It is normal for a teenager to want to spend more time with friends and less time with family. It may be painful and aggravating as a parent, but you should not take it personally.
It is important to balance your desire for control and closeness with your teen’s desire for autonomy and growth. Too much control and manipulation will cause the child to rebel and resent you and become secretive. Allow your teen to make decisions and grow, while you maintain reasonable boundaries and expectations. As long as teenagers are accountable for their actions and responsible for contributing to the family by doing some chores and spending some time with the family, it is best to allow them to develop increased independence as they grow.
When situations arise in the future where your daughter wants to spend her time with friends instead of with you and the family, try to be understanding, remain self-composed and by all means, avoid acting hurt. Be relaxed and self-assured and say something like the following:
“I’m happy that you want to spend time with your friends. But we love seeing you too. Why don’t you pick a night this weekend to have a family dinner with us / a day to join me to visit your grandparents.” Or
“I know you’d really like to see your friends this weekend. And it’s also important for me that we have some family time together. Let’s figure out what day would work best for everyone.”
When children grow to be teenagers, then young adults, and finally independent adults, the parent will suffer an unavoidable loss. But think of the alternative—a fearful and emotionally-fused child. You must embrace the loss of your adoring child to gain a capable and responsible family member whom you like and respect.
In the meantime, you may want to focus on your interests, friendships, and making your own life more fulfilling. After putting so many years into parenting, it takes time and effort to re-focus your life away from parenting. If you focus more on your own life and expand it in new directions, you will feel vital and fulfilled. Your teenager is likely to notice and respect you more for it too.
Teenagers generally experience a roller coaster of emotions, feeling superior and independent one moment, then discouraged and needy the next, resulting in mood swings that leave a parent as stunned and confused as the teenager. Frequently distracted, they may not hear their name being called. But if they purposely ignore you, it’s good to speak up: “Alexa, even if something’s bothering you, please acknowledge me when I talk to you.”
Irritability and testiness are understandable in teenagers; they are experiencing a lot of social pressures, academic stress, and increased hormone levels. Yet, any contempt in the form of verbal attacks has to be addressed with both seriousness and compassion. When anyone slams the door or makes remarks like “just go back to bed,” it’s time for you to establish boundaries. Teenagers usually feel worse about themselves when they are allowed to walk all over their parents. They actually feel more secure when they sense that their parents can express some inner strength.
While you do not want to be contemptuous yourself, it’s important to drop the sweetness and to express your personal power. Extending privileges or trying to buy friendliness when kids are behaving like this lowers their respect even more for you. You may want to say, “Don’t speak to me with a demeaning tone of voice. If something is wrong or you have a problem, you can tell me, but talk to me respectfully.”
Avoid in-your-face lecturing, which they will tune out, and avoid hostile withdrawal, which hurts them more than they let on. Instead, speak up and then withdraw a bit to give the teenager time to process. You can say something brief such as, “I know school is hard and you may have a lot going on, but it is not okay to treat me this way.”
It’s helpful to remember that you are role modeling the way you would like them to handle others who are rude. You want them to be effective. So you have to show a balance of respect, personal power, and compassion yourself. Be ready to be compassionate if they explain or become apologetic. Your goal is not to punish but to teach a more effective way of dealing with life’s difficulties.
Don’t expect behavior to permanently change after having a couple of conversations and meting out a few consequences. It’s normal for insolence to creep in again and again. It’s like teaching a small child to say “thank you” — you have to remind them a thousand times.
When parents realize that these moods are fleeting and when they can maintain some calm during the storms, the moodiness will eventually stabilize.
Donovan, 16 years old, is incapable of loving and, therefore, has never loved you, his mother (or, for that matter, anyone else, himself included) in his entire life. His natural capacity to love and to return love was all but eliminated by his horrid childhood. We practice loving first and foremost through our parents. If they fail us, if they turn out to be unpredictable, capricious, violent, unjust, this capacity is stunted forever. This is what happened to Donovan: the ideal figures of his childhood proved to be much less than ideal. Abuse is a very poor ground to breed healthy emotions in.
