Many victims lose sleep as they worry about the harm that their partner, or ex-partner, is causing their children. Each child of a narcissist needs lots of help. Narcissists are manipulative, covertly cruel, and unwilling to respect boundaries. How can mothers help protect their children from the toxic influence of a narcissistic father?

If you need support, learn about Betrayal Trauma Recovery Group Sessions.

5 Ways To Help The Child Of A Narcissist:

1. Learn why the narcissist does what he does.
2. Invite people into your circle who can support your children.
3. Learn how to use effective strategies and boundaries.
4. Knowing that not having contact with an abuser is best.
5. Create peace inside of yourself.

Transcript: 5 Ways To Help The Child Of A Narcissist

Anne: I have a member of our community on today’s episode, we’re going to call her Rose. She reached out to me and wanted to know how narcissism affects children. So I invited her to come on the podcast and share her story. As she shares her story, I’m going to point out five ways to help the child of a narcissist.

Welcome Rose.

Rose: Thank you. I’m so happy to be here today.

Anne: We’re grateful that you would take the time to reach out.

First Way To Help The Child Of A Narcissist: Learn Why The Narcissist Does What He Does.

Anne: So Rose, before you understood that your husband and then ex was a narcissist. What was going on in your home and with your kids?

Rose: To start the story, I probably should have never married him in the first place. Unfortunately, I met him when I was 18, so I didn’t know anything about narcissistic people. He broke up with me a lot of times while we were dating. And I’m not sure why I stayed with him. I think I’m sort of a helping type personality. So I guess I felt like I could fix him or change him so that he treated people with kindness and respect.

Anne: That’s so common for victims of narcissistic abuse, because they don’t understand what’s going on.

So that is the first way to help the child of a narcissist: To learn why the narcissist does what he does.

That’s why I wrote the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop to explain in detail. Why the narcissist does what he does. Often people think the solution is just getting to know them better and spending more time. While you’re dating, but narcissists are so good at manipulation and hiding who they are. That women can even be married to a narcissistic man for 5, 10, 15, even 40 years, and not recognize what they’re looking at.

If they don’t know what to look for. So that’s the first way. Learn about why narcissists do what they do.

Rose’s Marriage & Realizations

Anne: Rose, in your case, can you talk about how long you were with him before you marry and the length of your marriage? And what behaviors tipped you off that something was wrong?

Rose: We dated for five years. Then we were married for 18. He didn’t help much with the kids. He was always angry. I saw the effects of his yelling on the kids. They were afraid of him. And never knew when he was going to blow up. They were afraid of men. It was like walking on eggshells. And I really didn’t trust him around the children. Honestly, like if he watched TV, he wouldn’t be watching the children.

I started realizing it wasn’t a healthy relationship, probably when the kids entered kindergarten. That somehow I needed to get out of there, and I wasn’t sure how. I had no relatives around, so it was really hard for me. I didn’t even consider it for a long time. But then one night he got really, really angry with the kids for breaking something. And when I tried to intervene, he almost threw a screwdriver at me. That was the breaking point.

So I took my kids, I took some clothes and photography equipment, and left. Unfortunately, we stayed in the same neighborhood as him. Because I wanted to keep everything the same for the kids, I found a teaching job. But over the next couple of years, it was a struggle for me to teach full-time and help my children get the support and help they needed. Because all three of them had issues, and probably their biggest issue is self esteem, relating to being a child of a narcissist.

Low Self-Esteem For A Child Of A Narcissist

Anne: Talk about why his behavior affected their self-esteem, the types of things that a child of a narcissist would experience, and then how they reacted to it and internalized it.

Rose: Well, as a narcissist, he was always right. He did not listen to anything they said. He would call them names and belittle them. If they had a problem, he would just ignore it, or he would make them feel bad for even having a problem. I remember one time my middle daughter had lice, and he literally just ripped the comb through her hair. He was so angry at her for having that, trying to get the little nits out of her head, and just ripped out her hair in the process.

You never knew what was going to set him off. Because of that, they all have low self-esteem, because they can never win over his trust and never had his support. My two oldest daughters used to play field hockey, and he never wanted them to play on a travel team. Once we separated, he wouldn’t go to their games. He refused to pay for any of that.

He still really doesn’t go to their games. They just knew that he did not support them. If they got a good grade on a paper, even now, if they make the honor roll or they’re in all honors classes, they don’t even tell him because they know he just really doesn’t care.

First Way To Help: Understanding Narcissism

Rose: He withholds love. So if he gets angry at them, normally every night he says good night to them through a text, so he won’t text them good night. He’ll just ignore them for a few days or a week. And then it leaves them wondering, “What did I do wrong?” Or why is Dad mad at me? Or why is he not communicating and saying he loves me?

