Pay attention to the chameleon kids
When kids don't want to add stress to the family, they may become chameleon kids; the good, calm, quiet, good-natured kid who will be whoever you need them to be at the expense of being themselves.
Many of us grew up with the expectation that our job was to be good, obedient, and dutiful. As kids, we learned the importance of being respectful, behaving with kindness, and playing by the rules. For some kids, this goes beyond general rule-following and teeters into the territory of pleasing others as a form of self-protection. Here’s how this happens.
Growing up, many kids internalize the false belief that a child’s job is to be seen and not heard. Many children learn that it is wrong to erupt and disrupt. This causes many kids to suppress how they truly feel. They hush their own voice and they learn to ignore their needs in service of others. They put other people’s thoughts, feelings, and opinions above their own.
When we don’t let children express themselves freely, they learn to surveil and monitor themselves. By going against the grain, forming their own opinions, and breaking unspoken allegiances to authority figures, they fear being seen as bad, broken, or unpleasant. To be seen as bad, broken, or unpleasant ultimately means being shamed and potentially shunned. To be seen as defective means risking abandonment.
When children don’t want to add stress to the family, they may become the good kid, the quiet kid, the calm kid, the nice kid, the helper kid, or the rule-following kid; they become a “chameleon kid.” The chameleon kids are experts at changing who they are to fit their surroundings. They figure out who you need them to be and they become it. Chameleon kids follow the rules, are incredibly empathetic and perceptive, and they are high self-monitors. And here’s the interesting flip-side: these are the qualities that make chameleon kids excellent at helping others. They receive attachment rewards for being good, quiet, calm, and cheerful.
Following the rules
Chameleon kids internalize the belief that their job is to follow rules all the time. Yes, rule-following has its place. But when we are too rule-bound and bind ourselves to rigid rule-sets, we prevent ourselves from seeing that there are many alternative ways to live and to be. Colouring outside the lines feels scary to the chameleon kids who have been socially rewarded for colouring inside of them. Breaking rules or, better yet, creating new ones is hard for the chameleon kids who have been taught that the rules have already been set. This is why chameleon kids also struggle with anxiety, stress, courage, and individuality.
In order to follow the rules, you first have to learn them. The good, quiet, and helpful kids spend a lot of time observing the rules so they know who to be and how to act. “Good girls” and “good boys” don’t disrupt the status quo and don’t question authority. But sometimes, it is important for adults to help the chameleon kids question or break rules, especially if the rules are outdated or were never designed with their likeness in mind. For the chameleon kid, rule-breaking is not an act of defiance, it is an essential part of reclaiming their voice and writing their own rules.
The right kind of rules
I often wonder what it takes for these rules to stick. Why do some of us internalize rules and not others? Why do we follow some people’s orders and not others? What are the right kind of rules and who gets to decide how we think, feel, and behave? Many people think that a well-behaved child is a child who is calm, polite, and quiet.
Unfortunately, many of the good-natured, calm, and quiet kids go along with certain rules in order to fit in and belong. Many kids feel a pressure to get along in order to belong. This is especially true of the kids whose first bullies were not at school, but at home; these kids go to school with a desire to be seen, to be liked, and to be loved.
As kids, we often have trouble distinguishing between our desire to belong and our need to be loved which might the reason why we change certain parts of ourselves in order to gain approval, acceptance, safety, and love. We become good and quiet in order to keep the peace and keep people close.
All grown up
Chameleon kids become people pleasing adults. As kids, we learn to please when we don’t want to disappoint others. In that same way, the people pleasing adult is well-practiced in the art of shape-shifting to diffuse stress and reduce tensions. The relational scripts we learned in childhood are the same ones we carry with us into adulthood.
As adults, this usually means we prioritize helping others over focusing on ourselves and our own needs. This might also mean we have less practice identifying our needs because we’ve spent our childhood learning how to be nice, kind, calm, and good for others rather than being kind, caring, and compassionate with ourselves. In adulthood, this might also explain why we have trouble saying no, setting a boundary, or even communicating our needs; we fear being seen as needy, disruptive, impolite, and spoiled.
Don’t repeat the pattern
It is normal to repeat the patterns we experienced in childhood well into adulthood. We all do it. This includes treating others how we have been treated, even if that treatment was harsh mistreatment. As an adult, we all have an opportunity to break the patterns of behaviour we learned in order to protect ourselves or survive in our family or childhood environment. As a starting point, it is helpful to assume responsibility for our healing work and accept the role we will play in creating the changes we wish to develop. It takes time to unravel decades of patterning but change is possible. Chameleon kids do not have to become chameleon adults.
A note for the chameleon kids
If you relate to being a chameleon kid, here’s what breaking the cycle and creating a new pattern of behaviour may look like: It is likely time to break some rules, starting with your own rigid rules you’ve created for yourself. You know how to follow the rules, but it is also not your job to make sure everyone else is following the rules. Not everyone is going to act in alignment with your values and not everyone will have internalized the same rules you did.
Creating a new pattern of behaviour may be about releasing your need for rules in order to control your behaviour or releasing your need for control itself. Controlling others might just be another way you seek to control how you feel inside. Over-monitoring others might be preventing you from focusing on how you feel and what you need. Over-monitoring yourself might be causing you to revert back to the younger part of you that had to abandon your needs in order to belong or receive love.
A reminder in case you need it
As an adult, you don’t have to follow all the unspoken rules of life, especially if they require you to be calm, quiet, and good before they allow you to be freely yourself.
You don’t have to be “the good kid”— you can be the confident adult.
You don’t have to be “the nice kid” — you can be the boundaried adult.
You don’t have to be “the calm kid” — you can be an expressive adult.
You don’t have to be “the helper kid” — you can be a kind and caring adult.
You don’t have to be “the quiet kid” — you can be an adult who shares their views.
You don’t have to be “the rules kid” — you can be an adult who is guided their your values.
You don’t have to be “the pleasing kid” — you can be an adult who sometimes disappoints people.
You don’t have to be “the everything kid” — you can be an adult who has their limits.
You don’t have to be “the chameleon kid” anymore either — you can be an adult with a desire to break the cycles that no longer serve you.
Things I’m noticing this week:
The heaviness of the world; I agree with Vikki Reynolds’s belief that as therapists and helpers we have “a moral obligation to be the bringers of hope.” Working on it!
A new term called “Burn-on” via this article— Burn-on, the ‘masked depression’: How is it different from burn-out?
I was also a guest on a few therapy podcasts recently. You can check them out below:
The D Spot Podcast with Dana McNeil— A Deep Dive Into Intrusive Thoughts, Trauma-Fishing, and Oversharing
The Entrepreneurial Clinician Podcast with Jo Muirhead— The Uncomfortable Truth: Navigating Human-Technology Relationships in Therapy Rooms
The Practice of Therapy Podcast with Gordon Brewer— Navigating Modern Stress