Parents Partially to Blame for Narcissism "Epidemic"

There is a fine line between confidence and narcissism. You raise your children to have confidence and self esteem, if this goes too far it is exactly as dangerous as not going far enough.
I am mystified by parents who think that the course of action on these matters should be the same for each sibling. I admit with an only child to raise I don't have to cope with having two sets, or more, of rules and requirements and have to justify this. But, what works for one child is different than what will work for the others.
We have a Hollywood image problem. kids think they are entitled like the reality show children (young adults) like to think of themselves. The news surrounds 18 year old millionairs who havn't a clue as to how to act or treate others, instead of balanced well adjusted kids who have a realistic sense of self esteem. It seems Fame ruins a lot of kids and also their fans.

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It's easy to think all young adults have this problem but I see a lot of great kids out there. The kids from our local college do a fantastic job helping with local childrens activities. I have to say that when I was a child the high school and college age instructors (baby boomers) I had were not putting forth the effort that today's instructors are.

I think these kids are fantastic at mentoring. We've had a variety of college students doing everything from babysitting, language instruction, to swimming and tennis.

When I was a kid, the baby boomer tennis instructors just pointed us to an open court, then played tennis among themselves.

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Something parents should think about and actually do. I am a big fan of John Rosemond. He wrote this a while back and it's something I refer back to a lot.

Because it is the most character-building, two-letter word in the English language, children have the right to hear their parents say "No" at least three times a day.
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Children have the right to find out early in their lives that their parents don't exist to make them happy, but to offer them the opportunity to learn the skills they will need to eventually make themselves happy.
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Children have a right to scream all they want over the decisions their parents make, albeit their parents have the right to confine said screaming to certain areas of their homes.
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Children have the right to find out early that their parents care deeply for them but don't give a hoot what their children think about them at any given moment in time.
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Because it is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, children have the right to hear their parents say "Because I said so" on a regular and frequent basis.
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Because it is the most character-building activity a child can engage in, children have the right to share significantly in the doing of household chores.
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Every child has the right to discover early in life that he isn't the center of the universe (or his family or his parents' lives), that he isn't a big fish in a small pond, and that he isn't the Second Coming, so as to prevent him from becoming an insufferable brat.
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Children have the right to learn to be grateful for what they receive, therefore, they have the right to receive all of what they truly need and very little of what they simply want.
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Children have the right to learn early in their lives that obedience to legitimate authority is not optional, that there are consequences for disobedience, and that said consequences are memorable and, therefore, persuasive.
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Every child has the right to parents who love him/her enough to make sure he/she enjoys all of the above rights.
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It isn't fair to blame just parents. It is daycare and schools as well. Everyone wins at school, at daycare, they praise for every little thing. It is tv that is and other media that has them at the center of attention. Everything ( from media to stores) that treats a child like they are a little adult also doesn't help.

Even if a parent doesn't treat thier child like they are perfect, they are exposed to it from so many other places it is hard to keep them in line.

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My all time favorite contributor to this phenomenon is when parents say, "OH! My child won't eat that! She only like hotdogs and Goldfish!" HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! I look at the parents bug-eyed because I can't figure out if they're too lazy to properly rear their children and can't put in the extra effort to introduce new foods or if they don't realize that their kids will eat it if they didn't serve them the other easy crap. In addition to the lousy nutrition hot-dog kids receive, what does that say about an adult who is essentially powerless to her kids' food preferences? Who put them in charge of the menu?

