What are narcissists like as children?

[DianaT1969]

I see many posts about narcissistic parents and partners on MN. I don't know much about it, but assume that people don't suddenly become narcissists in adulthood. If so, what are they like as children, and at what age does it become apparent?

My narc mother was put on a pedestal by her parents and could do no wrong in their eyes.

I’ve had limited chats with her cousins etc about what she was like and the common themes are she was very very bossy/controlling from a young age

And a compulsive liar in order to always be in the right or get the last word/upper hand

This is my overriding memory of her as well (we went NC in my teens) - if she needed to trump someone else in any sort of argument, she would invent a qualification or previous job or something that made her the expert and right, and other other person wrong
The weird thing was that she always seemed to believe herself for weeks afterwards

Eg she would argue with a piano teacher about me not learning quick enough, and tell them she was a former ballerina who was so good at piano that she often got asked to play in rehearsals.
Then for weeks afterwards, she would mutter about how dare they question her when she studied at the royal ballet and the teacher is just some provincial nobody.
The reality is my mother probably did a couple of years of ballet lessons aged 8-11 and was totally unremarkable

Or she would argue with a builder and claim she studied architecture

Very high opinion of themselves. Bossy. They are always right. Superior to other folk. Indulged and worshipped by parents. Nothing but nothing is ever their fault. You can tell them a mile away. Luckily quite a few turn out to be nice adults when they grow up. Some unfortunately don't and cause chaos.

@Cactus1982

My DMs younger sister is a narcissist. She was absolutely spoiled rotten as a child, a surprise late baby born when my grandparents were in their 40’s and presumably they didn’t think they’d have any more children. They completely doted on her and the whole family’s life revolved around her. DM says that my GPs never told her off, she got away with things the rest of them would never have gotten away with and by the time she was a teen she’d developed behaviour issues. Apparently she used to have proper temper tantrums well into her 20’s.

A lot of youngest children are spoiled but that doesn’t necessarily a narcissist make. There has to be neglect in some ways.

@Viviennemary

Very high opinion of themselves. Bossy. They are always right. Superior to other folk. Indulged and worshipped by parents. Nothing but nothing is ever their fault. You can tell them a mile away. Luckily quite a few turn out to be nice adults when they grow up. Some unfortunately don't and cause chaos.

Narcissists are people who dont grow out of that type of behaviour.

Well, according to my grandparents and uncles my mum was not especially spoilt but she didn’t like it at all when her younger brothers came along. She was aggressive and bullied them and wanted everything her way. Her dad used to punish her with a smack as was pretty normal in the 50’s. She was very clever academically but looked down on others.

She is still fond of throwing a tantrum. I was raised in her shadow but it was the men in her life who she targeted. She bullied the last one to death and now I am left dealing with her.

My sister was a sickly sweet child, put on a show for everyone but learnt quickly how to manipulate people to get what she wanted. When she became about 15/16 and started to have real responsibility and had to face consequences for her actions she became nasty and narcisstic.

She was a spoiled child but was very much supported emotionally. She got on well with siblings and our parents and was a happy child with a mean streak. Not much has changed but we are now NC. She's very jealous of me because of our living situations.

My understanding is that narcissism is about creating a false sense of self. It's about a deep sense of shame. So to me it would suggest a household where there is emotional and possibly also physical abuse. Even in the cases of 'indulged' children who become narcissistic there could well be emotional abuse/enmeshment/false sense of self in order to fulfil parent's unmet needs

There are different ways.

What they have in common is the absence of an emotionally available parent who can respond to their needs.

Not overindulgence and permissiveness, although that is paraffin on the flames if the first condition is met.

Worth remembering we all have narcissistic traits and some are healthy.

Sugarbabymilly you are right, and I know other people spoiled as children who have turned into perfectly nice and normal well adjusted adults. Which is why I think there is a predisposition to it. My Aunt wasn’t just spoiled though, she was on a pedestal and the whole family had to revolve around her.

