co-parenting with a narcissist

How to Help Your Children When Co-Parenting with a Narcissist

Sharing is caring

Co-parenting with a narcissist is definitely not fun for you, but it may be doubly difficult for your children.

Narcissists lack empathy and genuine love. They see the people around them as commodities to be manipulated and maneuvered for their own benefit.

With children, this can be disastrous.

You can, however, mitigate the negative effects of your partner’s or ex-partner’s narcissism on the children. This can be challenging, however, no matter the age of your children.

Young children are emotionally vulnerable, of course, but even your adult children will need some protection.   

The Danger of Narcissism for Children

There’s no way to soft sell it – a narcissistic parent can cause deep emotional damage in children.

It’s not dissimilar to the negative effects that alcoholism or other types of addiction have on families.

This is because, at its core, the emotional wound for children is the same – an emotionally absent parent that loved something else (themselves, alcohol, drugs) more than their own children.

Adult children of alcoholics, for example, develop very common and typical coping mechanisms as children, which end up as dysfunctional behaviors when they become adults.

Dysfunctional behavior might include literally looking for love in all the wrong places, self-sabotage, and poor coping skills.

According to Sharie Stines, Psy.D., “It is advised that time spent with any narcissist be limited because it engenders confusion, dissociation, brain-washing, desensitization to abuse, emotional dysregulation, and destruction to one’s sense of reality.” She further says this can actually contaminate the child’s “inner-working” model, which is still developing with regard to how relationships work.

Moreover, don’t be surprised if your children, especially as adults, end up siding with the other parent over you.

Narcissists are often master manipulators.

One of the biggest problems you may have when you’re co-parenting with a narcissist is dealing with the emotional cancer of the narcissist poisoning your relationship with your children.

For this reason, limiting time spent with the narcissist can be paramount, both to you and your children.

Maintaining a Healthy Distance from the Narcissist

If you are still living with or married to the narcissist, you may need to get out in order for things to improve.  Staying in an abusive marriage, especially when young children are involved, will not lead to a happy ending.

Read:  Long-Term Narcissistic Abuse Can Cause Brain Damage

There’s an idea about marriage that you should “tough it out” for the sake of your children. It’s one thing if the spouses in question are relatively healthy emotionally and are just going through a rough patch. In those cases, a marriage might be repaired.

Barring a miracle, this isn’t going to be possible with a narcissist.

In order for a failing marriage to be fixed, both parties need to acknowledge the problem and be willing to work on themselves as well as the marriage to improve things.

Narcissists won’t ever admit they are wrong. Or, if on some rare occasion they do, it’s usually an act of manipulation, not a genuine emotion or regret.

So, don’t wait for your narcissistic partner to have a “come to Jesus” moment, especially if they are abusive to you and/or the children.

Get out as soon as you can (call domestic abuse hotlines for help).

Co-parenting with a narcissist involves high-conflict parenting, and this is simply going to create scars in your young children that may take years to heal when they are adults later.

Dealing with Child Custody and Visitation with a Narcissist

Make sure you have a good lawyer if possible. You will want to try to get custody of the children, with only limited and supervised visitation with the narcissist.

If you are already divorced or separated, and you have joint custody, or worse, the narcissist has custody, you might want to talk to a lawyer about adjusting these arrangements.

Leaving the bulk of the parenting to a narcissist is a minefield you want to avoid, if possible.

As you may already know from experience, the narcissist may pull out the stops to win over you in court, including lying and manipulating the law to his or her advantage.

Be prepared.

Once the legal requirements have been fulfilled with regard to your co-parent seeing the children, you should protect yourself by giving the narcissist a wide berth.  

Consider Parallel Parenting Instead of Traditional Co-Parenting

If you want to avoid high-conflict parenting, one good option to consider is a type of parenting called “parallel parenting.”

According to Edward Kruk Ph.D.: “Parallel parenting is an arrangement in which divorced parents are able to co-parent by means of disengaging from each other.”

Dr. Kruk explains this involves limiting the direct contact in instances that they’re no longer able to respectfully communicate with each other.

