Typically, narcissistic parents have an over inflated sense of ego which disguises deep shame and hurt from when they were younger.  However, children exposed to narcissism can be wounded by the parents as their emotional needs are not met.  Narcissistic parents have unresolved needs for attention.  The children of these parents then learn from watching their selfish parents that manipulation, aggression and intimidation get them what they want.  Alternatively they become co-dependent in their relationships giving too much having strived to attain their parent’s love and gratitude by giving into their parent at every end and turn.  The children lose their own identity and develop a false sense of self where their identities are formed out of default perception that feeling good is about being given to or giving to another.

These children are subjected daily to the perils of living with a person who has to get their own way at all costs, who doesn’t recognize both sides of the picture, who maybe has grandiose ideas and who cannot handle criticism.  These parents are always right which leaves the children little room to grow and develop in a healthy all rounded manner.  They lack empathy and fail to appreciate their hurtful and abusive behaviour patterns.  They also lack the capacity to love unconditionally even though they crave unconditional love in their own life.

Breaking the cycle is tricky.  Parents with severe narcissism do not recognize that they are so inflicted.  They are afraid of exploring their feelings in fear of exposing their own shortcomings.  Despite the indications that the solution lies in identifying and correcting the errors, understanding how defences work and why, the narcissistic parent generally do not want to change because they do not see any need to.  However, some parents are able to challenge their behaviour sets and make the necessary adjustments.

Whilst a level of narcissism or selfishness then is perfectly normal and can be heralded in survival terms, being a parent is often about putting away selfish desires to better our children.  A healthy balance then has to be struck and it is that balance that will help children on the pathway to positive outcomes.

In her blog post “8 ways to be a less selfish parent”, Natasha makes a few short, yet insightful, points that help any parent consider what they can do to ensure that their own pathway is not suffocating their children’s.  She suggests the following:

1.         Parents should be willing to waste more time

2.         Parents should get over their pet peeves

3.         They should treat their kids differently

4.         Parents should be protective of their time with their kids.

5.         Eliminate selfish rules

6.         Embrace the mundane with a servant’s heart

7.         Stop avoiding activities that turn into discipline sessions

8.         Master Empathy

In this blog we talk a lot about respect, responsibility and love.  We believe that to fully embrace these and to encourage a child’s autonomy is a good step on the path to striking a balance. It is about what finding what works for you.  What ideas do you have?

Further Reading:

Selfishness and Narcissism in Family Relationships

8 Ways to be a Less Selfish Parent

The Best Things About Dad!

1.            He has loved unconditionally

2.            He has shown how to treat women

3.            He has protected without suffocating

4.            He has shown how life can be navigated, understanding how to take risks and
enjoy new adventures

5.            He has demonstrated integrity, honesty, responsibility and loyalty

6.            He has let some mistakes happen as part of the learning curve of life

7.            He has known when to stand back and when to step in

8.            He has encouraged peace and harmony

9.            He has taught us humour and how not to take oneself too seriously

10.          He has given us support and worth, warmth and love.

Your silver hair
Your glistening eyes
Your candid smile
Your wisdom wise
Your warmth and love
Your support and care
Your hand to steady
You’re always there
Your constancy
Your peace, accord
Your total love
Yourself adored
Your honesty
Your integral heart
You’re here and now
You’re from the start
Your loyalty
Your wholesomeness
You’re life’s elixir
Your Dad – I’m blessed!

Definitely a step in the right direction.  Reset Parenting fully supports shared parenting that is based on equality and puts the children first.  We believe it is crucial to encourage communication with both parents and understand that the quality of the time spent with a child and the level of stability are all important factors.

Critically, we believe in always speaking well of the other parent remembering that every child has a heritage that reflects both parents – to speak ill of a child’s mother/father is to speak ill of the child!  The child does not need to be involved in the whys and the wherefores of a split, they do not need to be brought into adult ‘wars’, they do not need to be pulled in two directions.  They need to know that they are important and loved and that the parents will remain selfless to their own desires prioritising their children first!  Taking responsibility and paying respect with love and care are the paradigms of a positive outcome.

If you need support in your parenting choices through divorce and separation please look at this new video and follow the links or contact us at resetparenting@live.co.uk and we will put you in touch with organisations that will help.  If there are issues such as emotional/domestic abuse there are many wonderful organisations that can help too so that children primarily are helped to pave the way forward for positive outcomes in life.

“Never be fooled by friendship – it’s very easy to distinguish who are our true friends. They are loyal, supportive and honest. They know who you truly are and where you’re truly at. They don’t work out of assumption and bias but out of love and understanding and most of all when they are far away the miles mean nothing because their friendship transcends distance. But most of all true friends are true because they touch your heart and you touch theirs.”

