How To Not Raise a Narcissist

I don't know about you, but I don't want to give the world another Trump.

If you’re a parent raising a child today, you may well have pondered whether you’re raising a narcissist. I am willing to bet that parents a decade ago didn’t worry so much about this problem. But after enduring Trump, many of us would rather cut off an arm than raise a kid who becomes anything like him. (I’m not a mental health professional, so I have no business diagnosing anyone, but I have interviewed psychologists who study narcissism, and they say that Trump is an iconic example.)

With all the things we do as parents to nurture self-esteem in our kids, it’s not absurd to wonder whether we might inadvertently be nudging them toward narcissism. So what does science tell us about how narcissism develops, and about what parents can do to avoid raising narcissistic jerks?