Narcissist | Parenting In the Loop

Weekend Reading:

Spring is almost here…

Looking forward to the weekend? I surely am, even though some are equally hectic or even more so than the weekdays when everyone is doing their own thing, work and school. Signs of spring are all around with weather warming here in Chicagoland. Time to get outside.

I felt sad reading this post in the NYT because I can’t even imagine how I could have dealt with my husband being away and possibly out of touch when my kids were young. This young mom has a “moment” with her 2 year old son that is more than touching. What must her weekend be like?

Bedtime around here is the time I feel my husband’s absence the most. We generally tag team dishes and bath, so once the kids are asleep we can enjoy some precious alone time (we also have a 4-year-old daughter). With him gone, I keep holding out hope for a fairy godmother to come do the dishes and fold laundry while I handle bedtime.

Deployment Is Confusing for Children, Which Makes Children Hard on Parents – NYTimes.com.

Narcissism is a word making the news lately. In psychology, this is not a nice label to have associated with you or your children. How does one develop narcissistic traits? Well, this study gives you some ideas about over valuing children and yes even your grandchildren.

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and Ohio State University suggested that parents who overvalue their children raise children who overvalue themselves — narcissists, in the commonly used, nondiagnostic sense of the word. That overvaluation was evaluated in ways obvious and more subtle (if you thought your child had a working knowledge of all of those topics, you’re overestimating him or her — because several of them don’t exist).

‘Kids Like Me Deserve Something Special.’ The Risks of Overvaluing Our Young. – NYTimes.com.

Coffee and wine on Facebook refer to wake up and relax. They appear in mom feeds very frequently. Interesting discussions recently about the exhaustion of constantly multitasking.

Why do moms always talk about coffee and wine? Referencing the fact that talk of both beverages constantly fills up her Facebook feed, Kristen Schrotberger says she’s over the rampant liking of posts that reference the need for more coffee and wine. Her very matter-of-fact post on Scary Mommy sheds some light on why any conversation about alcohol and coffee is instantly popular. It’s because we parents are so exhausted from the constant multitasking we need to relax. Coffee picks us up, wine helps us wind down.

via: Kids in the House

Yet another weekend is upon us. I hope you enjoy some time for yourself!

Did you have a “difficult mother”

was she really a Narcissist

and

you didn’t really know it?

Henriette does a wonderful job describing the differences between the two in her post,

The Narcissist and the Difficult Mother.

Fortunately, I had a marvelous mother…she would give until it hurt and it sometimes did…although not always around because she worked, when she was present, she seemed beautiful inside and out.

Now…my father was a completely different story…he was a Narcissist and I never realized it until a few years before he died, but by that time the damage had long been done.

In his eyes, I simply did not exist apart from him.

In many ways, it was lucky for me that my parents were divorced when I was very young, so my exposure to him was limited but still very confusing.

It is even too emotionally painful to record here. He was not physically abusive but emotionally, I remember always being on a roller coaster, wondering, “how do I please you”…never realizing that this was an impossibility.

~~Simply put~~, I always wished and was full of hope that when we got together even for the very last time when he was quite old and I was an adult and a mother myself, that he would be Robert Young, in “Father Knows Best” and call me “Princess”.

He never did…

The narcissist is clothed in a kind of emotional Teflon….

Her fury at my ideas was so intense and so pure that I saw it was fueled by more than a simple disagreement with my point of view. This was rage at the notion that I could have a point of view. I didn’t exist apart from her, so I couldn’t think anything she didn’t think. I saw then that I didn’t really exist except as part of her identity.