In many Chinese families, children’s greatest fear is never making mistakes, getting hurt, or encountering bad things, but rather their parents’ reactions upon learning about them. Some parents, once their emotions are triggered, will first lose control: accusing, insulting, and exaggerating the consequences without distinction. Over time, children learn not to take responsibility but to hide the truth. When they are bullied or wronged outside, their first reaction is not to seek help but to remain silent—because, compared to physical pain, the more frightening thing is the emotional storm of their parents. This family environment teaches children that it’s not “the world is dangerous,” but “parents are unsafe.”

Beyond emotional outbursts, another more insidious yet equally harmful form of long-term depletion is “love” used as a guise. In many Chinese families, parents habitually transfer their emotions, stress, responsibilities, and trivial matters onto their children: seeking you for every small issue, venting their bad moods on you, making you bear the hardships of life. On the surface, it seems like “we can’t do without you” or “we need you,” but in reality, it’s boundaryless entitlement. Because true concern is not wanting to disturb; true understanding is considering whether the other can handle it first. Many children growing up in such environments mistakenly believe that “being needed is being loved,” and thus keep overextending themselves until exhaustion makes them realize: this is not love, but depletion.

Disorder in the parent-child relationship is often the earliest and deepest psychological trauma for children. Parents’ quarrels are many children’s first horror movie. Arguments, insults, pushing, throwing things—these images are like nails hammered into their memories. More cruelly, during the most emotional outbursts, parents pull their children into their conflicts, asking questions that can destroy their sense of security: “If we divorce, who will you stay with?” Children are forced to choose sides, to bear consequences that are not theirs. From that moment on, home is no longer a safe haven but a place that could collapse at any time.

Unstable parental emotions, boundaryless demands, and disordered intimacy together shape children’s fears, need for approval, and excessive self-blame. They learn to read others’ emotions, suppress their own needs, and take responsibility for others’ feelings in advance, yet are rarely taught how to protect themselves.

Therefore, true mature and rewarding family love is certainly not maintained by sacrificing children’s lives. It should be emotionally controllable, have boundaries, and not endlessly impose adult problems on children. Clear-headed children need to distinguish what is love and what is depletion; truly strong parents understand restraint in love and self-reflection in relationships. Only then can a home cease to be a place children want to escape for their entire lives.