She stormed off to her room and slammed the door and was, for twenty minutes, a completely ordinary, exasperating nine-year-old.

And I stood in the hallway outside her slammed door and I cried — not from frustration, but from something close to joy, because I understood what I was witnessing.

For months, my daughter had been too responsible to throw a tantrum.

She had been too busy managing everyone’s feelings to have her own unreasonable ones.

A parentified child does not stomp and slam and demand; she watches, and manages, and accommodates, because she has learned that her needs are less important than the crisis, that she must be good, must be helpful, must not add to the burden.

And the surest sign that such a child is healing is not that they become calmer or more mature.