My oldest friend who drove across the country when I was in intensive care and who I will go to my grave calling my friend.  (Apologies for poor quality photo – it dates back to between 1978 and 1985)

Recently I sat and listened to my boy play piano.  He’s 13 years old and has taught himself having had a couple of lessons when he was tiny but nothing since.  Of course, as his Mum, I love hearing him play, but more so I am constantly amazed at the standards he’s reaching by himself and some of the stuff that’s he’s now composing himself and whilst a large part of me obviously bursts with pride at his achievements, a larger part is sad that this wonderful gift, is only enjoyed by the four solitary walls of our music room without being shared with the outside world.  It’s not because I want him to have fame or fortune or some sort of lucky break, because, that’s quite simply not what is important but more so because, for a multitude of reasons, this lad’s light is being hidden under a bushel.  But when I examine that more, I have to ask myself why that is important.  Why is it important not to hide our light under a bushel and what intrinsic benefit does it have to anyone by sharing such a light anyway?

Encouraging our child’s gifts and talents, I believe is an intrinsic part of parenting.  I don’t believe that any child is necessarily more special than the next; I don’t think my children are any better than anyone else’s (well except to me obviously) and I am under no illusion that my boy is going to be some famous concert pianist but what I do believe is that helping a child discover their own unique gifts is one of the most precious things we, as parents, can do for our children.  Helping them to realise what they can do and accept what they can’t do.  Helping them to be content with their lot and grateful for their blessings in life whatever they may be.  Helping them bring out of themselves the one thing that brings them to life, that imparts some sort of elixir in their being that drives them to go that bit further, fills them with confidence, inspires them and compels them forward. That is what I believe passionately is what parenting is about.  It’s not about keeping out head in the sand or the clouds or any place that isn’t firmly based in reality but it is about encouragement, support and nurture.  Nurturing a child to have the confidence, believe in themselves and to take risks.  Helping them to be able to critically evaluate and to be realistic whilst encouraging them to work hard, focus and stay motivated in developing their latent potential whether that be as a pianist or a Picasso, a plumber or a pilot. a preacher or a politician.  Each of us, I believe, has something that is “our special something”.  It could be anything from a skill to a unique state of mind, or a strong academic ability, or vocational attribute.  But whatever it is, by helping our children develop or even hone in on this, they will in turn maximise on their strengths which in turn will help their weaknesses.

I was explaining this to my budding pianist and said to him to imagine his ability to play piano like growing a sunflower.  When it reaches full height it is magnanimous – it stands proud with its glorious head radiating towards the sun giving joy to all who see it.   The key though is not necessarily in the glory of the sunflower but in the two other by-products of the growing process.  Firstly examining the stalk, sometimes it is possible to realise that microbes of seemingly insignificant or weaker matter (all be it weeds or epiphytes) have been raised up alongside the mighty sunflower and secondly the gardener may well be encouraged by the success of their sunflower to try their hand at growing other plants.   So too is it evident that by playing to our strengths, using our gifts and talents, we harness our weaknesses and develop them and bring them on simultaneously and the fear of facing weaknesses and working on self-improvement diminishes.  So for my boy, his music is his strength.  The more he plays and the better he gets and the more confidence he gains from playing to others and sharing the beauty of his music and the more he is able to see the positive outcomes from using this gift, the more he is bolstered to take similar risks with the things he’s not so good at.  Or take for instance the child that is able to take excellent photographs and shines in his artwork.  Seeing the consequences of running with his strengths and by gaining confidence, he considers that maybe he hasn’t anything to fear by facing his weaknesses and having a go (in this case, his Maths).  By instilling that confidence his Maths grades rise – maybe not as magnanimously as his photography/artwork but still more than they might otherwise do.

This is often what is missing in education and in the classroom with many over stretched teachers and curriculum focussed and tight timetables interrupting the abilities of institutions to nurture each child individually but that is no excuse for parents not to play their part in encouraging and supporting their children and indeed I believe they have a responsibility to do so.  The world we live in is all about risks and knowing how to take calculated risks.   Those who are unsure of themselves can all too easily be consumed and spat out by the wider community especially when they become engulfed by what they cannot do.  As parents it costs nothing to offer such encouragement.  It isn’t about availing lucky breaks, or presenting those “once in a lifetime” opportunities.  It also isn’t about shelling out a small fortune.  It is purely about a mind-set and a commitment to our children.  It may be that as parent we chose to invest in a particular venture, but money will not buy a child’s gift or somehow instil a latent talent and so it is about encouraging them.  My boy hasn’t had piano lessons because we cannot afford them and yet he has sat down and taught himself because deep inside him was a need to express himself through such a medium and as such clearly has a gift bursting to get out.  That’s not to say, if someone offered to take him on and give him lessons, I would see that as un-necessary but the crux of the matter is that he is encouraged intrinsically and spurred on to do the best he can with the means available because he has been brought up to believe that he can and so he has.

Encouraging our children to shine brightly therefore needs to take a prominent place in our parenting regimes.  It is not about developing a brash, cocky child who fails to appreciate their own areas of self-improvement but by understanding and fostering our children’s unique gifts and talents to enable them to ‘grow’ the deeply attractive quality of security and quiet confidence.  They can then step gently yet purposefully through life with a calm determination and serene integrity of knowing where their strengths are, playing to them whilst avoiding the suffocation of being hung up on their weaknesses.  That to my mind, then transcends education in its narrow context and facilitates a skill set that will go far beyond the classroom.  That is what it means to encourage a light to be shone, to be taken out from under that bushel and bought to the fore so that with grace and courage we constantly move forwards without being held back.  And that is why children, need caring, loving parents to spend the time with them, encouraging them (realistically and passively) to shine bright at the things they do well; to grab life and excel at their strengths.

