How to Protect Your Child from a Narcissistic Father As a parent, you want to do everything you can to protect your children. When they get a cut on their knee, you feel their pain.
When they come home from school with a bad report card, you feel their humiliation. If your child’s father is a narcissist and is in a cycle of abuse, you’ll feel like this is happening to you (and it likely is).
Protecting your child from their father is no easy task; you don’t want them to be traumatized by their abuse, but you also can’t sever the parent-child bond without causing lasting damage.
If your child is going to see their father and have a relationship with him, the best thing you can do is build your child’s resilience so that they can deal with some of their more troubling behaviors.
11 Ways to Protect Your Child from a Narcissistic Father
There are a number of steps you can take to protect your child from a narcissistic father — some will involve just you and your relationship with the father.
Others, on the other hand, focus on changing the child’s behavior or helping them better understand their father’s disorder.
Some of these tips will be most helpful for parents who are still living with a narcissistic parent, while others are more appropriate for those who are divorced but still need to raise children with a narcissistic parent.
The most important step is the one you have already completed, which is identifying the behavior of the narcissistic parent and thinking about the best options to protect your child from him.
The steps below are a great start, but don’t think of them as a checklist to complete.
They are a toolbox full of helpful options that can be customized to your situation and your child’s maturity level.
Suggested Reading: Do You Have a Narcissist in the Family?
1 Take the Blame Off
Once you realize that you have been raising your children with a narcissist, you will likely blame yourself for the damage done to your child. These thoughts and feelings are not only unproductive, they are also patently false.
Narcissists are incredibly cunning and will not reveal their true nature until it is too late.
This may be after you are married, have bought a house, or have children with them.
The point is that they have drawn you in and made it very difficult to escape. Not seeing this side of him from the beginning is not a flaw in his character.
Spending all your time thinking about what could have happened, and what it would be like for your child if they didn’t have a narcissistic parent, is time better spent focusing on legal solutions, flexibility for you and your child, and what you can do to limit interactions with the parent.
2 Stop Fights Before They Start
For many people, this may seem like giving in to the narcissist, but it becomes a viable solution if you consider how ineffective fighting with the narcissist is.
If a conflict arises between you and the narcissistic parent, do not belittle, ignore, or challenge them in any way.
Narcissists crave attention and always want to appear right about whatever they are fighting about.
Try to find a way to steer the conversation toward agreeing with them (even if it’s on a trivial point in the fight).
Let them know that their point of view is valued. There’s no need to give in to them, just make them feel like they’re winning the argument, even when you get the concessions you were looking for.
3 Stay Calm
This is a big ask because every interaction with a narcissistic parent is designed to elicit an emotional response that will reflect poorly on you.
He wants you to cry, scream, and resort to name-calling, which will be used against you when he tries to exercise more parental control or when he fights for child custody during a divorce.
You can better manage his tantrums by understanding how narcissists work. Don’t take his words personally; he says what he thinks will cause a reaction. By not reacting, you can throw him off balance.
Then try to map out the conversation based on your past experiences with the parent.
How does he typically respond to criticism and what might he say to hijack the conversation? By thinking about the conversation, you’re less likely to be caught off guard and fall into his trap.
This may sound cliché, but take a deep breath before responding.
These breaths will help slow down the argument, help you stay rational, and prevent you from being provoked.
4 Let Your Kids Be Angry
Living with a narcissist is a stressful experience; no one knows that better than you. Your children may feel the same way after a narcissistic rage attack, and bottling up their feelings can lead to sudden emotional outbursts.
But don’t take your child’s anger too personally. They’re just expressing their pain.
Sometimes they may direct their anger toward you, wondering why you didn’t get them out of a difficult situation. Explaining the complexity of your situation can be difficult, but do your best and don’t get upset if your child gets angry.
5 Limit Contact with the Narcissistic Parent
Every interaction with a narcissist is an opportunity for them to insult you, manipulate you, and turn the situation against you.
There are very few times when interacting with them is productive. So, if you’re co-parenting a child with a narcissist, your best bet is to limit the time you spend with them.
On phone calls, tell your children that they can call you whenever they want; letting them initiate the interaction removes the narcissist from the equation.
In face-to-face meetings, such as dropping off the kids for the weekend, limit conversations to things that involve the kids.
Letting your narcissistic parent know more about your personal life is bound to have negative consequences.
6 Don’t let your child blame themselves
Just as you tend to blame yourself for your partner’s bad behavior, so does your child.
Most children desperately want to please their parents, a trait that narcissists know all too well and exploit to their fullest.