For example when her eldest sister (there’s a large age gap) had her first child and the first grandchild to be born into the family, my GPS were really concerned about my Aunt feeling pushed out. So much so that they refused to babysit and told the other siblings they weren’t to buy the new baby presents. Bare in mind my Aunt was about twelve by this point, I’d say that’s pretty ridiculous.

Honestly I’ve heard the stories. I can’t repeat them because they’d be outing, but she got away with murder. It was almost like she was this precious gem that everyone else had to fawn over.

@Whocutdownthecherrytree

Oh my, I’m reading all the responses about overly indulged children. My ex and my father are both narcissistic people. Both were emotionally and physically abused as children. Developed a self centred way of living through survival

From what I understand (daughter of a narc here, he wasn't formerly diagnosed as far as I know, like most narcs he didn't feel he had a problem!) it's often a complex experience in childhood of both neglect/abuse AND being overly indulged. With parents who swing completely inconsistently between one and the other.

Or with one parent being abusive and the other, often as a way of compensating, overly indulgent. Hitler was a narcissist: violent alcoholic father and a mother who never said "No" to him about anything.

Of the narcs I have met, it's striking how much of their behaviour is like a 3 or 4 year old. Outbursts, sulking, tantrums. That's part of normal child development when someone IS 3 or 4. But narcissists get stuck there.

I'm not an expert, but the following is what I understand. Narcissism is linked and sometimes co-exists with anti-social personality disorder. The latter can present in various ways - disregard for the feelings and interests of others is a constant feature, I believe. This has similarities with narcissism. Some adults with anti-social personality disorder are successful, others break the rules, but are found out. Low level crime might involve starting fires, for instance.

The link to childhood diagnosis is this, I believe: ' conduct disorder' is a diagnosis which children may be given by an expert. In some cases, these children grow to adults who are diagnosed with anti-social personality disorder. Not always. I think certain features are present and intervals between events less than a certain time span for a diagnosis of conduct disorder' to be assigned.

My younger brother is narcissistic, he was the golden child, could do no wrong. Was practically born performing and got off on the attention it gave him. He was a very sweet and loving young child but when our parents divorced he changed and became self absorbed and entitled and our mother let (still let’s) him away with it. He was very handsome and sociable unlike me so she promoted that behaviour with him while hiding me away.

He never did any housework, never cooked meals or cleaned up, he could charm his way out of anything and my mum fell for it and loved that about him. So I guess there was a degree of Cinderella going on where I was left to all his chores too and I was punished if I didn’t. His sense of entitlement meant that he would give away my things to improve his own social standing. Started off small like copied tapes but progressed onto computer games, things I loaned him temporarily (furniture, sports equipment, musical instruments) yeah it took me a while to learn to say no. He was always doing stuff to be seen to help someone else and didn’t give a shit about what it meant to me or my family.

My mum bought him his own flat at about 19 so she could sell her house to move and he was meant to pay the mortgage but he never paid a penny to her and she did nothing about it.

He’s a people pleaser - it never really made sense that his narcissistic tendencies came out in this way.

Both my parents are narcissistic, although my dad I think is just an abusive arsehole without need for a diagnosis.

I know a narcissist. She describes a really unhappy childhood, I think this may have been a major factor in her developing the disorder. Though, she's incredibly manipulative so its difficult to REALLY know....

I think a diagnosis is needed before it can be said with certainty that someone is a narcissist.

No one is born a narcissist. Like all personality disorders some really awful stuff has to happen to a child to make them a narcissist.

In MIL case I think it was probably having a cold distant mother who repeatedly told her as a child that it would have been better if she had died rather than her sibling

She very much repeated that dynamic with my poor DH, who was the family scapegoat.

Usually they are emotionally neglected or rejected in some way. Even in the most normal looking families. The narcissist grows as they try to protect themselves from the pain and tell themselves they are the only important or exceptional person etc, in an effort to feel better than others and therefore protect themselves from further rejection.

I thought that giving little children a lot of love, support and encouragement was supposed to be the best possible source of their future resilience and ability to form good relationships.

It is worrying to read how some posters think they can see this sort of treatment as being the root of later narcissistic personality problems.

