This is a question I get all of the time: How not to raise a child sociopath or narcissist? People ask this question because teenagers can look like they’re sociopaths or narcissists, but they’re healthy teens.

So, what’s the difference?

To start, we need to understand what a sociopath and narcissist are. If we don’t fully understand this, we’re not going to be able to avoid it or avoid raising a child sociopath or narcissist. These terms have been in the news a lot, and we in psychology have them under the umbrella of personality disorder. It’s a terrible phrase, I know, but that’s the phrase we use. Personality disorders have many different forms, two of them which are sociopaths and narcissist.