spanking

Don’t Label Your Narcissist

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

There’s a ton of good stuff out there about narcissism, but let’s be like good parents dealing with trying children.  Just say “No.” Good parenting is not enabling destructive behavior.  Enabling is easy, like any sin.  You just bow to the sin. 

Years ago I got enough of a narcissist in my life and when I crossed this person they came at me, fists clenched.  I stood my ground.  “Go ahead,” I said.  “Hit me.”  That stopped them.  I then said, “Nothing I ever do is right.  Nothing I do is good enough.”

In other words, I stopped performing, stopped being manipulated, stopped responding.

The most unkind thing we can do to a  narcissist is dance to their tune.  We, as the more “well” person in the relationship, are called to put on a new song.  They can learn to sing along, or they can get along.

Someone, telling me about someone else being mad, as though that was important, was happily surprised when I said, “He can get glad in the same clothes he got mad in.”  I have to not care.  I have to be healed, set free, even delivered of the  need to please, to keep the peace. 

It seems to me that narcissistic adults are, just like brat two-year-olds, begging for someone to draw some boundaries, help them learn to behave and therefore get along in this life. 

But labels—no.  Once you decide your mom, mate, boss, friend, or pastor is a narcissist, you will see everything they think, do and say through that lens.  YOU ARE JUDGING AND WHAT YOU JUDGE WILL, IN SOME FORM OR FASHION, COME ON YOU.  You will see them as fatally flawed, and just someone to leave in the dust.  You will stop praying for them, stop letting God have say-so, and lose all your power.

So examine the relationship.  Where have you enabled?  When have you bowed to their nonsense because you’re afraid of a bit of conflict? 

Isn’t it disgusting when you see moms asking permission from a toddler  for the day’s activity?  And when she tries to give him whatever he wants to stop the whining, does he stop?  No, he whines all the more, and eventually starts yelling and screaming.  He’s absolutely begging for some non-negotiable boundaries, for someone he can trust to help him be a better person. 

Well, you can’t spank your neighbor, or your mate, right?  No, but you can get to the end of your rope, stop trying the tired things you’ve been trying for ever, and that have never and will never work.

Oh, you wanna back up to that spanking part?  You want to so self-righteously tell me you don’t believe in “hitting” your child.  Well, if you think spanking is hitting, you definitely should not spank, but that’s for another time.    

So, don’t call your kid a brat, don’t call your mate a narcissist.  Call yourself brave and wise and finished with the nonsense.

And remember this:  We often see in others what we dislike in ourselves.  Yes, that gal in the mirror may be a work in progress as well.  Let’s just all get out of God’s way, and get in His ways.  Can I get an Amen?  Amen!

Talking to myself today, because when I start listening to too much YouTube  and getting all  brilliant about everyone else’s issues, I can really get all up in God’s business, and forget all about love and forgiveness, and walking in all the fruits of the Spiritl. INSTEAD I just get miserable, mad, and pathetic.  Like a two-year-old or a narcissist who needs the “gift of No” and maybe a nap. (I HEARD ABOUT THE GIFT OF NO FROM TIM HAWKINS.)

Think of that when that person is being impossible.  What’s really going on?  What do they really need from you?  It’s not enabling, that much is for sure. 

But it’s also not getting all in the flesh because you’re the latest expert on narcissism and you’re going to tell them off right this minute.  Pray and wait.  God really wants to help us all, deliver us all, set us all free to enjoy each other.

This will help:  Think of a new label, and make it one you want TO SEE BECOME REALITY.  Your two-year-old, because of your excellent training, is “a fine young man”, for instance.  Your drama queen teenager is a “deep and good-hearted woman IN THE MAKING”, your know-it-all grouch husband is a “Dearly Beloved Child of God.”

Someone in my house called someone else in my house “such an ass” and I said, “Do not call my child names.”  So, how about we just, as I said in the beginning of this diatribe, stop with the labeling.  It doesn’t help at all.  It harms. STOP WITH THE FINGER POINTING, AND PUT YOUR HANDS TOGETHER AND LIFT YOUR EYES—GETTING THEM OFF NARCISSISTIC BEHAVIOR AND ON THE HEALING LOVE OF JESUS.

Just a Little Spanking for You, Mommy, Should You Choose to Accept it

~ Bev Parker ~ Leave a comment

For kinder, gentler parenting advice and admonitions, go directly to the end of this post and read about Sally Clarkson’s book, The Mission of Motherhood.

