Reacting Positively To Bad Mouthing From Coparent, And Supporting Your Children Through This

Over and over again we hear our SPW members discuss how difficult they find managing conflict and in particular how they respond not react when one parent bad mouths the other parent to their children. We have put together practical and useful ways to approach this and react in a positive way whilst also supporting your child.

Do not bad mouth back

A tempting as it may be the first thing is not to bad mouth back. Especially in the moment when you may be angry hearing the hurtful and often untrue things being relayed to you by your children. 

Of course, this will be upsetting and you might feel upset and angry, along with your child. But it’s important to make sure that you calm down and that might be saying a holding statement like, ‘This is really important to me, and I can see you are upset about this, so I need a few minutes to think about this. Shall we have a cuddle.”

This also goes for when the coparent isn’t in the child’s life at all. Should they ever want to re-enter their lives, being positive about them will help. For comfort you can surround the child with loving friends and family.

Long term goals not short term gains 

Think about what you want to model as a healthy coparenting relationship for your children. They may one day also find themselves in a coparenting relationship. So it would be great for them to see both sides and behave with respect and kindness, but you can only control the message that is coming from your household. Teaching the child how to deal with difficult situations and people. If you're committed to positive and healthy coparenting, don't let your coparent distract you from that goal. You still have control over setting the overall tone of your own coparenting. 

Remember what is important is the long term mental health of your child and how you model healthy relationships to your children. 

This modelling might mean using: 

• Grey Rock techniques, or kindness by not getting into a text exchange. 

• Use the 24/48 rule. If it still matters in 24 hours then you have 48 hours to respond. 

• Remaining calm in the moment and not bad mouthing the other parent

• It may be that you have to do some deep breathing with your child to be able to give a response. 

Understanding from a child’s perspective

A child sees their parents as half of them, hearing negative comments is likely to make your child feel confused, hurt, upset and angry. They might feel really conflicted and uncomfortable about being in the middle of their parents. 

Remember that your child loves both parents often equally and doesn’t understand the conflict between you both. Feeling in the middle and torn can cause them to want to defend and feel really big emotions about the separation. 

“Children see themselves as belonging, attached to and part of each of you. They internalise that they are bad that half of themselves is bad.” Phillpa Parry. 

What you can do 

Focus on their self esteem. “What do you need from me? Advice, for me to listen or a cuddle.” Sometimes the child just wants to be able to express how they are feeling without a solution. This is a tricky one as a parent. 

“How did that make you feel, I don’t want you to be put in the middle of this, and it’s important that you are ok”

Reflective listening. “It sounds like you are a bit sad/ angry/ upset that mum/dad said those things.”

Providing a safe place to express their emotions and tricky feelings. Allowing these feelings rather than denying them.

Pain is an inevitable part of life, so keeping our children company and being with them to allow them to express their feelings is so important. It can be so comforting knowing that they aren’t alone navigating their way through these emotions. 

Sometimes these feelings are misdirected “You don’t love me.” This is where reassurance and extra love is needed, and they may be expressing this to you as their safe person, knowing that they are loved, and wanting to hear that back. But we really acknowledge how difficult it is to hear some hurtful things that children and young people say. 

“I’m really glad you could speak to me about this. It sounds really difficult all of these emotions that you are feeling. I love you.”

Building emotional intelligence

There is also an opportunity to build emotional intelligence in your children. Teaching them about different ways that people respond to big emotions. 

“Sometimes people find it difficult to deal with and express how they feel and it comes out in ways like this. I’m sorry you had to hear your mum/dad saying those things. I’m really glad you talked to me about it. “

You could even talk about something a bit less highly emotive like road rage, why someone might shout and scream in the car? They might be late for work, stressed or in a rush for an emergency. Get them involved in the conversation. You can also express that this isn’t right to shout and scream in the car at someone because of your emotions, but that it happens in life. 

You can teach critical thinking, “his/ her feelings are real, but feelings aren’t facts.’ Especially if the parent is telling lies about you, this is a good way to reframe the bad mouthing. 

Modelling

Model what normal healthy reactions look like, especially when faced with difficult situations and people. You can model traits like compassion, empathy and acceptance as well. Modeling how you would like them to behave in a similar situation. 

Modeling to them when you have arguments, how to listen to both sides, come to a solution as a team and what a genuine apology looks like. Imagine learning conflict resolution as children and how helpful this will be as an adult to them. 

It’s great to teach children about rupture and repair. That’s it’s ok to have disagreements and arguments but it’s how we work together to repair this afterwards. We can teach this as parents all the time, and as children they will have arguments with siblings and friends. 

“I lost my temper and I shouldn't have shouted, can we talk about it? Can I have a hug?” 

Even use the words, “How can we repair this?”

Set and teach boundaries

Supporting with boundary statements is different to the child defending you, as this is not their job and should be discouraged. This is only if the child wants this and would feel empowered by having this boundary mantras ready. Express that these can be used on both parents aswell, so if they hear something they don’t like you saying then they can non violently communicate this to you aswell. 

Walking through how they can talk to the parent about it, helping them set boundaries, for both parents:

“I feel sad when you say bad things about my mum/ dad.” 

“I don’t want you to talk to me about my dad/ mum this way.”

“I want you to speak with mum/ dad about this directly.”

You have the right to tell your mum/ dad you don’t like it when he talks about me and ask him to stop.

They are allowed to stay up as late as they want. You can just explain that “there are different rules for different houses” or simply state that you can’t do anything about what happens over there so you are just going to focus on how things are in your own home.

With parallel parenting building in boundaries can be helpful for parents with high-conflict or volatile relationships. In these types of arrangements, parents keep their interactions to an absolute minimum, typically by using a single, isolated platform for their communication. 

Try to have a conversation with the person doing the bad mouthing 

It’s important to ask your child if you want them to approach the other person, they may want to talk to you about the incident without any action or solution. They may be worried about making the parent angry and be telling you in what they see as a safe secure place. 

Sometimes this isn’t always the case, if it is repeated and you feel that it needs to be addressed in a calm, well thought out and not in the moment of hearing about the bad mouthing. 

You have to weigh up what you want to get out of communicating with the coparent, and what you think the realistic outcome will be. If it will be met with gas lighting, further lies or even manipulation and parental alienation then it is more important to build resilience and provide a safe space for your children to work through this. Try not to do this alone and reach out for support for you and your children.

When dealing with an abusive or narcissistic ex, you will need more support to be able to navigate your way through, and if you have any safeguarding concerns then we advise you speak to a solicitor about this, and check out our domestic abuse page for lots of organisations that offer support. 

A really important part of approaching the other parent, if you chose to, is making sure that the child isn’t part of the conversation. Make sure the child isn’t able to hear the conversation. They may have been the ones to tell you about the bad mouthing but the issue doesn’t involve them. 

Next make sure the child stays out of the middle of conflict. Messages or disagreements shouldn’t be relayed to the children, and definitely a message shouldn’t be asked to be sent through the child. Feeling caught in the middle is very stressful for children and is one of the most harmful aspects of parent conflict for children. 

Escalate to speaking to a Family Solicitor 

Again, don't hesitate to speak to your Family Solicitor or Barrister if you have concerns about what is being said, how your children are experiencing it, and what you can do to help make it stop.

Children are quick to figure out many of the narcissist’s manipulation tactics including gaslighting, speaking negatively about the healthy parent, putting siblings against each other or using the children as pawns to get to the other parent. The best thing you can do is model healthy behaviour, refuse to engage with the narcissist and let your children know that you are there for whatever they need.

See our other blogs on coparenting and visit our resource page for more advice and support HERE.