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China Elevator Stories
Recognizing Narcissistic Jealousy in Parents and Grandparents
A narcissistic parent or grandparent may be so jealous of you that they will destroy your relationship with your children.
05/09/2025
Ruth Silbermayr
Author
The first sign of a narcissistic parent or grandparent is usually that they will show extreme signs of jealousy toward you. The things a person who has to deal with a narcissistic parent or grandparent experiences may vary from person to person, but all narcissists I know are jealous, and the non-narcissistic parent will have to endure acts of jealousy from the other parent or grandparents.
In my opinion, a person can feel jealous and not be a narcissist, such as when a person who didn’t feel much jealousy at all was turned into feeling jealous because a narcissist deliberately made her jealous by constantly throwing other women in her face while dating. He may also have told her she just needs to accept this, that he wasn’t to blame for his horrific behavior, and that she simply wasn’t worth the effort for him, or she may have heard similar things narcissists commonly say. Now, we aren’t talking about a situation where a person simply doesn’t want to spend time with another person, but about a situation where a narcissist makes someone jealous on purpose. I experienced this with the singer I have written about, and believe me, his measures to make me jealous of the other women he was or wasn’t seeing were extreme—such as constantly hearing that he was having affairs and sex with other women, constantly being told how talented and sexy and beautiful they were, while never getting any compliment myself. Yet he still claimed I needed to want to have sex with him.
So jealousy can be a normal feeling, and we can also be made jealous by another person, particularly a person who is jealous themselves. But with narcissists, what we’re dealing with usually isn’t normal jealousy. It is pathological jealousy, and it looks very different.
My former mother-in-law was such a person. She was pathologically jealous, and this included situations where I merely talked with my children, where I took care of them, or where I bought clothes for them.
When I talked with my children while she was nearby, she would begin speaking to them at the same time in a very loud tone of voice, and she would not stop until I stopped talking. I could not say what I wanted because she constantly interrupted me and did not allow me to speak with my children. She was very domineering and pushy, and she showed no sense of moral awareness that this behavior was rude.
When I was holding my children while they were still small, she would forcefully take them out of my arms through pushy and disrespectful behavior, so that in the end I always had to let her hold them instead of being allowed to hold them myself. Whenever she saw that they wanted to be with me, she immediately interfered so that she would be the one hugging them or taking care of them instead of me. I found it dangerous that she constantly pulled them from my arms, and I had no choice but to let her do so to prevent them from falling or being hurt. She did not seem to care much about their safety and acted purely on impulse. My children always wanted to be with me because they felt safe with me, but she created a stressful environment with her constant pushy and disruptive behavior, where no one was ever allowed to sit, rest, or enjoy quiet.
One time, my son’s kindergarten asked parents to print photos of the child with their parents. I printed a few and gave them to my son to take with him. On the same day, my former mother-in-law sent me a message, telling me: “I just went to the kindergarten to tear down your photos and exchanged them with mine. Don’t be angry.”
Being replaced by another person and treated as if one has no right to participate in one’s children’s lives or engage with them in any way is naturally infuriating.
She acted like this all the time. I was dealing with an insane person—one who went to great lengths to make sure she was the only person in my children’s lives allowed to do activities with them, that she was the center of their universe, and that they didn’t get enough time with me. She also helped my ex-husband plot their separation from me and made sure I would never see my children again.
My ex-husband acted in similar ways with regard to not allowing me to spend time with our children and conspired with his mother to separate them from me forever so that they would not have a mother growing up. His reasoning is that he is the most important person, that a man has the right to have his children grow up with him, and that a woman does not have this right, since he is in the “inner circle” of the family and the woman is not—she is an outsider and should be treated as such.
Since his parents are also in the “inner circle” as the parents of the man, the maternal grandparents are in the outer circle as the parents of the woman. In his eyes, they are irrelevant and should not spend time with their grandchildren. This is one of the reasons he has not allowed our children to visit Austria—to completely cut them off from their Austrian family and relatives. He taught our children that I am not part of the family and has brainwashed them into believing this false narrative.
Traditional Chinese family structures are severely unequal, and women are often treated like slaves who have no rights, particularly those who do not belong to the male family line. A woman who belongs to the male family line may be considered of utmost importance—such as the children’s paternal grandmother—but a woman who does not will be considered unimportant, as though she does not exist, and will not be allowed to exist in her children’s life if she is dealing with a severely mentally ill individual. This kind of behavior, of course, harms children and is not in their best interest.
To a woman, she may simply be used as a baby-making machine, and once she has fulfilled the obligation to birth children for the male part of the family, she will be discarded and forced out of their lives, not being allowed to have any say in their lives, to be a part of their lives, or to raise her own children. I have seen this view of women present in the grandparents’ generation in China, where many women are simply seen as tools to produce grandchildren for their grandparents. These babies are then handed over immediately after birth to live with their grandparents and be raised by them, while the mother goes back to work and lives as though she is not a parent.
