April 2025 – Internal Family Systems: The Child Part

This month is the second to last installment in the recent series of articles on IFS; next month will be the roundup and the direct relating of it all to depression. Specifically, I’m rounding out the Parts with a discussion of the Child (distinct from the infant/toddler), which more than others is the Part who plays. It’s also a part that is commonly shut down, either during its time as a child because the environment could not tolerate its aliveness, or during adolescence or early young adulthood, when the Child is seen as an obstruction to the serious business at hand. I hope you find it helpful in further locating who’s who in your own psyche.

(If you need an IFS refresher, the previous articles are here: the core parts: Protectors, Exiles, Self, and the developmental parts: the Infant/Divine Child, the Teen, the Young Adult, and the Adult. And for the deep dive into IFS: No Bad Parts (the lay introduction) and Internal Family Systems Therapy (the clinical manual).)

I hope your spring is starting out well, and the childlike exuberance of new growth is finding its way into your life.

A detailing of the Child Part of the psyche, per IFS.

Children at a very early age engage and interact in the world around them. Play allows children to create and explore a world they can master, conquering their fears while practicing adult roles, sometimes in conjunction with other children or adult caregivers. As they master their world, play helps children develop new competencies that lead to enhanced confidence and the resiliency they will need to face future challenges. (Ginsburg, 2007, p. 183)

We are hardwired for play and exploration as well as for joining with one another. In fact, “playful parenting” is one of the best ways to prepare your children for relationships and encourage them to connect with others. That’s because it gives them positive experiences being with the people they spend the most time with: their parents. Of course, children need structure and boundaries and to be held accountable for their behavior, but even as you maintain your authority, don’t forget to have fun with your kids. Play games. Tell jokes. Be silly. Take an interest in what they care about. The more they enjoy the time they spend with you and the rest of the family, the more they’ll value relationships and desire more positive and healthy relational experiences in the future. The reason is simple. With every fun, enjoyable experience you give your children while they are with the family, you provide them with positive reinforcement about what it means to be in loving relationship with others. (Seigel, The Whole-Brained Child, p. 182-183)

The time between infancy/toddlerhood and teenage years is the period of childhood, divided into early childhood (2-6yrs) and middle childhood (6-12yrs). As with all the other stages of human development, it has its representation internally as a child part, whose particular character is defined by our history at those ages, but whose essence is shared by all children. The oak tree next to my house may bend and twist very differently from the one up the road, but their shared qualities are what make them equally “oak tree.” It’s the same with these developmental parts.

As I’ve described in the previous articles on Internal Family Systems (IFS), it is helpful to have a map of the different stages of development, because the Parts (the subpersonalities) of the psyche tend to express as the different developmental ages that then have relationships with the other aged Parts. Knowing which Part you’re engaging with, and what its core needs, challenges, and difficulties are just as a function of its age gives you a real leg up on identifying who’s who. And since the core need of all the Parts is to feel themselves accurately heard and understood, knowing how the, say, Child works differently than the Teen allows you (as the Adult/Self) to address them where they are at and gain some influence. It’s really no different than with other humans: we all want to be known and understood, and when we are, we extend trust and openness, building harmonious relationships. As outside, so inside.

So, every developmental stage has its particular challenges, and a great map for these comes from the developmental psychologist Erik Erikson. For every stage he identified (Infancy, Toddler, Early Childhood, Middle Childhood, Adolescence, Young Adult, Middle Age, and Older Adulthood, see here) he defined a core challenge and the consequence for not meeting that challenge. These requirements seem to be baked into what we are as humans at these different stages; our particular experience of the stage will be colored and shaped according to our unique history, but the underlying “armature” (like the metal skeleton within a puppet) is the same.

So, for the early childhood stage (2-6 years old), Erikson describes the challenge as “Initiative vs. Guilt,” meaning that the child must begin learning self-directedness (initiative) and managing the fear of trying new things, or else they will experience personal guilt, that is, “I did something wrong and that reflects on me”. The core way the early child does this is through play and imagination, especially in relation to their parents, whom as preschoolers they have the most contact with. Being experimental will always, of course, result in failure, but when the parents and culture gives negative feedback to the child, the consequence is a settling in of a sense of “wrongness” connected to our sense of self. This will inhibit or dampen the taking of initiative going forward in our lives.

In middle childhood (6-12 years old), Erikson’s label is, “Industry vs. Inferiority,” which means the child is learning emotional and social skills, and how they rank or compare to others in their peer group. This is the stage where social/peer relationships become much more prominent than in early childhood, and where free play converts into performance that is measured (banging joyfully on pans becomes the rigors of drumming in the school band). This is where either confidence is built, or a sense of inferiority to others sets in. Whether our caregivers are supportive and encouraging, or negative and discouraging, has everything to do with whether we feel safe to be industrious, or build a belief that assumes we will not be good at things or as good as other people. And what gets built at this stage (or any stage) becomes part of one’s foundation for the challenges of the next stage.

