Narcissism Can Arise As Early As 3 Years Old — How To Not Raise A Narcissist

The development of the mother-child relationship during the first three years of a child's life sheds significant light on how adult men come to suffer from confusion over their sense of self in relation to others—particularly with women. 

Chances are you have met men with interpersonal difficulties who needed to become attached to women who adore them. This adoration is commonly described as a narcissistic supply that the mother gives the child during his early years. If she doesn't provide this, the danger of raising a narcissist arises. 

There is a stage of child development called separation-individuation during the first three years of life. This is when the child must work out his need to feel close to an admiring mother while also developing a healthy separation where he can tolerate that he is not omnipotent and grandiose—as he once believed as a toddler. 

Parents often wonder how to set limits on their children and why this is so important. Internal separation between mother and child refers to the development of such limits and the experience of differentiation between the infant and the mother. When limits are set early on regarding a child's behavior, the child experiences an inner process of mental separation from the mother. 

For example, when a mother tells her 2-year-old, "Use your words, not your hands—hitting isn't allowed," the child knows his mother has a separate vision of how he should behave. They are separate individuals. This cements the clarification the child needs that he can't do whatever he wants; he has a mother who is different from him and who may restrict his actions. If she fails to do so, he will feel too powerful and omnipotent, leading to the potential for the development of pathological narcissism as an adult. 

Children don't want to feel more powerful than their parents. In fact, it's scary for a young child to feel more powerful than his mother. The child needs her to set limits so that he knows how to relate to others in a way that is acceptable. If he is too powerful, he expects that he is entitled to more than a child should have. 

Individuation, on the other hand, refers to the development of the infant's ego, his sense of identity, and his cognitive abilities. It refers to a developing concept of the self. Although interrelated, it is possible for either separation or individuation to develop more fully than the other in this stage of development, largely depending on the mother's attitude toward the child.

When this period of development does not proceed normally, the young boy becomes fixated, leaving him mentally stuck at the time when he needs great adoration. He does not proceed to the realization that he is differentiated from his mother and cannot expect her to always affirm his sense of infant-like greatness. When this failure to develop occurs during these early years, a man never successfully overcomes these needs for affirmation and adoration. These needs come to characterize his personality, and if he is indeed endowed with a superior intelligence that is applauded too much by his parents, he may be overindulged inappropriately and develop an overestimated sense of entitlement.

The mother who enables her child to separate well and develop autonomy gives him a greater sense of normal competence. The mother who prolongs her attachment to her son impedes this development and may lead him toward unhealthy relationships later in life, specifically with women, as he may want the same kind of narcissistic attachment that he held with his mother early on.

At the beginning of a child's life, the idealized parent is gazed at in awe, admired, and looked up to. The child wants to become this same ideal. That is, the narcissistic self wants to be looked at and admired. Later in life, the narcissistic ideal is related to the man's ambitions. The normal narcissistic man reaches for his ambitions. The pathological man is humiliated when he fails to live up to his ideals or ambitions. 

While it is healthy to be motivated by ambitions, it is not healthy to love them unconditionally. Then, there are emotions of disappointment that contain shame. This shame results from infantile grandiose fantasies that are not restrained in the adult's personality. He experiences narcissistic humiliation when the admiration and confirmation of his ambitions are frustrated.