Gosh I’m seeing my father’s traits in my son

[Call Me Cordelia]

My father fits the criteria for a host of personality disorders. Undiagnosed, but he's also very much malignant and has been out of my life for eight years. My eldest teen son often reminds me of him. Even physically there is a resemblance. For the record I do NOT believe my son in fact has personality disorder, but I see some of the traits very strikingly. What kind of help do you think I can get for him? How do we cope? He's only still under our roof for a very short time, so anything I can do for him now would be good. These are the sort of things I mean:

Rewriting history/gaslighting. He does this constantly. My husband and I habitually compare stories with each other. Sometimes it's really blatant. Last night he watched the baby for a couple of hours before bedtime. When I got home I took the baby, asked if she were in a disposable diaper. "Yes, I just changed her." Both my husband and I heard that. 2 AM, she's crying in a flooded out cloth diaper. I know he doesn't deal with cloth diapers, so he clearly never changed her at all. This morning he says, "I never said I changed her." Pushed back, and he says, "I said I was ABOUT to change her." Asked DH what he said, he still sticks to the new story.

He also never admits to having homework or a test if he decides his time would be better spent on something he wants to do. We check the student site, and he's like, "Oh I studied already," or just minimizes that he needs to do anything. He has gotten some poor grades because of denial like this but there's always some excuse.

He is also very focused on getting what he wants when he wants it, which is something that is really like my dad, and how he will manipulate and stretch the truth to try to get it. He's been saving for a thing he wants, but he wants it NOW. He needs dad's approval, and we've been delaying allowing him to make this purchase exactly because of this behavior. He wanted to talk to dad about it. Dad happened to be out for the evening, he can talk tomorrow. He immediately calls my DH on the phone, and pretended not to know what I just told him and can we order that tonight? NO! Now you wait another week.

He spends impulsively. Rarely has any money saved. Tries to gaslight that he earned such and such when absolutely not the case. Wants a thing SO MUCH and will pester relentlessly to get it but then finds a completely different model or whatever and wants that one just as much, and the thing he was hammering us for is completely forgotten instantly. Object permanence???

Very often after being told a discussion is closed for now he will just sit there and keep talking about it. I make use of the broken record still and very often just walk away from him.

He is also very unaware of other people and other people's feelings. For example, at the dinner table, a younger sibling ask to be passed something right in front of him. My son completely ignores the request and begins to butter his own bread. He is prompted not unkindly by sibling and finally by me, and he snaps, "Oh my gosh, can't you see I'm buttering my bread?!?! Just wait half a freaking minute!!!"

Does not really see his part in the matter when people are frustrated with him. There's always someone else or some other circumstance to blame.

Obsessive about his hobbies and completely time blind with computer use. He recently was home alone and had some things to get done in that time. He claimed to have been on the computer for five minutes because dad left just a few minutes ago, and how could we have possibly expected him to do all that stuff? (His stuff, for school and scouts.) We looked with him at the browser history and it had in fact been more like two hours. He didn't attempt to rewrite history that time, but ALL his classmates are always online for hours at a time! Not the point. "You're just always so hard on me!"

It's so hard to explain this sort of thing, because yeah, teenagers are inclined to play the victim to their parents who just don't get it, and yeah to the computer battle being so common. But this is CONSTANT. When he comes home from school or approaches me in any way I reflexively put my guard up.

He does have ADHD and is gifted, but he has never been in trouble at school. We have not medicated him. I'm not even sure how to present my concerns to our pediatrician, or what kind of help I would be looking for. At school and church he presents as a quirky but overall great kid. It's different being his mother. Thank you for any insight you fellow Out of the FOG travelers have to offer.

