Blog Entries tagged 'Hero child'

The "Geographical Cure" for addiction

kenandjody@comcast.net — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 07:18:54 +0100

For various reasons, the members of addicted families suffer constant upheaval from frequent relocations. Moving may be related to other obvious symptoms of family instability: bankruptcy, divorce, frequent hospitalization, incarceration, deaths in the family, etc.

But there may be other reasons. The hero-child dad is more likely than most dads to sacrifice family stabilityin order to climb one more rung up the corporate ladder. Even more often, however, when the mar [...]

Childhood Roles in Addiction

kenandjody@comcast.net — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 11:55:33 +0100

I will flesh out my description of the disease process as it relates to childhood with some concepts long accepted now among program people about the roles typically played by children in alcoholic homes. This section is to describe predictable roles of children in addictive homes, and I include it here with the certainty that many readers will have that "...been there, donethat" experience!

The roles are:

The class clown draws atten [...]

The Hero Child

kenandjody@comcast.net — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 05:58:46 +0100

I have played all of the roles of a child from a dysfunctional home at one time or another in my lifetime, but the most convenient for me as a child was that of "hero child." Here is the kind of bargaining that I did in my mind. Everything will be OK if I just:

...be "all everything" at school

...get good grades

...make first chair

...keep the yard clean

...literally "perform" for visitors to our home