(I am not criticising or contradicting these views - but wondering how to get it all right in bringing up a child?)

My sister is a diagnosed narcissist. Apparently she was a very clingy, difficult baby who used to cry non stop unless she was held. She was cosseted by mum but bullied by my father, who was a bad tempered bully with a drink problem and a short fuse. He didn’t tolerate her crying or moaning, but she seemed to realise that it got a reaction out of my mum, so kept doing it. So she was stuck in a cycle of being a brat, being cosseted, being a brat, being harshly punished. Then I was born and she became the typical middle child, stuck between a perfect older sibling who was naturally clever without even trying and very mature for her age, and a cute, sweet natured younger sister who purposely acted babyish because I knew it made people react how i wanted them to act (I realise I was a very manipulative child but I did what worked for me).

As adults, all of us siblings have diagnosed personality disorders and I firmly believe it’s down to our father’s abusive behaviour towards us.

I agree with dIverse. It's quite a rare condition, and more common in men than women. People can be monumentally selfish, self absorbed and down right nasty with highly-inflated opinions of themselves without having NPD. And a personality disorder is all pervasive. It reaches into all areas of life, all relationships, it's not as if one would be singled out for specially bad treatment.

Npd is a rare disorder but is bandied about as if half the population have it. Being self absorbed and having NPD are very different. Emotional neglect has been attributed to it or other forms of abuse.

There seems to be an emphasis here on over indulgence. The posters will then say Parent was Alcoholic/Narc/golden child and scapegoat parenting and so in a nutshell probably abused as opposed to "indulged". It's unlikely a narc/alcoholic parent is over indulging their child. They may throw possessions to avoid parenting or be lazy but that is not over indulging that is just not bothering to parent.

I don’t want to hijack the thread, but I used to know someone who I suspect was a narcissist. Some of the traits mentioned on this thread are very familiar, but I wonder if the following behaviour is familiar to any of you:

He spent a lot of his time trying to get the better of people. He loved tricking them, so he could correct them and laugh at them. He often didn’t mind if people got angry with him, but he couldn’t stand to be laughed at. If anyone did, he’d usually try to turn the tables and insist he was the one laughing at them.

We believe my mum's older sister was a narcissist. My aunt was a newborn when my grandad had to go away to war leaving her with my grandmother's undivided attention. He didn't return until my aunt was about 3 and she saw him as an impostor. She was even less happy about my mother's arrival a couple of years after that. Reading previous posts, it looks like difficulties adapting to the arrival of siblings could be a sign in children.

@Diverseopinions

I think a diagnosis is needed before it can be said with certainty that someone is a narcissist.

There are several problems with this.

Narcissists by definition have very little self-awareness. If they feel depressed, chronically angry, whatever, they will be holding other people as entirely responsible for that. And so they are highly unlikely to seek out a psychiatrist or someone similar and to say "I think the way I relate to people is problematic."

Many narcissists who HAVE been formally diagnosed have been seen by a psychiatrist after being charged with a crime. The involvement of mental health professionals has mandated by the judiciary. Or they have come to someone's attention due to an acrimonious custody dispute, that kind of thing.

Also bear in mind that narcissists by definition are very manipulative. They are especially manipulative of people in authority, which includes doctors! They often pull the wool over the eyes of even seasoned professionals.

Narcissists are especially good at convincing psychiatrists and others that it is their spouse and children who have a problem and not them. (I speak from experience.) Character-assassination.

I have read enough about narcissism to recognise it in two members of my own family. If a duck quacks, etc. I wouldn't dare to form that view of a casual acquaintance, there's not enough to go on and narcissists, also by definition, wear a mask when out and about. i really think you have to live alongside them to see them in all their dysfunction.

Obviously, nobody can say with certainty that a person is a narcissist if there has been no diagnosis. But there had been enough discussion of narcissism in recent years that most people will understand that it isn’t the same as selfishness or self- absorption and they might (for example) read articles by psychiatrists and psychologists with a realisation that they are describing with uncanny accuracy someone they know.

Ah, TurquoiseLemur just said it so much better. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck ...