The Hidden Grief of Growing Up Too Soon

When Responsibility Steals Childhood

What comes to mind when you think of childhood? I hope when my children look back, they remember feelings of joy, fun, love, connection and above all, play. Play is such a vital part of childhood. It’s how children make sense of their world, test ideas, learn trust, and express creativity. Yet so many underestimate its impact. We rush children to grow up, to prioritise the way we do things, structure over spontaneity, outcome over curiosity. When childhood is filled with responsibility — whether physical or emotional — everything changes. Those moments that should be full of imagination and wonder become filled with fear, management, and thinking. You start doing instead of being. It’s heartbreaking, isn’t it? To picture a child, tiny hands trying to hold together the emotional world of adults. Children are meant to be free, intuitive, messy, curious, spontaneous. That’s their gift. Yet conflict, silence, or emotional emergencies can strip that away in seconds. That responsibility isn’t meant for them.

The Science of Play

Play isn’t just fun, it’s neurological nourishment. When children play, their brains light up with connection. Neural pathways between the emotional, sensory, and executive parts of the brain strengthen. It’s in play that the prefrontal cortex, the part responsible for empathy, problem-solving and emotional regulation starts to develop. Through playful movement, imagination, and experimentation, children practice everything from impulse control to social understanding. They learn how to tolerate frustration, how to take turns, how to recover after mistakes. In fact, researchers like Dr. Stuart Brown (National Institute for Play) have found that play deprivation can have similar effects to chronic stress. The brain becomes rigid, anxious, and hypervigilant. Play is the opposite of that: it tells the nervous system, you’re safe enough to explore. It literally builds the architecture of safety in the body. When children play freely, they learn that the world is not only manageable, but enjoyable. Their brains associate curiosity with reward, not danger. So when play is replaced with responsibility, pressure, or fear, those same neural pathways wire differently. The world begins to feel unsafe, unpredictable, and heavy to carry.

From Responsibility to Over-Responsibility

The children who carried too much too soon often grow into adults who carry too much still.They become the people pleasers, the overachievers, the ones who take responsibility for everyone’s feelings, needs, and moods. They become the “strong ones.” The “together” ones. From the outside, it looks like competence — thoughtful, organised, dependable. On the inside? It’s messy, never ending, exhaustion. You’re always managing, always scanning, always driving the car. You never get to rest. And that car? It’s familiar. It’s the place where you felt safe, wanted, valued, maybe even loved. So you keep your hands on the wheel — white-knuckled — even as you start to fall asleep behind it. You crash, get back up, grab another coffee, and keep going. Because letting go feels impossible.

Taking Your Hands Off the Wheel

When you finally start to take your hands off the wheel in adulthood, it can feel like freefall. You let someone else drive, or you sit in the backseat, or you choose not to get in the car at all. Suddenly you feel lost, confused, helpless. No one ever taught you what doing nothing felt like. Children who missed out on freedom don’t know how to flow. They don’t know how to let life happen and to trust the moment. So when stillness or joy or spontaneity appear, they feel awkward, stiff, disconnected from their bodies and their needs.

Play is the antidote. Not the forced, performative kind but the true kind — the letting-go kind.

Relearning How to Play

Play doesn’t have to mean sitting on the floor with dolls (though it can). It means loosening your grip on control. Letting things flow. Letting your emotions flow with them.

I still cringe sometimes when a therapist or someone else suggests something “playful.” I’ve come to see that cringe for what it is: the part of me that once learned that play wasn’t safe.

So I ask myself:What is it about just being that makes me so uncomfortable?

Reclaiming What Was Lost

What else can you reclaim? If you’re still burdened with too much responsibility, maybe you can start putting some of it down, even if only in your mind.

Try not acting on the guilt. Try doing the opposite, just once. Don’t wait until everything is done before you meet your needs. Don’t wait until you’ve ticked one more box before you rest. Live now. Feel now. Allow yourself to change your mind, again and again, without apology. And yes — be childish. Not reckless, but beautifully, rebelliously childish. You’ve thought things through enough for three people; you don’t always have to be the bigger one. Sometimes your small, messy, petty, hurt child deserves a voice — especially if they never got one.

Returning to the Inner Child

Ask yourself:Where can I hand some responsibility back? Which relationships have I been over-carrying? Where have I mistaken control for care? Reconnecting with your inner child isn’t about reparenting them perfectly — it’s about listening.What do they need? Maybe they need to finally cry, without you swallowing it down and saying, “It’s fine.”Maybe they need to get angry, without you stepping in to tidy it up. Maybe they just need to know that now, they are safe enough to play.

Reaching Out for Support

If any of this feels painfully familiar — if you’ve carried too much for too long — please know you don’t have to do this untangling alone. Healing the parts of you that never got to play takes patience, safety, and sometimes, another nervous system alongside yours. Reaching out for support isn’t weakness; it’s the first moment you let someone else share the load. Whether that’s a therapist, a friend who really listens, or a community that helps you soften — connection is the medicine that rewires the brain. It’s how play returns. Bit by bit, you remember what it’s like to feel safe enough to laugh again, to rest, to be held by life instead of holding it all together. Reach out to me here, if you like.