Narcissistic Children Disclaimer: This article is not about how to prevent your child from becoming a narcissist. Narcissistic personality disorder begins early in life, often as a defense against chronic neglect and emotional or physical abuse. However, we all have narcissistic tendencies that must be dealt with to become healthy, whole people. for more details,
We love our children so much that creating an environment suitable for nurturing narcissistic tendencies is easy. However, the lifelong consequences of narcissistic children can be devastating to the children and their families. Narcissistic tendencies include the following traits: fragile ego, low self-esteem, boasting, inability to be honest with oneself and with others, and inability to face personal responsibilities. A lack of empathy for others and a suspicion that everyone is better off round out the satanic list.
Helicopter parenting is partly to blame, but selfie culture and body worship aren’t helping us. To make matters more complicated, certain stages of normal development are naturally more self-focused than others. Every healthy two- or thirteen-year-old experiences a little narcissism as they embark on journeys of self-discovery. But narcissism in children is often fostered unwittingly. We all tend toward narcissistic behavior, but helping our children grow beyond that is part of the job of parenting.
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So, if you want to help your child have healthy self-esteem without turning too narcissistic, there are ways to make this journey easier. Of course, parenting can never rule out all possibilities for children whose lives never take off or go horribly off track. After all, from adolescence onward, your child is an individual moral agent, and you should treat him or her as such.
However, if your son or daughter shows signs of narcissism such as self-absorption or selfishness, you have more ability to correct this course than you realize.
Here are some tools to help you and your children:
Stop the blame/shame game.
We parents often model this more than we realize. One of the most common shame/blame rituals in homes is “Who moved __?” The question is shameful and blaming because it assumes that responsibility for lost items falls on someone other than their owner. This may seem subtle, but it sends the message that our actions are someone else’s fault, and oh boy, are they in trouble.
In many homes, everyone rushes to find the missing item to avoid blame and gain favor. Lots of little scenes like this teach kids that it’s never okay to be wrong and that we can put our actions at other people’s doorsteps. Try to rethink the role of blame in your family. Asking others if they know where you misplaced your item teaches children that it is okay to ask for help, and it is okay to be imperfect. Narcissistic children will always blame others for everything. But this victim mentality is not helpful at all.
Play crazy, happy, sad.
When my kids were little, we would play this game around the dinner table. Everyone at the table shares a time that day when they felt angry, happy, or sad. This teaches self-awareness and cultivates intimacy. Don’t fix their emotions. Verify its authenticity. If your son or daughter reveals that a friend betrayed their trust, and they are angry, validate those feelings without trying to talk them out of their honest feelings. Help them explore other emotions that may lie beneath the anger. Pain, embarrassment, and disappointment are normal human feelings. When we name our emotions, we gain control over them.
If you can cultivate conversations around the dinner table that focus on each person in turn, you teach them to be honest with themselves and with others. They learn that their feelings and experiences matter. You are teaching them that being open is safe within the family unit. These conversations also naturally lead to many fruitful and useful discussions. My children remember this ritual fondly to this day, now that they’ve grown up.
The reason this helps prevent narcissism is simple. Narcissism needs a strong front and a mask that needs to be maintained at all times. Showing weakness means removing that false identity. Being honest with others strengthens our bonds with others, but also with ourselves. Teaching your children to be comfortable with their true selves helps protect them from creating any false narcissistic selves.
Do not protect narcissistic children from the consequences of their actions.
This may seem obvious, but as a college professor for nearly twenty-five years, parents would regularly arrive at my office in distress because their child was failing. I say kid sarcastically because most college students are adults. And if your child is a college minor, you won’t be doing them any favors by intervening even then. The narcissistic kids in my classes came with their tendencies, frankly.
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I know many teachers retire or leave their field early because they can no longer tolerate verbal abuse from parents. If you want your child to learn to respect others, it is required that you do it yourself. But letting your child fail a class may be the most valuable thing you do as a parent, barring cases of learning disabilities, etc. Why? Because allowing them to be responsible for their education means that they will bear the burden of responsibility for the rest of their lives. Or they won’t. In either case, you cannot force success on a child or success for them. However, you can let them reap what they sow.
Help them take ownership of their lives. Every human being must take responsibility for his life. If we limit this as parents because we can’t bear to see them suffer, we rob them of ownership of their success. Children are not stupid. They know whether they deserve an A or an F. If we give them false successes, they quickly become entitled and expect success where they did not deserve it.
Stop being afraid of their failure.
This is a weak point for most of us. We fear our children’s failure because, in our minds, it represents a failure on our part. To be honest, that may be the case sometimes, although it’s not often the case. The danger here is twofold. If we are afraid our children will fail, they will become afraid of failure. Failure is an important teacher. It teaches us humility and perseverance.
The second danger is that our children will hide their failures from us, either to protect us or out of fear. Whether our children’s failures are moral, pedagogical, or a failure to take responsibility, we help them create false selves when we make them too serious to be real. Children shouldn’t lie, but parents are responsible for making it safe to tell the truth. Better yet, model the right way to handle failure by accepting your failure without falling into self-blame, self-pity, or anger.
Praise them for the right things.
Children need praise, but if you constantly praise a child for being smart, athletic, or beautiful, he or she will focus his or her energies on becoming smarter, stronger, and more beautiful. The problem with this is that these things are shallow. You end up with this type of narcissistic child: a know-it-all, an athlete, or an image-focused child. Praise them for real things, like telling the truth when it’s hard. Praise them for facing fear or persevering through a difficult project. We risk creating narcissistic children if we withhold praise or create a dependency on admiration.
The secret to praising your children well is validation. If your son or daughter brings home a great report card, tell them that you love seeing them absorb the material or that you get excited when they learn something new. The key to validation is to find out who they are first, and then what they did second.
The important message to your children is that you enjoy who they are, not just what they do.
This gives them the sense of worthiness we all need to feel loved. Not only are they gifted in their unique ways, but the core of their identity is important and valuable. This is how God loves us. He enjoys who we are because we can only do good things through Him.
Any way you look at it, teaching our children to have self-esteem at an appropriate level, to have the ability to self-correct without fear, and to feel completely comfortable with who they are requires that we be on the same path. The world needs people who have full lives, are brave enough to be themselves, and are willing to take risks. The world does not need any more cowards hiding behind labels full of empty claims and exaggerated exaggeration. Narcissistic children become narcissistic adults. Aren’t those we have to endure enough?
My children are grown now, and my mistakes are many. However, I will say without hesitation, that I enjoy each one of them, each one of them reveals the glory of God in their unique way. I am lucky that none of them fell prey to this disorder.
