Is my ss becoming a narcissist like his biomom?
Hello all,
This is my first post here and I am so grateful to have found this forum!
We are in month three of blending our families. We bought a house together and are getting married in the spring. I have two teens (15 dd and 14 ds) and he has two as well (ss is 14, sd is 11). Mostly it has been ok, our main issues are around his ex and his son.
I'll try to be concise. The ex is a narcissist with everything that entails. She is a 'disney mom' with the kids, especially with the son, who is older. In her culture, the sons are the princes who should never lift a finger and should receive every entitlement you can think of. To say she buys their affection is an understatement, and of course, there are no chores at her house.
I have no issues with sd. She is sweet, easygoing, and relaxed. She hangs out with me and talks to me quite a bit, and will come out with me if I offer to take her shopping with me. Also, my kids are quite fond of my fiancee.
Ss however is troubling me. Df and I are on the same page and have the same concerns. He speaks in a condescending manner a lot of the time. He acts as if he is entitled to not do chores, because he had a "long day at school" or had sports and is tired. He procrastinates and moans and talks back under his breath, or with a negative tone. I have been very hands-off for the most part when it comes to challenging him in this early stage. I try to use humour and can get any kid pretty much to come around, but he is another story.
Fiancee and his ex obviously have a very toxic relationship. She is constantly lying and manipulating even the smallest issues. She is definitely on a pas campaign. Fiancee never speaks badly of her, or when he has to comment on something she has done, very much focuses on the action and not her.
There is so much more i could say but right now the thing we are most worried about is what she is doing to ss. She is raising a little prince all the while belittling and ridiculing his father. She lies and twists truths. She bullies, and the reason she hates me is that I have not allowed myself to be bullied. I have called her on her lies and manipulation and done it in a way that cannot bite me in the ass and this drives her crazy.
Anyhow we are very worried about the narc tendencies we are seeing in ss. Right now he is in a sulky rage because he did not make the top level of hockey he was trying out for. He made the B team instead of A. He thinks he should be on A, of course, and thinks the only reason he isn't is because of his size (he's small for his age). He is a solid player, but the fact is the other players are more skilled. He talks (very seriously) about making the NHL but he doesn't act like a kid who has this dream. We had a great backyard rink for the last two winters and he was out there maybe once. But, his mom tells him he is the BEST and of course he will make it because he deserves it. I grew up in a town where hockey was everything and there were players who made it to the NHL but these were kids who were out on the ice every minute they could, they were obsessed. He's not that kid.
What does the mom do when he only makes the B team? She sent a long email questioning the integrity of the assessors, that her son was FAR BETTER than the players who did make it, and if they didn't correct this mistake pronto then she is going to withrdraw him from the league. She copied ss on this email and now he is excited because he thinks that (rightly, in his mind) he will make the A team after all thanks to her bullying.
I worry that there is nothing we can do to combat this kind of thing. He is an insecure kid to begin with and I think terrified of his mom in a lot of ways, but likes the message she sends to him that he is the BEST, and that of course he deserves it all! Whereas his dad and I are all about instilling more community-minded values, a work ethic, and life skills that will be useful as these kids enter adulthood.
Can anything be done? I guess I am just not feeling very optimistic right now. On days i am, I keep saying to us that we are playing the long game, that one day he will see past the materialism and ego and see that his mother, while she might think she means well, is not doing the right thing.
Hello and WELCOME! My SS13
Hello and WELCOME!
My SS13 sounds just like yours. Same with BM. Blech! I haven't found a solution. I can't wait for my little SS prince to go home tomorrow!! BM is the queen of PAS, little prince loves to mutter shit talking under his breath to DH. BM is super disrespectful to DH in front of SS. God only knows what BM tells to SS to manipulate him. SS throws tantrums in all his sports teams when he thinks he didn't get his way with what a coach called or didnt see or should have seen....
SS13 ran up 6,000$ of BM's credit card on Xbox live a few weeks ago in games, ingame items and porn. 6k ..... Guess who is still allowed to play sports? The little prince!!! I would not pay for anything for him for an extremely long time, only necessities.
SS knows he can play BM and DH off of eachother, it's a big game.
The latest game has been telling DH his cell phone doesn't work. and telling BM it doesn't work. All along we thought BM was playing us to get him a new phone, no it turns out its SS trying to get one and lying. BM called DH crying about her credit card being maxed out from SS, then they actually communicated and found out the deal with the cellphone. SS knows that mommy and daddy don't get along, so they don't talk at all, so he can play them. Little brat.
The only way to combat and
The only way to combat and defeat these dipshits in the toxic blended family opposition is with fact. The Skids need the facts too. In an age appropriate manner of course. Rather than hiding the facts of the narcissistic BM from her children you and FDH need to be clearly presenting the facts of BM's toxic behavior to the kids as the lies and manipulations that they are. That is the only way to both begin shutting down BM's toxic crap and to begin to give the Skids the ability to protect themselves from her toxic crap.