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I dont believe the experts have the right diagnosis, yeah I agree with the "generation entitled." But I do beleive that this is caused by spoiling kids and giving them what they want, it does not create a pesonality disorder such as narcissism, I was born in the seventies and I was raised by a narcissist parent (my mom), and what I have learned later in life which I throughly did not understand as a child or early adulthood, is that a person with a narcissist personality shouldn't be parents, they are to in love with themselves, when I was a child, she of course got the attention of what a beautiful baby I was. As I reach teenage years and became a woman, I began to be competition, which at every moment she got she would find faults in me and degrade me at any chance she could get, causing me to have a very low self-esteem of myself. I mean if your mom thinks your ugly why should any one else feel any different.
My mom was into her rich boyfriend, taking my Father's child support money and buying expensive wines for her boyfriend while I settled for clothing from Kmart, and like today, back then you were judged for the clothes you wore at high school.
There are way to many stories I could share but I will speed it up to the last ten years, I got married and I have a beautiful husband and three wonderful children, we have a beautiful home on the lake and there is not one fault about our home, we bought our home in the mid ninties and have never relocated, well from the moment I married, had our first child, to our home she has found faults in all of them, from whom I chosed as a spouse to how we raised our children (like I would of took advice from her) to our home she always slandered it, she was jealous, that my life turned out ok and that she never married, in fact the rich boyfriend dumped her because after 20 years she demanded marriage and he wouldnt give it to her and at the time of their breakup was when I was planning my wedding, so I'm sure she told me that was my fault too.
My mom had her run abouts of health problems and it was me that would take her to her appointments, she ended up getting esophageal cancer and she blammed that on me, I don't know why but as I did my own research on it I think the alcohol abuse and the heavy smoking throughout the years may have been to blame, but when she yelled at me and told me I was the cause of her stress, how does one think any different, this is my mom speaking to me.
I didnt speak to her for four months and when her time was nearing the end, I went. When she laid on her death bed, I was there holding her hand, she asked me to forgive her for being the Mother she was and at the time I told her she was free of the any wrong doings she did to me, an hour later she passed away. She held on until I told her she was forgiven.
When I sought the therapy that I held off for so long, I probably should of started when I was a teenager, but I just got around to it one day within the past 8 years, I sought it for depression and I learned in therapy that I was the Co-nariccist, living with the nariccist parent and everything my therapist told me fit me to a tee. I sat in the back of the relationships I was in and had no control over them, I often fanized the way a mother-daughter relationship would be like, I was prone to an abusive and destructive relationship which I was in one of those before, I often sought love from anyone and everyone that would give it to me. I didnt care about my needs as long as everyone else was happy.
I guess after reading the article again there are some truths in it but I wouldn't necessary say its nariccism, thats a very truly harsh diagnosis to make and to be branded that, but that is my story of being raised by a nariccist parent, so to me there is a difference in spoling and truly raising a narricist person. My kids are the generation entitled and we have still set up rules and guidelines that they have to follow to earn anything, I guess thats the disadvantages of not having anything when me and my husband grew up. Everyone has a little bit of a narricist personality rather its the confidence in a bikini or its "all about me" or "why did this happen to me." It doesnt mean that you should be branded with having a personality disorder, and not a very healthy one at that.

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But mark this: There will be terrible times in the last days. People will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, proud, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy, without love, unforgiving, slanderous, without self-control, brutal, not lovers of the good, treacherous, rash, conceited, lovers of pleasure rather than lovers of God...(IITimothy 3:1-4).

Interesting observation made almost 2,000 years ago by a writer of what people today call a book of myths and fallacies...the Bible.

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I would like to point out to Sherry Pettey that instead of looking at the bible as a fortune telling book to look at what was going on in that time as well. Most things written that sound like they apply today also applied to back then as well. The world really hasn't changed all that much when it comes to basic things like want and over indulgence. Writers back then weren't righting about the future, they were commenting on their own day and age, nothing more. The bible isn't a fortune telling book, it is simply writings made by a human being about their own experiences.

As for the topic at hand, it is the fault of the parents, whether they are too lenient or too harsh with their kids they are the root of the problem, not just one of the many branches. Everything goes back to how the parent raised their kid(s) to view the world. I have seen many many of "today’s kids" who are "mine, mine, mine" and "me, me, me" to everything and I just have to laugh because I know their parents have made them this way and I feel sorry for how their kids are going to turn out.

For proper development of an individual you need action and consequence, not action and someone coddling them when it doesn't turn out exactly right. We as a whole need to change how WE perceive things, it's OK when a kid fails, it's OK to punish a kid when he/she does something wrong, it's OK that a kid falls and scraps their knees. But it is NOT OK to coddle a child and not let them experience any of these experiences for it is these experiences that form the child into an adult.

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Both my parents have NPD.
Almost made me one as well but as it didn't I am now pretty much the opposite.
It has made me understand how (not) to live.
It's everywhere though.
Rampant.

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As the mother of a narcisstic child, I don't find much help anywhere I look. My second daughter was sweet, independent, loving. Her older sister (by almost 6 years) was the same, but started getting into trouble with the law in her young teens. Maybe we focused too much on the older one at that time? i just don't know.

The education we received from the judicial system was certainly an eye-opener. Did yiu know that in New Mexico a child has the right to run away from home, but the parents remain responsible for said child? Is there any sense to that?

We live in a small town with myriad social dysfunctions. Both of my girls (but especially the younger one) had to deal with the suicides of many friends, as teenagers. The younger one had to deal with the random murders of two friends. These were not bad kids, just in the wrong place at thewrong time.

We noticed the younger daughter lying to her friends' parents that I was abusive to her, which I was not. She was diagnosed at age 15 as having a borderline narcissistic personality disorder. She of course didn't believe it. I think the saddest part of it all is that she truly believes that I did the things she accuses me of.

I still don't know how to deal with her. It's so easy to say don't give in to her. You wouldn't believe how vile & nasty she can be when thwarted.

The problem now is that she's almost 23 & has an 18-month old baby that I adore. She hasn't tried it yet, but I know that she's going to use that baby against me. I dread the day.

I guess what I'm mostly trying to say is that it's always easy to blame the parents, but there's probably alot more to it. I'll shoulder my share of the responsibility, but what about the other circumstances that I mention (& some I don't)?

I'm tired of hearing from the media, these blogs, my daughter, that everything is my fault. I believe that as parents, most of us do the best we can with what we have at the time. What we really need are solutions, practical ideas, etc., as to how we can keep our sanity when dealing with this type of person.

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