How to Avoid Raising Narcissistic Kids

Narcissistic Kids Disclaimer: This article is not about how to prevent your child from becoming a narcissist. Narcissistic Personality Disorder starts early in life and is often a defense against chronic neglect and emotional or physical abuse. However, we all have narcissistic tendencies that need to be dealt with so that we become healthy, whole people. For more details, see https://poemachronicles.com/traits-narcissist/ .

We love our children so much that creating an environment ripe for nurturing narcissistic tendencies is easy. But the lifelong consequences of narcissistic kids can be devastating for the children and your family. Narcissistic tendencies include the following traits: a fragile ego, low self-esteem, bragging, inability to be honest with self and others, and an inability to face up to personal responsibilities. A lack of empathy for others and the suspicion that everyone else has it better than they round out the devilish catalog.

Helicopter parenting is partly to blame, but our culture of selfies and body worship doesn’t help. To make matters a little more complicated, certain phases of natural development are naturally more self-focused than others. Every healthy two-year-old and thirteen-year-old has a bit of narcissism as they are embarking on journeys of self-discovery. But narcissism in children is often unintentionally nurtured. We all have a tendency towards narcissistic behavior, but helping our children grow beyond that is part of the job of parenting.

So if you want to help your child possess healthy self-esteem without over-correcting into narcissism, there are ways to make this journey easier. Of course, parenting can never rule out all the possibilities of children whose lives never quite launch or veer terribly off course. After all, from adolescence forward, your child is an individual moral agent, and you must treat them as such.

However, if your son or daughter is showing narcissistic signs such as self-absorption or selfishness, you have more power to correct this course than you realize.

Here are some tools to help both you and your kids:

1. 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 the “Who moved my ____?” The question is shaming and blaming because it assumes that the responsibility for lost items rests on someone other than to whom they belong. This may seem subtle, but it sends the message that our actions are someone else’s fault, and, boy, are they in trouble.

In many homes, everyone rushes to find the lost item in order to avoid blame and gain favor. Too many little scenes like this teach children it is never ok to be at fault and that we can lay our actions at the doors of others. Try to rethink the role of blame in your household. Asking the others if they might know where you mislaid your item teaches kids it is ok to ask for help, and it is ok to be imperfect. Narcissistic kids will always blame others for everything. But such a victim mindset is never helpful.

2. Play Mad, Glad, Sad.

   While my kids were young, we played this around the dinner table. Basically, everyone at the table shares a time that day when they were mad, glad, or sad. This teaches self-awareness and cultivates intimacy. Don’t fix their emotion; validate them. If your son or daughter reveals a friend betrayed a confidence, and they are angry, validate that emotion without trying to cajole them out of their honest emotion. Help them explore the other emotions that might lurk under the anger. Pain, embarrassment, and disappointment are natural human emotions. When we name our emotions, we gain mastery over them.

If you can cultivate conversations around the dinner table that focus on each individual in their turn, you teach them to be honest with themselves and others. They learn that their feelings and experiences matter. You teach them that being open is safe within the family unit. These conversations also lead to many fruitful discussions naturally that prove helpful. My kids remember this ritual fondly to this day, now that they are grown.

The reason this helps guard against narcissism is simple. Narcissism requires a strong front, a mask that needs maintaining at all times. To show vulnerability is to take down that false identity. Being authentic with others strengthens our bonds with others, but also ourselves. Teaching your children to be comfortable with their true selves helps guard them against erecting any narcissistic false selves.

3. Don’t shield narcissistic kids from the consequences of their own actions.

   This might seem obvious, but as a college professor for nearly twenty-five years, parents regularly arrived at my office in a snit because their child was failing. I say child ironically, as most college students are adults. And if your child is a minor in college, you do them no favor by running interference even then. The narcissistic kids in my classes came by their tendencies, honestly.

Many educators I know retire or leave their field early because they can no longer withstand verbal abuse from parents. If you want your child to learn to respect others, it is required that you do so yourself. But allowing your child to fail a class might be the most valuable thing you do as a parent, barring cases with learning disabilities, etc. Why? Because allowing them to be responsible for their own education means they will take up the burden of responsibility for the rest of their life. Or they won’t. Either way, you can’t force success on a child or be successful for them. You can, however, let them reap what they sow.

Help them own their lives. Every human being must take up responsibility for their life. If we short-circuit this as parents because we cannot bear to see them suffer, we deny them ownership of their success. Children are not stupid. They know if they deserve an A or an F. If we give them fake successes, they soon become entitled and expect success where it was not earned.

4. Quit being afraid of their failures.

   This is a weak spot for most of us. We are afraid of our children’s failures because, in our minds, it represents a failure on our part. And to be honest, sometimes it might be, though often it is not. The danger here is two-fold. If we fear our children’s failure, they will become afraid to fail. 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, educational, or a failure to take responsibility, we help them create false selves when we make it too dangerous to be real. Children obviously should not 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 own without falling into self-blame, self-pity, or anger.

5. Praise them for the right things.

   Children need praise, but if you praise a kid continually for being smart, athletic, or pretty, they will focus their energies on becoming smarter, stronger, and prettier. The problem with this is that these things are shallow. You end up with these types of narcissistic kids: a know-it-all, a jock, or a child focused on image. Praise them for the real things, like telling the truth when it was hard. Praise them for facing a fear or for persevering on a tough project. We risk narcissistic kids if we withhold praise or create 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 you love seeing them absorb the material or get excited when they learn something new. The key to validation is recognizing who they are first, then what they have done second.

The important message for your children is that you enjoy who they are, not just what they do.

This gives them the sense of worthiness we all must have to feel loved. Not only are they gifted in their unique ways, but the essence of who they are is important and valued. 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 kids to value the self at an appropriate level, to contain within themselves the ability to self-correct without fear, and to be wholly comfortable with who they are requires that we be on the same path. And the world needs people that are fully alive, brave enough to be who they are, and willing to risk. The world needs no more cowards hiding behind labels full of empty grandiose claims. Narcissistic kids become narcissistic adults. Aren’t the ones we already have to tolerate enough?

My children are all grown now, and my mistakes are multitudinous. However, I say, without equivocation, that I enjoy each one of them, each of them revealing the glory of God in their own unique way. I am blessed that none of them have fallen prey to this disorder.

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