Still seeking your parents’ approval at 40? Why the child in us keeps hoping

You tell your mother about your promotion, and she asks about the weather. Your father hasn’t seen his grandchildren in months, though he lives an hour away. You are 43, you have a life of your own, and still, after every visit, there’s that old feeling: not enough. Many adults know it. Seeking your parents’ approval doesn’t automatically stop when you move out. Start by finding out how much room the child in you still takes up.

Why the wish for approval doesn’t go away

The British psychiatrist John Bowlby, founder of attachment theory, described how children build inner working models from the way their parents treat them: a picture of how valuable they are and what they can expect from others. A child who is often rejected tends to develop a picture of not being lovable or not being enough¹. The German attachment researchers Karin and Klaus Grossmann showed in their Bielefeld and Regensburg long-term studies, spanning decades, how far such early experiences reach into adolescence and adult life².

The American psychologist Jeffrey Young, founder of schema therapy, found words for this. The emotional deprivation schema describes the deep expectation that your wish for warmth, understanding and protection won’t be adequately met. The approval-seeking schema describes a sense of worth that depends mainly on other people’s reactions³⁴. According to Young, both develop when basic needs fall short in childhood, and they stay active until you notice them.

Why you keep turning into a child around your parents

Sigmund Freud already noticed that people often don’t remember old experiences but repeat them: they act them out instead of knowing them. He called it the compulsion to repeat⁵. With parents it shows especially clearly. Barely at the kitchen table, you are twelve again: waiting for praise, swallowing a remark, trying hard. The Konstanz sociologist Kurt Lüscher and the American sociologist Karl Pillemer describe how love and disappointment exist side by side in parent–child relationships well into adulthood¹⁰. It gets difficult when the disappointment isn’t allowed and hope is renewed instead, again and again.

This hope is not a mistake. It made sense back then: a child cannot leave its parents, so it hopes things will get better if it just tries hard enough. As an adult, the same hope keeps you stuck in the waiting position. More on why parent patterns are so persistent in Enmeshed with your parents.

When your own children wake the old hurt

In 1975 the American psychoanalyst Selma Fraiberg coined a famous image: ghosts in the nursery. With your own child, the unresolved experiences of your own childhood return. Fraiberg observed that parents who could remember and feel their old pain were less likely to pass it on to their children⁶. A review of three decades of research with 95 samples confirms that attachment patterns are indeed passed on between generations, but only to a moderate degree. Passing it on is not destiny⁷. What this can look like in family life is shown in “Daddy has to work” and Angry at your child.

Many people only realise with their own child how much they went without. And often a new, quiet hope appears: perhaps my parents will at least do it right with the grandchildren. When that doesn’t happen, it hurts twice. Yet intensive grandparenting is not a given. According to the German Ageing Survey 2023, around 38% of grandparents with grandchildren up to 13 help look after them⁸. The researchers David Coall and Ralph Hertwig show how much this involvement varies from family to family⁹. Hard, but often true: what your parents couldn’t give you, they usually can’t give your children either.

The inner conflicts behind it

The German OPD conflict model describes basic inner conflicts that show up again and again in relationships¹¹. When you keep waiting for your parents, it is usually these. In MindMotion they are called patterns:

• Taking & Giving (OPD: care versus self-sufficiency): the hunger for what was missing is still there, and is still directed at those who couldn’t give it.
• Being Enough (self-worth conflict): your worth hangs on your parents’ gaze. Successes only count once they see them.
• Closeness & Space (individuation versus dependence): saying goodbye inside feels like a loss you don’t want to risk.
• Fit In & Take Charge (submission versus control): being good, not disagreeing, hoping to be loved after all.
• Responsibility (guilt conflict): looking after your parents as if you could earn their affection.

Each of these patterns has a hidden benefit: as long as you hope, you don’t have to grieve. That is why the hope is so stubborn. Where self-worth comes from is explained in Self-worth: where it comes from.

Healthier: grieving instead of waiting

The American family researcher Pauline Boss describes ambiguous loss: a person is physically present but psychologically absent. Because there is no clear goodbye, grief stays frozen¹². Boss described this for situations such as dementia or addiction. Applied to parents who are there but emotionally out of reach, it explains well why you never finish: there is always the next visit, the next phone call.

The Swiss psychologist Verena Kast showed that grief is needed not only after a death but also for farewells in life. She describes four phases: not wanting to accept it, emotions breaking through, searching and separating, and finally a new relationship with yourself and the world¹³. Here that means accepting that something important was missing in childhood, and that it can’t be made up for. Not for you, and not for your children.

Grieving doesn’t mean writing your parents off. Contact often gets easier once you stop expecting what they don’t have. And it opens your eyes to what is possible today:

• Give what was missing yourself: give your children the interest and warmth you missed. That is what Fraiberg meant by the ghosts leaving.
• Refuel elsewhere: look for recognition from people who can give it, and learn to take it in.
• Be kind to yourself: speak to the child you were the way a good parent would have. More in Self-compassion.
• Collect new experiences: every relationship in which you are seen rewrites the old working model a little. More in New relationship experiences.

How MindMotion picks this up

MindMotion is not therapy and doesn’t offer it. The app is a tool for psychological self-reflection, closer to coaching. In the Mind-Check you start from a concrete scene, such as the last visit that left you feeling small. Step by step you look at what you wished for, what you feared and where you know it from. That makes visible how childhood, inner pattern and your everyday life today are connected. At the end there is a small plan for the next situation. Start the Mind-Check, it works without signing up. Psychology in 30 seconds is waiting in the video blog.

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