The way Erikson’s insights translate into IFS is as such: if the stage’s challenges are navigated more or less successfully, then we learn that that Part of us is acceptable, and it becomes integrated into our sense of self. It’s not a problem, so therefore it will not be connected to a Protector part who needs to keep it an exile. The playful and exploratory 5yr old gets to be, within the mind and life of the Adult, a playful 5yr old and feels welcomed by the Adult. But if that child was not appreciated by his adults, then there will be a Protector whose job is to keep it exiled, either by keeping it hidden from the adult, or suppressing its playfulness under guilt and judgement. Which is a tragedy (albeit a rectifiable one) because to be a full adult we need access to the two forms of play that are embedded in these early and middle child stages; the alternative is an adulthood which has a kind of dryness and lack to it, in which play (both free and channeled) is either maligned as “childish” or totally inaccessible.

The solution, as with all situations where a Part has been made into an Exile, is for the Adult to listen to the fears of the Protector, to get permission to explore the pain that is being locked down in the Exile, and through empathy unburden the Child of its guilt/shame. This does two things: it matures the Adult into someone who is more and more infused with the qualities of Self (compassion, empathy, understanding), and it unburdens the Exile to allow them to become who they were meant to be. The Child who feels (in the Adult’s psyche) guilty and inferior becomes restored by the Adult’s empathy, understanding and connection, into the playful and experimental Child it was designed to be. It then gets the gifts of support and guidance from the Adult, and the Adult becomes more enlivened by the energy and play that is native to the Child.

Example

Carmen (not a real person) is a 45-year-old executive assistant to a middle-manager in a large corporation. She has been married to Rick, a general contractor, for coming on 20 years, with two boys in high school. Their relationship is harmonious if rather functional, partially a result of all the pressures of family life and child-raising, and partially because she and Rick have settled into a kind of “workist” mode with each other. She has been employed as an EA for her whole adult life, and in college she was nose-to-grindstone. For a brief time early in college, she dabbled with singing in a pop band, but partially from her own embarrassment and partly the worries of her parents that she’d be distracted from the “important work,” she gave it up.

In Erikson’s “Middle Age” stage, the challenge is “generativity vs. stagnation,” and Carmen was definitely feeling much more on the stagnant side. She knew that there was nothing wrong with the details of her life per se; neither her work setting, relationship with her husband, or parenting of her boys were toxic. Her relationship with her parents and extended family was not hugely close, but were friendly and enjoyable. When she would find herself daydreaming of knapsacks and beaches, she had the fortunate sense to realize that her life did not need to be blown up to feel more alive.

But she did recognize that she needed a change if the next decades were not going to be a slow descent into grey (in which case she could feel that “blowing up” would become more and more attractive). She knew there was an aliveness that was missing, and that it was more about her internal than her external circumstances. In initially gingerly conversations with her husband, she learned that he, too, was feeling somewhat stale. Just starting to talk more openly with each other injected a nascent source of aliveness, and they (with some fear and loathing) took the advice of an older psychologist aunt of his to get into couples therapy. They found a good practioner, who helped them explore where they had drifted into a kind of genial taken-for-grantedness of each other, and both in their sex lives and in day-to-day interactions, they began practicing being more playful with each other. Instead of listening to their internal voices of “pragmatism” they would hug each other on the way out the door, and dance in the kitchen when the boys were playing something that boomed through the house from upstairs.

But these doors that open a little don’t want to stay just slightly ajar, so Carmen found herself starting an individual therapy. She explored how a sparkly and mischievous early childhood hit grade school like a solid wall, collapsing under the weight of school and parent expectations. Her therapist walked her through the discovery and disburdening of that 5-year-old Part, and reassuring and unburdening what they called the “Serious Child,” the Protector against the native play of the earlier Child. She started to feel the impact as a sense of unguarded play; as the Protector felt safer that play was not going to collapse her life, and that the Adult Carmen was now the parent at hand, then the impulses to be playful and engaged were not automatically submerged under fear.

The noticeable results of this were more epiphenomenon: she shifted from her current position to being an EA in the design department, and started studying for a certificate that would allow her to shift to a more creative role. She started singing in a group again, eventually getting up on stage to the delight of her whole family. Her house got a makeover from its pragmatic aesthetic to something more colorful and alive. But the more important change was internally, in the relationships of the Parts and the emergence of the Adult channeling the Self as the center of it all. Aliveness started increasing because the misalignment of the Parts that had set in so young was getting straightened out, and like a good chiropractic adjustment, allowed the energy of play to flow again.

Conclusion

The Early and Middle Childhoods are characterized by learning through play, first free play and then organized play. When those meet the dismissive or suppressive reactions of the child’s environment (for whatever reason, play is not recognized), then that Child and all its native play gets exiled to the shadows of the psyche, either forgotten or maligned. This leaves the future Parts without, or with only echoes, of the pure play and life-delight of the Child. If this is not dealt with, it will often lead to a generic sense of greyness in adolescence and adulthood, if not depression. But the Child is still always there in an Adult psyche; it is always reclaimable.

There are many maps for this process, but IFS offers a very concise and useful one: recognize the Protector and help them feel safe; then access the burdened Child and through understanding and empathy unburden it while building the strength of the Adult; continue building the Adult’s capacity to channel the Self (compassion, wisdom, empathy). This creates a “virtuous spiral” in which the Adult emerges more, the Protector and Child feel safer, this helps the Adult become wiser, whence the Parts feel that much safer. The result is a psyche that is integrated, that is, in which the Parts feel safe with each other and with the Adult/Self, and therefore share their various gifts with each other, solidifying a psyche which is robust, protected, and deeply playful.