Co-Parenting with a Narcissist: 3 Essential Tips [2024]

Co-parenting with a narcissist is not a communication problem — it is a developmental landmine where the wrong move can hand your child decades of trauma. Trauma recovery coach Kenny Weiss teaches three essential tips for protecting your child without playing the alienation game, the codependence game, or the righteousness game most co-parents fall into.

Kenny Weiss teaches the Worst Day Cycle™, Authentic Self Cycle™, and Emotional Authenticity Method™ — the three frameworks that explain why co-parenting with a narcissist activates the same codependent patterns that produced the original relationship. You will learn the difference between attention and Attunement, why parental alienation is the most destructive thing a co-parent can do, why your child may attach to the narcissistic parent through Stockholm syndrome, and why this work begins with healing your own childhood wounds.

According to Kenny Weiss, the first essential skill is becoming an expert in Attunement, which is different from attention. Attunement requires putting aside your own stress and emotional load to sit with your child and ask "what's going on in your life — why do you like that?" Most parenting is logistics. Attunement is presence. In a co-parenting situation with a narcissistic ex, Attunement is the one factor that can offset the other parent's emotional dysregulation.

Trauma recovery coach Kenny Weiss teaches that parental alienation is the most destructive mistake a co-parent can make. Under no circumstances should you ever say anything negative about the other parent before your child turns 18 — no matter what the ex does, no matter how true the criticism is, no matter how strongly the child invites it. Every child deserves to adore both parents regardless of behavior. The instant you start the alienation, you place your child in a double bind where whichever parent they choose, they lose.

Kenny Weiss explains that children of narcissistic parents may attach to the abuser through Stockholm syndrome — the same psychological mechanism that caused 1973 Stockholm bank hostages to bond with their captors. When a child attaches to the abusive parent, the healthy parent often spirals into defensiveness and alienation. The corrective move is patience. As long as you do not engage in alienation and you do the deeper healing work, the child will see the truth on their own as they age.

According to Kenny Weiss, the second essential tip is to become an expert in codependence. The only reason you ended up with a narcissist is that your own codependent patterning — low self-esteem, weak boundaries, inability to say no, unhealed childhood pain — said yes to a person who could not love you well. If you do not heal your codependence, you will alienate the child and weaponize their loyalty. Codependent righteousness mirrors narcissistic righteousness on the other side of the coin.

Kenny Weiss teaches that the third and most important step is healing your own pain through the Authentic Self Cycle™ (Truth → Responsibility → Healing → Forgiveness). Children become the combination of their parents' emotional condition. If you do not heal yours, your child has no model of a healthy adult and will inherit the same patterns that created the original relationship. The most loving thing a co-parent can do is the work that makes their child's emotional inheritance better than their own.

0:00 — Tip 1: Become an expert in parenting

0:34 — Attention vs. Attunement

1:30 — Parental alienation: the rule of never

2:31 — The double bind alienation creates

3:14 — Kenny's mantra: "both your mom and dad love you"

4:21 — Stockholm syndrome — why kids attach to the abuser

5:04 — Be patient; let them see truth on their own time

6:03 — Tip 2: Heal your codependence

7:13 — Tip 3: Heal your own pain

7:53 — "No one enters our life unless we say yes"

8:53 — Children become the combination of their parents

9:24 — Recommended books for the work

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