It took a number of years but my bride and I arrived at this method of managing the toxic Sperm Clan and preparing our son (my SS-23) to be able to defend himself from the toxic manipulations of the shallow and polluted end of his gene pool. My DW and I met when SS was 15mos old and married the week before he turned 2yo. The toxic crap from the Sperm Idiot and Sperm Clan, primarily Sperm GrandHag, started even before we married. For a few years my bride tried the killing them with politeness and respect tactic which failed miserably. Then for a few more years she used the conflict avoidance tactic to protect our son from his Sperm Clan's crap. Her logic was that she did not want them taking their anger at her out on the kid during Sperm Land visitations.
Only when I was finally able to get her to see that they were taking their ire out on the Skid anyway did she come to the point where she would pound them into submission with the facts of their own behaviors. As our son got older we started answering his inevitable questions regarding his observations and addressed his comments about the crap the Sperm Clan was saying to him. As he got older, he got more facts. Eventually he was doing his own research on things that he saw or heard from the toxic DipShitIot squad that did not pass his smell test. We documented everything from day one of our 16+ year conflict with them. Our sole objective was to protect the best interests of the kid. We had court records, arrest and conviction records, statutory rape records, adultery information, Private Investigator reports, etc, etc, etc.... on the Sperm Idiot, Sperm GrandHag, and Sperm GrandPa, journals of every conversation with the Sperm Clan, recordings of every telephone conversation (it is legal to record your own conversations in Texas without notifying any other party on the line)over the course of our running engagement with his BioDad's clan. On many occasions when he was in his early to late teens we would find him in our home office reviewing the files from the two cabinets of Custody/Visitation/Support records. Following many of those occasions he would come to his mom and I and ask why his Sperm Clan would lie about things and try to get him to be mad at us. We just told him that some people are embarrassed by their behavior and it makes them feel better to attack others instead of realizing their own issues and making the effort to fix them.
In April of this year my son approached his mom and I and asked for me to adopt him. He explained that he has always been a Rags and he wants the family name. I told him that he was a Rags and that changing his name was not necessary but if he wanted to that we could just do a name change and that an adoption was not necessary. He said "Dad, you don't understand. I want to be a Rags. I want the full meal deal adoption. I want a new birth certificate with you on it as my father. Will you adopt me?" So his mom and I made it happen and the adoption order was signed 4 days after we first contacted our attorney.
We never hid anything from our son. We kept him informed of everything we could based on his age at the time. Over time he was no longer a victim of the manipulations of his birth father and that family. He still has relationships with them but he will not let their crap go unaddressed and when they get stupid he bares their idiot asses with the facts of their behavior. Interestingly and surprisingly our particular cross to bear has been Sperm GrandHag and she congratulated him on the adoption when he spent the weekend with them following two weeks with his mom/my bride and her family.
So, I recommend that you and FDH take complete control of the situation, confront SS with the facts of his BM's behaviors. Confront BM with those same facts. Demonstrate what mature, committed, loving adults are and be the counter point to BM's manipulative crap. Protect your Skids and your family from the toxic manipulations of BM. Smack the shit out of her in court by barring her ass with the facts, records, evidence, and documentation of her crap. SS may have time to navigate to a position of viable adulthood if you and FDH can jerk a knot in his tail immediately and get him aligned with reality.
Remember, facts are neither good nor bad. They are just facts. It is the toxic behaviors that result in the facts that must be addressed. In both SS and BM. The facts are the perfect tool for giving clarity.
It worked for us.
All IMHO of course.
Good luck.
Bingo. We do the same thing.
Bingo. We do the same thing. We never disparage, but we make sure that the facts are there for them.
Thank you Rags and Lintini -
Thank you Rags and Lintini - both of you confirm what my gut is telling me to do, which is to present them with facts. The little prince came home in a foul mood from hockey because he is just stunned that he is on a b-team with "idiot" players. It is everyone's fault but his own, apparently. I'm just glad that the league convenor is not falling to BM's bullying...convenor basically said, well, we'd be sorry to see your son go, but if that's what he wants to do then that's what he wants to do. I'm just glad they are not caving in to BM's bullying.
My own take is that the sooner the world tells him that he's not the privileged little prince he thinks he is, the better for his own sake.
In the meanwhile, he is just focused on himself and what is in any given situation for him. He is happy to let BM spoil him and we know he loves all the perks he gets with her. Still, we are steadfast in not playing that game. There is no way in hell I will let that happen! He is very money oriented...like many young teens are. A friend of mine at work was looking for an alternate babysitter (my son who is 14 is her regular but sometimes he can't do it because of other activities)...I offered ss14 the chance to take his place and his response was...maybe...how much does she pay? Of course he is not seeing the big picture that teenage babysitters around here are a dime a dozen! That is the last time he is going to be asked, that's for sure.
