Mental Health: How Parenting Styles Affect Us

Photo by Nicole De Khors at Burst

I was raised in the 70s and 80s when it’s generally agreed that parenting styles were very different. Top priorities back then were ensuring that your child was fed, clothed, educated and disciplined for any transgressions. This was all well and good, our physical and academic needs were well met, but emotional nurturing was left very much to the personalities of the parents and the vibe that this generated within the family – a well-being lottery if you like. Schools offered a similar deal, feeding you through the system, spitting you out at the end with a clutch of O and A levels, with little support for friendship/personal issues. This type of parenting and schooling meant that if you had problems, you pretty much had to deal with them on your own. We had to find our own way through the minefield of relationships, worries, body issues, alcohol (and other substances) and sex. Some might say this was ‘character building’, but for many, we became victims, bullies or a combination of the two. Some of us suffered mental illness, developed low self-respect and were ill-equipped to deal with alcohol and sexual relationships, making us behave inappropriately or dangerously and vulnerable to abuse. The vast majority of us did indeed pull through – we figured out who we were, how to move forward and become successful, kind and reasonably well-adjusted people. But with a bit of support, advice and guidance, this could have been so much easier for us, and we would have far less ‘baggage’ to deal with in our ongoing lives.

This type of upbringing is now known as ‘under-parenting’, where parents fail to acknowledge and address their child’s emotional needs. Fifty years ago, it was the norm – these days, you'd have a social worker knocking at your door.

As a parent of four children with a sixteen-year age gap between the oldest and youngest, I have witnessed the change in approach when it comes to supporting and nurturing children as they grow. We now keep a watchful eye on their mental well-being. We understand the importance of listening to our children, not just their worries but the things that have made them happy too. We know we must respect their thoughts and believe that what they say is important to them. We teach them to be loving and kind towards their siblings and not allow teasing to go too far or become one-sided. We offer guidance with friendship issues. We make an effort to ‘catch them being good’ and give them lots of praise. When they are naughty, we give them a chance to explain their actions before giving well-considered sanctions. We help them with the stresses of school life and guide them to establish a healthy work–life balance. As they grow, we talk openly about body image, sex and alcohol and advise them on staying safe as they enter the adult world. It is interesting to note that, according to a recent study, young people are drinking much less and, in fact, almost 30% of 16-24-year-olds do not drink at all.

It isn’t just parents who have changed the way they care for children’s emotional development. Most schools now acknowledge the importance of mental well-being and offer services to support young people and their parents. My children’s school runs seminars and workshops for parents and students, covering an extensive range of issues and have a large pastoral team who deal with problems that students are experiencing. They take mental welfare very seriously and believe that you can only achieve your full potential academically if you are feeling happy, confident and safe.

It could be argued that there was nothing wrong with the way children used to be brought up. Why shouldn’t they find their own way – it didn’t do us any harm, it made us who we are. I would say, yes it does make you who you are but perhaps not the best version of who you could have been, and that it can do untold harm. The habits you pick up as a teenager/young adult and the way you view and conduct yourself at that time do tend to stick. Untreated mental health problems and attitudes towards self-image, relationships and addictive substances that develop during childhood become deep-rooted and often last a lifetime, with the sufferer in a permanent state of ‘management’.

This 21^st-century wave of awareness and proactive involvement in children’s emotional development can only be seen as a positive step in turning out well-adjusted, happy individuals. But as the pendulum swings away from under-parenting, it poses the risk of sliding into over-parenting, which can be equally damaging. Over-parenting takes the form of excessive praise/attention/interference, minimal/biased discipline or telling the child they are gifted in some way. 

Constantly praising children has been shown to have a negative effect. Many realise they are being praised for little reason which diminishes its significance and can actually damage self-esteem – a kind of ‘is this really the best you think I can be?’ thing. This is one reason for many schools no longer giving out stickers, and also because it normalises praise – children start to see it as an entitlement rather than something special. Parents who believe their child can do no wrong also do them a dis-service in failing to help them develop healthy relationships and these children often go through school experiencing endless friendship issues. Telling a child that they are talented when they simply just like doing something can be dangerous, as when they eventually discover they aren’t that great, just normal, it can come as a massive blow. They may feel they have been deceived and this can lead to trust and anger issues to go alongside a loss of confidence and sense of failure (you only have to watch The X-Factor to see this played out). Over-praising can also cause a child to believe they are perfect and superior, which can result in relationship problems, depression and a constant pressure to perform. The ‘helicopter parent’ who constantly interferes with their child’s life and friendships and is always on the phone to school over trivial matters runs the risk of transferring their continual fretting to the child, who can end up with anxiety issues of their own.

