Parental Alienation and Narcissism

Using Children as Pawns

Photo by Levi Meir Clancy on Unsplash

Children are often caught in the middle in the face of a divorce or separation. Kids love both of their parents and become confused and afraid when they don’t get along.

But what happens when one parent is a narcissist who is adept at gaslighting and manipulation? This article will focus on parental alienation and narcissism.

Parental Alienation

As you may remember from my last post, parental alienation is doing or saying things by one parent to their children against the other, damaging their relationship with the alienated parent.

The damaging parent might cause their children to fear, reject, or even hate the targeted parent as they are painted a picture that is ugly and full of lies.

There are many ways to manipulate children into despising their other parent, including isolating them away from the victim parent, undermining the other parent’s authority, asking their children for information that is negative against the other parent, and emotionally manipulating the children. By far, the most damaging thing done to children is to deny the targeted parent access to them.

Often, the offending parent uses narcissism against the children and their other parent to control and manipulate all…