Ocober 29, 2026
By: Dr. Simcha Samuel, Clinical Psychologist
If you were a fly on the wall across family therapy sessions, you might notice that each family member plays a different role. One seems to be the scapegoat or problem child, who the family views as the reason that they need therapy; this person can be viewed as the one who absorbs the dysfunction in the family system and expresses or externalizes it into symptoms, making him or her the ‘identified patient’.
In contrast, there is someone else who can be viewed as the golden child. This person seems to function at a high level (e.g. academically, socially, athletically), and stands in contrast to the problem child. Together, these two roles provide the family system with a balance or equilibrium. After all, the family is itself a system or an organism which will move toward equilibrium to achieve a sense of stability or balance.
In many families, children can take turns in different roles. However, in some families, children spend large chunks of their development (even decades) stuck in one role. The individual who spent their childhood and adolescence in the role of golden child often has a sense that others expect them to be functional, responsible and emotionally fine. Their pain point may be that their struggles were minimized or unseen, and that high expectations were put on them compared with their sibling(s). In contrast, individuals who get stuck in the role of problem child have a sense that people view them as a dramatic screw-up. They may escape the expectations placed on the golden child, but they struggle with the sense that others don’t respect or trust their judgment as they do other adults.
Interestingly, adolescence is a developmental phase in which teenagers are meant to explore their identity and distinguish themselves from their family of origin. However, when the role of golden child extends from childhood throughout adolescence, that individual may be highly aware that they are expected to remain responsible and highly functional; as such, they may suppress, limit, and delay their identity exploration in an effort to preserve their relationships (and indeed to preserve their identity as a golden child). In recent clinical practice, I have noticed that those individuals often have a delayed adolescence. If they believe that exploring their identity during adolescence and potentially distinguishing themselves too much from their family of origin would pose too much of a potential strain on their familial connections, they may suppress or delay their need for individuation until they have moved out of their family home and maybe even until they have secured their own chosen family (e.g. a strong community, friend group, spouse and children). Their ability to process anger toward, and their efforts to set boundaries with, their family of origin may also be delayed.
This delayed adolescence may be interpreted as strange, or even childish, by others as it is out of step with their same-age peers – but the context matters. Most people do not arbitrarily choose to explore their identity or experiment with boundaries for the first time in their mid-thirties. Instead, this blog offers a different way to interpret the timing. Sometimes this shift (or delayed adolescence) happens when the perceived threat to connection, belonging and community is viewed as more tolerable to the individual. This does not mean that the individual will stay in a delayed adolescence throughout their adulthood, but rather that there is an opportunity to understand (without shame) why this developmental stage got delayed, why it is happening now, and how it can be moved through in a healthy way.
Richardson, R.W. (2011). Family Ties that Bind: A self-help guide to change through family of origin therapy (4th ed.). Self-Counsel Press.
