If you have been navigating the turbulent waters of co-parenting with a narcissistic or relentlessly high-conflict person, you already know the challenge does not affect only you. Your children are also trying to make sense of two homes, different expectations, conflicting messages, and an emotional dynamic they may not yet have the maturity to understand.
In the previous article, we explored strategies for managing a difficult co-parenting relationship. Now, the focus shifts to the young stars of our lives: our children.
How do we help them become resilient without expecting them to be stronger than the adults around them? How do we teach them to recognize and express their feelings without turning them against the other parent? How do we protect their individuality when one parent may attempt to control what they think, feel, enjoy, or say?
Building resilience is one of the most valuable gifts we can give our children, and its benefits extend far beyond the immediate challenges of co-parenting. Resilience is not simply the ability to “bounce back.” It includes learning how to understand emotions, adapt to change, trust personal judgment, ask for help, recover from disappointment, and continue moving forward without losing a sense of self.
By nurturing these abilities now, we help children manage not only difficult family dynamics but also future academic pressure, friendship problems, professional setbacks, relationship challenges, and the countless disappointments that accompany being human.
The goal is not to raise a child who never struggles or needs support. The goal is to raise a child who knows that struggle is not failure, that asking for help is not weakness, and that difficult experiences do not have to define the rest of their life.
Impact of Narcissistic Parenting
Before discussing the effects of narcissistic parenting, an important distinction must be made. Narcissistic personality disorder is a clinical diagnosis that should be made only by a qualified mental health professional. A former partner can be controlling, emotionally dismissive, self-centered, manipulative, or highly conflict-oriented without having a diagnosed personality disorder.
For the child, however, the label is less important than the behavior.
Children can be affected when a parent consistently prioritizes personal image, emotional needs, or control over the child’s developing identity. The child may feel valued primarily when performing well, agreeing with the parent, displaying the “right” emotions, or participating in activities that reflect positively on the parent.
When affection, approval, or peace seems dependent upon compliance, children may begin suppressing their authentic preferences. They learn to study the parent’s mood before speaking. They may say what they believe the parent wants to hear rather than what they genuinely think.
Over time, children living in this environment may struggle to trust their own perceptions. They may wonder whether their feelings are legitimate, whether their opinions matter, or whether disagreement makes them disloyal or unlovable.
Some children become perfectionists and people-pleasers. Others withdraw, rebel, or appear emotionally detached. Some become unusually skilled at adapting their personality to whichever adult is in the room.
These responses do not mean the child is weak or permanently damaged. They are often attempts to preserve attachment, reduce conflict, and feel emotionally safe within circumstances the child cannot control.
Risks to Child Development
Children develop their self-concept partly through the way the important adults in their lives respond to them. When they receive warmth, reasonable guidance, attention, and respect, they are more likely to experience themselves as capable and worthy.
When their emotions are repeatedly dismissed, their preferences are treated as defiance, or their achievements matter primarily because they enhance a parent’s image, children may struggle to separate their true identity from the role they have been assigned.
A child may begin believing:
“My feelings create problems.”
“I am loved when I perform well.”
“If I disagree, I will disappoint someone.”
“It is my responsibility to keep the adults happy.”
“What I want does not matter.”
These beliefs can affect self-esteem, decision-making, emotional expression, boundaries, and future relationships. A child who learns that love depends upon compliance may later find it difficult to recognize controlling behavior or advocate for personal needs.
That does not mean every child exposed to a controlling parent will experience lasting psychological problems. Children respond differently depending on their age, temperament, experiences, support system, and the presence of stable adults.
Research on childhood resilience repeatedly demonstrates the protective importance of having at least one dependable and supportive adult relationship. A calm, responsive parent cannot erase everything that happens elsewhere, but that relationship can provide a powerful emotional counterweight.
Harvard Center on the Developing Child
Your child does not need you to create a perfect childhood. They need to know there is at least one place where they are seen clearly, heard honestly, and loved without having to perform for it.
