Serious ego issues...

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This came up in another thread and thought it would be interesting to expound upon as I thought I was the only one dealing with the problem.

My dear stepson (15) has a huge ego. He was diagnosed when he was seven, but always displayed problems. His biological mother always told him how perfect and wonderful he was when he was little - he NEVER did anything wrong - and it has fostered his mind set that he can't do anything wrong and is perfect in everything he does.

That means that his teachers are wrong if he doesn't agree with them and they're wrong in assigning him work he does not think makes sense and/or he doesn't want to do. We're wrong for not letting him play video games when he has not done his chores or his grades are not good. Anyone who has a difference in opinion is wrong and stupid in his eyes. At work (something he does through a school program) the customers are stupid and wrong for getting in his way and/or wanting something when he's stocking shelves.

In his mind he's absolutely perfect in every way and the rest of the world is just stupid and wrong in every way for not being exactly like him and agreeing with him and bending over backward to do everything for him and doing exactly what he wants to do.

My boyfriend has three kids and they all are really tough to deal with when they come back from their mother's house, but he can be the worst. Even our 'typical' 5y/o female is easier to get back to normal after spending time with their bio-mother than he is, and she sees her more by order of the courts. In all honesty, he sees her very rarely, but it's also her parents who foster these attitude issues in them all too. So anytime they're gone we know there will be huge problems when they return, mostly with him.

We're working with the courts to get her cut out of their lives as much as possible or get supervised visitation. The courts know she's not a good mother and is causing issues with the children and are therefore not forcing the older two to see her unless they want to. Luckily my dear boy (the eldest and the one with AS) rarely even wants to deal with her crazy antics, screaming and put downs. She thinks males are worthless over the age of ten, so the boys are treated horribly, but still come home with laziness and ego issues.

But it all comes back to their bio-mother and her influence. I just cannot get over my boy's ego! He honestly does not understand why he's not the center of the universe and why we do not bend over to give him everything he wants. He does not understand why he should have to do the school work he does not find interesting. Everyone else in his class should have to, but not him. He can't understand why he has to do anything around the house - dishes are his job. But also simple things like bringing his own clothes down to the laundry room or even taking his dirty underwear out of the bathroom that he shares with his two siblings. Though he freaks if his siblings leave ANY clothes in the bathroom.

Do not get me wrong, I adore him! He's one of the most interesting teens I have ever met. But dealing with his ego just sets me on edge and makes it hard to deal with his other issues. We spent more than four days trying to get him to write a simple essay for Biology class because he did not think it should have been assigned. He did not think he should have to do it, so he fought us every step of the way. He put more work into avoiding it than it would have taken to write the paper. From 8am to 8pm he sat there fighting us tooth and nail for four straight days (weekend and snow days). It was not because it was too hard or he did not understand - though he does have trouble putting out info in a cohesive way - but because he did not think he should have to do the paper. He thought he was too good for it, so he should not have to do it. This is a common occurrence around here and he doesn't understand that he has to do the work if he wants to go to college and succeed.

It does not help that the school has coddled him and pushed him through when they should have pushed more. He now thinks - because of the school and his ego - that he can go to college wherever he wants, people will do the work for him and he will get a fantastic paying job where he can sit and play video games all day.

I just do not know what to do about the ego issues. The school isn’t letting him slide any longer and things are getting much harder for him, but his ego is what’s holding him back in a huge way. Hopefully soon he won’t have to deal with his bio-mother at all, but we’re still picking up the mass she’s caused and do not know how to get past it. Seems as though nothing we’ve done has worked.

I JUST posted this in the other thread:

My son is also "extremely self-confident" and, yes, it can be off-putting, but he has learned to tone it down. When I listen to parents and read posts it seems like some AS end up arrogant, and others end up with zero self-esteem at all. As it seems to be with everything, there doesn't seem to be much middle ground. Given a choice, I prefer the arrogance.

BUT, I will also say that it is at least in part defensive. When you realize that, it gets easier to work on. I've been pretty gentle with my son about it all, and have appealed to his pragmatic side, and that approach seems to work.

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Some more notes.

I remember one of the earliest discussions we had with the school psychologist, while he was explaining that the number 1 thing he had noticed making a difference was the parents becoming extremely well informed and involved. His example was 2 AS kids he had worked with years ago. One had parents who divorced and never really came to understand the condition. By high school their child was a loner wandering the halls thinking to himself how brilliant he was, how stupid everyone else was, and how stupid school was (after all, he was brilliant but not getting good grades, so whose fault was that?). The other child had parents who got immersed in AS and learned to understand their child and worked with him. By high school his AS was basically invisible in public, and he ended up befriending the first child and tyring to help him navigate.

