You As Mother

One issue every daughter of a narcissistic mother has to concern herself with is being a mother herself.

We worry about replicating the dysfunction and harming our children just as we were harmed. As well, we simply don't know how to be a high-functioning mother. All girls learn to parent by absorbing how her mothers parent, and unless we proactively choose to learn differently, that's what we'll know.

Well I have good news for you!

The first thing is that, almost by definition, if you're reading this page, you're NOT going to be the sort of mother that your own mother was. By caring enough to worry about being a good mother and make it your business to read how to do differently, you're already proving that you are so, so different from your own narcissistic mother.

So take a deep breath and absorb that good news.

You're NOT like her.

Now you might have some narcissistic traits as explained here. But as I explain on that page, you'll be able to recognise them and change them. But obviously you're not narcissistic because a narcissstic mother would NEVER doubt that she was anything less than perfect.

But what about practical parenting skills? How do you become a good mother?

I share my own journey here, and the resources I have found, and the observations I've realised, and I hope you find them useful. I am not being so arrogant, I hope, as to say I'm a perfect mother (and indeed my son would let you know I'm not!), but I have put a lot of effort into learning and applying good parenting skills, so I do get 10/10 for effort. And some of it has rubbed off.

When a baby is born, one of her first jobs is to learn how the world works. She's always looking for evidence and drawing conclusions. Those conclusions get literally wired (in the form of neural pathways) into her brain as part of her 'map' of the world, and will influence everything about her life. She's asking questions like: Am I a worthwhile person? Am I loved? Is the world a safe place? Will my needs be met?

It's our job as parents to answer those questions that Yes, she's a worthwhile person, yes she's loved, yes her world is safe, and yes her needs will be met.

We do that by proving it to her.

But how do we do that? 

The best thing I did, bar none, was to join the breastfeeding support group La Leche League when I was about seven months pregnant. I thought I was going to learn about breastfeeding - and I did. But I also learned how to be a mother.

This came about in two ways. The first was that La Leche League has what I believe is a wonderful philosophy of how children should be treated and they provide much practical resources to help you learn these, in the form of books (I share my favourites below) and conferences. It's a full course in learning how to be a mother.

The second way in which La Leche League taught me to be a mother is through simple modelling of wonderful mothering. The Leaders (as the facilitators are called) and other long-term members are, by definition, very child-centred and are, in my experience, absolutely inspirational to observe and learn from.

Breastfeeding itself really helps in mother-child bonding. When you breastfeed your body produces the hormone oxytocin which helps you bond with your baby. The more you bond, the more love you feel, the easier it is to be responsive to her. For sure women bond without this help, but this makes it much much easier. And seeing as daughters of narcissistic mothers are perhaps starting from behind we need all the help we can get.

Breastfeeding also means that you're spending more time with your baby, and that also helps you bond with her. It means you both get to know each other really well, and learn how to work together, and that encourages a good relationship between you. With my son I found that I was nearly psychic about him. If he cried I'd know exactly what was wrong. It may have been that he had different cries but a) if he did, they were subtle enough that I couldn't conciously distinguish them, and b) even my husband, who was a very hands-on dad, couldn't do this.

I also recommend attachment parenting. It's superb for proving to the baby that she's worthwhile and loved. Now, attachment parenting can be challenging to our society, and you might find these suggestions challenging. But it's truly the way humans have raised their babies for most of our history.

Attachment parenting involves: baby-wearing, co-sleeping, empathetic discipline. Learn more here.

One of the best pieces of advice I ever received was from La Leche League. It was this: Up to a year old, a baby's wants and needs are the same. You won't spoil her. On the contrary, by meeting her needs you're teaching her to trust you, and she'll be more likely to accept your discipline/guidance as she moves into the toddler years.

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Once the child is older their needs change. My parenting bible, which is the single best resource I ever had, was the strangely named book How to Talk So Kids Will Listen & Listen So Kids Will Talk. There is so much excellent advice, and really good techniques. One of my favourites was this: when a child is upset, reflect her emotions back to her.

