7 Signs You Grew Up With Emotionally Immature Parents, According To Therapists

Childhood should be whimsical, nurturing and validating. But for many kids, this just isn’t the case.

Some children have parents who may provide for their kids physically but don’t quite understand how to support their child emotionally or mentally. These types of parents are known in the therapy world as emotionally immature parents.

“An emotionally immature parent is a parent who is unable to meet your emotional needs, either as a kid or an adult child,” said Aparna Sagaram, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and owner of Space to Reflect in Philadelphia. “They center themselves regardless of what’s going on in your life.”

In other words, everything is about them, their emotional needs and what’s going on in their day, Sagaram explained. An emotionally immature parent often struggles to regulate their own emotions, said Jennifer Chaiken, a licensed marriage and family therapist, co-owner of The Therapy Group in Pennsylvania and co-host of ShrinkChicks podcast.

Emotionally mature parents are the opposite: “They’re parents who are more able to emotionally engage with you,” said Chaiken. “They’re able to really recognize and understand, and also affirm your emotions without taking them personally, or trying to change how you feel.”

Emotionally mature parents possess emotional intelligence, which allows them to navigate their emotions while communicating with their child in a way that’s effective and nurturing, added Chaiken.

“That level of support, it allows the child to grow and give[s] them the space to be their true self, rather than kind of imposing their own desires on the child,” Chaiken said.

Whether someone is an emotionally immature or emotionally mature parent has a lot to do with how they were raised.