In order to truly engage in this type of parenting, you will need strict boundaries set up and adhered to. You should get a neutral third party to help with this process. It doesn’t necessarily need to be a lawyer or a therapist. A professional divorce mediator may be able to help set up this type of parenting structure. 

3 More Ways to Mitigate the Negative Effects of the Narcissistic Parent on Your Children

Once you have set up the appropriate legal boundaries with the narcissist, you will still need to troubleshoot the issues that come up.

If you’re still in a living situation with the narcissist, being proactive about handling problems is even more important. Here are a few tips:

1. Don’t Get Sucked into the Narcissist’s Games

Narcissists thrive on attention, including negative attention.

They will likely try to do things to purposefully push your buttons and make you lose your cool. Do not give them the satisfaction of responding to their bait.

If you do get sucked into the narcissist’s trap, you are helping create drama that will impact the kids, either directly or indirectly. As difficult as it might be to avoid reacting to the malignant narcissist in your life, do your best to respond to challenges with grace, poise, and equanimity.

2. Avoid the Temptation to Say Bad Things About the Narcissistic Parent

Unless your children are older and have asked you to be honest with them, don’t delve into the narcissist’s psychology with your kids. This may be particularly tempting if you are in one of those periods where the child is caught up with the narcissist, desperately trying to win their love, and siding with them over you.

The problem with badmouthing the narcissistic parent is that it is likely to backfire. If your kids are in denial (even as adults), this may cause them to be mad at you. And the narcissist can spin this to make it look like you are the bad guy.

Having this type of anger and contempt won’t help you or your children in the long run. Working on emotionally detaching from the situation will be beneficial for all involved.

3. Focus on Building Up the Self-Esteem of Your Children

Deep down inside, your kids may be feeling lost or confused as to why one of their parents doesn’t truly love or care about them.

While you shouldn’t go overboard and spoil your children as a compensation mechanism, they will need a lot of love from you.

Help your children by supporting them in developing their skills, enjoying unique hobbies, and cultivating their own creative voice.

With the Right Approach, Your Children Will Ultimately Be Okay

The reality is that, no matter what you do, the narcissistic parent will likely have some sort of negative impact on your children.

Do not take this as a death sentence.

If you offer them healthy emotional support and get them into therapy as soon as possible, their chances of developing emotional resilience greatly increase.  It’s important to realize, however, that doing nothing will not help your child.  When a child grows up in an abusive and traumatic environment, the developmental impacts can have long-term implications.

Your children will probably have some trials and tribulations, like all kids do, but with your help, they can grow up and learn how to heal, especially when you remove them from toxic environments and give them your full love and support.

The best gift you can give your children is your own healing

Join my course The Essential Break Free Bootcamp

You will learn how to…

  • Begin living congruently with your desire to live a healed life without feeling guilty
  • How to implement ‘Extreme Modified Contact’ if you share custody with a narcissist
  • How to find your lost self, even years after narcissistic abuse
  • How to smash and sever emotional hooks that keep you prisoner
  • + so much more!

I will give you multi-media training (printables and videos) to help you set limits and create stronger boundaries against emotional manipulation that has caused you to act out of character.  Take the course on your own time, at your own pace. Your subscription never expires, and you can come back and review a lesson anytime you need.

Learn more here.

 


Sharing is caring

Leave a Comment:

11 comments
Monia Tempesta says March 9, 2020

I have a 5 years old boy and his father is a narcissist. We live separately since our boy was 2 years old and we have shared parenting. Should I needs to tell my son his father is a narcissist? What age is recommended to do so? How should I do I? What’s the best approach? How could help my son the most in order for him to have happy life and avoid for him to become an adult narcissist like his father?

