Teaching Your Kids About Narcissists

We do not teach out kids about narcissism, borderline, and other disorders because of their other parent.  We teach them about high-conflict individuals and about the importance of standards and boundaries because those lessons are crucial to a good life.  Whether the other parent is high-conflict or narcissistic or not, it is important to teach our kids about how to handle themselves in a real world that is populated by significant numbers of problematic people.

Transcript

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This is unapologetic parenting podcast dedicated to candidly and unapologetically discussing parenting, divorce and co parenting. We take on the topics most people don't want to talk about and offer support and solutions to help you be a better parent, co parent and human being. Now without further ado, let's get right to it. Welcome back to unapologetic parenting. I'm your host Carl Knickerbocker. And in this episode, we are talking about educating our kids about narcissism, educating them about narcissistic behaviors, perhaps cluster B borderline behaviors without using the other parent as the prime example. So I think a lot of times when we deal with a narcissistic co parent, a narcissistic ex, or a borderline one of these cluster be disordered folks, we, as the other parent, tend to shy away from doing any kind of education, on boundaries, mental illness, different borderline, or narcissistic tendencies and people, because there's that fear that well, if we say anything about this, or talk anything about this, then we're going to be damaging, potentially the relationship between the child and the other parent, and then we're going to be the ones that look like we're doing something awful and insidious and trying to alienate, etc, etc, etc. So typically, from your experience, I'm sure you found that that's exactly what the other person is doing. They're going on some sort of weird campaign as is, as is typical for people with those disorders, where they're probably trying to paint you misrepresent you, make you look all sorts of crazy to the children probably have engaged in some sort of manipulation or alienation campaigns in the past, whatever have you. Well, that doesn't give carte blanche or excuse or anything else to then do the same thing back. But here's where I focus in on things. These are life skills that need to be taught. These are relationship skills, involving boundaries, people's character, being able to recognize who is healthy, and going to be a suitable match are suitable potential match for friendship, love, relationships, marriage, whatever else have you. These are skills that need to be taught, we need to teach them to differentiate between the healthy and the unhealthy. And to be able to see that hey, people who act these ways people who act in these disordered manners, people who have these sorts of traits, people who do these sorts of things, that should be a red flag every single time to not enter into a relationship, especially romantic relationship, or any sort of relationship where you can possibly end up reproducing with a person who is like that. And that's a conversation that most parents never have, and probably 99.9999% of people ever listening to this podcast, that's probably a conversation that your parents never had with you. And you probably never experienced anybody out in the wild, who actually will talk about, hey, you need to have these boundaries in place around people who act in these disordered ways. Because guess what disorder people will end up having disordered relationships. And then you're going to be stuck with disordered dynamics and disordered problems all through whoever knows how many years or decades if you end up reproducing with that. So get them while they're young. Teach them while they're young, raise them right from early on. And part of that is having these really kind of Stark, blunt, just to the point practical conversations and lessons over what to do what to look for what to watch for what are these trades, what sort of people are out there? Now, I would start off probably with something that you think is not aligned with whatever particular flavor of crazy your exes so if you think that your ex is borderline if you think your ex is a narcissist, pick something else pick some other kind of weird psychopath or sociopath start with, you know, histrionics. Start with something like that. Or just start with people who have different behavioral traits, maybe addiction, schizophrenia, different things like that, that you can use as an entry point to the lessons of Hey, probably not the best decision to be romantically involved with people like this. Probably not the best decision to ever have kids with people like this or here. Some tactics for dealing with high conflict people and teach them about boundaries, teach them how to stand up for themselves, teach them how to deal with people who lie deal with, you know, lying or pathological liars, how to deal with people who just twist things around and the importance of, you know, being clear to themselves on what the truth is what was really said, teach them to stick to the facts, teach them all sorts of practical skills. And from there down the road, you could get more into some of the specifics of narcissistic personality disorder. But you could probably just break that down into things like, how do you deal with somebody who, you know, lies? How do you keep yourself secure in the truth, and you can couch it in terms of, hey, millions of people do this, this is running rampant in our culture in society right now, people just making stuff up. And so let's talk about sticking to the facts. Let's talk about looking at a situation and just seeing, alright, this is actually what was said, this is actually what was done, and leave it at that. avoid the temptation of spinning off into Well, it doesn't matter what the facts were, it doesn't matter what people actually said, This is what I feel. And this is my truth. And my truth is what really matters and all that other craziness that people do teach your kids about the reality that a lot of people just make stuff up, and then accuse others of it, you can teach them about individual things like projection, hey, a lot of times, when people are accusing you of something, they are projecting what they themselves are doing onto you. You can teach them about that you can teach them about black and white thinking or splitting, and say, Hey, you know, anytime you see somebody who's like, oh, you're all evil, and, you know, then the next day, you're all good, or this person is just, you know, the golden child, and you're just bad, bad, bad. That's called splitting. And that is this. And that is not healthy. And let's not ever do that. And you can teach them about these individual things. You can teach them about empathy, just as a neutral concept, hey, empathy means acting compassionately, and you don't have to get into the woowoo stuff about, you know, I walk into the room and my heart chakra feels pain somewhere, that's just weird, just know. But you can teach your kids that, hey, you know, empathy means I understand that this other person is suffering, I understand that this other person has an emotional need or physical need, or whatever else have you. And then I can work to address that I don't have to feel just in my you know, heart or spleen or whatever else, what they feel, I can understand it, and then act empathically to them in the form of compassion. And teach them that teach them what it means to act compassionately, and to respond to the needs of others, and then teach them that, hey, some people just can't or won't do that, some people just will actively refuse almost every single time possible, they will refuse to act in that responsive, compassionate way. And that's a big problem. So if you ever see somebody doing that, you know, that is not the type of person that you want to have a relationship with, that is not the type of person to trust or bring into your life, on any kind of higher level. If you need to get down the road, and start, you know, exploring concepts about narcissism, or borderline or this or that, give them some book recommendations, and let the books just kind of speak for themselves. So you know, have them read the sociopath next door, just be like, Hey, this is just a really fascinating book. And you know, part of your summer reading is going to be these other classics or whatever have you. And then I also want you to read this book, and then just let them read it. Or you might have them read, stop walking on eggshells, and just say, Hey, you know, here you go. These, this book has all sorts of techniques that are good to deal with all sorts of people that you're going to deal with, in school, in high school, and college, in workplace settings in the entire rest of your life. Because these borderlines and these problematic people, they are going to be everywhere, all the time. They're just part of our society. You cannot live your life, engage with the public, and not come across these people. So you need to learn these skills of engagement, the skills of spotting these things. You need to learn what it means to define boundaries and have really, really good clear standards for how You will communicate what it means to walk away and make that decision. So you can refer them over to books, you never have to have a discussion that says, Oh yes, your other parent is this your other parent is a narcissist your other parent is disordered your other parent is this or that. It is your responsibility as a parent, though, to prepare them for life that is going to be, you know, populated by disordered people. It is your responsibility as a parent to prepare them whether the other parent is you know, disordered or not prepare your kids to be able to spot these things, and to know how to recognize them and respond appropriately, and have the decisions or boundaries in place now that are going to serve them to avoid getting into relationships. And you know, God forbid, having kids with disordered individuals because we all know where that leads and how difficult and awful that is. We don't want our kids to experience that. We don't want them to repeat those mistakes or repeat that past. And the best way we can do that is to teach them the skills that they need these neutral skills that they need to handle disordered individuals, wherever they are in life whenever they are in life.