Identify and Heal
Firstly I want to begin by clarifying that Grooming is when someone builds an emotional trust with your child, with the intention to abuse or exploit them. This encompasses emotional and psychological abuse, and any behaviour or action that puts your child at risk of not being safe, and at risk of harm.
Sadly, we live in a dangerous world, and gone are the days when we can just let our children out to play in the park, without having to worry about their safety. After all, we have all heard of stranger danger, and must educate our children regarding this, in a way that is relevant to their age and stage, in order to keep them safe. When parents think about the potential risk of their child being in a position where they could be vulnerable to being groomed, the visualisation they have is often of a stranger online, or a deviant lurking outside the school gates.
For most parents, it wouldn’t even cross their mind that their child could be at risk from their own family members, and the mere idea of a grandparent being responsible for putting our child in harms way, is so inconceivable that we would immediately throw the thought straight from our mind. My question is why? Why would we throw that thought straight from our minds? Is it really so ludicrous that the narcissistic mother who abused and exploited us, is not capable of doing the very same thing to our child? This is a mother who knows no boundaries, and is not capable of feeling love or empathy, for anyone, and their children and grandchildren are no exception.
As daughters it is extremely difficult and conflicting for us to imagine that our own mother would want to harm our child, and in a society where we are conditioned to believe that grandparents are a vital source of support for our children, the dilemma of whether we should allow our child to be involved in her life, can cause us a great deal of inner turmoil, guilt and stress because it can feel like we are depriving our child from having a loving relationship with their grandparent.
Unless you spend every minute with your child while they are with your narcissistic mother, can you really be sure that she is not harming your innocent child? The simple answer to this question is absolutely no of course you cannot.
Let us examine what makes a narcissistic mother tick, and ask what does she really need in order to survive. The basic answer to this is narcissistic supply. As daughters of a narcissistic mother we know only too well that our mother gets this supply from attention, adoration, unconditional love, and Fear. What better way for a narcissistic mother to source of all these things for herself, than from our child who excitedly awaits their weekly visit to Granny’s house, where in the eyes of our child, the healthy but boring boundaries put in place by us as parents, do not exist at granny’s. You can be assured that your mother recognises this, and she will, and does exploit it to serve her own purposes…and so then the very real and dangerous risk to our child’s wellbeing begins.
Of course it is normal that grandmothers want to spoil their grandchildren, and perhaps sneak their grandchild a bag of sweeties before mealtime and lovingly call it a “secret”. However, narcissistic grandmothers have very different agendas, and “secrets” are actually dangerous tools that she will use to poison your child’s mind against you, triangulate your own family unit, and cause destruction. There is no such thing as normal grandmother behaviours and kind gestures when they are given to our child by a narcissistic grandmother.
As parents we have to be mindful that the most important relationship our own child will ever have is the relationship they have with us as their mother. We are our child’s emotional regulatory system in those first few important years of their life, and everything they learn about themselves, others, and the world, they do so from us. These first few years and the healthy secure attachment they have with their mother, will set the scene for all their future relationships.
If an adult daughter has an unhealthy and toxic relationship with her mother, it is simply not possible for her child to have a healthy relationship with their grandmother. All we are doing by facilitating the relationship is giving our child mixed messages that demonstrate the people who love us are allowed to hurt us. This is not only setting our child up to engage in toxic relationships themselves, but it is also showing our child how to not trust us, because she will hurt our child, and by the time we recognise the ways in which she has done it, it can often be too late, and the damage will already have been done.
Our narcissistic mother will never be capable of maintaining any type of healthy boundary, nor will she want to nurture the relationship her grandchild has with their mother, which should be her main priority, but it isn’t because it does not serve her on any level. Let us keep therefore in the forefront of our minds, that any behaviour our narcissistic mother presents with, towards, or in front of our child, which will cause them to lose trust in us as their mother, is most certainly abuse.
NPD is on a spectrum, and there are various ways in which our narcissistic mothers set about grooming our child to be abused. The first and most obvious one is sexual abuse. Although it is not the most openly spoken form of abuse, unfortunately it does exist. A common misconception is that sexual abusers of children are men, and this is not the case.
Sexual abuse to children by NPD mothers is actually very common, with a lot of research and evidence currently being done to support this, and many adult daughters are now coming forward to share their own experiences of sexual abuse at the hands of their narcissistic mother. Due to NPD being on a spectrum, within that spectrum there is a depraved sexual deviance component. There are two types of sexual abuse, the first is referred to as contact abuse, and it includes any activity in which an adult makes physical contact with a child including penetration. The second type is Non-contact abuse and this is the one where I will focus most attention on as it is much more covert in nature and more difficult to recognise the presenting symptoms in your child, and spot the behaviours in your mother.
