What Can Trigger Personality Disorders In Children?
Doctors cannot diagnose personality disorders in children until they are 18 years old. But if the symptoms start in childhood, they can eventually lead to a personality disorder in adulthood.
When analyzing symptoms, it is important to consider your child’s developmental stage. It’s important to look at where your child should be developmentally and compare that to where they really are.
During childhood, your relationship and bond are incredibly important as they influence the proper development of your child. Would you like to learn more about personality disorders in children? Then read on.
Childhood Personality Disorders: Attachment and Bonding
When we talk about attachment and bonding, we are talking about children’s need for an emotional connection with their parents or caregivers. You need to establish this strong bond during the early years of your little one’s life.
The way we learn to relate to others depends on our attachment style. These are known as attachment relationships. It is also important to relate bonding and attachment to the stage of children’s emotional development.
Childhood Personality Disorders: Stages of Emotional Development
There are four main stages in our child’s emotional development:
- Early childhood: From birth to 7 years
- Second childhood: From 7 to 10 years old
- Early adolescence: From 10 to 15 years
- Adolescence: From 15 to 18 years
Your child ‘s actions will depend on the stage of development they are in. In addition, the way they act will always have to do with the continuum of dependence and independence.
If your child is in the early childhood stage, it is completely dependent on his parents or the most important figures in his life. Their survival depends on them. At this stage, the parents play a very important role as they are the source of emotional regulation for the child.
At this stage, our little ones will look to their parents for safety as they explore the world. That means parents are there to protect and supervise them from a distance. However, if you do too much, you can overprotect your child.
When kids are scared, they need a place to hide where they feel protected and calm. But when parents are unable to provide that security for their children, the problems begin. That’s why it’s important to know where your child should be at each stage of development so you can look out for any issues that could affect their future.
Childhood Personality Disorders: Broken Bonds Between Parents and Children
At what point are parents no longer able to regulate their children emotionally? What are the consequences of that? There are three situations:
1. If you overprotect your kids and limit their ability to explore the world. This prevents them from becoming independent. Instead, you tell your child that the world is dangerous, what we call insecure-anxiety attachment.
2. After the exploration phase, your little one will look to you for shelter. However, if you don’t know how to help your child regulate and protect his emotions, this emotional breakdown will lead to your child developing an insecure-avoidant attachment.
3. Some children do not have a safe shelter. Unfortunately, these children are victims of maltreatment, abuse, or other forms of violence. Our little ones look to us for an emotional connection. In some families, however, the parents are a threat to their children. This causes two types of personality disorders in children: attachment and defense at the same time. As a result, the child develops a disorganized attachment.
What happens if these ties break?
When these emotional ties break, children and adolescents experience a high state of fear and anxiety. This is because the child has lost control over his relationship with his parents. As a result, they feel the need to use different strategies to help them regain emotional balance. However, these strategies ultimately prove to be harmful.
Normally they will try to avoid what hurts them. That is of course a problem if they are afraid of their parents. In those situations, the attachment and defense systems are activated at the same time. Then children often develop certain personality patterns in an effort to regain that emotional balance. Let’s take a look at them.
Narcissistic personality
This personality disorder in children arises when children do not develop empathy. As a result, their needs take precedence over those of everyone around them. It can start in two ways:
- In a primary way: Parents have given their child too much praise. This can happen because one or both parents also have narcissistic tendencies. Therefore, they need to feel extraordinary because of their children.
- Secondary: This happens when children try to compensate for a feeling of inferiority
Caring Personality
This personality disorder develops when children learn that their needs are not important to their parents. They then transfer those feelings into their relationships with other people.
Little ones will try to change their behavior to meet the expectations of others. They do that by neglecting themselves. In addition, they will try to please and satisfy the needs of everyone else.
The child will develop a lot of internal anger, but they don’t express it because they are afraid that people will reject them. This can lead to an anxiety or personality disorder in children.
Perfectionist personality
Children come to believe that they have to do everything right and that they have to be perfect. They think that if they are, everyone will love them and everything will be fine. As a result, they try harder and harder to be better, but they are never satisfied. So they keep trying, but it’s never enough.
This behavior can turn into a constant search for perfection. That eventually becomes part of their personality and can lead to a disorder.
Indolent Personality Disorders in Children
Some little ones have a fear of failure. Therefore, they will avoid any situation where there is a risk of failure. In addition, they will end up blaming others if something doesn’t work out and they will usually make no effort to change the situation. In some cases, this is simply part of their development. But if it continues, it could be a sign of a personality disorder.
Conclusion
In short, when it comes to personality disorders in children, it is important for parents to focus on their bond with their children. This is crucial to avoid problems with their emotional development.
In addition, it is important to note that we cannot diagnose personality disorders in children until they are 18. This is true even if they exhibit certain behaviors that may indicate a disorder. Remember that their personality will develop in the early stages of their development.
