What Makes A Childhood Chaotic?

Think about your home as a child.

• How would you describe it?
• What was your home like?
• How did the people in your home manage their emotions?
• When you think about it now, what does it feel like in your body?
• Does your life today still feel like your childhood, or is it completely different?

There is consistent evidence that household chaos leads to poor outcomes for children, parents, and the family. It makes it harder for parents to parent, increases stress, and leads to adverse physical and mental health and education outcomes.

“Household chaos” refers to the level of organization in the family home. A chaotic household lacks routine, predictability, or structure and often has high levels of stimulation or background noise. In chaotic households, you don’t know what will happen or what someone will do next. Kids who grow up like this spend their lives trying to predict outcomes and devise a system to control their environment.

Before we dive into this topic, I want to clarify that this is often a systemic issue, not just a parent failure, especially for low-income or single parents. Many of these parents are trapped in a cycle where they must choose between going to work, cleaning the house, taking an extra shift, or being on time to pick up their child. The stress that comes with being unable to manage your time and the chaos that ensues, leads to more chaos.

Social media has also created more pressure to have a specific type of “home.” Having a peaceful home does not mean that everything is always Instagram-perfect. It’s not about everything being aesthetically pleasing; it’s about reliability. This is why household chaos is seen across all levels of income and socioeconomic status. Low-income families can (and often do) provide their kids with a calm, stable home. High-income families can experience high levels of chaos despite their access to resources.

Household chaos is a term that we use to describe homes where no one knows what will happen next. These homes may be noisy, crowded, dirty, unpredictable, or full of emotional ups and downs. As a therapist, I’ve noticed that there is physical/logistical household chaos and emotional household chaos. Some families only have one; many have both.

When a household is physically chaotic, the family may experience things like:

• Always being late or missing appointments entirely
• Never knowing where anything is
• Feeling overwhelmed by mess, clutter, or dirt in the home
• Not being able to feel settled anywhere
• Moving often and not having a sense of “home”
• No sense of routine
• Never knowing where your next meal is coming from or if you’ll eat
• Bills going unpaid, being evicted, having the power turned off, etc.
• A feeling of being unprepared or behind
• A sense that there are no rules or the rules are very inconsistent
• Not knowing who is in charge or who to look to for direction

When a household is emotionally chaotic, the family may experience things like:

• Walking on eggshells around certain people
• Emotional volatility and outbursts
• Being shamed for certain emotions or not being allowed to express emotions
• Abusive language or outbursts
• Inconsistent affection or attention
• Feeling like you have to manage other people’s emotions
• Being afraid to speak up or share how you feel

Most families will experience household chaos at some point.

Adverse outcomes are experienced when the chaos is consistent, and there is zero effort to repair or fix the chaotic elements. If the adults in charge are unaware of the chaos or are perpetuating it, there are bad outcomes for everyone in the family.

Kids need predictability to thrive. Even though they’ll fight you every step of the way, that bedtime routine and making them brush their teeth or sit down to eat dinner helps them succeed. It is essential to have a space they can come to where they know what to expect.

A child can grow up in a one-bedroom apartment with a single mother and clothes from a thrift store and feel highly at peace and cared for. A child can grow up in a mansion with every material item and a father who drinks and throws things at the wall and feel completely terrified.

So what happens when home isn’t a safe place?

If you grew up in a chaotic household, you may experience some unwanted symptoms as an adult.

Tony A. published "The Laundry List" in 1978. It is a list of characteristics that does a great job of describing the characteristics of adults who grew up in dysfunctional homes.

According to Tony's list, many adult children of dysfunctional families can:

• Become isolated
• Fear people and authority figures
• Become approval seekers
• Be frightened of angry people
• Be terrified of personal criticism
• Become alcoholics, marry them, or both
• View life as a victim
• Have an overwhelming sense of responsibility
• Be concerned more with others than themselves
• Feel guilty when they stand up for themselves
• Become addicted to excitement
• Confuse love and pity
• "Love" people who need rescuing
• Stuff their feelings
• Lose the ability to feel
• Have low self-esteem
• Judge themselves harshly
• Become terrified of abandonment
• Do anything to hold on to a relationship
• Become "para-alcoholics" (people who take on the characteristics of the disease without drinking)
• Become reactors instead of actors