When your the daughter of a narcissistic mother as soon as you have children (without realizing it), you’ve created a new kind of monster, the narcissistic grandmother.
I had a wonderful grandma, and I loved everything about her.
She loved me more than my own mother ever could.
I thought my mother would love her grandchildren the same way, but my children didn’t get the same kind of grandma I had.
A narcissistic mother continues to abuse her children all through adulthood and into the next generation unless or until we make it stop.
I didn’t care what that woman did to me, but when she came after my kids, I had no choice but to end the relationship.
Not only has your mother tortured you your whole life, but now she has every intention of doing it to the next generation too.
Most parents learn from their mistakes and try to be the greatest grandparent of all time.
Narcissistic grandmothers have a much more sinister plan in mind.
These mothers are not capable of loving their grandchildren anymore than their own children.
They have learned nothing from past mistakes or behaviors and will do everything in their power to undermine and destroy your relationship with your child.
They don’t understand love.
They don’t care how much they emotionally damage their grandchildren.
Why would they?
They never cared about their own children, and they see your children as leverage to hurt you.
She only sees them as tools to be used, manipulated, and controlled.
If the narcissistic grandma has the opportunity to turn her grandchildren against their mother, she’ll do it.
Normal loving grandmas would do everything in their power to strengthen the bonds between mother and child because they know how important it is for a child’s growth and development.
Only a sick and disturbed person would do the opposite.
They don’t care about what’s best for your child.
They only care about what makes them feel more important, and if at the expense of your child’s wellbeing, a narcissistic grandmother is okay with that.
She doesn’t see your child as a living, breathing little human being.
There is no compassion or empathy, and she’ll do to them exactly what she’s done to you.
Narcissistic grandmothers usually go one of two ways.
She will either completely ignore you and your children, or she’ll try to enmesh herself in your life in the most suffocating ways.
Either way, she will never be supportive in any way.
A narcissistic grandmother will ignore you because deep down, she isn’t capable of caring:
- She’ll never offer to help if you are sick or injured.
- She won’t offer to take the kids for the weekend.
- She’ll intentionally forget birthdays.
- She won’t call to say ‘hi, how are you’ or ‘what can I do to help?’
- If your children are very little, they may not have any idea who the strange woman is.
This option is the best, even though it doesn’t feel like it.
You want your children to have a loving grandmother, every child deserves to have loving grandparents to spoil them.
But a narcissistic parent?
They don’t even know how to be that kind of grandparent.
A narcissistic grandparent is not anything a child deserves or should have to endure.
They are not capable of giving love to their grandchildren and will only use them to cause problems that would otherwise not exist.
I know how much a good mother loves her children, and you think this comes as naturally to everyone else as it does to you.
Under normal circumstances, you would be absolutely right.
In this case, their absence is a blessing in disguise and is absolutely in your child’s best interest.
The second option is much much worse.
A narcissistic grandmother will try to turn your children against you.
This is called grandparent grooming.
When a grandparent exhibits behaviors causing a child to lose trust in their parent, that’s abuse.
Can you imagine anything so horrifying?
Having your own mother do everything in her power to destroy the family you made.
- She will undermine your authority in front of your children.
- She will attack you in front of your children.
- If your child doesn’t behave the way she wants them to, she’ll turn it into a nightmare for you and your child.
- If you have more than one child, she’ll choose a favorite and a bad one and pit them against each other.
- If you don’t allow her access to her grandchildren, she’ll call the cops, CPS, the paster, and tell anyone who will listen what a terrible mother you are.
- It’s a known tactic of narcissistic grandmothers to try and take custody of their grandchildren just to hurt their adult child.
- She will go to any length to destroy your success as a mother so she can feel superior.
You don’t know what you’re up against.
This is a ragingly jealous woman who knows deep down she isn’t a good mother, and she will hate you for loving your children.
She will despise you for being a good mother.
You’re probably thinking ‘this is sick’ and you’d be right.
It is sick.
And disturbing.
And above all else, it makes no sense.
It serves no purpose other than to make your narcissistic mother feel better about herself.
She’ll do all of this for such a meaningless and empty result.
I can’t quite grasp it.
I can’t wrap my head around it, and believe me, I’m trying, but it’s so unbelievable and unexplainable I can’t comprehend it.
My brain can’t go there or even imagine it.
A narcissist can’t get any pleasure from happiness.
Seeing someone fail and feel terrible about themselves is the only way they get supply.
It’s the only way they have to make themselves feel better.
The only purpose a narcissist has in life is to cause pain and suffering to others.
That’s it.
There is no more to it.
This is the place where my brain just stops and has no answers and no solutions other than no contact.
You are not a bad parent for protecting your children from toxic people, no matter who they are.
There is some guilt associated with cutting off a toxic grandparent.
However, the guilt will be a thousand times worse if you allow it to continue.
Many women have lost their children before they even realized what was happening, and it’s one of the deepest kinds of pain.
If the narcissistic grandparent succeeds in manipulating their grandchildren, it’s a new level of pain and despair for everyone involved.
The rules of society don’t apply to you and your situation.
When dealing with a narcissistic mother or father, you’re not playing the same game of life as everyone else.
Society tells you:
- You only have one mother.