So how do A and B relate? I'm not honestly sure, except that I do think the ego is defensive. Without a solid explanation in hand, they fall onto the one they believe they see: that they are smart, and no one else is. That gets enforced over the years as people seem completely incapable of understanding their point of view, and as they fail to get rewarded in school for flashes of insight while getting penalized for "silly" stuff like not dotting i's or crossing t's. My son was already falling into that trap when he was finally diagnosed, and I think that having the diagnosis and understanding a lot more about himself has helped mitigate it.

It's still a constant process. I have to find solid, real world explanations for why teachers grade as they do - explanations that make sense to my AS child. I have to explain why people act as they do, so that their actions make sense to him, and he isn't always writing them off as "stupid." And so on. I need to get him to see and understand - really understand - the other side of every conflict, and I think it HAS mitigated the issue quite a bit with him.

I'm not trying to be blunt, but this seems like cases of pathological narcissism to me. Or on the "too much selfesteem"-disorder spectrum.

You should check here and see if this applies: Narcissistic Personality Disorder

My boy's bio-mother suffers from severe depression, borderline personality disorder and most likely narcissistic personality disorder herself - so this would not shock me.

We do not know what her exact diagnoses are as she believes she's absolutely perfect, other than she feels she has to see a shrink every week. We're just waiting to see what comes up with the court ordered evaluation of her. She's constantly claiming that my boyfriend also has AS and is a horrible father and it destroyed their marriage. She blames everything on him and not her issues and/or extra-marrital activites. She completely believes that her diagnosis of my boyfriend as AS means he has it, even though there's been no diagnosis or even need for evaluation. Just further showing her borderline personality disorder and possibly narcissistic personality disorder.

I know, from talking to his father, that my boy was hyper praised as a child and was told he did everything right and was always perfect. I know a lot of his ego issues stem from this constant reinforcement. But reading about narcissistic personality disorder really makes me wonder. He sure fits in there quite well. Except that when I first met him I thought he had no self esteem. It was the more time I spent with him, the more I wanted him, the more I spoke with his father about things that I discovered just how big his ego is. I was an extremely shocking revelation for me, but then many things made much more sense to me.

I had thought a lot of the things were his AS, but now I realize that his ego was also a big part of a lot of the things going on. I just don't know how I missed it as I have lived with two different narcissistic people - my ex-husband and a former roommate. It was because of their narcissism that I am no longer married to, or living with either of them. Though I am still very good friends with my former roommate. As long as we don't have to live together, we get along very well.

I have noticed that most other people - children and adults - I have met who are somewhere on the spectrum have very little self esteem. My boy is the first I have met who has such the huge ego.

I am planning on showing all of this to his father when he gets home from work and asking him about this. It might be worth bringing up at my boy's next monthly shrink appt.

Thanks!

You're welcome, and good luck!

my son would alternate between believing he knew everything & believing that he knew nothing. if i had to pick, i too would pick believing he knows everything.......the depression issues surrounding believing you know nothing are tremendous and overwhelming....
i'd start small and pick the most annoying scenario to deal with first....is there a specific issue that keeps re-occuring constantly ??? if so, make a behavior support plan that outlines what is expected of him & what reward/consequence will occur if he does not do as expected....make him a part of the reward/consequence decision-making process. he might be able to help you decide what an appropriate reward & consequence would be

First off, allow me offer my consolations. My mother was most definitely narcissistic, so I know what its like living with one. Trust me, its much worse when shes the parent and your the child then the other way around. Anyways, that is somewhat irrelevant. I would also like to say that his large ego has nothing to do with AS. There may be some jerks with AS, but there are just as many normal jerks, please dont let 1 person's actions influence your opinions on everybody.

The first thing I would suggest is sitting down and coming up with a guide line of agreeable rules for everybody. For example, your son will treat you with respect, and you will treat your son with respect. Now I should of course say that respect does not mean automatically agreeing with the parent and doing whatever they tell you to. Respect means that he doesnt yell at you, talk down to you, swear at you, or belittle you. Likewise you treat him the same way. I know its odd to treat a 15 year old as a fellow adult, but if you want him to act like an adult you have to treat him like one. You can also add to the list that he will treat others (beside you) with the same respect that he expects. You can also come up with a list of mutually agreed upon responsibilities. For example, he takes out the trash, picks up his clothes, and does whatever REASONABLE chores you want him to. Reasonable is relative, but try to avoid outlandish demands like him spending 3 hours per day doing something he hates. After all, school is a full time job, and very hard for most aspies. Make sure you write down in detail what he should do. Making a chore list which basically says 'do whatever I tell you to' isnt very reasonable.

For example a possible chore list for him might be:
Monday: collect trash and take it to curb
Tuesday: wash dishes
Wednesday: free day
Thursday: Vacuum Room and change bed sheets
etc.
You may also want to add at the end: 1 hour of extra chores per week to be assigned as needed. For example, its Wednesday, which is his day off chores, but you really need help with something like shoveling snow. You can use up your hour of spare chore time to ask for help, or you could save it till Saturday for something else. Make sure to use this hour of chore time only when you need help, not because you are angry at your son and want to ruin whatever he is doing at that moment.

