There are parents who do not allow their children to leave. Children need to feel like individual, independent beings with different opinions and beliefs. This is how they build their own identity and head towards adulthood. The problem comes when parents do not allow this natural development to occur. It is then, when they tie their children, wanting them not to leave their side, turning them into an “anchor child”.
Sometimes parents take a son or daughter from conception to anchor it to them, to their lives and their destinies. They usually mention phrases like: “This son is for my old age”, “this is in case his father leaves”, “this is my happiness”, “this is so I don’t feel alone”, “this will take over the business of the family”.
Or more phrases like: “This one is not going to get married, he will stay with me”, “everyone can leave, but you can’t”, “if he is here, his father will not leave us”, “you will take care of me in my illness”, ” you are here to help me with your brothers when I die”, “you will do or study what I could not”, “you are my only company”, “you are my father and/or mother”, “you are what gives meaning to my life”, “you are my support”.
All these phrases, said or thought, are a sentence and a mandate that the children perceive and fulfill out of blind love, childish love, with a contract that they carry signed in their hearts and they comply with it.
Children who have never left their parents’ house; wanting to do it. Children who believe that they have to take care of their old parents, also called “stick” children. Children who are charged with the mandate to travel with their parents, to spend the holidays with them, to have to make them happy as an obligation and at the cost of conflicts and disagreements with their own families.
Children who have not married or formalized with any partner because they are symbolically tied to mom or dad. Children who take care of their siblings by promises made to their parents on their deathbeds. When children fail to become emotionally independent from their parents, they become adults with a great emotional burden. They feel guilty for having a life of their own, away from their family of origin.
It is necessary to check if dad or mom was an anchor son or daughter in your system. Whoever stops her, retains and could not move forward; he must heal the generational impact of it.
How to realize if you are an anchor son?
If you are a son or daughter who does not advance in their projects, who cannot have a partner, who lives in the parental home (even if they are dead). If you have a profession that you do not enjoy or live as a sacrifice such as a doctor, psychotherapist, nurse, social worker, work with the elderly. You are an anchor son.
If you cannot travel or make trips even if you have the resources. If you are in your parents’ business and you have to give and distribute to your dad, mom or siblings. You are an anchor son.
If you got married and had to take your mom, dad, or adult siblings to live with you; you are an anchor son. If you live with the obligation to care for your parents, if you return to live with your parents after getting divorced, if no plan to live far away or in another country is fulfilled; only if you give money for your parents’ old age, you are an anchor son.
If you suffer pain, cramps, numbness in your legs, ankles and knees every time you plan a project that takes you away from your mom or dad, you are an anchor child.
What to do to heal?
Parents hardly let go of their children, less if they have created such a project from the soul. But if at some point you thought about it, you said it because at that moment it was your level of consciousness, look your son or daughter in the eye and say: “Son, I free you from me, from taking care of my illness, my old age, my shortcomings, my words.”
Our words and fears bind our generations. You have permission as a child to free yourself from your parents’ mandate without feeling guilty. You can give or contribute for his old age. But they are not your responsibility unless they are elderly, seriously ill and totally helpless.
Granting wings to children so that they can fly free is the greatest gift that we can give as parents. No child should remain anchored next to the mother or father. Wise parents plan and have a vision so as not to overburden any child.
“When I let go of who I am, I become what I could be. When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need.” -Lao Tzu