Word.ws English Dictionary

inner child

inner child noun: the childlike aspect of a person's psyche, typically, the personality and the memories of one's childhood, especially in the context of coexisting with, and being suppressed by, an adult aspect of the person.

Noun

inner child (plural inner children)

  1. The childlike aspect of a person's psyche, typically, the personality and the memories of one's childhood, especially in the context of coexisting with, and being suppressed by, an adult aspect of the person.
    • As I encouraged him to stay with that pain, he fell deeply into the reality of the inner child. The need in this inner child for love was very real indeed. He loved this inner child with all his heart.1993, Barbara Ann Brennan, Light Emerging: The Journey of Personal Healing, Bantam Books, page 135
    • A level of intensity can be seen in Anne's account, although Anne's investment was not so much in the world of her adult self but in the therapeutic world of inner children. […] Anne worked hard on her healing but the majority of this work was done on, or with, her inner children.2009, Jo Woodiwiss, Contesting Stories of Childhood Sexual Abuse, Springer Nature (Palgrave Macmillan), 2009, Softcover reprint, page 186

Examples of inner child in a sentence

  • I will start by stating that most of the time — especially in our relationships — it is not our adult self, but rather our inner child, who is actually running the show.2010, Bree Maresca-Kramer, It's That Simple!: A Woman's Book on Relationships, Life, Ourselves and the Healing of It All, It's That...
  • In traditional marriages, the woman mothered both inner children by holding the emotional content of the marriage, cooking and keeping house.2012, Shakti Durga, Empowering Relationships, Higher Guidance, page 110:

Forms of inner child

pluralinner children

Questions about inner child

What does inner child mean?
Inner child means the childlike aspect of a person's psyche, typically, the personality and the memories of one's childhood, especially in the context of coexisting with, and being suppressed by, an adult aspect of the person.
How do you use inner child in a sentence?
I will start by stating that most of the time — especially in our relationships — it is not our adult self, but rather our inner child, who is actually running the show.
What part of speech is inner child?
Inner child is a noun.
What is the plural of inner child?
The plural of inner child is inner children.

Words near inner child in the dictionary

  1. Inner Brass
  2. inner cabinet
  3. inner cabinets
  4. inner cell mass
  5. inner cell masses
  6. inner child
  7. inner children
  8. inner chimp
  9. inner chimps
  10. inner circle
  11. inner circles

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: inner child (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “inner child.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/inner_child. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.