APA Citation
Crick, N., Murray-Close, D., & Woods, K. (2005). Borderline Personality Features in Childhood: A Short-Term Longitudinal Study. *Development and Psychopathology*, 17(4), 1051-1070.
Summary
This groundbreaking longitudinal study tracked borderline personality disorder features in children over time, examining how these traits develop and manifest in young people. Crick and colleagues identified specific behavioral patterns, emotional dysregulation, and interpersonal difficulties that emerge early in development. The research provides crucial insights into how childhood trauma and dysfunctional family dynamics contribute to the development of personality pathology, offering a developmental perspective on conditions that often co-occur with narcissistic abuse dynamics and complex trauma responses.
Why This Matters for Survivors
Understanding how personality disorders develop in childhood helps survivors recognize patterns from their own upbringing and family systems. This research validates that many survivors' struggles with emotional regulation, relationships, and self-image have developmental origins rooted in early trauma and dysfunction. For parents who are survivors, this knowledge supports breaking generational cycles of abuse and understanding their children's needs for emotional safety and healthy attachment.
What This Research Establishes
• Borderline personality features emerge early in development as identifiable patterns of emotional dysregulation, interpersonal difficulties, and identity disturbance that can be tracked longitudinally in children.
• Childhood trauma and dysfunctional family systems directly contribute to the development of personality pathology, validating the connection between early adverse experiences and later mental health struggles.
• These features represent adaptive responses to chaotic environments rather than inherent character flaws, showing how children develop coping mechanisms to survive difficult family dynamics.
• Early identification and intervention opportunities exist for helping children who display these features, suggesting that personality pathology is not inevitable even with early trauma exposure.
Why This Matters for Survivors
This research validates what many survivors instinctively know - that the emotional and relational struggles they carry began in childhood as normal responses to abnormal situations. If you’ve struggled with intense emotions, fear of abandonment, or difficulty maintaining stable relationships, understanding that these patterns often develop as survival mechanisms in dysfunctional families can reduce shame and self-blame.
For survivors who are parents, this research offers hope and direction. Recognizing how personality features develop in response to family dysfunction empowers you to break generational cycles. Your awareness of these patterns, combined with your own healing work, creates opportunities to provide your children with the emotional stability and validation you may not have received.
The longitudinal nature of this study also demonstrates that personality features can change over time with different experiences and interventions. This contradicts the harmful myth that personality disorders are fixed or untreatable, offering hope that healing and growth remain possible throughout life.
Understanding the developmental origins of personality pathology can also help you make sense of family dynamics and relationships with siblings who may have developed different coping mechanisms or trauma responses to the same dysfunctional environment.
Clinical Implications
This research supports trauma-informed approaches to understanding childhood behavioral and emotional difficulties, encouraging clinicians to look beyond symptom checklists to underlying family dynamics and trauma histories. Rather than pathologizing children’s responses to dysfunction, therapists can recognize these features as adaptive attempts to cope with overwhelming circumstances.
The developmental perspective emphasized in this study suggests that early intervention focused on creating emotional safety and teaching regulation skills can significantly alter trajectories for children showing borderline features. This supports family-based interventions that address systemic dysfunction rather than focusing solely on the child’s symptoms.
For adult survivors in therapy, understanding the childhood origins of personality features can reduce shame and self-criticism while providing a framework for healing. Therapeutic approaches like Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and trauma-informed therapies become more effective when both client and therapist understand these patterns as trauma responses rather than character defects.
The research also highlights the importance of addressing attachment wounds and developmental trauma in treatment, as many personality disorder symptoms stem from early disruptions in caregiving relationships and the development of secure attachment bonds.
How This Research Is Used in the Book
This study provides crucial developmental context for understanding how narcissistic family systems impact children’s emotional and psychological development. The research helps explain why survivors often struggle with emotional regulation and relationship patterns that mirror borderline features, not as pathology but as understandable responses to chaotic upbringings.
“The child who learns to walk on eggshells, to read every micro-expression for signs of impending rage, to shape-shift their personality to match a parent’s momentary needs - this child is not developing a personality disorder. They are developing survival skills. What Crick’s research shows us is that these adaptive responses, while necessary for psychological survival in dysfunction, can become patterns that persist even when safety is found.”
Historical Context
This 2005 research emerged during a critical period when developmental psychology was increasingly recognizing the profound impact of early trauma on personality formation. Published in the era following landmark trauma research by Judith Herman and others, this study helped bridge the gap between clinical understanding of personality disorders and developmental perspectives on how these patterns form in response to adverse childhood experiences.
Further Reading
• Linehan, M. M. (1993). Cognitive-behavioral treatment of borderline personality disorder. Guilford Press - foundational work on treating borderline features with skills-based approaches.
• Fonagy, P., Gergely, G., & Target, M. (2007). The parent-infant dyad and the construction of the subjective self. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry - explores how early relationships shape personality development.
• van der Kolk, B. A. (2005). Developmental trauma disorder: Toward a rational diagnosis for children with complex trauma histories. Psychiatric Annals - contemporaneous work on childhood trauma’s developmental impact.
About the Author
Nicki R. Crick was a pioneering developmental psychologist at the University of Minnesota who specialized in childhood aggression, peer relationships, and personality development. Her work fundamentally changed how researchers understand relational aggression and emotional development in children.
Dianna Murray-Close is a clinical psychologist whose research focuses on developmental psychopathology, particularly how early adverse experiences shape personality and behavioral outcomes in children and adolescents.
Kathleen Woods contributed expertise in longitudinal research methodology and child development assessment techniques to this important study.
Historical Context
Published in 2005, this research emerged during increased recognition of developmental trauma's long-term impact on personality formation. It bridged child development research with clinical understanding of personality disorders, contributing to trauma-informed approaches to understanding childhood behavioral and emotional difficulties.
Frequently Asked Questions
Yes, children exposed to narcissistic abuse often develop emotional dysregulation, unstable relationships, and identity issues characteristic of borderline features as coping mechanisms.
Research shows that borderline personality features can emerge in middle childhood, often as responses to chronic stress, trauma, or dysfunctional family dynamics.
No, childhood personality features are often adaptive responses to trauma that can heal with appropriate therapeutic intervention and stable, nurturing relationships.
Narcissistic parenting creates emotional chaos, invalidation, and inconsistent caregiving that can lead to emotional dysregulation and relationship difficulties in children.
Yes, with trauma-informed therapy, survivors can learn emotional regulation skills, develop secure relationships, and heal from childhood personality adaptations.
Many behaviors labeled as personality disorder symptoms in children are actually normal responses to abnormal situations and trauma exposure.
Through their own healing work, learning healthy emotional regulation, and providing consistent, validating relationships for their children.
No, children respond differently to trauma based on resilience factors, support systems, and individual temperament, though many show some adaptive responses.