[notrightinthehead]

Nature vs. nurture - Cordelia, I don't want to minimize your concerns, I am sure they are warranted. I just want to share my experience - when my firstborn daughter, now in her thirties, was a teenager I thought she and my NPDh were so similar that it frightened me. The lying, the victimhood, the constant feeling insulted, or slighted in any way, I found her very difficult to deal with. When she left for boarding school, I hoped that her peers would sort out some of her traits. I also told myself that I had done my best and I would trust that at her core she had the ability to be kind, loving and considerate and hoped that eventually she would choose that path, not the one my NPDh had chosen. She has had her ups and downs, but now she has turned in a responsible and sensible woman and I cherish the time I spend with her. Don't give up hope!

[NarcKiddo]

I don't have children so cannot offer any insight on what might be normal teen behaviour and what might not. Your statement that he presents at school and church as a quirky but overall great kid would suggest that much of his behaviour at home could possibly be ascribed to a teenager pushing boundaries. At any rate he is clearly able to behave well and I guess that bodes well for future development into a responsible adult. I'm sure the ADHD will play into his behaviour patterns (how could it not?) and I am also sure that there will be some family tendencies in the mix.

What is challenging, I find in my own life, is identifying what is objectively problematic vs what is subjectively problematic. My mother is an undiagnosed narcissist - classically grandiose and possibly malignant. Now I have realised this, and learned about behaviour traits and whatnot, I find myself very alert for similar in others. This is problematic for me in my marriage because my husband can be loud and bombastic. He can be a bit bullying at times (although is horrified at any such behaviour in himself and will adjust his behaviour if called out). He also hails from a family with PDs so that comes with its own challenges in terms of few role models. My point is that I find it difficult to work out who is bringing what to the party sometimes. Is it his behaviour or my sensitivity to it? Of course it is a mixture of both but as time goes on and I realise he is a safe person to be around I have concluded that more of the issue is my sensitivity.

[bloomie]

Call Me Cordelia - what I thought of as I was reading your post is that it is possible that your DS's traits reminding you of your Father is because possibly, your father never developed beyond the maturity level of a teen?

I am another not in any way attempting to minimize your concerns, but what I see is you and your DH holding the line and holding your DS accountable for his behaviors in ways that will continue to form and inform him as he grows into adulthood.

One of the best pieces of advice my own pediatrician gave me was: 'try not to project into the future the challenges you are facing in childhood or teen years with your son'. It really helped me to stay focused on holding the line and being those guardrails that my own child needed.

In a home where your son is safe, it is possible he will try this on and push and attempt to manipulate. That he is not struggling with getting in trouble at school and relates well at church is reassuring.

It was also was hard for me to relate to the testing of my children because I never had a safe and reliable space to test or blunder in. There was no grace to be had to figure things out, be selfish, make mistakes, try and fudge the truth...in my own family of origin, so I had a hard time understanding how differently children and teens may act out in a safe environment. I was learning right along with my own kids in these times.

As parents, we see the potential for character issues and if we have parents or family members who have done a great deal of harm with certain patterns of behaviors and traits it makes perfect sense that our antenna are up and we are on alert for these kinds of signs. Keep doing what you are doing... loving, holding the line, believing in and looking for the best and praying over your precious boy as you live out a life of consistency and guidance! Stay the course! Your son is one very blessed young man and may not truly know that for awhile yet! But, I believe it will come!

[Call Me Cordelia]

Oh my gosh. Bloomie, I think you are on to something here. My only reference for teenage years are my own and my husband's, and neither of US would have dared blow off studying. As you say, there was no grace for us. But my son has really taken on board the idea that we've taught him that grades are not the source of your self worth. I could go on. I knew it wasn't the exact same with him and so I felt bad even drawing the comparison. My son does not have anything like a sadistic streak, for example, and I am aware he's more mature than my father in a great many ways even at fifteen.

And yet... it feels so very alarming because when I've seen these behaviors before, there WAS no growing out of it! And having a good public face vs. I feel so hypervigilant around him is also a familiar-feeling dynamic.

Thank you all for helping me gain perspective. I will be thinking on this and hopefully bringing more peace to my relationship with my son.