There are many sexually deviant behaviours that may not be regarded as sexual abuse, and this happens for many reasons within narcissistic families, and can become so intergenerational that it almost becomes engrained within individuals and handed down to future generations, and for this reason the behaviours become learned behaviours, to the point where they are considered normal. However, they are not normal.
Such behaviours include narcissistic mother/grandmother sleeping naked and persuading the child to sleep in the bed beside them, either clothed or unclothed, and also walking around the house naked. When a narcissistic mother is challenged on this, her normal response will sound something like “the naked body is beautiful and perfectly natural”.
Not allowing the child privacy for toileting at an age where the child is more than capable of doing so. She will barge into the bathroom and disregard normal boundaries, and get upset if the child requests the door to be closed.
Bathing/showering is controlled by the narcissist by insisting that the door is left open, and that mother is involved in the cleaning or drying process of the child, at an age, which is inappropriate to do so.
Other examples are having conversations with our children regarding sexual acts, or allowing the child to watch films of a sexual nature. Also confiding in the child about her own sexual experiences.
Listen to your child, watch their body language, children are very aware and they know if someone makes them feel uncomfortable, however they may not be able to vocalise this depending on their age and stage, and it is important to watch for changes in your child’s behaviour. For example narcissists can be observed, “looking too long” when you are doing a diaper change, or are bathing your child. These are depraved behaviours and a component of NPD, and while Professionals and the world of neuroscience are busy gathering supporting evidence to explain why these behaviours take place, we as mothers must be vigilant and aware. All of these covert behaviours are sexualising, and are recognised by professionals and the law, as sexual abuse.
A narcissistic grandmother will groom your child with the sole intention of using your child as a tool and weapon against you as a parent, to hurt you, and your child, and will use many different ways to enable this. A common way of doing this is by excessive gifting, and trips that perhaps we cannot afford to do as often as we would like to. Grandmother recognises this and will use these gifts and trips to gain favour and adoration from her grandchild, and plant seeds in our child’s head that their mummy doesn’t care enough to do these things. On the flip side of this, grandmother can use these gestures to gain control of her grandchild, by implying that the gifts and trips will have to stop if the child doesn’t behave according to her wishes, or doesn’t appear grateful enough. The emotions from the child, whether it is fear, adoration or affection, are narcissistic supply for the grandmother.
If you have more than one child, you can be assured that Granny narcissist will have her “favourite” and just like our own sibling unit while we were growing up, she will triangulate your children, and take great pleasure in spoiling one, and leaving the other child out of activities or gifting, to cause ill feelings between the children, and feelings of unworthiness in the child who is being “forgotten”. She will also make up stories and feed them to each child about the other, to pit them against each other. This keeps Granny Narcissist in a position of control.
Granny narcissist loves nothing more than knowing or hearing about difficulties we may be having with our own child, in their behaviours or feelings towards us. Be very aware of Granny narcissist telling your child lies about you, as a way to alienate your child against you. This can be done in very subtle forms over a long period of time, and it is very common for NPD Grandmothers to triangulate and alienate to such an extent, that the child completely rejects you as their mother, in favour of Granny Narcissist. Often, we wont become aware of the emotional and psychological damage that has been inflicted upon our child by our toxic mother, until it is too late, and we then have to remove her from our child’s life.
It is very common for Daughters of Narcissists to rightly challenge their mother when they do become aware of what has happened, and this is when you can expect a phone call or visit from Social Services, due to your toxic mother reacting from the rejection, and informing Social Services that your child is in danger, or at risk of being harmed by you. This is to safeguard herself from allegations, and the best way she can do this is by pointing the finger at you first by lying. So many women have to endure a harrowing journey through the court system, of having to prove that they are not abusing their own child, due to the Narcissistic Grandmother acting out of vengeance. Some Granny Narcissists, like my own mother, will use other tactics such as trying to gain Grandparents visitation rights, to allow access. In my case, I informed my narcissistic mother that if she wanted to go down this route, then I would quite happily sue her in court for Historical Child Abuse to myself, and ensure that she never had access to my child again. I can happily state that she never used that threat again. Unfortunately, many women are not so lucky, and end up losing their child to their toxic mother.
It is so very important to remember that these NPD mothers are toxic master manipulators, and are very capable and skilled at hoodwinking the best family law solicitors, and mental health professionals, because they know how to lie and manipulate everyone, after all they have spent their entire life mastering this.
My advice to every woman who has a narcissistic mother is to keep your child away from your toxic mother. Yes it will be difficult, and you most probably will feel a tremendous amount of guilt and sadness for your own child because after all they are suffering a loss from their life. However, if your toxic mother continues to play a part in your child’s life, you can be guaranteed that the loss will be greater in the end, to your child and yourself.
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