The Golden Child Syndrome

we’re used to thinking of many of the
psychological problems of adulthood
stemming from a lack of adequate love in
our early years we grow mentally unwell
preto under confidence anxiety paranoia
and shame because somewhere in the past
we were denied the necessary warmth care
and sympathy but there is another more
curious and more subtle problem that may
arise from childhood years what we can
term the golden child syndrome we may
wind up mentally unwell not so much
because we were ignored or maltreated
but because we were loved with a
distinctive and troubling over intensity
because we were praised for capacities
that we did not possess and could not
identify with and because we were asked
with apparent kindness but underlying
unwitting manipulation to shoulder the
hopes and longings of our carers rather
than of our own deep selves there our
childhoods where upon arrival the infant
is quickly described by one or more of
its parents as profoundly exceptional it
is grandly declared uncommon ly
beautiful intelligent talented and
resolutely set for a special destiny not
for this child the ordinary sorrows and
stumblings of an average life while
perhaps still no taller than a chair the
offspring is firmly described as a
figure whose name will reverberate down
the centuries on the surface this could
seem to offer a route to enormous
self-confidence and security but to
place such expectations on someone who
still struggles with that coat buttons
can paradoxically leave a child feeling
Hollow and particularly incapable unable
to sense any resources within itself to
honor the hopes of those it loves and
depends on the child grows up with a
latent sense of fraudulence and
consistent fear that it will be unmasked
it winds up at once grandly expecting
that others will recognize its
sensational destiny
entirely unsure as to why or how they
might in fact do so the golden child
cannot shake off a sense that it’s very
special and yet can’t identify within
itself any real grounds why it should be
so its underlying longing is not to
revolutionize nations and be honoured
across the ages it is to be accepted and
loved for who it is in all its often
unimpressive and faltering realities it
wishes as we all do to be seen and
accepted for itself to have its faults
and frailties forgiven and acknowledged
rather than denied or glossed over it is
in the end as much of an insult to one’s
authentic reality and a psychologically
painful to be praised for great things
one hasn’t done and could never do as to
be attacked and blamed for sins one is
innocent of the phenomenon suggests that
true love should involve an agnosticism
around a child’s eventual level of
worldly success it should ideally not
matter to the parent where a child ends
up or rather it should matter only
insofar as and no further than it
matters to the child parents who see
their child in golden terms or not of
course consciously cruel they are merely
with tragic fervour misdirecting
energies that have failed to find a
better destination the child covertly
being asked to redeem a career that did
not go as expected a depressed mood that
did not lift or a marriage that proved
unusually intolerable the golden child
is over time destined for a moment of
breakdown when the hopes invested in it
failed to be realized the golden future
will it starts to be clear never
materialized but a bigger prize awaits a
feeling of liberation from expectations
that were always disconnected from
reality the golden child is freed to
enjoy a momentous truth that a life does
not need to be golden in order to be
valuable that we can live in basa met
forms in pewter or iron and still will
be worthy of love and adequate
self-esteem and even though this has
nothing to do with the original
expectations one was asked to shoulder
that realization will be the truly
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