Navigating Narcissism: Practical Tips for Co-Parenting with a Difficult Ex by Hero Lomas

While it would be great for children if their parents remained friends and even holidayed together after a split, that is not the reality for most people. If you are dealing with a difficult ex that sort of relationship is simply impossible.

What is a narcissist?

Narcissist has become somewhat of a buzzword in popular culture in the last 5 years, a label generously attributed to anyone with less than desirable personality traits. But what actually is a narcissist? More importantly, how does one co-parent with one?

Narcissism starts in childhood, it can come from experiencing trauma and abuse in early childhood, as well as an excess of unrealistic praise. Traits include a grossly inflated sense of self-importance, as well as entitlement, manipulative tendencies, and a lack of care about anyone else in their life.

Narcissism in co-parenting

A narcissistic co-parent can cause issues in the other parent’s relationship with the child. Natural love-bombers, a narcissist will seek to lure and control the child with lavish gifts, fabulous holidays and excessive attention.

It can be upsetting to be cast as the ‘boring parent’. However, in the long term, what is truly important is the stability you provide. The children will come to recognise the difference between conditional and unconditional love.

Allow yourself to trust in your children’s perception of events. If you have been subjected to narcissistic abuse, it can be tempting to speak negatively of your ex-partner to the children, to warn them, and validate your own experience. This is particularly hard when the other parent is denigrating you to the children. However, this can be counterproductive and emotionally damaging for your children. Again, it is important to think of the long-term relationship, your stability will eventually show in comparison to the narcissistic parent.

You have to accept that with a narcissist you may have to parallel parent rather than co-parent. You can only control the time that they are with you.

Communicating with a narcissistic parent

Narcissists tend to indulge in creating elaborate lies that suit their narrative. If you are receiving communications from them, designed to make you feel attacked and inferior, it is important not to react. You may feel the need to rebut their allegations, in case of later court proceedings.

There is no need to do this, a judge will rarely comb through text and email chains between co-parents. Identify the concrete, practical issues regarding the children that need to be replied to, and simply ignore anything irrelevant.

A co-parenting app can be helpful in keeping all communication in one place, useful if you need to look back at what was actually agreed. Messages in the apps can never be edited or deleted.

How to protect yourself

Children have a right to a relationship with both of their parents, but you can minimise the time you have to interact with the narcissistic co-parent. Many things can be worked out initially in order to avoid time-consuming logistical planning further down the line. Pick-up and drop-offs can be established early on, with a consistent time and place, there will be little reason for contact between co-parents. The school is a great location for the changeover, which can be facilitated by teachers or the children themselves, if they are older.

If plans go awry, it can be easy to fly off the handle and react to the disruption. Often, after going through divorce proceedings, we can be in fight or flight mode, feeling sensitive and sick of ongoing disturbance from our ex-partner. In this situation it is important to examine our reactions, particularly if dealing with a narcissistic co-parent. You must ask yourself, is my reaction going to help the situation? Or simply provide fuel to the narcissistic blaze?

A calm dismissal of their actions can go a long way to avoiding upset and conflict. In the way of primary school bullies, if the narcissist learns there will be no reaction, they will simply get bored and stop.

A narcissist will never change. You just need to manage your expectations and control your own behaviour.

Top tips for parenting with a narcissist:

1.      Don’t criticise the other parent – your children will work it out in the end;

2.      Get a court order or a detailed parenting plan in relation to contact arrangements – the narcissist won’t stick to it exactly but it will help;

3.      Minimise contact with the narcissist – aim for handovers at school or with the children directly if they are older;

4.      Go grey rock – try not to react to any of their antics. ‘Noted. Thanks’ or a thumbs up emoji is a perfectly adequate response to most irrelevant correspondence;

5.      If the situation is particularly bad, consider a parenting course. Courses such as The Co-Parent Way Co-parenting coach | Co-parenting support | The Co-Parent Way (thecoparentway.com) can be done alone and will help you deal with any contact issues in a way that is as healthy as possible for you and children;

Finally - don’t beat yourself up because you don’t do divorced parenting like Gwyneth Paltrow and Chris Martin. Maintain your boundaries with the other parent and focus on creating a loving and caring relationship for your children when they are with you.