And, of course, it’s entirely possible to simultaneously under- and over-parent – make your child believe they are God’s gift whilst failing to notice and address their emotional needs. This can have a particularly toxic effect and lead to very unpleasant personality disorders.

What a very difficult line for us to tread, and I, for one, know I don’t get it right a lot of the time. It's about judging when and how to step in or back off – a fine balance of giving the right amount of support and advice to equip them to independently deal with what life throws at them. 

But even if we do underdo it or overdo it occasionally, we can take comfort in the knowledge that by including emotional nurturing on our list of parental responsibilities, we’ve taken a huge step forward in providing a positive future for our children.

Parenting: School-Day Mornings

Photo by Matthew Henry at Burst

When children grow up and go off to university or move out, it often leaves parents with a depression known as 'empty nest syndrome'. The eerily quiet house, the lack of mess to constantly tidy, the absence of managing someone else's life and a sense of not being needed anymore contribute to the loss of identity of being a mum or dad. (This doesn't actually happen; you soon realise that, as your child transitions into adulthood, hands-on, daily dealings with them are replaced with being the provider of remote support – a virtual assistant, on 24-hour duty for at least a couple of years before they really find their feet in the world.) We may wish they were still children, living under our roof, but there's one thing that a parent will not miss – as they stand in an empty bedroom, wondering whether it's fit for Airbnb – a thing that they'd probably had enough of after only a few weeks of it, a thing that has significantly contributed to the alarming appearance of worry lines, a thing that they absolutely, definitely will not miss... the school-day morning routine.

Oh, my goodness, if you could harness the stress levels in parents getting their children ready for school in the morning and convert it into energy, you could compensate for the surge in demand on the national grid that occurs at the same time. 

From the early hours of the morning until the magic school registration time, five days a week during term time for at least fourteen years it's a ground-hog day of the same – and sometimes new – spanners flying into the works. No matter how carefully you prepare the night before (uniforms laid out – tick, packed lunches – tick, books in bag – tick, return slips filled with exact payment – tick, PE kit washed and by the front door – tick, water bottles refilled and in bag – tick), you will never, ever have a nice, calm start to the day.

Younger children get up ridiculously early and have to be entertained, whilst you are desperately trying to get ready for work and not turn up with only one eye mascaraed and your skirt tucked into your pants; older children get up ridiculously late and very grumpy and have to be chivvied and cajoled every step of the way. If I had a pound for every time I had to repeat an instruction (have you cleaned your teeth, please can you put your shoes on, stop playing on the Xbox, put your phone down and get ready, what do you mean you've left your coat at school...), I could take early retirement. That hour requires the skills of a personal assistant, United Nations envoy and a child psychologist rolled into one.

You battle on as the time for leaving the house gets ever nearer, and you're still trying to shepherd your children into some semblance of readiness. At last, and miraculously on time, you open the front door and usher your children out. You think you've made it when one of them (at least) pipes up and presents you with THE DOORSTEP CHALLENGE.

The doorstep challenge is a complete curveball. It can be anything:

Oh, Mum, we're meant to wear something spotty/pink/Roman today.

I need to go back into the house and find my hat/fidget spinner/script for the school play.

We have to wear sun cream today or we won't be allowed out to play (sun cream in loft).

It's school photos today (2nd day of wearing their uniform, hair not looking good).

I've got to bring my saxophone into school (saxophone not in case, music nowhere to be found).

An author/footballer/circus skills coach is visiting today – I need £5.63 in exact change to buy a book/football/diabolo.

Can you test me on my spellings – wait while I search my bag for the list.

It's Skipping Day today – I need my skipping rope (locked in garden shed).

I've left my homework in my room – I just need to finish it quickly – it has to be in today!!!

Now, you could, quite justifiably, turn around and tell your child that it's too late for that. Give them the lecture about being more organised and that the deadline for all these things is the night before, not now. You could tell them that this will teach them a lesson, and maybe they won't do it next time.

But you know you're just wasting your time. You love them, and the last thing you want to do is let them go to school worried or angry about the day ahead. You want them to have a good day and to like school, and you know that putting your foot down will achieve neither of these things. 

