We have all heard of the scapegoat, that quintessential archetype, we see it most often in society and scandals, but it is also one of the many roles that a child can play in a dysfunctional and toxic family.
Parents play an integral role in our development and as such when we have a situation such as a dysfunctional family, this obviously affects the child, creating a multitude of traumas and coping mechanisms and although there are many ways in which this trauma can develop in a child, in this article I will present the lost children syndrome, which refers to a child who retreats in themselves in order to minimize the amount that the world and the people that surround them affect them.
In toxic homes children usually fall into a role such as: the scapegoat(the one that is always to blame, no matter who is at fault), the perfect one(the one that can do no wrong), the sensitive one(the one that as the name suggests is sensitive, fact brought up time and time again as a defect), the caretaker (the one that assumes the role of the parent) and the people pleaser(the one that believes that everything would be alright if everyone is happy and does everything in their power to maintain that peace).
The term “lost child” comes from the idea that this child is lost in their own world. The lost child is one of the roles that children have in dysfunctional family and it refers to a child, most times the second or third one who, because of their traumatic home life withdraws within themselves, avoids personal interactions and they repress their emotions and they usually spend their time in the shadows avoiding being noticed, becoming invisible, as they believe that in this way they can avoid the bad things that are going one around them. Because they retreat into themselves they feel ignored and unheard by the people around them and this leads to them not developing friendships as they also lack the ability to connect with others and share their opinions, because of a fear of conflict which stems from their fear of conflict. Another trait is that they repress their emotions using animals, objects by seeking comfort in them, as they believe that you can count more on objets than on people as they are more predictable than people and usually won’t start a conflict.
And so once again as we have been proved many times over, the way that our parents have a huge role in the way that their children turn out and in the case that the environment is a toxic one, the child will be affected.
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