Scapegoating and Mental Health Outcomes
Scapegoating occurs when one family member is repeatedly blamed for problems that belong to the larger family system. A child may be labeled difficult, ungrateful, dramatic, disloyal, troubled, or responsible for creating conflict between the parents.
Once that label takes hold, ordinary behavior may be interpreted through it. The child’s disagreement becomes disrespect. Sadness becomes manipulation. A request for independence becomes rejection. An age-appropriate mistake becomes proof of a supposedly permanent character flaw.
A 2023 peer-reviewed study involving 504 Australian emerging adults examined perceived parental narcissistic traits, childhood scapegoating, anxiety, and depression. The researchers found associations between scapegoating and increased symptoms of anxiety and depression in young adulthood. The results should be interpreted carefully because the study relied on participants’ retrospective perceptions and could not establish direct cause and effect, but it reinforces the importance of preventing one child from becoming the family’s designated problem.
Children should be held accountable for their behavior, but accountability is not the same as assigning them a negative identity.
Instead of saying, “You are irresponsible,” address the forgotten assignment.
Instead of saying, “You always create drama,” address the specific behavior.
Instead of treating an emotional reaction as proof that something is wrong with the child, help them understand what happened and determine what they can do differently next time.
A child should never be required to carry the family’s anger, embarrassment, resentment, or unresolved conflict.
Fostering Open Communication
One of the most empowering things you can give a child in a high-conflict co-parenting situation is a home where thoughts and feelings can be expressed safely.
Open communication involves much more than asking questions. It means creating a relationship in which the child knows that honesty will not automatically lead to anger, interrogation, criticism, or another fight between the parents.
Encourage your child to talk about joy, sadness, frustration, embarrassment, confusion, and disappointment. These conversations do not always require a formal sit-down. Children often speak more freely while riding in the car, cooking, drawing, walking, playing with a pet, or getting ready for bed.
Ask open questions:
“What was the best part of your day?”
“Was anything difficult?”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Is there anything you want me to know?”
Then listen.
Do not assume every silence conceals a problem. Children need to know they are free to speak, but they also need permission not to speak until they are ready. Repeated questioning after time with the other parent can feel less like support and more like an investigation.
When a child shares something upsetting, try to manage your visible reaction. If honesty immediately produces anger, frantic messaging, or another parental confrontation, the child may decide it is safer to stop sharing.
Begin with simple reassurance:
“I’m glad you told me.”
“That sounds difficult.”
“You are allowed to feel that way.”
“You do not have to solve this by yourself.”
It is also essential to remember that a child can love a parent whose behavior is controlling or emotionally difficult. Your job is not to badmouth, diagnose, or convince your child that the other parent is a narcissist. Your job is to create an environment where the child feels safe enough to develop personal observations and express them without being pushed toward either parent’s narrative.
Avoid discussing your co-parenting frustrations with your child. Do not show them adult messages, ask them to carry information, or use them to confirm what happens in the other home. This places the child in an impossible loyalty conflict and undermines the emotional freedom you are trying to create.
The American Academy of Pediatrics advises separated parents not to criticize each other in front of their children, force children to take sides, or use them as messengers.
American Academy of Pediatrics
If your child reports a serious safety concern, remain calm, listen without suggesting answers, and seek appropriate professional guidance. Do not repeatedly ask the child to retell the story to different people unless directed by someone qualified to handle the situation.
Open communication should make children feel heard—not responsible for building a case.
By creating a judgment-free environment, you teach your child that emotions are normal, thoughts deserve consideration, and difficult experiences can be discussed without becoming disasters. These lessons support emotional intelligence, self-awareness, confidence, and the ability to form healthier relationships throughout life.
Strengthening Self-Esteem
Strengthening your child’s self-esteem is more than offering compliments. It involves helping them develop a stable sense of worth that does not depend entirely upon achievement, approval, or another person’s mood.