So, you stand in the doorway, shouting at them to hurry up or race around the house, searching for something that will do for dressing up as Matilda for World Book Day until finally, much later than you should be, you can all head off for school. You arrive at work, utterly frazzled, feeling like you've already done a day's work and knowing that there will be a repeat performance tomorrow (and tomorrow and tomorrow).

But when your children do finally fly the nest and leave you feeling redundant and bereft of their company, you can look back with pride, through those rose-tinted glasses, that you've successfully (almost) survived going on 3,000 mornings.

And then see if you can do anything about those wrinkles.

Mental Health: How To Deal With The Narcissist In Your Life

Photo by Thought Catalog at Burst

I know someone with whom I rarely disagree... but not because our views always concur. In fact, I find a great deal of what she says abhorrent, but if I express this, even in the mildest terms, she will most likely fly into a rage or label me with some awful personality trait that explains why I don't agree. Matters to disagree on come thick and fast, as she is a prolific ranter, airing her extreme views and intolerances, along with pompous declarations of 'how things should be', which are often utterly incompatible with accepted social norms and expectations.

This person firmly believes she is above most people – an important person and entitled to special treatment. If she doesn't get this, she becomes angry and resentful, and the ranting starts over. She is always right; alternative views are scorned without a second's consideration.

A fine example in this person's canon of rants is the public breastfeeding one. According to her, it is beyond disgusting, the mother is showing off, it's on the same level of indecency as urinating in a public place or having oral sex in a restaurant, and it absolutely should be banned. Yes – she actually said that, to me, then a mother of two young children who I had breastfed, sometimes in difficult and embarrassing situations and sometimes in great pain (and she knew that). I sat there, inwardly fuming at this vile, hurtful and anti-people remark, but not daring to call her out for it, as I knew that her opinion was unshakable and she would have become enraged if I had.

So, for most of the time I spend with her, I murmur noises of agreement – which only serve to strengthen her convictions that she is always right – whilst inside, my blood is boiling. 

She constantly seeks to exert her superiority over people and I suspect ramps it up for people who threaten her sense of importance. She does this in several ways:

She bigs herself up: she seeks out and associates with hi-status people (in her eyes) and uses the fact that this person is her 'friend' and therefore holds her in high regard, to elevate her own importance and validate her world view. This places her on a higher platform, from which she can lecture and patronise everyone else. She believes, for example, that her GP knows her better than all the other patients and has something of a soft spot for her. She also believes that most people waste their doctor's time with trivial complaints; she only visits when there is really something wrong – which is probably why the doctor likes her so much. 

She puts others down to achieve superiority: gaslighting, blaming, nasty remarks or labelling with a negative personality trait. Her favourite tactic is to claim that someone's sanity is in question. I guess, in her mind, since she is always right, people must be mad if they don't agree with her.

She also ensures that everyone sees and acknowledges that she is at least one cut above most normal (stupid) people. She has accomplished a number of impressive things but elicits constant worship by being excessively modest and under-celebrating her achievements. This has the double effect of making people feel inferior and (perhaps to redress this) that they need to show or remind her how amazing she is. The more they do this, the more self-deprecating she becomes to keep the praise coming in. This inverse bragging is boosted further by her outward contempt for anyone who dares to revel in their own achievements, with a thinly veiled 'they haven't done half as much as me, and look at them boasting!'

She puts herself at the centre: everything orbits around her, and, like a child, behaves as if all things, whether good or bad, happen because of her or for her. Her emails are dense with self-referencing - I, I, I. She reacts to the most unconnected things as if she was the intended recipient, because she's so special. And if she thinks someone has forgotten that she’s special and important, she’ll lose the plot, like responding with fury if invited to a party that clashes with something she already had planned: how can that person be so inconsiderate?

And no matter how nice I am, how much interest I show, how sympathetic to her problems I am, how much support I offer, I never get anything back. This is because she thinks she is entitled to the way I treat her and I'm not. I don't think she has ever asked me, in a truly authentic, non self-serving way, how I am or wished me luck or asked for an update on a problem I might have had last time we spoke. She expects praise and gets angry with people who don't give her enough but never authentically offers any herself. If I offer her a drink, the response is simply, 'Yes,' or 'No,' – no please or thank you. I find the mum in me constantly wanting to jump out and correct her, as my children would never get away with that level of rudeness. But I wouldn't dare.

I'm not known for reining in my views or holding back from challenging someone else's, so why do I do it with her?

For years, I puzzled over how to deal with this person. Why am I so submissive with her? Why do I allow her to say and do these things? Why do I let her make me feel so bad?

