When Your Family Member Refuses to Grow Up: How To Cope with Emotional Immaturity

Emotional immaturity in a family member can be one of the most frustrating and painful dynamics to navigate. Their reactions are impulsive, self-centered, and totally lacking in self-awareness. Honestly, it can feel like you’re dealing with a toddler.

Whether it’s a parent, sibling, or partner, their refusal or inability to grow emotionally can leave you feeling stuck and drained. Like toddlers, emotionally immature adults can drain your energy when you are with them for long periods. You may take on the labor of parenting them or trying to manage their emotions to protect yourself or others from their outbursts.

Many people take this “management” approach to these relationships until they simply run out of energy. They end up in places like Calling Home because they realize this strategy is no longer working. Managing the emotionally immature family members in their life is going to deplete them completely.

When you realize that your family member is emotionally immature and is refusing to take steps to change, you have to face the reality that you have outgrown someone you expected to have a relationship with for life. In this article, we’ll explore how emotional immaturity can feel like interacting with a young child, why trying to fix or lower yourself to their level is unproductive, and how to navigate the painful process of outgrowing a family member emotionally.

Emotionally Immaturity and Child-Like Behaviors

Emotional immaturity often manifests in behaviors that are strikingly similar to those of young children. For example:

• Tantrums and Outbursts: When things don’t go their way, they may lash out in anger, frustration, or passive-aggressiveness rather than engaging in a calm, adult discussion.
• Self-Centeredness: Their world often revolves around their needs and desires, with little consideration for others. They may struggle to empathize with your perspective or acknowledge your feelings.
• Impulsiveness: Like a toddler who acts without thinking, an emotionally immature person may say or do hurtful, reckless, or irresponsible things, only to later deny or deflect accountability.
• Avoidance: Rather than facing conflicts, responsibilities, or difficult emotions head-on, they may dodge accountability by blaming others, shutting down, or disappearing altogether.
• Dependence: While they may crave independence, they often lack the emotional skills to maintain it. They rely on others to meet their needs or rescue them from the consequences of their actions.

These behaviors can make you feel like you’re parenting this adult, constantly walking on eggshells or cleaning up their mess. It’s exhausting, and it can trigger a deep desire to fix them, educate them, or lower yourself to their level.

Why You Can’t Fix Them

It’s natural to want to help someone you love, especially when their behavior causes harm to themselves, others, or you. However, emotional growth is (unfortunately) an inside job—it can’t be forced or orchestrated by someone else.

• They Must Choose Growth For Themselves: Emotional maturity requires self-awareness, accountability, and the willingness to change. If they don’t see a problem with their behavior, they won’t work on it, no matter how much you push.
• You Risk Losing Yourself: Constantly trying to lower yourself to their level—whether it’s through matching their tantrums, suppressing your needs, or enabling their avoidance—can erode your emotional well-being and sense of self.
• It Creates a Cycle of Resentment: The more you take on the responsibility of helping them with their emotional growth, the more you may resent them for not meeting you halfway. This dynamic can deepen the divide between you and increase feelings of resentment.

It’s Hard To Outgrow Your Family

When you have been conditioned to believe that you should continue relationships with your family members for life, and it becomes almost impossible to achieve this, it’s painful. As you develop healthier coping skills, boundaries, and self-awareness, you notice they just seem stuck. This process is both liberating and painful.

You are proud of your progress, and it’s so uncomfortable to be around people who will not grow or change. The more self-awareness you have, the more obvious their behavior becomes and the harder it becomes to tolerate it. Ignoring their self-destructive behaviors, criticism and rude remarks, or the desire to remain stuck becomes harder. You might find yourself sitting around your family members wondering, am I the only one that sees this? The lack of accountability and inability to see their impact on others begins to eat away at you until you want to scream. It is so hard to be around people who seem to be sleepwalking through life, stepping on anything in their way.

When this happens, you have to accept what you cannot change and acknowledge that their emotional maturity is not your fault. It is not within your power to fix it. The only things you can do are accept them as they are and lead by example. Leading by example includes clearly defining what behavior you will and won’t tolerate. It also means you will direct your energy away from trying to fix them and pour it back into yourself. The people in your life may be inspired by your progress and choose to make their own changes, but they will do this on their own. Leading by example allows you to live the life you want and inspire others without depleting yourself completely.

Outgrowing a family member emotionally can feel like an actual death. Give yourself permission to mourn the relationship you wish you had, even as you make peace with the one you do have.