A child with healthy self-esteem does not believe they are perfect. They understand that they remain worthy when they make mistakes, lose, struggle, disappoint someone, or need help.
Here are some meaningful ways to nurture that foundation:
Encourage their interests: Children often develop confidence through activities they genuinely enjoy. Whether their interest is painting, sports, music, reading, science experiments, coding, animals, or something you do not fully understand, show curiosity and provide opportunities to explore it.
These activities are not merely hobbies. They allow children to experience success, frustration, practice, failure, improvement, friendship, and personal expression. Most importantly, they help children discover who they are outside the expectations of either parent.
Set achievable goals: Age-appropriate goals give children the opportunity to experience themselves as capable. The goal might involve finishing a school project, learning a new skill, improving at an activity, caring for a pet, or helping with household responsibilities.
Many children enjoy learning practical skills such as cooking, organizing, operating the washer and dryer, or preparing something for school—even if the white laundry occasionally turns pink. These experiences communicate trust and competence.
Celebrate effort and progress: Recognize accomplishments without making achievement the price of approval. Praise the persistence, creativity, preparation, courage, or judgment involved—not only the final result.
A child should know you are proud when they win, but they should also know you remain proud when they work hard and the outcome is disappointing.
Use positive reflection: Regularly remind your child of personal strengths and qualities. Discuss challenges by identifying what went well, what was difficult, and what could be tried differently next time.
Avoid framing every mistake as evidence of a flaw. The objective is not to prevent self-improvement but to teach that growth does not require humiliation.
Teach them to value their opinions: A child living with a controlling parent may feel that personal opinions are constantly corrected, challenged, or dismissed. Ask what your child thinks and take the answer seriously.
You do not have to agree with every opinion or allow children to make adult decisions. The lesson is that their voice matters and disagreement can occur without rejection.
Model self-respect and healthy self-talk: Children learn a great deal from the way parents speak about themselves. Constantly criticizing your body, intelligence, parenting, or abilities teaches children that self-attack is normal.
Let them see you acknowledge mistakes without destroying yourself over them. Demonstrate that adults can learn, apologize, make changes, and continue forward.
Create a supportive home environment: Your home should be a sanctuary where children feel safe, loved, and accepted for who they are. This does not mean eliminating rules or allowing disrespect. Safety is created through reasonable expectations, predictable consequences, emotional warmth, and the knowledge that affection will not disappear when a mistake occurs.
One creative way to encourage autonomy is to help children create a small personal retreat—a “child cave”—within their room or another appropriate area of the home.
Allow them to decorate and organize it according to their preferences. It might contain books, drawings, stuffed animals, photographs, music, craft materials, or anything else that helps them relax and feel connected to themselves.
This personal space provides more than physical comfort. It gives children an age-appropriate sense of control over their environment, especially when other parts of life may feel unpredictable.
Strengthening self-esteem is not simply a response to a difficult co-parent. It is an investment in the child’s future. Children with a stable sense of worth are better equipped to manage peer pressure, academic setbacks, relationship problems, and the inevitable failures that accompany growth.
The goal is to help children recognize that they are capable, worthy, and valued without requiring constant validation from either parent.
Teaching Emotional Intelligence (EI)
Emotional intelligence is the ability to recognize, understand, express, and manage emotions while also responding appropriately to the feelings of others.
For children living within a high-conflict family system, these abilities are especially valuable. Emotional intelligence helps them make sense of complicated experiences without assuming every uncomfortable feeling is dangerous or every disagreement is a catastrophe.
Identify and name emotions: Help children develop language beyond “fine,” “bad,” or “mad.” They may be disappointed, nervous, overwhelmed, embarrassed, lonely, frustrated, jealous, relieved, or confused.
Naming an emotion can make it less frightening and easier to manage. However, do not tell children what they feel. Offer possibilities and let them decide what fits.
Understand what is behind the feeling: Once an emotion has been identified, gently explore what may have triggered it. Avoid leading questions or assuming the other parent is responsible.