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Counting to three.  Counting to three loudly.  Counting to three with threats (or rather, promises about to be broken). Is there anything sadder, sillier, more tiresome, or less effectual than a counting mommy?  I think not.

I ask myself, “Why?”  I ponder the questions, “Why can’t they see it doesn’t work?” and “Who is responsible for this parental drivel?”

Hell.  Hell holds the reason, the source, the blindness, and the responsibility.  Worst of all, the outcome is Hell–the Hell on earth of frustrated and angry parents living with bratty kids, and frustrated and angry kids living with witless parenting.

And books from Hell, written I surmise by:  men, or women who have nannies, or perhaps women who have never had a child, and yet, unbelievably, think they have the tiniest clue what they’re talking about.

What are the clues for me, the reader, that such authors have no clue?  A listing of some of the most glaring offenders begins with “The Fairness Doctrine,” reminding me that yes, there is something more tiresome than counting.  It’s grown-ups (well, in age at least) whining, “It’s not fair,” and teaching their children that fairness is their birthright, that everything and everyone should bend over backward to make sure they get their “fair” share.

Perversely, Fairness advocates, having taught their children greed, and disrespect, will insist they share and even give away favorite treasures to the neighbor’s even greedier get, or a whiny sibling. The child with the strongest will and weakest mother will win (and lose) in such encounters.

Fairness Doctrine devotees are also often proponents of “reasoning” with their little geniuses, and vehemently opposed to spanking.  I can hear it now, echoed by more than one lily-livered mommy, “Spanking is violence,” she says with pious horror and superiority.  “We don’t hit,” she adds in that valley girl affectation which makes real women squirm.  And yet, these children are often violent–screaming at and hitting their parents and siblings, without the slightest beginnings of the self-discipline necessary for life.  I submit to you where there is no natural order (that would be parents, rather than children, in charge) the most tyrannical and least qualified will rule.  Yes, there are households where two-year-olds reign.  Could anything be more ridiculous?

Yes.  We progress!  There is yet a further level of ridiculousness in today’s anti-logic parenting mantras.  They don’t spank, but they whine, wheedle, gripe, groan, endlessly and mindlessly repeat themselves, raise their voices, scream, and even cry.  “You made Mommy cry,” she blubbers.  PA-THET-IC!  Very probably she isn’t smart enough to spank.  Indeed, if she thinks spanking is violence, if that is what it is when she does it, perhaps she’s at least right in this one thing–she should not spank.

“Boys will be boys,” she smirks.  And criminals will be criminals, Mommy Idiotica.  Anything, it seems, is preferable to training your son that the world wasn’t expressly created for his amusement and debasement.

 “Safety first!” she mimes to justify keeping her listless, pasty-faced children indoors just because it’s nippy outside, as though it is actually good parenting (or even doable) to protect kids from any and all possibility of physical harm, even as she parks them in front of the TV at every opportunity, paying little or no attention to the mind-numbing and soul-bending messages bombarding their malleable psyches.

“Oh, kids are tough,” she explains as though she actually believes this lie, and also believes she possesses the wisdom of the ages.  Kids are humans, and therefore complex and beautifully fragile and sensitive beings, affected for good or bad by every single moment of their lives, and even more so, by every thought, word and deed of their parents.

These are a few of my (non) favorite things, and I have the credentials to talk about them–I have successfully raised world-changing (as opposed to weak, whiny, selfish, indecisive, crowd-following, world-destroying) children, and I have loved (almost) every minute of it.

P.S.  Villages are nice addendums, perhaps, but they cannot make up for ignorant, lazy, and irresponsible parenting.  Effective parenting is very hard work, so just accept that and get on with it. Prepare yourself for the long, long, long haul of teaching, re-teaching, training, praying, searching, paying attention, reading that same book over and over and over, praying, reading the Words of Jesus, and did I mention praying?  You don’t get overs on this, so live in the now–you have NOTHING more important to do than getting to know your child’s heart. Know that this parent/child training is ongoing and rigorous, and will stretch and grow you like nothing else on earth. Know also that the rewards are beyond compare and comprehension.  They are, as my daughter Hannah used to finish each night as we said her prayers, “peace and love and joy!”

P.P.S.  Should I write a book, entitled perhaps, “No One Loves a Brat, Be She Mother or Child”???  Speaking of books, the very best book on parenting I’ve ever read was by a woman raising world-changing children:  Sally Clarkson, bringer of great light via her masterpiece, The Mission of Motherhood.