31 Jul 2008 04:06 AM

My Post & Beth's Reply in Topic When Your Child's Grandparent is a Narcissist

rosem1111 (25) 29 Jul 2008 06:26 PM

My mother is elderly now and I too could potentially write a book about all the things she has done since I was little. I realised I was "older" than her when I was 5 years old. At 6 I decided to keep my deeper thoughts to myself and not let on to my family, including extended how "old" I really was. All my mother's family has issues. My father coped largely by being absent a lot. I was the oldest and parented my younger siblings a lot.

I learned that I could not trust her with my children when they were very little. The turning point on that one was when she left my toddler son, my oldest of four, alone in the bathroom in a tub of water. Luckily I was home too. I told her nicely that this was not a safe practice and she denied that this was true .

One time I came home where she was minding my then two children, to find my son, at 3 years, cowering in terror under the dining room table. She had suddenly flipped into raging mode and was pacing around yelling "Number 96, he's an idiot...." Turned out that 96 was on the football jersey of a neighbour's visiting adult son and who had repeatedly kept kicking a football into our yard.

Four years later came the last straw re her minding my children. I came home, baby number four in my arms, to find her flipped into rage again and this time it was focussed in white heat on my oldest daughter, then 5 years old. I came to the outside of our back gate, hidden by the high fence, to hear her non-stop haranguing of this girl as she used the trampoline. Then she realised I was at the gate and motor-mouth harangued this child to open it for me - "Go an open the gate for your mother; hurry up open it; oh you can never get anything right; blah, blah, blah..." I was really, really,shocked.

Then I went through a host of strategies to get my mother from earbashing my daughter with lethal, personalised abuse like torrents of lava. I started off thanking her nicely for looking after the children and asked her if she'd like to join me for a cup of tea. It wasn't until I got to strategy number 5 that I got her off my daughter's back and pouring that same personalised venom onto me. I, totally without meaning to and out of character, ended up telling her she had the devil in her and I ordered him to get out. She went kaboom!!!! And I got verbally attacked big time. I blocked my ears and had this image of her as a gigantic raging brown bear standing on its rear legs attacking me. Whew! It really got my adrenalin pumping.

After that, 15 years ago, I never let her mind my children again and I have had only as brief, as I can, periodic contact with her. She has not become normal, but she varies in how bad she is. But whatever happens, it is all about her, even if she acts as if she is being nice. Now that she is old, my three, now big, girls sometime ring her as a kindness. As always she talks non stop and at them. She talks "out" whatever family news or memories are currently on her mind. She is big on replaying memories and always has been. She does not interact except to check if one is LISTENING. She will not stop or agree to end the conversation. I have had to teach my girls to hang up firmly after delivering the parting cues and niceties, even if she is still talking (which you can guarantee she will be). They are very confused about her.

Beth McHugh (11285) Yesterday at 04:08 PM

Hi Rosem, your mother is sounding increasingly like the traditional narcissist. Many parents worry about the effects of this type of behavior on their children but as long as you provide a relatively healthy template for your children, then the effects of this type of behavior are not so acute as her influence would have had on you as a child. Obtaining a clinical diagnosis by proxy would also be helpful to both your girls and yourself in knowing just exactly what you are dealing with. You can contact me at http://youronlinecounselor.com for further assistance regarding this issue. Best wishes, Beth

Send this to a friend