When I was looking for a divorce lawyer, I met with a female attorney first. I could tell from the first meeting that she didn’t like me. We just didn’t click. I didn’t hire her and went on to hire a different attorney. The first attorney did give me some valuable advice. She wisely told me that I needed to give Will and Jenny the tools they needed to learn to deal with their dad and his disorder. She made a point of making sure that I understood that I could not prevent them from seeing their dad, so I might as well arm them with the necessary coping skills.
Her statement has really stuck with me. And it applies to life in general. As much as we may want to run from situations, we only grow by learning to deal with them. Go ahead and run, but chances are, the new path you take could lead you headlong into the same mess. I have not specifically told Will and Jenny about their dad and NPD.* They are too young for that. But when they ask questions about their dad’s behavior, I take the time to explain his actions. My goal is for the kids to understand that their dad is just the way he is, and it has absolutely nothing to do with who they are, how they dress, what their interests are or anything they are doing. I do not want them laying awake at night, thinking that their dad behaves the way he does because of something they did or because of who they are.
They have managed to come up with a pretty good set of tools for heading off any disappointments or confrontations. They have learned which buttons to avoid pushing. It has all been trial and error. Act this way, and this is what you get. Act a different way and you can expect this. Kids are intelligent. They understand cause and effect. If something is painful, they’ll do their best to avoid it.
Mark stopped by for a visit yesterday. Just before he had gotten here, Jenny had been rubbing her eye. Her eye was irritated and red. When I asked her if she was going to go out and say hi to her dad, she said, “Mom, if he sees that my eye is red, he’s going to treat me like a baby. I’m not going out there.” (Mark still believes that Jenny is the last holdout for any sourcing of his narcissism. He treats her like a baby with the hope that she will always be his admiring little girl. He does not empathize with the fact that seven year old girls cannot stand to be treated like babies.) I laughingly suggested that she wear my sunglasses, and expected that she wouldn’t take me up on the offer. Surely, wearing big sunglasses would get more adverse attention than a red eye. She took me up on the offer. She pranced around the front yard in huge sunglasses, and she never took them off. Being the true narcissist that he is, he didn’t even notice the sunglasses or the red eye. It ended up being fun for Jenny, and she avoided being treated like the baby.
Will and Jenny have gotten pretty clever at coming up with different tools. I help them to be confident with who they are. They come up with the tools and coping mechanisms on their own. And just like with everything else in life, the lessons we learn on our own are the ones that stick. They will both come out of this with some pretty extensive tool chests. Those tools should serve them both well in all their different relationships.
*Revision dated 8/8/10
During the course of this year of blogging and survival, I made the decision to introduce the word, narcissism, to Jen and Will. I realized that speaking succinctly about narcissism was more effective than talking in general terms. The kids processed better when they had a specific term to work with. They seemed to be able to handle things better, once I defined what they were dealing with.
Tags: child of narcissist, life, narcissism, narcissistic behavior, NPD, proactive, survive