And then, one day, after a particularly unpleasant time with her, I Googled 'how to deal with a difficult person', and the trusty internet provided the answer: narcissism

As I read through the description, all the puzzle pieces slotted into place. Initially, it seemed some of the 'red flags' didn't apply to her, but as I thought about it, I realised they all did. For example, I never realised how much she lies - she is always so convincing and forthright and compels you to believe her, with her army of people or 'evidence' to back her up - but, oh, my goodness, she does! She achieves this by gaslighting (twisting facts/blame-shifting) and exaggerating to the point that her accounts are simply not true. Electronic communications have revealed some absolute howlers which confirm that my long-held gut feelings have always been accurate: she bullshits.

Following my discovery, I then eagerly looked to find what I'd really been searching for – how do I deal with this person, how do I come away from being with her without that knotted-up, frustrated, I've-gone-and-let-her-do-it-again feeling?

And the answer – you don't. In a nutshell, that's pretty much it. As I trawled through the tips for dealing with a narcissist, the most recurring advice was to try not to argue with someone with it because you will never win. Great. There was even advice, in light of the damaging effects of being with a narcissist, to consider ending the relationship or at least keeping them at a distance (known as 'grey rock'). Not easy if it's a close family member, spouse or work colleague. There was a great deal about working on your own self-esteem and making sure you knew in your own mind who you were and what your strengths were so that Mr/Ms Narcissist could not put a different version of 'you' in its place. Again, doable, but the effects of narcissism are so toxic, you would need a cast-iron sense of self to remain unaffected.

Unlike most personality disorders, narcissism is rarely diagnosed and even if it is, it's very hard to treat. This is because the very traits of narcissism prevent sufferers from accepting a diagnosis or subsequent treatment – they're not the ones in the wrong, everyone else is!

And so, I am left feeling both empowered and disempowered: I now have this knowledge – I know what to call this thing and have the information to try and understand it and, to an extent, why it makes me feel the way I do. But in some ways, I feel more at a loss as there seems to be little I can actually do to turn things around and make this a happier relationship.

So, what can I do? I have come up with some tactics based on responding rather than reacting, making my boundaries clear, all the while maintaining my dignity and preserving my true sense of self.

For starters, I am going to try to convey to her, in as many ways as I can, that I do not single her out for special treatment. I want her to understand that I ask everyone how they are, that I will compliment anyone on their looks or achievements, that I sympathise with everyone's problems and offer help equally to all my friends and family and that I don't give extra thanks and praise to her for birthday/Christmas presents, in essence, I don't give her special treatment. This may irritate the hell out of her, and it will do nothing for her belief that she is exempt from having to do such things herself, but at least it will assert the notion that I treat everyone the same, and I do not consider her life circumstances to warrant her special status.

I am also going to try really hard to stop making noises of agreement, which validate the outrageous things she says, and attempt to do so without offering an opposing view that could lead to an argument - in other words, not chase her down those rabbit holes. This is not going to be easy as I will be faced with a choice of awkward silence versus stating that I don't agree. Very hard to move on from either.

Then the nasty, hurtful and humiliating put-downs. I might try simply labelling the behaviour: 'Hm, a bit harsh', or try to deflect it: 'That's not what most people say about me', or the lovely one I heard recently: 'you are entitled to your faulty perception of me'.

I will try – and this is hard for a 'normal' person, who naturally wants to celebrate others' achievements – not to give her much praise or, at least, ensure I always counter it with positive comments about other peoples' successes.

I will capitalise on 21st-century technology by communicating as much as I can through texts and emails, You can garner your thoughts so much better when not being beared down upon by an intimidating, unreasonable person and make your point clear without being interrupted (as she always does).

In essence, I am going to set clear boundaries - if she pushes them, I will assert them, not by fighting her fire with my own and getting dragged down with her illogical 'word salad', but with healthy communication that states how I expect to be treated and (if necessary) that she has fallen short of that. And then ensure that she doesn't make me responsible for her ensuing anger - the mushroom clouds are hers to own.

Finally, I will try to bolster my own self-esteem and non-belief in the image of me that she tries to purport.

Narcissism is awful. It poisons relationships and damages people. If you are living with a narcissist, you have my every sympathy, and I urge you, for your sake, to learn more about it, seek advice and take mitigating steps. There's no changing a narcissist, and you may never win the argument, but you might just be able to make their victory less sweet.