Reply
REAL Self-Care Ideas for New Survivors of Narcissistic Abuse - Kim Saeed: Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program says January 15, 2020

[…] you share custody with a narcissist, you’ll need to incorporate something called Extreme Modified Contact. I have been using this […]

Reply
Lori says November 29, 2019

I was wondering if there are anyways I can live married to him and set healthy boundaries that work. I do not want to risk being able to be with my son 24/7 to monitor what goes on.
He is a narcissist with me and controlling with our son.
With that being said my son loves his father. and has told me he would live with him over me if we broke up.
He is 12
I find it easier to surrender my time with my son when my husband is home (to avoid conflict I do my own thing) he is the care taker of him because he just dominates everything but when he is gone working long hours I have all that time with my son to love on him and show him what normal is.
Ps
He has seen me lose it emotionally in the past that’s why I think he tends to think I’m the problem because dad is always self controlled with some outbursts of anger
Any advice

Reply
Home For The Holidays? How To Navigate A Narcissistic Family Member With Ease - Kim Saeed: Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program says November 19, 2019

[…] course, complete abstinence from such events may not be a viable option if you co-parent with small children and you want them involved in family […]

Reply
4 Ugly Faces of Narcissistic Financial Abuse - Kim Saeed: Narcissistic Abuse Recovery Program says August 26, 2019

[…] Read:  How to Help Your Children When Co-Parenting with a Narcissist […]

Reply
Cheryl says August 18, 2019

How do you prove to a judge that your ex is a narcissist & the more he’s around the kids, the more damage to them there will be? I really want the answer. There is practically No Help, No Hope, because it seems to be unrecognized as the serious factor It Is!

Reply
Anonymous says January 13, 2019

Hi this has been the most painful experience of my life ever. I left my husband in 2012 and we divorced may of 2013. I had no idea that he was I believe a sociopath seeing he doesn’t need constant adoration and attention like a narcissist and I don’t recall those over the top ups and down ever but there truly was some signs that I always just thought he can be a jerk, well I was blamed for everything, he was controlling but not so much at the beginning but became more apparent to me after both kids were born and we were playing tag team with shift changes. He worked full time and I worked part-time almost full time at times because I waiteressed but the more I liked my work and was telling me how I get requested a lot things started to change and I remember my son was 6 and my daughter was 4. But he started accusing me of cheating and that was the beginning to to end of a peaceful, Happy life as I have known it so far. This went on for 2 years and other things at my place of work took place like he threatened my co-workers by social media and he was stalking me. I became scared because he had raped me like 4 times he was being crazy I was sleep deprived he never let me sleep and he was drinking. I wasn’t allowed to do much . I remember after telling him I’m not cheating and please Believe me became I need to quite my job it was him or my job and I didn’t do it cause I made decent money. It was hell now he was saying to friends family and kids that mommy was cheating. I left him March 2012. So after the divorce which wasn’t a pleasant experience at all but it was done with him never going away my attorney told me to not talk to him and I said he just shows up and it’s was uncomfortable. Anyways so my ex was still drinking and so an incident took place and instead of the state trooper arresting him with both kids while intoxicated they let him go and made him swear his mom would drive. I was shocked when I found out and tried to get the courts aware of his driving while intoxicated and that didn’t work because of the police not doing their job. So he never co-parented and always made my life harder and impossible. Every year became worst I had kids in therapy.. but too much to explain. All I know is I made sure the kids had a safe loving home with me which they didn’t feel it at their dads. So from December 2015 to February 2016 there were 3 Dcf cases against my ex and the kids being traumatized at his house with his gf. So the kids each case were threatened by their dad in which they lied for the sad because he freaked them out. So I by the 3rd Dcf case after once again he Made our daughter lie and if she didn’t listen to him he was gonna kill her which I learned about this way after I lost the kids.. I was labeled an abuser and neglectful and I also know that the Dcf workers lied on transcripts about me and the kids medical and educational neglect which I never ever neglected them ever. But it did not matter anymore and the therapists even tried to get Dcf worker to stop it with me I had to do an evaluation like my ex and I had clean urines like my ex but they harassed me and told me I tampered with it and I was shocked and Anyways I never experienced anything like it and now I can’t help my kids . My ex has destroyed my life I lost my friends from my childhood and family that all chose to Believe him and I see the kids now but he’s totally taken over their brains and it’s so upsetting and wtf everyone turned their backs on us. My kids were traumatized and so many disgusting things happened at their dads and Dcf never believed it to be true because too far out there. Wtf they don’t get the right training and only cause damage that is irreversible and the kids have like the Stockholm syndrome. I wish I could talk with you more and explain everything. I suffer c-ptsd and physical ailments from all the ongoing abuse .. I have been hurting and worry all I know is he uses my son 13 to talk to like he’s a man and he’s 13. It’s insane what my ex got away with. I’ll never understand why Dcf is even a reliable place to help children all they did was abuse my kids and ruin their lives cause my brain is like mush now from so much pain and worrying. He’s so scary to me and I don’t want him to smear me or mentally hurt the kids anymore but new horizons didn’t help me during this time either so I don’t believe there is any place that truly helps ever.

