Lindsay C Gibson’s book Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents was an enormous unexpected hit in the pandemic. Now the psychologist is back with her advice for raising happy, healthy children
Around the time of the pandemic, a self-help book with a somewhat unglamorous but functional title – Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents – took off on social media. It had been published five years earlier, but in 2020, when more people had time to reflect on life, it was rediscovered, its success fuelled by readers who recognised their own childhood in its pages and their experience with parents who had uncontrolled emotional outbursts, or were self-absorbed, unavailable or lacking empathy. In the view of its author, Lindsay C Gibson, these were parents whose own emotional developmental stage was closer to that of, say, a four- or five-year-old. Their own children had overtaken them, and were now recognising it.
Gibson’s latest book, How to Raise an Emotionally Mature Child, is a guide for those of us who don’t want our children to experience the same kind of childhood we did. Perhaps you’ve realised – the self-awareness is key – that you’re lacking enough maturity of your own, and feel clueless about what you should be doing. “If you have an emotionally immature parent, it doesn’t mean that you’re doomed,” says Gibson, via video call from her home in coastal Virginia. “However, you’ve probably learned emotionally immature attitudes and behaviours that may pop out at times. The difference is that if you have adequate emotional maturity, you’re going to notice it and it’s going to bother you.”
