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If there’s one skill children of narcissists struggle with, it’s setting boundaries. Never able to say “no” to their parents, they can grow into adults who never draw the line at work or with their friends and intimate partners. It’s a life-altering deficit that can leave these survivors at odds with themselves and vulnerable to narcissistic abuse in the future.

Why is it so hard to draw the line with a narcissistic parent? It’s a question that seems to have a straightforward answer. Wouldn’t survivors be angry? Wouldn’t it be easy for them to walk away? How? When you’re never given the skills or the examples to set healthy boundaries as a child, you’re not going to do it as an adult.

Even adults struggle to escape the narcissistic parent-child dynamic.

Toxic relationships exist everywhere. People with misguided intentions look to one another for solutions that don’t exist. Narcissistic relationships are a little different. When you’re dealing with a narcissist, you’re dealing with a high-control personality type that is capable of Machiavellian behaviors when it comes to getting what they want out of others.

Narcissists are especially dangerous as parents. They raise children with deep emotional wounds and adults who have a hard time drawing the line with those same parents (and other people they love).

People who haven’t experienced a narcissistic parent make comments along the lines of, “Why don’t you just put them in your place? Why don’t you stop talking to them? Why can’t you stand up for yourself?”

The reality is that drawing the line with any narcissist — especially the narcissistic parent — is hard, if not impossible. It’s a two-sided failure. First, the child who tries to draw the line is conditioned into fear or perverse, self-denying loyalty. Then there is the failure of the narcissist. They aren’t a personality type who accepts “no” lightly.

Drawing the line with an actual narcissist is like personally attacking them. A narcissistic parent sees a boundary as more than a denial. To them, it is attacking who they are. They don’t accept that. Not from the world and certainly not from the children they look down on. The children of narcissists aren’t allowed to set boundaries and it reverberates through the rest of their lives.

Why is it so hard for the children of narcissists to set boundaries with their parents?

When a deeper look is taken at the relationship between narcissistic parents and their children, the lack of boundaries becomes more understandable. The codependent nature of narcissistic relationships aside, there is a sense of possession and a constant diminishment that makes these connections impossible to draw the line in for children (at any age).

Sense of possession

Children of narcissists are objectified. That’s because narcissistic parents tend to see their children as objects and direct extensions of themselves. Instead of valuing them as people with their own experiences, children exist as luxury luggage to be rolled out for the parent’s acclaim and kept out of the way when unwanted or invalidating.

That sense of possession can send the child out into the world used to a pattern of possession that sends them into dangerously one-sided relationships. They see themselves as the catalyst of other people’s happiness, so they pursue people who expect other people to make them happy.

Feeling as though they must always play the second part in someone else’s story destroys a certain amount of self-confidence. Victims of narcissistic parents aren’t empowered to set any limits that may conflict with that toxic parent’s demands of them.

Lack of safety

Safety is one of the lacking foundations in a narcissistic parent-child relationship. This is safety on every level. A child of a narcissist may feel unsafe with their parent mentally, emotionally, materially, spiritually, and physically. Narcissistic abuse can encompass all of these areas, and that makes dealing with a narcissistic parent like building a castle on quicksand.

Children who show any deviation from the narcissistic parent’s desires or expectations risk a negative reaction. This may be as simple as getting the cold shoulder, or it may be as extreme as disownment. Only one thing is certain. If you disappoint the narcissistic parent you are going to be “punished”.

Living under this axe means that the children of narcissists never feel safe enough to share how they feel. Worse, they are never safe to draw a line that the narcissist doesn’t already approve of. Their authenticity and happiness is not a priority. They take that on in their inability to set boundaries with their parents.

Non-existent examples

Much of the behaviors we learn as children come not from direct teachings but from observation and mimicry. Children watch parents and siblings, echoing the way they treat others and themselves. Boundaries are a part of this. Not only do children experience a lack of boundaries with their parents, but they watch narcissistic parents void the boundaries of everyone around them.

There are essentially no existent examples of healthy boundaries in a narcissistic household. Pseudomutuality assures that victims (and enablers) have no place to hide. They must think the way the narcissists demand and act the way the narcissist demands, at all times.

Without those healthy examples — both of someone setting a boundary and of the other person accepting that boundary — children grow up into people who don’t know how to set or respect boundaries themselves…especially with their narcissistic parent.

Lowered self-esteem

What self-esteem can a child develop in a relationship with an adult narcissist? The narcissistic parents themselves don’t have healthy self-esteem. They are warped by a central sense of insecurity, which is what bestows them with their grandiose nature. (They’re overcompensating for their crippling insecurities.)

