The role of the golden child – the one who seems to function at a high level academically, socially, athletically – stands in contrast to that of the problem child, and together their roles serve to “correct” dysfunction in a given family system by providing balance or equilibrium, but not without a price.
For the golden child, that price is the delay of their own healthy emotional growth and exploration in adolescence in order to preserve the family status quo, only to have it emerge painfully in strange and even childish ways later on in adulthood. These moments, Dr Simcha Samuel shows us, point toward an opportunity to understand why this developmental stage got delayed, where we can explore why it is happening now, and how it can be moved through in a healthy way.