Granted, Donovan, being the brilliant and manipulative person that he is, knows how to perfectly simulate and emulate LOVE. He acts lovingly, but this is a mere act and it should not be confused with the real thing. Donovan shows love in order to achieve goals: money, a warm house, food on the table, adoration (Narcissistic Supply). Once these are available from other sources, the former ones are abandoned callously, cold-heartedly, cruelly and abruptly.
You have been such a temporary stopover for Donovan, the equivalent of a full board hotel (no chores, no requirements on his time). Not only was he able to secure his material needs from you, he also found in you a perfect Source of Narcissistic Supply: adoring, submissive, non-critical, wide-eyed, approving, admiring, the perfect narcissistic fix.
You describe a very disturbed young man with a clear NPD. He values intelligence above all, he uses foul language to vent his aggression (the narcissist resents his dependence on his Sources of Supply). The narcissist knows it all and best, is judgmental (without merit), hates all people (though he calls upon them if he needs something, he is never above exploiting and manipulation). When not in need, he does not contact his “friends”, not even his “girlfriend”. After all, emotions (“sensitivity”) are a deplorable weakness.
In the pursuit of narcissistic gratification, there is no place for hesitation or pause. You put it succinctly: he will do nothing for others, nothing matters to him if it is not for himself. As a result, he lets people down and refrains almost religiously from keeping promises and obligations.
The narcissist is above such mundane things as obligations undertaken. They counter his conviction that he is above any law, social or other, and this threatens his grandiosity.
The narcissist, being above reproach (Who is qualified to judge him, to teach him, to advise him?), inevitably reverts to blaming others for his misdeeds: they should have warned/reminded/alerted him. For instance: they should have woke him up if they desired his precious company and wanted him to keep a date.
The narcissist is above normal humans and their daily chores: he doesn’t think that he needs to attend classes (that others do. This is the unspoken continuation of this sentence). Other people should do so because they are inferior (stupid). This is the natural order of things, read Nietzsche. Most narcissists are predictable and, therefore, boring.
To love a narcissist is to love a reflection, not a real figure. Donovan is the most basic, primitive type: the somatic (or anal) narcissist, whose disorder is centred around his body, his skin, his hair, his dress, his food, his health. Some of these preoccupations attain a phobic aura (“freaky with germs”) and that is a bad sign.
Hypochondriasis could be the next mental step. But Donovan is in great danger. He should seek help immediately. His NPD, as is usually the case, has been and is still being compounded by other, more serious disorders. He is led down a path of no return. Donovan is constantly depressed. Maybe he has had few major depressive episodes but he is distinctly dysphoric (sad) and anhedonic (hates the world and finds pleasure in nothing). He alternates between hypersomnia (sleeping too much) and insomnia (not sleeping for two days). This is one of the surest signs of depression.
Narcissists suffer, by their nature, from an undulating sense of self-worth and from all-pervasive feelings of guilt and recrimination. They punish themselves: they dress in ragged clothes contrary to their primary predilections and they direct their pent up aggression at themselves. The result is depression.
Donovan also seems to suffer from a schizoid personality. These people prefer to stay and work in their rooms, in solitary confinement, chained to their computers and books, to any social encounter or diversion. They rarely possess sufficient trust in others and the requisite emotional baggage to develop stable interpersonal relationships. They are miserable failures at communicating and confine their interactions to first degree relatives.
The total picture is that of a young person suffering from a Borderline Personality Disorder with strong narcissistic and schizoid hues. His reckless and self-destructive spending and his eating irregularities point in this direction. So does the inappropriate affect (for instance, smiling while pretending to shoot people). Donovan is a menace above all to himself.
Borderline patients entertain suicide thoughts (they have suicidal ideation) and tend finally to act upon them. This aggression can perhaps be directed elsewhere and result in catastrophic consequences. But, at best, Donovan will continue to make people around him miserable.
Treatment, psychoanalysis and other psychodynamic therapies included, is not very effective. My advice to you is to immediately stop your “unconditional love”. Narcissists sense blood where others see only love and altruism. If, for masochistic reasons, you still wish to engage this young person, my advice to you would be to condition your love. Sign a contract with him: you want my adoration, admiration, approval, warmth, you want my home and money available to you as an insurance policy? If you do, these are my conditions. And if he says that he doesn’t want to have anything to do with you anymore, count your blessings and let go.