Narcissistic parents want their children to look up to them, even worship them.
Children who show the right amount of respect and admiration are made into the golden child, the child who can do no wrong in their parent’s eyes.
This status has nothing to do with the child’s personal qualities, and everything to do with how the narcissist makes them feel.
When a child fails in school/sports/career, the parent withdraws support because their perceived failures reflect poorly on them.
A child who stops showing proper respect to their narcissistic parent will also have their status demoted until they come crawling back to them.
As the other parent, your job is to show unconditional love to the child, and to let them know that their value does not depend on how their parent feels that day.
For younger children, explaining this might be as simple as saying, “Dad is having a bad day, and it’s not because of anything I did.”
For older children, you can engage in deeper conversations, telling them that their behavior is not normal and stems from their own emotional issues.
7 Let them know they’re not alone
One of the most powerful ways narcissists control their victims is through isolation.
They assert control over the situation and manipulate everyone into believing their version of reality through manipulation.
They will shower their children with praise, building them up only to tear them down later, giving them all the power in the relationship.
Your children need to realize that their narcissistic parent treats many people poorly, which helps them understand that they did nothing wrong to deserve it.
You can share your negative experiences, but stay focused on what you did to make the situation go away.
Tell your children about healthy coping mechanisms and how they can benefit them.
8 Be open with them
This can be difficult, and the amount of information you share about the parent should take into account your child’s age and maturity level.
If you have a younger child and you mention that their father is a narcissist, there’s a good chance they’ll ramble on and repeat the newly learned word, sometimes in their father’s presence.
Things are bound to go badly when the father learns that you’ve outed him as a narcissist.
Instead, think about how the child perceives his father’s behavior. He’s worried about letting him down or upsetting him.
He needs to be told that his father’s behavior isn’t his fault and that he’s being overly sensitive and defensive with everyone.
In this context, the child can learn to avoid the wrath of his narcissistic father while growing into an emotionally stable and empathetic adult.
9 Don’t denigrate the father
After this last tip, this may seem contradictory, but there’s a difference between telling the truth about someone’s behavior and turning them into monsters. Remember, the goal is to protect your child, not to vent your feelings.
Unfortunately, unless you’re willing to go through with a divorce in order to gain full custody, the narcissistic father still has parental rights.
Bringing up negative feelings toward him won’t help your child. Instead, it will cause him to act in ways that feed his narcissistic tendencies, leading to more manipulative behaviors or harsh punishments for your child.
Over time, your child can form his own opinion of his parent, and he will feel more secure in his opinion if he comes up with it on his own.
Older children are more likely to ask questions that prompt you to reveal things about their parent that you otherwise wouldn’t. Always let the child initiate these conversations.
10 Model Helpful Behaviors
Narcissists oscillate between periods of love bombardment and emotional distance, leaving their children very confused.
Often, they will look to the one person who might actually understand how to deal with their parent—you.
Your children will notice how you act when their parent gets angry, and how you keep the conversation positive to prevent yourself from triggering their emotional triggers.
It’s a tightrope to walk, as your children may think this is how they should handle every interaction. Again, it’s important to know your child’s maturity level and what they can handle.
Given the unequal relationship between parents and their children, it will be difficult for them to model all of your behaviors.
Setting boundaries doesn’t work well when an adult can demand that a child do something without explanation.
11 Get some outside help
No one should ever need to navigate a narcissistic relationship alone—not you, not your child.
Everyone needs a support network, and that can take many different forms. If you feel safe with your friends and family, discuss what’s happening and get their perspective on where you should go next.
Unfortunately, narcissists work their way through your social network, poisoning your contacts with smear campaigns and doubt.
Often, you can’t be sure who to trust, because you don’t know who has manipulated them and turned them against you.
In this case, it’s best to seek professional counseling. Therapy will help you better understand the father’s mental state and what you can do to protect yourself and your child.
Your child could also benefit from some time with a therapist. If you don’t help him understand his father’s problematic behaviors now, it will be harder to fix them later.
ProtectingYourChildFromANarcissisticParentChallenge
No matter what steps you take, you’ll feel like you’re fighting a losing battle.
A narcissistic parent drains your energy so that you don’t have the willpower to fight them. If you can, free yourself and your child from the situation.
If you can’t, your best bet is to develop resilience, and protect yourself from the pain the father causes rather than actively fighting him.
Remember that none of this is your fault and you cannot change a narcissist who does not want to change. All you can do is work on yourself and help build a better future for your child.