Children watch as their narcissistic parent lives perpetually at odds with themselves. Despite claiming to love themselves and their bodies, narcissistic people often engage in self-sabotaging behaviors that display the true depth of their insecurities. Perpetually triggered by a world that reflects those insecurities to them, they lash out at their children.

Narcissistic parents spend decades destroying their children’s self-esteem in different ways. One narcissistic parent may demand perfection, they build their child up but only if the child is getting all-A’s and admission letters to prestigious schools. The other type deliberately shoots their child down, criticizing them and demeaning them until they sincerely believe they are the worst person in any room.

What boundaries can be set by someone who thinks they are unlovable or unworthy? Again, no trick questions are needed here. The answer is clear. Self-esteem doesn’t flourish in narcissistically controlled families, and without a strong sense of self-worth, victims can’t effectively create boundaries.

Zero secure spaces

Relationships with narcissists are exhausting, even more so when that relationship is a decades-long connection with a narcissistic parent. It becomes a full-time affair. Victims of narcissists are forced to give up all emotional space to that narcissist. Narcissistic people desire to be the center of all thought, and all attention in terms of their victims — especially their children.

There’s no extra room in a relationship with a narcissist, not even for the narcissist’s children. In their world, narcissists want all efforts made toward meeting their delusions. If they want to project the perfect family with perfect children, then there is only room for that set of desires, beliefs, visions, etc.

Children are never given the space to explore and experiment with their sense of self. Specifically, they are never given allowance to experiment with setting boundaries, saying “no”. Never being given allowance to form this personal identity or set of desires in childhood, they can grow into adults who also don’t know how to draw the line with their parents.

Unhealthy conditioning

To be raised by a narcissistic parent is to be narcissistically conditioned. What does this mean? In short, it means that — over an extended period — children of that narcissistic parent are taught that the negative behaviors, beliefs, and reactions of that parent are “normal”. This is the reason so many survivors internalize their abuse or settle for similar treatment in future relationships.

Children of narcissists are conditioned to normalize and accept a lot of toxic things. Primarily, they are conditioned to perform people-pleasing behaviors. The narcissistic parent, only giving positive reinforcement when their desires or delusions are reinforced, teaches the child only to show those behaviors (even if they are disingenuous).

Narcissistic conditioning produced in narcissistic families leaves children vulnerable to future abuse and makes it hard for them to set healthy, effective boundaries with partners, friends, and even professional colleagues in the future.

The best ways to create boundaries with a toxic or narcissistic parent.

If you are a child of a narcissistic parent, then take hope. Change is possible. Limitations can be created for your parent, but it will take time, an investment in yourself, and a lot of courage. The change can be kickstarted with knowledge and carried through with self-esteem. Narcissistic parents don’t have to control your life. You can empower yourself with rational distancing.

1. Empowered knowledge: Knowledge is power and that certainly applies when recovering from a narcissistic parent. The more survivors know about narcissism (specifically narcissistic personality disorder), the more they can see who that parent is behind the mask. That empowers survivors to stand their ground and create boundaries that protect them.
2. Heightened self-esteem: There is no maintaining boundaries against a narcissist without high self-esteem. Like any other narcissist, the narcissistic parent will attack where it hurts when they are denied their expectations. The survivor must be emotionally detached from the parent’s cruelty and invested in their happiness to remain strong.
3. Physical distancing: Physical distance is everything when dealing with a narcissistic parent. The further away you can get from the physical (like moving to another state or city) the easier it is to put up emotional boundaries. They have less power over you when you have a life that is distanced enough to compartmentalize their influence.

The more you know about narcissism, the more impervious you become to their manipulation. That includes narcissistic parents. Healing is achieved through knowing and compassion. Survivors need to understand themselves, their abusers, and the reality of recovering their sense of self and their nervous systems.

Getting to that point requires high self-esteem and the space to build peace and security. For survivors to find that physical and emotional space is usually needed.

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It is incredibly hard for the child of a narcissistic parent to set boundaries. Narcissists don’t like to be denied, they don’t like to be told “no”. Both of those things often coincide with someone drawing the line around their need for respect and emotional security. However, the narcissistic parent sees it as a threat and will react accordingly.

Breaking the pattern is a must for the children of narcissists. To become happy they have to free themselves from the toxic role play and the diminishment of their self-esteem. It’s painful, it’s scary, and it takes so much patience and energy to do. The freedom on the other side makes it worthwhile. Every survivor deserves that freedom but they have to change ties with the narcissistic parent to find that freedom.

Jabeen F, Gerritsen C, Treur J. Healing the next generation: an adaptive agent model for the effects of parental narcissism. Brain Inform. 2021 Mar 2;8(1):4. doi: 10.1186/s40708-020-00115-z. PMID: 33655460; PMCID: PMC7925789.