Parenting with a Narcissist

This is Part 2. Part 1 is here

Your first priority is not to her father or his image. It’s to her. And your child looks to you for the truth.

So you will listen to her. You will sympathize with how she feels. You will reflect back to her what she is telling you, holding up each little heartache so she can see them clearly, bringing them to her conscious awareness, her intellect so that she may reason and come to conclusions…about what love is and what love isn’t.

You will not spell it out to her. Her father will. You will only help her to read what is written. And she will realize what she already knows. That what this man gives her is not love.

And you will let her know that it is not personal. Perhaps giving her examples, you will help her to see a bigger picture. Looking at what she is experiencing, gently guiding her through questions, giving her space to come to her conclusions.

And if she says, “He doesn’t love me”, not from that angry pouting kind of way a child can do when they don’t get what they want, but from the deep well of loss and sorrow that come from this kind of awful realization, you will speak the truth, in as gentle a way as you can, with no lessening of its reality.

How much of the truth and in what way you speak it will depend on her level of maturity and the depth and degree of trust and confidence you two have already created amongst yourselves.

To be continued. Final part tomorrow.

You don’t. You let him tell her. And he will.

In the many ways a narcissist does, he will let her know she is not valued for who she is, she is not seen, she is invisible and does not even exist except in what she is to him. He will show her that everything revolves around him and that if by chance that coincides with what she wants, it’s only by chance…or design for something greater he wants.

He will turn his affections toward her off and on, depending on which way the wind blows. If she does anything to disturb his over inflated version of how he sees himself as a father, he will punish her. If she embarrasses him, he will punish her.

If it suits him, he will ridicule her. He will laugh at her and call it “just teasing”. He will see it upset her, ignore her protests and pleas for him to stop…and do it some more. He will demand to have her when he’s lonely or when he needs her for one reason or another, and just as easily discard her when he has other plans or interests.

And when she cries to you, because you are the one she can talk to, because you listen, because you are there for her and you see her, you will validate what she is feeling. Because you will not betray your child in the name of “not wanting to talk bad about her dad”.

You will not dismiss her by saying, “Oh, you know he really loves you”, because you know that a narcissistic personality disordered individual (not just a jerk) isn’t capable of loving anyone, and you will not set your daughter up as bait for other narcissists by supporting the lie her father needs to believe about himself.

To be continued tomorrow

Okay, after writing about needing to take care of yourself, eating right, getting the sleep you need, I’m up at 3:00 in the morning writing, because I can’t sleep.

The N-Ex is telling my daughter that she doesn’t need braces when her teeth are more and more crooked and getting out of alignment. Anyone with eye balls in their head can see just how much she needs them…not to mention her own dentist who recommends she sees an orthodontist, like now.

The bottom line is, he doesn’t want to pay for them. The irony is that he doesn’t have to. His mother set up a savings for her that has more than enough money to cover it for just such an occasion. Unfortunately, she turned it over to him, so he controls the account. But guess what he wants to do? He wants to save it for a car for her, when she turns sixteen.

She wants the braces. She wants straight teeth. But what she wants doesn’t matter. He wants to give her the cool gift. He thinks it will make her adore him. He’s looking for those brownie points when she’s sixteen. The hell with her living self-conscious about her smile or having to deal with dental complications that come from crowded and crooked teeth.

Once again, it’s about him. And once again, it’s at her expense.

And he knows I want her to have them. That seals her fate. He won’t give in to me.

So, I wake up in the middle of this night, just dumbfounded at his ability and willingness to hurt his child in a battle in which he is the only participant. But I guess, to a narcissist, that is enough. All he needs is himself, because in the world of a narcissist, that’s all there is.

And I am incredulous.

That’s another thing about being with a narcissistic “partner”. No matter how low they go, they are always capable of doing one more thing that flabbergasts you. You know what they’re like. You’ve already witnessed what they’re capable of. And yet, they will pull one more thing out of the depth of their narcissistic magic hat, and just floor you.

Yes, I should be in bed, but I needed to write. It’s one of those, if I don’t get this out, I’ll wind up laying awake till the morning light, kind of nights.

Are you up in the middle of your night? If you are, know that you’re not sitting wide awake alone. God knows how many of us are just as stupefied as you, staring into the dark, looking for an explanation of something we will never find.

She needs me.

I always knew that, but the night before last she really brought it home to me.

The night before last, I held my little girl in my arms as she wept and raged. She cried about her fear of loss – no, her terror of losing me and having to live with her dad forever.

What if I died? What if something happened to me? The thought of having to depend only on her father filled her with fear and despair.

She said if I died, she would no longer wish to live. She would die. She would see to it.

What she feared most of all, next to a broken heart, was the thought of being a fake person for the rest of her life. To lose so much of herself trying to survive that she would forget who she really is.

Yeah, she’s not even a teenager yet, not for a few more years.

Yet, she knows. She knows the cost. She knows what it costs her now to be with him, and she knows what a thin line she walks, as it is.

I was alarmed, but at the same time I was not. I know how sensitive she is. I know what she is dealing with.

So there are a number of things to take care of. A number of things, as a responsible parent, I have to, at least, try to set up.

But what I need to do right now is make sure I take really good care of myself. Of course, there are no guarantees at all. If there were, I’d make them.

Yes, I can take care of logistics for her care if something should happen to me, but I, also, have to do what is within my power to lessen the chances that something could happen to me – whatever is within my area of power to effect a change.

You know like eat right, exercise and get plenty of sleep. Those little things that can make all the difference to one’s level of health. To not drive myself ragged, or lower my immune system, because it’s not really just my life. It’s hers – literally.

When you are the healthy…or at least, healthier partner in a relationship, and the other partner is narcissistic personality disordered, the importance of you sticking around is exponentially greater.

A mother’s importance is immeasurable to any child. But to a child with a narcissistic parent, the other parent is a matter of sanity…and sometimes life and death.