Which inner child still lives in you?

In Homecoming, John Bradshaw wrote that a wounded — or a playful — child still lives inside the grown-up, quietly shaping how we love, rest, and reach for others. Eighteen gentle statements place you among six inner-child patterns: the Wounded, the Playful, the Trusting, the Frozen, the Caretaker, and the Wise. Most of us carry more than one.

18 statements~4 minutes5-point scale

Answer for how you really are, not how you wish you were — and be gentle with whatever comes up. Your responses stay on this device; nothing is saved or sent anywhere.

Bradshaw, Whitfield & the child who never quite left

The idea of an “inner child” is older than the phrase. Carl Jung wrote about the divine child as an image of wholeness and renewal; but it was John Bradshaw’s 1990 book Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child that made the idea household. Bradshaw argued that the neglected, wounded child of the past is “the major source of human misery” — not because the child is broken, but because it is still waiting for something it needed and didn’t reliably get. Heal that, he said, and you reclaim the wonder child: the authentic, playful, curious self underneath.

Charles Whitfield’s Healing the Child Within (1987) framed the same thing as the True Self that a protective, co-dependent false self grows over. And attachment research — Bowlby’s internal working models, Jude Cassidy’s work on how those models steer attention — explains why these patterns are so durable: the relational template laid down in childhood carries forward into adult life, stable but never quite fixed. That last word matters. The patterns below can soften.

The six inner children

Frequently asked

What is the inner child?

The "inner child" is a way of talking about the part of your psyche that holds the feelings, needs, and protective strategies formed in childhood. John Bradshaw, in Homecoming (1990), described how a wounded inner child — and a spontaneous "wonder child" — keep living inside the adult, quietly shaping how we love, rest, and protect ourselves. Charles Whitfield called the same thing the "Child Within": the True Self that a protective false self can grow over.

How many inner-child types are there?

There is no single official list — clinical and self-help sources name anywhere from five to ten patterns. We use six that recur across the literature and map cleanly onto the rest of the site: the Wounded Child, the Playful Child (Bradshaw’s wonder child), the Trusting Child, the Frozen Child, the Caretaker Child (the parentified helper), and the Wise Child (Jung’s divine child). Most people carry more than one; the quiz surfaces your strongest.

Is this quiz scientifically validated?

No — and we want to be honest about that. Unlike attachment (the ECR-R) or the Big Five (the Mini-IPIP), there is no validated psychometric scale for inner-child "types"; Bradshaw himself used reflective "index of suspicion" questionnaires, not scored tests. Treat this as a structured, well-grounded mirror for self-reflection, not a diagnosis. If something here resonates painfully, an attachment-aware therapist is the right next step.

How long does the quiz take?

About four minutes. There are 18 statements — three for each of the six patterns, interleaved — rated on a gentle five-point scale from "not at all like me" to "exactly like me".

What does “re-parenting” mean?

Re-parenting is the practice of giving your inner child, as the adult you now are, the steadiness and care it needed and didn’t reliably get — soothing the old fear, setting kinder limits, allowing rest or play. Each result page ends with four concrete re-parenting steps tailored to your pattern. Bradshaw called the larger project "championing" the inner child rather than fixing it.

Is my data saved anywhere?

No. Your answers stay on your device. Your six pattern scores are encoded into the result URL only so the page can show your breakdown; nothing is sent to a server.