Guide: The Seer
For each short story we have created a guide that elaborates on the subject/conflict of the story and offers some more insights about the topic. The guide also offers a quick exercise that helps the reader examine their relationship with the subject and see themselves more clearly.
We recommend reading the short story first, you can find it here:
In the short story "The Seer," we not only gain insight into the mindset of someone with considerable observational skills and knowledge of human nature but also discover an interesting and lesser-known family dynamic: parentification. Many more people are subconsciously entangled in this dynamic than we might initially assume.
Parentification essentially occurs when a child is made, consciously or subconsciously, responsible for attending to the emotional or physical needs of their parents or siblings. Physical parentification is when a child physically cares for the adult and siblings including activities such as earning money, doing housework, or paying bills. Emotional parentification occurs when the child assumes the responsibility of keeping their parent or siblings emotionally stable and content.
This phenomenon often arises when the parents are struggling with mental health issues or addictions, not limited to severe cases of parental mental health problems but also less severe ones. A clear sign of parentification is when a parent instructs the child to care for the other parent or, in the event of a divorce, the child becomes the trusted companion of the seemingly weaker parent. Discussing matters typically reserved for adult partners—like financial difficulties, emotional distress related to the divorce, or issues with a new partner, including sexual matters—indicates parentification.
In this short story, the protagonist, Isaac, whom his friends simply call the Seer, grew up with a mother battling alcoholism. Children forced to endure various childhood traumas, especially those growing up with a parent facing addiction problems, develop highly refined senses. This heightened awareness can stem from two reasons, usually present simultaneously in children who suffer childhood traumas. For those regularly abused—verbally, physically, sexually—or growing up next to often aggressive parents due to alcohol or drug use, anticipating danger from afar can be crucial for survival. They must be vigilant of the slightest signs, sometimes knowing whether the parent has been drinking or is in an aggressive mood just by how the key turns in the lock upon arriving home. Such children cannot later discard the tense vigilance with which they constantly monitor their environment for potential danger.