The Conscious Parent

Maybe they are right and I was a bad child right from the start.”
The rebel role can result from several family dynamics, at the root of
which is the issue of acceptance. In the most typical cases, the parents
are either too rigid, overprotective, or overbearing. The child feels
squelched in its authentic expression, as well as feeling burdened by the
expectations of its parents. Much “bad” behavior is a child screaming for
help. The message the child seeks to get across is that it isn’t getting its
needs met in the normal way, which is why it resorts to extremes of
behavior. Another possible response is for the child to cave into the
demands of the parents, in which case it may become “the star” or “the
pleaser.”
Because “bad” behavior triggers all of our fears as a parent, we
admonish our children, guilt-tripping them, even shunning them in the
hope they will reform. They rarely do. Instead, we perpetuate their
behavior until it escalates out of control. When children receive negative
attention for negative behavior, they learn that if they behave badly
enough, their parents will finally notice them.
Some children who are rejected by their family grow up as receptors of
all the failings of a family. Therapists refer to these children as the
identified patient of the family. When parents don’t own their own
shadow, they inevitably project this shadow onto one of their children,
who becomes the container for all the family’s unexpressed, split-off
emotions. Occasionally, the projection encompasses more than one child.
Such children grow up with a strong sense of guilt and the feeling that
they are intrinsically “bad.”
When these children become parents, they either project their feelings