With their qualities of empathy and their intuition, gifted children are very early excellent interlocutors, their maturity of mind makes that they are not surprised if one of their parents begins to pour out on his adult feelings and to witness him the discomfort of his situation.
He can even uncide all his grievances, assured of being understood, without thinking for a moment that he speaks of the father or the mother of the listening to him, as if he were trying to put him in his camp, therefore opposed to the other parent. It is then an untenable situation for this child who ends up no longer knowing what is expected of him. There are, of course, extreme cases where the defaulting parent really is, the child does not need to be explained to him the abomination of the situation, he saw it himself on a daily basis, he appreciates being understood and seeing his shared feelings, even if he intends to tell facts that he would have preferred to ignore.
These extreme cases, which generally end quite badly and sometimes in a truly dramatic way, are more often evoked, precisely because of their impressive appearance, even for those that their function used to frightening situations. Society also takes over to try to put order in a disorder that goes beyond the protagonists, to the great relief of children who no longer felt the strength and know-how necessary to deal with these disasters.
Most often, these are banal appearance quarrels, in reality very serious in depth, because they reveal a fundamentally different conception of existence, but whose consequences are less overwhelming: any event, even minor and derisory, becomes a cause of confrontation as if the protagonists only knew this one road to settle a divergence of opinion and the first arbiter to which they steal. He thinks he is responsible for a mission, he tells himself that the distress he perceives well in this parent in pain must be appeased and if we address him, it is because there is no one else.
In fact, the one who exteriorizes, sometimes in a a little too spectacular way, his annoyance or his anger, does not seek a more distant or more neutral confidant, he goes to the closest, guaranteed to be understood without being necessary to be forced to make a presentation of the whole sequence. This situation is all the more painful for the confidant that he has the constant feeling of betraying the one who is thus criticized: defending him would amount to betraying live the one who takes him as a confidant, in all cases, he occupies a traitor position, he who loves order, justice and especially harmony.
“No one realizes the immensity of this charge”
No one realizes the vastness of this charge, we end up finding this role normal that he should not take on in a classic family configuration: children must not be affected by adult stories, but the fold has been taken and each is blocked in their position.
In a siblings, there is most often one of the children who occupies this place that can hardly be described as “privileged” since it imposes a weight that he believes himself for a long time forced to bear with the feeling that no one else can play a role that we do not want to dispute him. Sometimes even, he is jealous of his siblings because of this apparently privileged situation of a favorite interlocutor. He then has no more withdrawal position: at the same time, traitor, supposedly preferred, horrified confidant because of the transgression which is imposed on him, forced to maintain himself in a neutrality in reality impossible to keep, he does not find any rest now.
Sometimes we have to wait for adolescence to rebate the confidantbut he must be rather rebellious of nature and have a well-drawn character to dare to revolt against this harmful situation which puts him in conjunction with each of his two parents.
If he does not have the heart to put an end to these interminable complaints, so as not to make suffer more, that has the feeling of knowing a little respite by confident without restraint, he must find by himself a position where he can be spared. Too sensitive and defenseless, he would undergo this eternal bombardment without having time to recover.
Gifted children, who occupy this place because of their quality of listening, are forced to seek by their only means of defense strategies: They put these annoying confidences at a distance as if they did not concern his parents, They allow the liberating flow to flow by operating a tiny shift of the protagonists: they are no longer really of their parents, but characters who look like them in many aspects, while remaining a little abstract, as in a comedy or a novel where the protagonists seem real, with subtle differences which indicate that it is a fiction. It is then that he can keep an unshakable calm by hearing recriminations and complaints gradually emptied of their meaning.
This defense mechanism is so well installed that he imagines that this role is assigned to him for life: Adult, it is sometimes necessary that it is his spouse who, hearing these plaintive speeches, is surprised by this situation by wondering how he supports it. Explain that this is another circuit, specific and solely devoted to this exchange, is certainly delicate for someone who ignores this kind of situation. The life confidant is likely to give him a distorted image, when it is an essential defense system, without any relation to his true personality. We suspect that a diver does not always offer this smooth, black and shiny appearance, with disproportionate feet: without his combination, he looks like everyone.
It was a way to preserve her sensitivity by sparing her so as not to be eternally flayed, with, moreover, a feeling of helplessness from which it is imperative to defend himself. It is self -image. One of the consequences might suggest that this is a vocation: “ All my life I was the receptacle of the sorrows and the annoyances of my entourage, it must be my mission on earth, I must fulfill it “And the confidant engages in a professional path which will enclose him in this role which has been imposed on him, assured of being protected by the defenses developed in his childhood. In fact, he had multiple gifts which he leaves fallow.
Advice : Even if the temptation is great in the face of a sensitive, kind and intuitive child, one should never give him a role of confidant: he can however sometimes seem to choose him himself, to lighten a suffering which he perceives and that he would like to attenuate. His own qualities must be used for the construction of his personality, and not to serve as an eternal receptacle, obviously understanding and attentive, stories where he cannot, especially, intervene.
