I was reading a book recently by Rokelle Learner about coping with narcissists.  The title of the book is “The Object of my Affection is in my Reflection” which indicates that narcissists tend to love themselves too much.  There is of course healthy narcissism which is your right to feel satisfied, special and unique, to want to win, to be the best and to be celebrated.  Where narcissism becomes a problem it is when people exaggerate their belief in being entitled and are also extremely boastful about their achievements, on a grandiose scale.  It is similar to an e-mail that I received recently, which I had some of my staff comment on, without telling them who it came from where somebody wrote to me saying, “All I want to know is what have I done wrong to deserve the immature gesture of blocking me on WhatsApp?  I am truly and deeply hurt by these actions you have taken against me!”  It should be noted that in fact my telephone number had changed.  The aggression shown in that e-mail to me would be a sign of unhealthy narcissism and the book suggests a number of ways for you to avoid raising entitled and over-indulged children.  

It will say for example if your children got bad marks you should allow them to tolerate discomfort – you should not run to your child’s rescue on every single negative encounter they might have.  Of course there are things that you need to involve yourself with, but you cannot assure them that everything is OK all the time and somebody else is to blame.  You must be reasonable about what your dreams for your child are – it is not for them to achieve your dreams and your frustrations as to what you have not achieved in your life.  You must not invest more in a result than your child does – if they are not investing any time in something – there is no point for you to try and make up for it by investing lots of your time.  

You need to make sure that your child gets time to play freely with others to learn social skills and that your real goal is to raise an independent adult – some single children in particular are brought up as narcissistic brats as they never learn to play or deal with others.  You want to teach your child to think for himself/herself and how to be able to disagree respectfully with somebody in a position of authority, if they have the basis to do so, and to be able to withstand criticism from their peers.  

What you don’t want is some child who feels that whatever they want they should be given – more TV time, more devices to play with, a grandiose sense of self-importance and entitlement while demanding that others treat them with adoration and respect, regardless of their behaviour.  In particular, narcissists often lack empathy – they are unable to recognise and experience how other people feel and to a large extent what the book is basically saying is that narcissistic parents produce narcissistic children – so if you over-accommodate your child, if you over-parent your child, if you are a helicopter parent who sits over your child and helps them with every single thing all the time and told them not to worry about anything, you might well produce a narcissistic child.