Stop Bad Mouthing Your Child’s Other Parent

Have you bad mouthed your ex who is also your child’s other parent? If you are blasting them online or anywhere else for that matter, check in with your ego. What are you really getting out of it?

Do you need an army of strangers to tell you that you’re entitled to feel the way you do? You being right does’t matter, what matters is that perfect version of the two of you who needs you to put their well-being first. 

I am a child from a divorced family raising a child from a divorced family. I have first hand experience living as both parent and child. Let me tell you, I’m thankful to know what’s at stake. 

Children are not just made up of fifty percent of each of you genetically. They also identify themselves to each of you. So if in your mind your ex is a poor excuse of a human and you feel the need to verbally say that to make yourself feel better, you are using the same ammunition against your child.

Your relationship with your ex will always be separate from your child’s relationship with them. Your child doesn’t need to understand how or why you were done dirty. It’s not their responsibility to side with you or give you comfort with their empathy. 

Children love their biological parents unconditionally. The grief they already feel from the separation of their family is catastrophic, they don’t deserve to hurt more. Save your child from your weapons.

As a second generation separated parent, I understand exactly what it means to co-parent and what it feels like to not always agree on choices, behaviour or lifestyles. Co-parenting is HARD. There are under currents of anger and resentment and they creep into your thoughts like weeds. It feels like a constant battle of finding rational in a hurricane of explosive emotions. 

Stop. Refocus. What’s the end game? Your child’s well-being. Choose them.

Remember, that just because you think your child’s other parent isn’t doing a good job, it doesn’t mean that your child feels that way. Perhaps they are getting exactly what they need from both of you. 

One day your child will clearly see each of you for exactly who you are, talents as well as your faults. Inevitably, they will learn that their parents were humans, doing the best they could in the circumstances in which they found themselves.

They will love you both, just the same.