I have been studying attachment theory and doing some research on how childhood attachment affects the health of people as they grow older. There is evidence that a poor childhood attachment leads to all kinds of problems and especially poor health. While I am not an expert on this subject, I have read some and can relate to it because I have had 3 autoimmune disease and I often wondered if they were somehow connected to being a parentified child.
Every adult I have talked to who admits to being parentified (or abused in some manner) as a child reports digestive and thyroid problems or autoimmune disease. At first, I thought this was very odd because I was sure I was the only one. But the more women I talked to who were parentified, the more I began to see the pattern. Parentification does lead to health problems, at least anecdotally and as reported by adults who were parentified children, and although my "research" on this is not scientific, it seems important to me. Parentification not only steals a childhood. It steals good health that we should be experiencing in adulthood.
Please email for a REVIEW COPY.Bad Girls Club has been added to the Pacific Northwest Special Collection at the University of Washington Library and the Ted Hipple Special Collection at the University of South Florida.
BAD GIRLS CLUB (not connected with the TV show) is a roller coaster ride that will put you into the head of a parentified child who is fighting to save her life. If you've ever wondered what it's like to be that child or if you were that child, you'll find yourself in these pages.
I was a parentified child and this blog is a lot about that and also about the things I've learned and done as a result of that experience. I've published two books, (Save Me, A Young Woman's Journey Through Schizophrenia to Health, Doubleday; Bad Girls Club, Blooming Tree Press) both about parentified and abused children which have been well received by educators and mental health experts.
"This book is a must read for school counselors, school psychologists, school nurses and all those interested in providing education and intervention for youngsters trapped in similar family dynamics and unable to free themselves."
Jan Tkaczyk MA School Counselors Assoc. Adjunct Professor, UMass. Boston "Bad Girls Club is as riveting as Dave Pelzer's A Child Called It books, but is far better at exploring the psychological reasons why the abused remain so loyal to their abusers." Midwest Book Review  parentification, child abuse, young adults, abandonment, shame, vulnerability
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