You might ask, “What part of that situation felt hardest?” or “What were you hoping would happen?”
The objective is to help children understand themselves, not collect evidence against someone else.
Encourage healthy emotional expression: Children can process emotions through conversation, drawing, writing, music, imaginative play, sports, dance, walking, or time outdoors. The natural world can be a remarkably effective source of calm for children and adults alike.
The activity itself matters less than giving the emotion a healthy place to go.
Develop empathy: Discuss how friends, family members, or characters in a story may feel and why. Help children understand that different people can experience the same event differently.
Empathy does not mean accepting harmful behavior. It means learning to recognize another person’s emotional experience without losing awareness of personal needs and boundaries.
Teach regulation and problem-solving: Help children discover how to calm their bodies and organize their thoughts when upset. Depending on their age and personality, this might involve deep breathing, counting, taking a break, physical movement, talking to a trusted adult, or spending time with a pet.
Then help them identify what they can control.
If they feel lonely, could they contact a friend, join a family activity, or work on a favorite hobby? If they feel overwhelmed by schoolwork, could they divide the assignment into smaller parts or ask a teacher for help?
Children cannot control every feeling or situation, but they can gradually learn that they have choices in how they respond.
Model emotional intelligence: Children learn by watching adults. If you are stressed, say so in an age-appropriate way and explain how you intend to manage it.
“I’m frustrated, so I’m going to take a few minutes before I respond.”
“I made a mistake, and I need to correct it.”
“I disagree, but I can still speak respectfully.”
This normalizes emotions while showing that feelings do not have to control the entire household.
Use positive reinforcement: When your child demonstrates empathy, communicates honestly, manages frustration, or attempts to solve a problem, recognize the effort.
The response does not need to have been perfect. Emotional intelligence develops through practice, reflection, and many imperfect attempts.
By teaching these skills, you provide children with tools that extend far beyond the immediate co-parenting situation. Emotional intelligence supports healthier friendships, stronger communication, improved decision-making, and greater resilience throughout adult life.
Establishing Routines and Stability
When you are co-parenting with someone unpredictable or controlling, creating stability in your own home becomes vital for your child’s emotional well-being—and for yours.
Children generally benefit from structure because it helps them know what to expect. However, stability should not be confused with rigidity. A safe home needs predictability, but it also needs warmth, flexibility, and room for ordinary life to happen.
Consistent daily routines: Establish a recognizable pattern for meals, homework, play, chores, and bedtime. The schedule does not have to operate with military precision. Work responsibilities, school activities, traffic, illness, and exhaustion will occasionally disrupt even the best plan.
What matters is that children generally understand the rhythm of the household. Dinner may not happen at exactly the same time each evening, but the familiar sequence of dinner, bathing, relaxation, and bedtime can still provide reassurance.
A stable emotional environment: Physical routines matter, but emotional predictability may be even more important.
Children should know that rules will not change dramatically based on a parent’s mood, that mistakes will not produce humiliation, and that affection will not be withdrawn as punishment.
A calm home does not mean nobody ever becomes angry. It means emotions are handled without making children responsible for regulating the adults.
Reassurance and open dialogue: Regularly give your child opportunities to discuss worries, successes, disappointments, and ordinary events. These conversations reinforce that their experiences matter and that support remains available.
Do not make every check-in about the other parent. Children also need space to talk about school, friends, interests, ridiculous jokes, pets, games, and the countless ordinary details that make up their lives.
Predictable transitions between homes: Moving repeatedly between households can be stressful, even when children love both parents. Whenever possible, keep drop-offs and pickups calm, brief, and predictable.
Prepare younger children for upcoming transitions. Help them gather what they need without making them responsible for managing adult logistics.
After they return, allow time to settle. Some children want to talk immediately. Others need food, a shower, physical activity, quiet time, or a reunion with the family pet before reconnecting.