Reply
Lyn says April 15, 2018

My divorce after a 30 year marriage to a narcissist was final in February. I found navigating “gray rock” difficult (as true “no contact”, in the midst of legal proceedings, was not possible, even though that is what I desired most). This was complicated by an obvious (and confessed) profound jealousy that my ex harbored in regards to my relationship with our two college aged daughters. I felt I had to be honest with them about the unhealthiness of our marriage and the reasons for my as-close-to-no-contact-as-possible behavior, and that I intended for it to remain that way forever, which I warned would make “life events” in the future awkward at best. The first life event we had to endure was the college graduation of my youngest. Because she has a degree in psychology, I felt comfortable with the fact that she could comprehend the complexities of the situation, yet I am cognizant that even though the girls are adults, it may precipitate their own journeys into some painful truths in their pasts, and that dealing with the new family dynamics wouldn’t be easy. The decisions I made and the example I set for them by not leaving the marriage is the biggest demon I have to battle. I just have to trust in all of our individual healing journeys, and in their wisdom, strength, and high emotional intelligence to heal and learn from the past and to have healthier relationships in the future, including implementing healthy boundaries with their father.

Reply
Holly says January 10, 2018

This is tough, I got slightly more time with the kids than he did. Now he is claiming that I am evil for withholding the children, he is sparking a campaign via the kids about how I am actively taking them away from him. He appealed the court decision and lost, then tried to take it to the state supreme court (it was denied). He is part of several fathers’ rights groups, going so far as to lobby state legislators for a change in laws because he was so unfairly treated. (Never mind that we had a 50/50 mediation that he turned down, thankfully; that I offered 50/50 to settle out of court that he turned down, thankfully.) I am grateful that we have the decision we do now, although I would like him to have even less time with the kids. I do my best to follow these tips, but it is difficult to stay the course. We have a long road ahead of us, with him threatening to go to court every few years until they are adults.

Reply
Calinda says January 10, 2018

I am newly divorced from an off-the-charts narc. His young adult children (still college age) are so upset with his outlandish behavior that they have not spoken to him in over a year. He destroyed our finances and left me holding the bag. Now, I am presently struggling to make ends meet – mainly because as a family unit we do not want to accept his financial help since it will most certainly come with strings or abuse. He, on the other hand, is enjoying a large salary free from all of the costs associated with his old life – house, family etc. He just offered to buy my youngest child a car; he thinks that he can use the car to weasel his way back into her life. Thanks for this post – it reminded me that the money or his help for that matter is just not worth it.

Reply
Melissa says December 26, 2017

Reading this..is exactly what I have been going through this year with my 12yo son. I was never married to his father.& only dated a couple of times.but he has made my life hell.especially since he became a reformed alcoholic & claimed inheritance off his late mum. I am his next head hunt.he has brain washed my son & given him everything a 12yo would want not to mention getting my son to take his t.v & Xbox I bought him last Christmas out of my home when I wasn’t there.soo many dictating emails written like a true narcissist..thankfully I have had great friend support or I wouldn’t know where I would be I am praying for the strength in 2018 to find a good lawyer.somethings got to give!!!

Reply
Add Your Reply