- You’re adults, and you can work this out.
- Family is everything.
- Your mother loves you.
- She’s only trying to do what’s best for you.
None of these things are true for the child of a narcissist.
As a matter of fact, these are the worst things to say to someone trapped in a narcissistic family.
Final thoughts…
In my generation, no one saw the narcissistically abused child.
Today we are in the millions.
Its possible narcissists are created by their parents, and we don’t want our future generations to suffer.
You are your child’s only protection, and you are the only one who can stop this abuse from happening because it’s invisible to everyone else.
Not everyone can go no contact when the narcissist is a family member, and there are a few alternatives to help you handle their behavior.
Need support?
It’s tough trying to recover from this and straighten it out on your own.
To speed up my healing process I got into life coaching and it changed everything for me.
I took it a step further and became a life coach so I could learn how to help other people like me.
Coaching actually works and it works quickly when you use a specially trained coach. Check out my page here to learn more about it.
When you’re dealing with narcissistic abuse, sometimes you need help from a licensed psychologist. If you have more severe symptoms like debilitating depression, PTSD, or C-PTSD you can connect with a professional therapist online.
Try Online-Therapy (20% off affiliate link).
You don’t have to be face-to-face or meet them in an office.
They’re available and on-call for you Monday-Friday, so there’s no waiting three weeks for an appointment.
It’s affordable, and you pay much less than seeing a therapist in person.
Post like this and narcissistic support groups are no substitute for therapy.
If u see some of these things in yourself hoe can you change. If we admit to ourselves we do these things sometimes how can we fix ourselves .
Hi Shannon,
Wow, just step right up whydontcha. Since you asked, here’s what I see in those two sentences you wrote. The fact you’re asking this question tells me you are self-aware, and you can’t change something if you’re not aware of it. If you don’t like something about yourself and you know what it is you can change it.
The difference between a narcissistic grandmother and a fantastic grandmother is one, boundaries, and two, motive. One understands boundaries and doesn’t try to control everything. The other violates boundaries as a rule and tries to control everything using fear and intimidation.
It’s also possible you’re over-analyzing because it is my opinion that a narcissistic person would never put those two sentences together. I officially give you the award for the bravest comment of the week!
My mother fit all these senerios and I keep my kids from her. (They are grown now) I still suffer the effects of my mother making me her little slave, crtizing everything I did. She even dressed me as a boy when I was a little girl. She pits people against each other so she can look like the good person. Her way is the only right way. I stay away as much as I can but she is elderly now and there is some interaction. I always leave her feeling angry and violated. I want to shake her but I have to remember she in incapable of maternial of love and incapable of seeing things from another perepective.
Hi CU,
I do the same with my adult kids because I don’t want them to think it’s okay for someone to treat them like that. I want to protect the next generation (grandbabies, yay!), it’s the best thing we can do to stop the cycle. Thank you for sharing this, I know how hard it is. Better me than mine. I don’t want them to suffer like I did.
My goodness!!! So true!!! I need prayer above anything else. I am surrounded by narcissism on every side. My parents, my siblings, my child’s father, the pastor of the church I feel like I’m in a world alone fighting for my child’s rights. It’s a scary place when you’re alone, and it’s hard to explain and prove these things to be true. I’m in constant arguments and debates with everyone, now involved in a court case trying to avoid too much contact for my child’s sake, and it just seems my walls are closing in. Not to mention past boyfriends. Everything written is dead on!
Hi Danielle,
They are everywhere and it’s very possible you’re the only sane one in the room so be careful and watch your back. When the walls are closing in I remind myself that I will fight this madness to my last breath and they can never win as long as you’re alive and standing in the way. Sometimes you have to play their game and manipulate them, I think you understand what I’m saying. No quit, no mercy, and do whatever it takes to protect your child. Educate yourself as much as possible and take care of yourself internally. Strength comes from within. When my children became adults I wasn’t alone anymore but I had to let them grow up first. You’ll probably lose a few battles but this is war.
My mother has custody of my daughter. I recently asked her if she would think about letting my daughter live with me and I opened up, the proverbial can of worms; which is how I found out that my mother, is narcissistic.
Every word you’ve said here resonates with my story. My husband asked me if I had a different profile. he was amazed to see that it is I who is following you, and I am glad that I got to read it.
Narcissism is no joke, there’s no way the world can avoid it’s existence. It’s truly that devastating, it’s a vicious cycle of heartbreak, violence and despair.
Once you have seen, it cannot be unseen…
Hi Nicole,
So true, it destroys people’s lives for generations and no one can see it. When you do see it’s one of the worse truths to accept.
Thank you for letting me know this is reaching the right people and the only kind of people who understand.
I cried like a child for 3 weeks when I figured it out, I had to read the information about seven times before it actually kicked in. You are doing an amazing job, writing is the best way to heal. It’s as though, through the medium of writing; we are finally able to validate our own feelings. It helps us resolve the fact that our mothers are the monsters…
This is all very true. I’m dealing with parental alienation because of a covert narcissist. I was coerced into signing an adoption consent form by my daughter’s paternal grandmother. Guess who my daughter lives with now, yep, her dad 5 hours away from me.
I’m sorry to hear that, it’s a crime against humanity, literally.