I genuinely think that every parent should have a copy this book. Especially daughters of narcissistic mothers who didn't learn good parenting the natural way.

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Some other thoughts.

I realised very early on the power of 'You are ...' statements. As said above, a child is learning about the world, including - indeed, primarily - who they are. They look to the parents for the information about who they are. We, as parents, teach children who they are by how we treat them, as explained above. But we also tell them in as many words. Every time you say "You are ..." you are literally telling the child who she is.

And so, saying things like, "You're naughty", or "You're useless," or "You're careless," and so on. As the daughter of a narcissistic mother, I have no doubt that you can think of many more.

To parent well, use "You are ..." statements very, very judiciously.

In practice this means that in disciplining, always label the behaviour; never label the child.

So: "That was a naughty thing to do" rather than "You are naughty".

Or at the very least say what the child has done, rather than what the child is.

So: "You are being very naughty right now" rather than, "You are naughty."

I would go further. I would hesitate even to label the child as being good. Because that means that if the child is good to do X, that makes her feeling good very conditional upon always doing X. I wanted my son to feel inherently good about himself, regardless. This is not to say that there is no standard of behaviour - of course there is. But it's a parallel thing to how the children feel about themselves.

So I wouldn't say, "You were a good girl to share your toys." Instead I would still label the behaviour by saying something like, "I saw the way you shared your toys. That was very kind."

That way the child gets the approval of the job well done, but it doesn't mean that if she doesn't share her toys another time her self-image is tarnished.

Now, there is a time to use "You are ..." statements. That's when you say things that you want to become part of your child's internal map. These are stand-alone unconditional statements like:

• You are loved.
• You are precious.
• You are a gift in my life.
• You bring me joy.

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Another thing we found good was to realise that there are only three rules. Our son was allowed to do anything he wanted as long as it didn't

• hurt himself, or unduly risk hurting himself,
  
• hurt others, or unduly risk hurting them. This included hurting their feelings.
  
•  damage property, or unduly risk damaging property.

This may not work for you, but it has worked very well for us. We have never come across anything that he wasn't allowed do that didn't fit into one of those categories. And it helped clarify our own thoughts as parents, when we asked ourselves if he was allowed to do things.

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The teenage years.

Our son is only 6 months into the teenager years, so we cannot count ourselves experts on this stage.

The theory behind the attachment parenting though is that it raises happy and contented children who respond well to the teen years. I remember reading a comment by one of the authors of a book I got through La Leche League. I cannot remember the book nor the author, but the quote never left me: "Get up with them at night when they're small, and you won't have to get up at night to deal with problems when they're big."

Maybe we're just lucky, or maybe the years of parenting in this way have paid off, but our son is the most amazingly easy teen. For sure we occasionally have the rolling eyes and him talking to us like we're stupid. But not often, and that's the worst it gets. (I should say that we also home-educated him, and that may help in this - all the home-educated teens we know seem to be equally easy and happy kids.)

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Another thing I learned was to parent with humour and humility.

Humour is something lacking in narcissistic mothers. Nice humour anyway, they often like slapstick humour. And if we can bring humour to our parenting it's a way of showing that we don't take ourselves unduly seriously, and it lightens things up.

Once he was resisting doing something and I said, "If you don't do it I'll use Mum-power and make you."

Quick as a wink he said, "Well then I'll use whinge-power!" and he started pretending to whinge and complain and cry.

By humility I mean that you don't have to have all the answers, and you don't have to pretend to have all the answers. I was saying to my son the other day that we would all be experiencing changes soon as he grows old enough to date, with all the issues coming from that. I explained to him that it would be a new thing for us all - that we'd never parented a dating son before, and he'd never dated before, and we'd all have to find our way.

This means we're all growing together and finding our way. We're still the parents, and the buck still stops with us. It's not about abrogating responsibility. But it is about creating a genuine mutually respectful relationship.