Anne: Oh, I’m so sorry. Poor kids. That is so heartbreaking. Yeah, when you face this with your kids, knowing why they do what they do is key. Because if you know why the narcissist is acting this way toward your children, it can help you know what to do.

So, again, the number one way to help the child of a narcissist is to learn why that narcissist is acting the way he is. And again, the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Living Free Workshop takes women through that step-by-step, so that you know exactly what’s going on.

And you’re just now learning about the Living Free Workshop, which I’m so excited for you to go through. Now that you’ll have access, let’s talk about the things that you felt like you succeeded at, even without knowing strategy. What did you find helpful?

Second Way To Help A Child Of A Narcissist: Invite People Into Your Circle Who Can Support Your Children

Rose: I work as a teacher in a city school. And so I work with children who have been abused mentally and physically, and I’ve had some trauma training. One of the biggest things we learned is that when the kids come in, no matter what their age, if they have had a rough night, they might need to talk to somebody, or they might need to take a nap, or whatever they’re dealing with, you as a teacher need to realize.

Hey, something happened with this child. They might not be up to steam today to do this, that, and the other thing. And so if my kids had an issue with their dad, and it was something that had made them cry the whole night before, or just out of sorts, for whatever reason, I would email their teacher and let them know.

“Hey, this is happening with their dad. Can you please keep your eye out, are they okay?” I would ask if they need to talk to somebody, like a therapist at school. Even in high school, I did that.

Anne: So this is the second way to help the child of a narcissist. I’m going to talk about strategy in a minute. because when you do it, you need to do it strategically. One of the things I found problematic was when my children described to people the abuse that they were experiencing.

Challenges With External Support

Anne: Some people would respond by saying to my children. “Oh, well, your dad loves you very much.” And I was like, please don’t tell my children that the abuser loves them, because I don’t want them confused about what love feels like. So I would say, “Oh, you are absolutely lovable, but I’m so sorry. He’s not capable of love. That’s not what love should look like or feel like.”

Having adults who understand that around your kids, so that they can support them to help them know. “It’s not, you. You are a wonderful, awesome kid. Your dad has some brain problems, and he’s not capable of seeing how amazing you are.”

The second way to help the child of a narcissist is to invite people into your circle who can support your children. But only invite the people who understand this type of abuse. The Living Free Workshop has a section about how to find healthy people to help your kids. It includes step-by-step instructions about how to find these safe people, because we’ve all experienced when unsafe, unhealthy people make it worse for our kids.

How old are your kids now?

Rose: They’re 18, 16, and 13. They’re supposed to see him every other weekend, but the 18 year old now is off on her own at college, and once they turn 18 where I live, they don’t have to have a set schedule. My middle daughter is supposed to go every other weekend, but she hasn’t gone in months because she has a job, and she makes sure that she’s working on those weekends.

Preferential Treatment Of One Child

Rose: Now, my son is the golden child. The narcissist usually has a golden child. So I think he is the one that my ex-husband feels closest to. And so he treats him the best. He buys him things, and so he still goes because he’s only 13 and can’t drive yet or anything. But my daughter, who went to college, she’s 18, my ex-husband, didn’t pay for anything.

He didn’t pay for anything for the dorm room, he didn’t buy any books. He told her he’s just not paying for any of it, and he’s not. So it’s like he’s just dropped her, he doesn’t support her in any way. Which of course still affects her self-esteem.

Anne: Yeah. And that goes back to the number one way to help the child of a narcissist. Because if you understand that they just discard anyone, who’s not “useful” to them.

So when a narcissist dad can use his child to make himself look good. And take them to church, and everyone at church thinks he’s a good dad, or take them to a family party, or even just to the grocery store. He can just walk up and down the aisle with this kid, and people smile and tell him, “Oh, you’re such a good dad.” Then great, he’s got a use for them.

But when he perceives that the children aren’t useful for his image or aren’t useful in some other way, he loses interest in his own children or anyone else really quickly.

Third Way To Help The Child Of A Narcissist: Learn How To Use Effective Strategies and Boundaries

Rose: Right. It affects the children. I just feel so bad for any child of a narcissistic parent. Because I see what my kids are going through, and they all have anxiety, all three of them. It’s a long road ahead, because all three are people pleasers. They’re just dying for his attention. Which makes me sad.

Anne: It is sad. It’s heartbreaking to see these kids try to get blood out of a turnip. Yeah. So the third way to help the child of a narcissist is to learn how to use effective strategies and boundaries. So back when my children were dealing with their father’s narcissistic abuse, I was praying and praying because I’ve experienced his post divorce abuse for eight years. And my children were also being abused this whole time. It was horrific.