Argh I am not looking forward to another full day of attitude tomorrow. I am still angry also at the first thing he said when the BM dropped them off the other day, which was to ask "is anyone else here?" This meant my own kids. I said no, they are at their dad's...he said...GOOD. Totally not seeing how I might find that a problem! Anyhow I told him later that this was really not right - this is their home too and as their mother I found hearing that very, very troubling. He looked genuinely stunned that I might feel this way. I almost felt sorry for him because it was glaring to me at that moment how he is all about me me me!
Sigh.
Time to bring the pain. When
Time to bring the pain. When he gets snarky, apply consequences. He either figures it out, or he is one miserable young man. Never relent. Lather, rinse, repeat.
I can't give any advice on
I can't give any advice on blending but I do know about hockey. My cousin runs the program where we live and a nephew has been drafted to a WHL team.
SS is going to be sorely disappointed. I don't know where you are or where he plays but that letter is only going to get him negative attention. I'll be surprised if the coach will even keep him on the B team.
I couldn't stop myself from
I couldn't stop myself from saying things like, "oh, really, the coach is 'stupid'? You've got me all curious now!" Then I would go to the soccer website and look up the coach's credentials and read them out loud. Then I would do some math out loud: how many years of coaching times how many players per year. "Oh, so 'stupid' coach has experience with 450 players! Now, how many players do you have experience with, ss?" I would be tempted to say how many does your mother have experience with but I would resist.
Then I would look up his favorite college or NHL players and find interviews where they tell how many hours a week they spend practicing. Etc. So on and so forth.
I am a big proponent of letting the sun shine in this little shady cloistered worlds of spoiled kids. Help them get their brains exposed to a world view that is not their lousy parent's view. In my house I also insist on speaking up for the point of view of the teacher or whoever is being blamed at the moment. It's a crazy little dyad, these spoiling mom/dad and their golden offspring. The kid really has no way of knowing the blarney mom is feeding him stinks to high hooey. Make a tiny crack in the dyad and let some sun seep through, you'll be doing them a huge favor.
I had an awful sleep last
I had an awful sleep last night, struggling with how to handle all of this. So far I am letting his dad be the one to present him with facts, and to his credit, he does it in the most neutral plain way possible. He said to him, "son, if it is the opinion of four assessors that you belong on the B team, then that's what we have to accept. They have seen hundreds, maybe thousands, of kids between the four of them." But of course the little prince still thinks it's because he is on the smaller side. Never mind that the other kids we know who make the a level are so obsessed with hockey they have to be dragged inside at dinnertime from playing with their friends on the road, that they are on the outdoor rinks every night and weekend during the winter just skating or playing casually with their friends. The boy next door (who is hockey obsessed but very good) and left dozens of dents in their house's siding practicing his slap shot over and over, lol. Whereas SS14, on a beautiful fall day like today, has literally not seen the light of day, playing video games and watching youtube all day.
The latest is that narc biomom emailed the convenor of the league to complain, of course, behind fiance's back, and threatened to quit the league if he was not moved. And SS is convinced he is going to make varsity hockey at his high school, which apparently is very unlikely given how popular hockey is here and that most of the team are seniors. Luckily the convenor is not falling for it- she basically said, "as you wish" and let her know how to get a refund! lol. Fiance spoke to the convenor on his own and told them that he supports whatever decision the league sees fit, and that he doesn't want his son to learn that bullying and threats are the way to get what you want.
In the meanwhile i hate the feeling that there is someone living in my home that does not like me or my children. (that is a whole other thread!) I can't stand his tone and I'd rather just not engage with him. I say good morning and goodnight and ask him if he would like any more dessert...that kind of thing. But I'm keeping my distance. I will however challenge him with facts however the next time he says something unacceptable- such as on Friday evening, when biomom dropped him and his sister off. The first thing he said when he walked in the door, and I was right there in sight, was "is anyone else here?" He meant my kids of course. I said, no it is just the four of us, my kids are at their dad's. His reply? "GOOD".
I let him know right away that I found that mean and disrespectful, that I was hurt by it and that I don't ever want to hear him say things like that about my children or anything like that with the same attitude. There have been a few incidents like this and the funny thing is he is IMMEDIATELY deferential to the point of being uncomfortable. This is a kid who hates to get into trouble. I have seen him when his biomom has been berating him on the phone and instead of pushing back or rebelling a bit like normal kids would...he gets teary and goes into an almost robotic "yes mom" mode. He is terrified of her, of her disapproval.
Anyhow. I guess I am lucky in that fiance and I are totally on the same page with this...I should count my blessings!
Thanks again all, it is so great to get the feedback and to see I am not only not alone, but there are people out there who truly get this dynamic.