My former mother-in-law would come to my place and refuse to leave, in order to always be with my children. She didn’t want to give me even a moment alone with them, but she had no problem taking them for herself (she was a helicopter grandparent, and her behavior was constantly annoying and unbearable). She didn’t want me at her place with my children, but coerced me into letting her stay at mine whenever I was caring for them. It took a very long time to get her to leave us alone so that I could focus on parenting, since she constantly demanded attention, created drama, and it was simply easier to take care of my children alone.
When I bought clothes for my children, she would immediately run out and buy new clothes—the same kind I had bought (if I bought trousers, she would buy trousers)—and then she would exchange mine for hers. As you can see with my ex-husband, he is also trying to manipulate my children into only wearing the clothes he or his father bought, actively manipulating them to reject what I had chosen. This is also jealousy in action, since he is also a pathologically jealous person.
A normal person wouldn’t go so far as to manipulate their own children, but narcissists will. You may even see signs of brainwashing, with children repeating everything a narcissistic parent has told them.
A lot of the time, my former mother-in-law didn’t just buy the same kinds of clothes I had bought, she also tried to forbid me from buying them clothes at all. She and her husband went shopping far more often than necessary, because she was so jealous that everything they wore needed to be bought by her and in her style. If they needed a new winter coat, for example, she made sure she bought it before I had a chance to, so that our son then had to wear hers and couldn’t wear mine. If she had had good taste, that would have been one thing, but she didn’t, and I found the clothes she bought too embarrassing for my children to wear in Austria—not because they had a Chinese style, but simply because she had no sense of taste.
Even then, she actively undermined my ability to let my children wear the clothes I had bought. She came to my place and hid them, so I couldn’t dress my children in them, or cut holes into trousers without asking me first if I agreed. I had bought those trousers at H&M in Austria before flying to China.
I don’t think what children wear should be too important, but I wanted to dress them in a way that felt comfortable and soothing to the eyes. She also often bought clothes in the wrong size, like shoes that were five sizes too large, and then forced my son to wear them, even though this was harmful to his feet. I once had to throw away a pair because she constantly exchanged mine for hers. I remember my son once stumbling badly when she had forced him to wear her oversized shoes, and that was the day I threw them away so she couldn’t harm him further.
There was no way to argue with her. She simply insisted that they were her shoes and didn’t understand how to protect a child. She also pushed the stroller in the middle of the street, on purpose, when she wanted to make me angry. I always told her to please use the sidewalk, but she ignored me and put my children in danger.
The messages read:
Me: “When will we have a video call?”
My former mother-in-law: “After they woke up, we went to the stadium, and now they just finished eating dinner.”
This wouldn’t be a problem if she allowed you to have calls with your children, but if she constantly interferes or tells you she doesn’t have time, or that the children are busy, it can become a huge issue. She frequently used excuses to prevent me from having video calls with my children.
When my son was at my home recently, we went through photos of the things I had sent them from Austria. He told me which items had arrived, but some were missing. Two photo albums I had made for my children were never handed over to them, which is common for narcissistic parents or grandparents—to make sure the children don’t know about the other parent, or to erase that parent from memory. A narcissist may be so jealous that the only person allowed to appear in photos with the children is them.
A narcissist’s jealousy may also extend to food, culture, and language. My former mother-in-law was so jealous she pushed my children away from learning German, exchanged Austrian culture for Chinese, and copied any activity I did with them while later prohibiting me from ever doing it again. I had sometimes made popcorn for my children before flying to Germany in 2019, and later my son told me his grandmother often made popcorn and that he had learned it from her. Making popcorn isn’t a problem in itself, but when a grandmother copies everything you do with your children just to claim it as her own, while preventing you from sharing those activities with them, it becomes insanity. She wasn’t usually a fun person, but she copied my fun activities and then manipulated my husband into believing I wasn’t allowed to do them anymore.
Signs of pathological jealousy in narcissistic parents and grandparents are:
- Extreme competition for attention: They sabotage your bond with your children and resent your closeness.
- Constant competition: They constantly compete with you over anything, even small things.
- Replacing or copying you: They repeat your actions—buying clothes, creating traditions, planning activities—just to erase your role.
- Undermining your authority: They interfere with parenting decisions and insist on their own control.
- Withholding or controlling possessions: They hide, destroy, or replace gifts, clothes, and photos to ensure only their contributions are valued.
- Erasing your presence: They prevent the children from seeing your photos, speaking your language, or knowing your culture.
- Creating drama: They provoke fights and tension to remain the center of attention.
- Overstepping boundaries: They invade your home and routines, refusing to respect your space or your role.
A normal person may sometimes feel jealous, but they don’t manipulate children or erase another parent because of it. Narcissists, however, often do. Their jealousy is pathological, and it can deeply damage both the children and the targeted parent.
Have you ever dealt with a jealous narcissistic parent or grandparent?