And on this chore list you can also write down your chores. For example, you are responsible for making meals, doing laundry, etc. Now of course you do these things anyways so your not doing any extra work. But showing him what you do and promising to do your share if he does his works much better then just demanding things from him. Also, have written down consequences for not doing the things listed. Keep in mind that you may have to apply these to yourself. For example, if he freaks out and yells at you, he has to make dinner that night. If you freak out and yell at him, you have to take out the trash on Monday, or perhaps lose your hour of free chore time that week. If he doesnt pick up his dirty clothes off the bathroom, he has to do his own laundry.

Making a rule list for everybody in the family (you, your husband, and all the kids) is a good way to come to a compromise. Make sure you include mutual respect as a major goal. And if he fails to show respect, make sure that the consequences are clearly listed out.

That of course only works if your son is willing to be reasonable and come to a compromise about how things should be done to best benefit everybody. When somebody is being unreasonable (due to a large ego) you have to make them reasonable first before you can discuss anything.

I have found that the best way to deal with somebody who has a huge ego is to let them fail, hard. I'm not just talking about letting him get 1 bad grade which he doesnt care about. I mean let him utterly fail at something which he cares about, and then have to ask for help. Now, I know setting your children up to fail is somewhat counter to your parental instincts, but if you can solve a life time of problems with 1 week's worth of bad experiences then I would say that is a fair trade off. I know it may be morally reprehensible to some people to deliberately hurt a child. And the bad experiences from the week of problems can cause some problems with anxiety later on. But you can work through anxiety, you cant make anything work when somebody is being unreasonable. I am probably going to be unpopular for saying this, but having your child go through a painful situation now to correct the problem in a short period of time is better then letting him fail at life due to his unreasonable expectations. That's why they invented boot camp. Sure it is unpleasant for the child, but thats the idea. It motivates you to work so you can avoid situations like that.

Obviously not all behavioral problems can be solved with 'tough love'. When somebody is struggling to do homework because they are overwhelmed and frustrated, being tough only hurts the situation. But a refusal to do reasonable work because he feels he is too good for simple tasks, and doesnt need to pull his fair share is one of the times when it is effective.

In a previous post about a similar issue I recommended dropping the kid off at a homeless shelter for a few nights. Let him get a taste of reality and see what happens when you dont pull your weight and expect everybody to take care of you. However the child in that instance was nearly 18, Im not sure that would be the best course of action for a 15 year old. Perhaps you could arrange your own boot camp? For example, say you have a cousin (or somebody you trust) who is willing to help out for a few weekends. Just tell your son that you are so fed up with his refusal to be reasonable that you are sending him off to live with his relative until he learns some respect for other people. Then have your relative pick him up and basically be rude and mean to him all weekend. I'm not saying your relative should hit the kid, but have him make unreasonable requests, and then yell at your son till he does it. Like getting up at 6 am to go chop wood or something. Or have him demand that your son sort random papers by the alphabetical order of the first word. Obviously a very unpleasant time for your son, but he may begin to feel what its like to be at the other end of the unreasonable request.

Once your son is fed up with going to his uncle's house for the weekends, you can point out that this is what happens when people are unreasonable with each other. When people make these foolish demands and judge other as inferior before even considering their view, that is the result. And your son is welcome to stay at your house if he is willing to be reasonable and treat other people with respect just as they respect him.

kids like him-will run into someone, who will show him-he isn
t the center of everything
he won't get into collage and get a great job-he'll be fired a few times and lose friends because people don't deal with those sorts well
and he will learn quickly that way

I know those things will happen and he will be taken down a peg.

But my real concern is that he's going to piss someone off with his ego and get his ass kicked in an extreme way.

He's a good sized boy - not huge at all, but not little. He's about 5foot10 and 180lbs-ish. He's not muscular, actually a bit chubby, but he looks big. I think that's why no one has meesed with him in school yet. But I fear his ego is just going to push someone too far and he will really be physically hurt.

I hate to say a good black eye might do him good, but it might. But I fear that is will be much more than that when it actually comes down.

As shocking as it might be to read, I think Tracker has some really good ideas. Sometimes, I think my oldest son's best experiences were when he had a shock to the system -- because frankly, it seems like our children don't pay attention to anything less than that. To make an imprint that is last to them, everything has to be BIG! Well, the concept of sending a kid to an uncle's house where he has a ton of unreasonable requests -- that's BIG! And one would sure learn that requests such as writing a Biology paper would definitely be much more pleasant than chopping wood for no reason at 6 a.m.!

Gosh, a teenage boy who thinks he's smarter and better than everyone else, and that the world revolves around him? Wow! That's so completely different than all the other teenagers out there!