Learn your child’s transition rhythm rather than assuming silence means something is wrong.
Balance flexibility and consistency: Children need dependable routines, but they also need to learn that changes can be managed. If plans shift, explain what is happening calmly and provide whatever certainty is available.
This balance teaches children that stability does not mean everything must go perfectly. It means they can trust the adults caring for them even when circumstances change.
By establishing routines and emotional stability, you give your child a reliable place to land. Your home becomes a sanctuary not because nothing difficult ever happens there, but because difficulty can be handled without fear, chaos, or emotional punishment.
Encouraging Social Connections
Children benefit from having a support system that extends beyond their immediate household. Friends, relatives, teachers, coaches, neighbors, counselors, and other trustworthy adults can provide affection, encouragement, perspective, and a sense of belonging.
I firmly believe children benefit from interacting with people of different ages. Each relationship offers a unique learning opportunity.
Younger children can encourage patience, responsibility, and leadership. Older mentors and relatives can offer guidance, wisdom, and a different form of companionship. These varied relationships help children understand that the world is larger than the conflict between their parents.
Foster friendships: Encourage children to develop and maintain healthy friendships. Friends provide companionship, emotional support, laughter, and a temporary escape from family tension.
Create reasonable opportunities for social interaction through playdates, school activities, community programs, or virtual connections. One reader arranged a regular “virtual tea time” for her daughter and a close friend who moved to Europe. Distance changed the friendship, but it did not have to end it.
Connect with extended family: Grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and other relatives can provide continuity and another layer of emotional security.
These relationships should support the child rather than become additional fronts in the parental conflict. Extended family members should not question children about the other home, criticize the other parent, or pressure the child to demonstrate loyalty.
Their role is to love the child, not join the case.
Participate in community activities: Sports teams, clubs, music programs, scouting, art classes, community groups, and other organized activities can help children feel connected to something larger than their family situation.
These experiences allow children to develop skills, collaborate with others, experience accomplishment, and build relationships based on shared interests rather than family conflict.
Promote hobbies and interests: Encourage children to pursue activities that reflect their genuine curiosity. A book club, robotics team, coding group, dance class, band, outdoor program, or volunteer opportunity can introduce them to peers and mentors who appreciate the same things.
These connections reinforce that the child has an identity beyond being the son or daughter of two parents who struggle to get along.
Model healthy social interaction: Let your children see you maintain friendships, ask for help, offer support, communicate respectfully, and repair misunderstandings.
Modeling does not require pretending every relationship is perfect. It means demonstrating how healthy adults manage differences without control, humiliation, retaliation, or abandonment.
Outside relationships should never be assembled as an army against the other parent. Their purpose is to give the child a broad, healthy network of people who know, value, and support them.
In a Nutshell
When co-parenting with a narcissistic or persistently high-conflict person, it is easy to become consumed with what happens in the other household.
You may worry about controlling behavior, rigid expectations, emotional manipulation, or the messages your child receives when you are not present.
The difficult truth is that you cannot control every wave created by the other parent.
What you can do is remain steady enough to help your child navigate them.
Your primary responsibility is not to convince your child that the other parent is wrong. It is to create an environment where your child can develop personal judgment, emotional awareness, confidence, and a sense of safety.
In your home, allow them to be heard without being interrogated, guided without being controlled, and corrected without being humiliated.
Protect their right to love both parents.
Listen when they speak.
Respect their developing preferences.
Give them dependable routines, meaningful responsibilities, supportive relationships, healthy outlets, and the freedom to become someone neither parent has completely designed.
Be the calm in and after the storm.
Your child does not need you to create a life without difficulty. They need you to demonstrate that difficulty can be faced without losing compassion, dignity, humor, or a sense of self.
You are not merely helping them survive a complicated childhood.
You are teaching them how to move through life’s challenges while trusting their own voice, seeking support when needed, and remembering that they remain worthy of love even when the people around them are struggling to love well.
