Ex-Husband has p.disorder with Narccisstic traits. My son and I no contact 4, 9 mths. Whats likelihood son it

Question

My ex-husband has been in prison for a year and is now out receiving treatment. He doesnt know where me or our son live, with a foster family. He was in prison for criminal damage, threats to kill police officers. He has a two year probation. We are in process of a divorce and i have no conatct with him or wish to. Social services have been involved for over a year and we all agree he shouldnt have any direct contact for 2 years.
4 months of the time he was aprisoner he was in a secure psychiatric ward. They diagnosed him with a p.disorder with narcisstic traits. My ex-said it was a minor one but i dont know!
Im very concerned that my 13mths old son may genetically inherit this disorder. Please can you tell me what is the likelihood of this?

Answer 1

This is kind of long, so I apologise in advance. Take it a bit at a time if you need to.

Narcissistic traits are tendencies towards Narcissistic personality disorder. See the wiki page. It implies that he has got behaviours and coping mechanisms that reflect this personality disorder but perhaps not enough to fully fit the DSM 4 criteria.

Your son has inherited his father's genetics and may have some degree of a predisposition towards this. However, genetics are certainly not the biggest factor in determining a person's personality.

Your son is very young and you have the ability over the next 6-14 years to determine how he behaves.

What will determine how he behaves?

This will be largely based on how HE SEES you behave towards other people, and on how he sees other people behaving towards you. This is particularly important if you find another partner and the two of you are living and interacting together. This is what your son will take on as a role model of behaviour.

Some of these wiki pages might be a little heavy going. The most important bit is in the Developmental psychology - the role of mothers:

"Traditionally mothers (and women generally) were emphasized to the exclusion of other caregivers. This has begun to change, with the emphasis now placed on a primary caregiver (regardless of gender or biological relation), as well as all persons directly or indirectly influencing the child (the family system). However, studies are showing that the role of the mother/father are more significant than first thought as we moved into the concept of primary caregiver.

For example, the traditional father had little to do with an infant directly, but his method of interacting with the mother (supportive, abusive, neglectful) had a great deal of impact on the infant indirectly."

This is to say - if you choose another partner along the lines of your son's father - if your son sees you being treated badly by a male (his male role model), put down, manipulated, bullied, etc then this is what he will absorb and this is how he will behave. He will eventually grow up to behave like this to you and to other women because this is what he has learned is the right and proper thing. It would take years of therapy to undo.

If you choose a partner who is caring and nurturing and respectful to you, whom you care for, nurture and respect in return, he will learn that this is the way to behave. He may initially behave in a bullying or manipulative way and it may create the illusion of his father's behaviours, but also remember that children will always try to test boundaries. If the boundaries are found to be intact and the guidelines are a constant script for him to rely on then he will behave according to the guidelines.

You get to teach him how he should be.

Choose wisely.

Behave wisely.

More than one mother has told off their children only to hear their child telling off their dolly in exactly the same tone of voice. More than one child has repeated back to their parent the same sort of telling off the parent has given to them. Most children learn VERY WELL! They don't always learn what you intend for them to learn.

Best of luck!