So in my prayers, I asked the question. What strategies do I need to know and implement that will completely deliver my children from this abuse and also deliver me? And this is actually where the strategies I teach in the Living Free Workshop came from. back before I put them into the workshop. When I discovered them, I implemented the strategies. And they worked. It was like a miracle.

I was able to completely deliver my children from his narcissistic abuse. That was eight years post divorce. So it took me a while to figure it out. And then I was like, is this just a fluke? Is this just me? So I tested the strategies with other Sheroes to see if it would work with them. And we were able to duplicate that success. The women I worked with reported back to me that these strategies helped them.

Rose’s Experience With Boundaries

Anne: So even though you don’t know the strategies in the Living Free Workshop yet. Can you talk about your own experiments with boundaries so far?

Rose: I did not have boundaries. I am so sad to say that I did not even realize what boundaries were until a couple of years after I left him. I was just kind of in a fog. After you deal with a narcissist for a while, you just are dead inside. I just try to not let him upset me. But what’s happened is that he won’t respond to anything, a text, an email, nothing. And so if there’s a problem with the children, it has to go through my son .

With my oldest daughter, especially when he ignores her or attempts to manipulate her, we have very open communication in our family. And so all three kids talk to me all the time, and especially about him, if they have an issue or problem. And so I will flat out tell her, look, he’s trying to manipulate you. You need to stick to whatever your original plan was, or tell him how you feel. And sometimes he won’t respond to her.

Anne: Yeah, that’s why the third way to help the child of a narcissist is to have boundaries yourself. So that they can see your example and see boundaries in action. Because time and time again, narcissists continue to try to hurt us. They never give up trying to cause chaos and harm.

Rose: How do you deal with that?

Handling Abusive Communication

Rose: Like when my ex-husband actually sends me something, it usually sets me off, because either the tone or whatever he’s saying, it’s not nice. When you hear those lies, how do you not get upset about it?

Anne: It makes sense that it sets you off, because when he sends that, it’s actually another abuse episode. The intent is to hurt you. It’s impossible not to be harmed when you’re being abused. And that’s what’s happening. Your desire to prove what’s true. To confront him about all his lies. That is the most natural form of resistance to abuse. So you’ve historically been doing everything right, because the entire time you’ve been resisting his abuse.

You just didn’t understand that there were things that were a little more effective, but I don’t want you to blame yourself, because you’ve always been resisting the abuse. You’ve always been trying to protect yourself. The Living Free Workshop covers the different ways of thinking about the situation to shield your mind and your emotions from the harm. But there are also strategic ways to respond to these messages. Each child of a narcissist needs extra care.

So when women are done with the lessons in the Living Free Workshop, they’ll have access to the Message Workshop, where I teach women how to respond to abusive messages at btr.org/message. That one’s actually not available until women have finished the lessons in Living Free because they build on each other and you have access to that.

Yeah, but the answer is if he’s still using his messages to abuse you, which is exactly what’s happening in your case. You’re going to be harmed every single time. There’s no way to be abused and not be harmed.

Fourth Way To Help A Child Of A Narcissist: Knowing That Not Having Contact With An Abuser Is Best

Anne: Does that resonate with your experience?

Rose: Yeah, he did a lot of gaslighting. So something would happen. He would deny it, and I would keep fighting to get him to say, Oh, okay. I see your side. Yeah, you’re right. But of course, that never happened. And I’m still kind of like that. I want him to acknowledge the truth and it really drives me crazy. It really upsets me.

Anne: Totally, totally. The strategies in the Living Free Workshop and the Message Workshop help ground you in reality. Women say it’s night and day difference between that and what they were trying to do before.

Rose: Right, well, I could do that if he actually contacted me, but. It’s more like the opposite, where I need him to pay a bill. And so I will send it to him or email him about it. And he just doesn’t respond.

Anne: So this is the fourth way to help the child of a narcissist. It’s knowing in your heart that not having contact with an abuser is better. Even though it’s common to think, I want him involved. I want him to contribute. That’s always going to bring abuse with it. So that fourth way to help the child of a narcissist is to realize they’re actually better off with him not writing back and leaving you alone. Then they would cause all the chaos, because they can’t be involved in a peaceful way.

This leads to the fifth way to help the child of a narcissist.

Fifth Way To Help The Child Of A Narcissist: Create Peace Inside Of Yourself

Anne: The fifth way to help the child of a narcissist is to create peace inside of yourself. No matter what’s happening outside of you no matter what he’s doing, and this is impossible to do. When he’s abusing you because he wants to affect you. We talked about that a little earlier. So, this is how to get rid of that inside of yourself.

