Kids who feel love depends on performance hide, split in two, or rebel

When the conversation turned to parents who tie their own worth to how perfectly they parent, author David Zahl described what he believes that pressure teaches a child.

Approval that depends on performance, he said, is "not a recipe for intimacy or closeness." In Zahl's account, a child who feels loved to the extent that he or she performs learns to hide the truth, to live as two different people, or to rebel and stop talking.

Zahl stresses that caring deeply about children is good, and that the world needs more present, responsible, and loving parents. The problem, he argues, starts when results on a test, a team, or admission to a selective program start to settle the parent's identity as well as the child's. Then children become evidence for how their parents feel about themselves, a use that Zahl describes as objectification that "doesn't serve the child or the parent well."

For evidence, Zahl cited journalist Jennifer Wallace's book Never Enough. As he described its findings, the students most at risk for drug use, depression, and suicide were those "in high-achieving schools who felt that their parents' love was conditional."

That message sometimes goes unspoken, in Zahl's view. Parents do not always need to state the condition, he said, because children can pick it up "by the nature of who they are." Zahl added that he has compassion for parents, because being one right now is hard.

He closed with what he has watched over time. He has seen young people grow up feeling responsible for how their parents felt about themselves, and then treat the relationship as complicated at best or want little further contact.