This is all my perspective and POV...possibly differing from professional views as well as other members' views...

An inner child is NOT a child alter. There a clear distinctions between the two.

Everyone dissociates to a degree, it can be necessary and healthy. Everyone is parted to a degree...having the part that works, the part that talks with a professional or minister, the part the "hangs with the gals/guys", the part that is their parents child, the part the hurts with harsh words, the part the goes to the amusement park...everyone is parted. An inner child is a part of a cohesive (or even more parted than average) mind. The average parts are available most all the time, and interact together for the best result and reasoning for a person.

The DID'er can have parts like above. Then there are the more separate parts.

With DID, there are one, but usually more than one, child part(s). They're as above but separate and walled off as needed by a child suffering horrific fears and/or abuse. There aren't usually the connections between parts to work as a whole as the average person. As abuse and need continues, the parts become full-fledged alters or "others" becoming more defined and separate as time goes on. The "out part" can't hold all the ugly and function as needed in school, with other children, complying to demands that go against natural reactions, etc. As they become more separate, they can develop different characteristics, gifts, capabilities, styles, thinking, etc. The child part is the part that is still a child because it's holding for the rest that which it holds. In doing so, he/she remains a child...learning as they go but maintaining that which they hold and are. It's necessary to maintain...always...to survive.

An inner child is the part of a mind who does hold the special in those precious childlike ways with those childlike feelings. They might be a bit more separate than the average part, but not nearly as separate as an alter/other. They may be separate enough to hold that which the adult can't/don't want to and therefore the adult doesn't have access all the time. However, they wouldn't have a *separate* "personality" from the adult, or hold that which the adult generally can't access at all, that acts separately from the "whole" on its own, and keeping activities and actions completely separate and away from the whole, etc. A child alter is very specific in what they hold, what they can tolerate, what their specific function/role is, but mainly is viewed as a different, separate and individual self, etc but also functioning separately, and sometimes without the knowledge of the main part.

For me it boils down to functioning and separateness, in combination with the diagnostic criteria. To me, like normal dissociation in comparison to disordered dissociation, there's a clear difference because I live/lived it.

Again, this is the understanding that I've come to for myself and might not apply to what others feel for themselves or what they've learned.

I have NO clue if anything I said will make ANY sense to anyone else...lol.

KD