The other day I received a letter from a dear friend, hoping that sometime soon we will get the time to meet up but sadly she talked in her letter of how busy she was with one thing or another and how busy I was and that it didn’t look that we would get together in the near future.  A grey cloud moved over head as I read that thinking when did we all become so busy with “life” that we don’t have time for each other?  When did I get so tied up with “life” that my friends think that I’m too busy for them?  When did we all succumb to the ‘busybusybusy’ syndrome?  What exactly is it?  Why do we all need to be so busy? How much does it affect family life and more importantly how can I make changes that will mean that “busyness” isn’t ruling my life or ruling it to the extent that friends don’t think I can fit them in?

To be honest, it’s a funny thing, because before receiving the letter I have never thought of myself as a busy person.  I always feel that I could do so much more with my day.  Ask me to fit something in and inevitably I will; shifting priorities here and there and making sure that, somehow that everything gets done with the limited hours that we get in our 24 hour days.    It’s always a bit of a tough conundrum never really knowing what one day brings to the next in terms of health but on the whole we just go with the flow.  Still to this friend, I obviously appear very busy raising four teenage children by myself but to my mind life is just ‘full’.  But what is the difference between a full life and a busy one?

Essentially, on reflection, I realised that different people have different perceptions as to what busyness is.  One person may say they are busy busy busy and run off their feet with activities whereas another maybe doing exactly the same activities and just feel that life is full, not especially busy.  Benjamin Franklin’s quote “if you want something done, ask a busy person” comes to mind, but why is that – is it that we should ask a person who says they are busy or someone who doesn’t but appears busy?  We are all, or many of us are, occupied now days with the pressures and strains of modern life yet somewhere along the line we have become consumed by busyness.  It has become a state of mind not a state of affairs, as has often been said, but why?  Why do we all need to be so busy and how much does it affect family?

If we strip away at what constitutes busy, as previously mentioned, this can mean a multitude of things to different people.  The dictionary “busyness” as the “1. quality or condition of being busy.” and “2. lively but meaningless activity.”  But essentially it is fair to say that busyness entails a degree of subjectivity.  I, for instance, don’t think I’m busy, but my friend does.  Who is right?  Is either or neither?  If I consider a busy day over a full day, that is a day when I don’t have time for anything else, not because I couldn’t make time but because I choose not to.  That choice may well not be a conscious one, or one that I would sit down and deliberately make, but it is a reactive choice with consequences that are far outreaching.  It destroys my inner peace and takes away from a deeper calm, that otherwise would see me in the midst of a full day but still able to step out of it to include another activity if necessary.  Effectively it becomes a reaction as opposed to a thought through response made from a centre of proactivity and ultimately the people that pay the price for such reactivity is me, my family and my friends.

Life then, in terms of our daily activities, needs to be seen as a series of choices; choices that give us space to be proactive and choices that mean that we don’t succumb to a busyness disorder.  If we feel the need to be overtly busy, then we need to ask ourselves why?  Why do we want to live life in the fast lane, never taking the time out to coast in the middle lane or meander in the slow lane?  We need to challenge ourselves as to exactly what the consequences are of slowing down a bit.  Are we scared of missing out on something, maybe some opportunity, if we stop to take a breath?  Do we really need to close yet another sale – is our business going to fall to pieces if we take five minutes?  Do we really need to do everything that we think we need to do?  If we take on that job are we going to starve?  And what about family, probably the biggest question or all, and our children – can we actually afford to burn life away in the fast lane without taking time out to spend even a short period of time with them each day, drop that call to answer their question, or to sit down and take the time out?  Can we afford not to listen to that small, peaceful voice within that guides and support, strengthens and inspires?  Are we fully aware that our busyness is the mute button to that voice.

If it all sounds unrealistic – then we have to ask ourselves why?  What actually would happen tomorrow if everything we did suddenly ground to a halt?  What realistically would the outcome be if we wound up, say, in some hospital bed and couldn’t do everything we had been doing?  Four years ago that effectively did happen to us and strangely enough our quality of life improved and things got better and better.  For sure, our family bonds strengthened; sibling rivalry ceased and there was a new focus on teamwork and mutual co-operation, respect and individual responsibility.  In a few short months, our world seemed to stop but in that time we learnt so much and now when life is full and edging towards busy, I often reflect on that time and take a rain-check before busyness takes over like it used to.

However, only each of us can truly know why we subscribe to a “busy” life over a “full” one but, for sure, busyness diminishes life’s rich tapestry – full on the other hand leads to a fulfilling peaceful life where the tapestry is brightly coloured, interesting, magnificent with the capacity for expansion.  Is there really, then a choice?