I remember way back when, before my kids were delivered, At the time I thought, you know, things are getting better. They’re improving. I was feeling good inside. I was feeling peace. And he picked them up for their weekend with him. I was looking forward to a wonderful weekend. And I had a wonderful weekend. When they returned home, they were devastated. They told me a horrific story about how he lied to them the whole weekend.

He tried to manipulate them, harassed them, and kept talking about me in ways they knew were not true. It was upsetting to them. I was feeling so peaceful and good. And I thought things were maybe getting better. Then he, maybe energetically, could feel how peaceful I was feeling and just wanted to drum up chaos. Now I know exactly why narcissists choose to do this. Being a child of a narcissist isn’t easy.

But this was back before, and as I thought and pondered why. One of my questions was can I create peacefulness inside myself despite what he’s doing?

Creating Peace Despite Chaos For A Child Of A Narcissist

Anne: And so that’s actually one of the strategies to create peace on the inside to deliver our own emotions from the chaos. And that’s why I wrote the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Meditation Workshop. It was to get rid of his voice in my head. and get rid of the trauma in my body. And I actually wrote those meditations for myself, because I couldn’t find meditations anywhere else that fit our situation exactly.

When I say our, I mean, women who were going through this. So those meditations helped me so much. I wanted to make them available to everyone. That helped me rid the trauma of my body so that I was more capable and calm to find safe people to rely on.

Rose: I’m trying that tonight, yeah.

Building Self-Esteem In Children

Rose: I would like to bring up all their self-esteem and let them know that they’re worthy. My oldest daughter especially doesn’t feel good about herself. And I wish she would feel good about herself. She had been struggling with this for so long that I knew before she went to college, I needed to help her figure out what was going on. He refused to pay for those bills.

And how do you think that makes her feel? Once again, he’s not supporting her, lowers her confidence and just makes her feel like, why doesn’t dad support me? I just say, I don’t know. I wish he would. And my middle daughter too. She has a lot of anger. She did. She’s getting better now that she’s 16, but she also has low self-esteem.

And my son too, I just wish that they knew how worthy they were of other people’s love and that they didn’t have to be people pleasers to have people like them. That they should be able to be who they are and, they’ll find other people that, have common interests and be friends.

Anne: Now that you have access to the Betrayal Trauma Recovery Meditation workshop, hopefully that will help build that up on the inside to strengthen your internal defenses, and hopefully the kids’ internal defenses stronger. Each child of a narcissist needs to be strong.

Focusing On Positive Relationships

Anne: I heard this motivational speaker say this a long time ago. She said, “Two out of 10 people will not like you. So never, ever worry about those two people.” Many people spend all their time and energy focused on the two people who don’t like them, so they miss all the love, happiness, and peace they could get from the eight out of the ten people. So only spend your time and energy on the 8 out of the 10 safe people.

In my case, that’s probably more like six out of 10 people don’t like me. So I focus on the four people that do, and I don’t worry about the other six. And I find the peace and safety here with my tribe. I’m grateful for our listeners, who apparently like me because they listen. So I’m so thankful and honored that you listen to this podcast.

I have found so much peace there, and I think that’s good for children to know too. They have to deal with many issues because they are a child of a narcissist. Like, there’s always a situation where someone doesn’t like you. In your case, it’s your dad. Let’s focus on people who like you. Your grandma, your friend, your neighbor, like, all these other people are worth your time and energy.

Rose: Oh, I know. I have found that some of my friend’s husbands. Or the kid’s friend’s husbands, have been wonderful role models for my kids and also coaches. I’ve had some amazing coaches and dads step up and take my kids under their wing. So they can see what a person who doesn’t lie or a person who isn’t a narcissist looks like.

Finding Help For Your Children

Anne: Yeah, being around safe people is one of the best ways to help our kids understand who is safe and who is not. Every child of a narcissist needs help.

Rose: Right. Hopefully open their eyes. It took so long for me to see. It takes a long time.

Anne: Agreed, especially when you’re just poking around in the dark. Trying things that you think might work, but you don’t know exactly if they will work or not. They haven’t been tested. My hope is that women learn the strategies I teach in the Living Free Workshop and the Message Workshop. And when they create peace inside themselves, maybe through the meditations I wrote in The Meditation workshop.

Then it won’t be so much work, because these strategies and tools are so effective. You can find more about them at Betrayal Trauma Recovery Workshops. All the workshops are listed there.

Rose, thank you for reaching out to me. So many women have these same questions. I appreciate your bravery to come on and talk about it. And if any of you listening are interested in talking about the issues you’re facing. You don’t have to have the answers, you don’t have to have it resolved. You don’t need to know what to do to share your story.

This podcast is about sharing where we are right now. So the other women know they’re not alone and that we’re all going through this together. Thank you so much for talking to me today, Rose.

Rose: You’re welcome. Your podcasts have helped me so much. Thanks for having me.