What to Do If You’re Child Shows Narcissistic Tendencies?

It can be devastating when you recognise that your child is starting to exhibit signs of a narcissistic personality. These signs are likely to be a sense of entitlement, malicious behaviour, professing to be better than others, lack of accountability, and / or pathological straight faced lying.

As the parent of this narcissistic child if you have also suffered at the hands of a narcissistic personality it is vital that you work hard on your own recovery. You child healing and developing past the possibility of narcissistic personality disorder depends very much on your wellbeing and your ability to be healthy enough to effectively parent.

You must lose the guilt and the tendency to over indulge your child as a result of what you and he or her experienced in relation to narcissistic personality disorder. Stop over-compensating for any joint parenting that your child may have with the narcissistic parent. Don’t try to compete or soothe by over loving your child. The worst of narcissistic personalities often develop from the formula of one narcissistic parent and the other who smothers and has very poor boundaries with the child.

You child is going to need very clear, consistent and firm boundaries, and needs to learn accountability and the laws of cause and effect. If your child exhibits a narcissistic personality stop trying to reason, prescribe or lecture. Call time out or enforce boundaries when unacceptable behaviour occurs. Do not grant this child your attention or any privileges that reward bad behaviour.

If catching your child out on lies, lack of empathy and inability to have remorse, enforce the boundary until the child does take responsibility. Make the boundary conditional to your child apologising and taking responsibility. If you child reneges after taking responsibility enforce the boundary immediately again, and detach from the narcissistic personality backlash.`

If your child has started to develop narcissistic personality disorder, even if you are joint parenting with a narcissistic individual, you will be able to have a positive effect as long as you get on to effective parenting as soon as possible.

If you child has started to develop narcissistic personality disorder, your child will initially project the parts of him or herself that he or she is refusing to take responsibility for, and this could go on for some time. You will need to be very thick-skinned, incredibly diligent and very consistent in order to detach from taking the abuse personally and keep upholding effective boundaries.

Focusing on helping you child develop healthily is going to take a lot of your effort. You may wish to seek support from others to help you remain strong during this time. Continue you own healing and self-empowerment as well.