Raising Resilient Children with a Borderline or Narcissistic Parent

Being partnered with a narcissist or borderline personality can be hard enough, but learning how to shield children from the fallout is paramount. Here, the authors show readers how to manage parenting when a narcissistic or borderline partner is part of the equation. Life in a narcissistic family system is at best challenging, and too often filled with chaos, isolation, emotional outbursts, and rigid controlling behaviors. It is too often devoid of peace and emotional safety. In the worst outcomes, children in these families grow up with low self-worth, issues with trust and belonging, and a lack of self-compassion. They are at significant risk of carrying the cycle forward and having poor adult relationships. This book offers a way to intervene and disrupt the cycle of negative outcomes for children. Written by two family therapists who bring a combined total of sixty years of clinical practice with individuals and families, the book pulls no punches, giving clear-headed advice, easy to follow actions to help children, and an abundance of teaching examples. Instead of the doom and gloom scenarios often presented about life with a narcissist or borderline, this book provides a much more positive outlook, and most importantly, it offers hope and a path to an entirely different outcome for the family members. Supported by current research in neuroscience, mindfulness and parenting information, the book focuses on teaching resilience and self-compassion to raise emotionally healthy children, even in a narcissistic family system. It starts by helping parents get a clear understanding of what they face with a narcissistic or borderline partner. There is no room here for denial, but there are also many options to explore. It explains how and why the narcissistic family system functions so poorly for raising healthy children, and pinpoints the deficits while providing information on how to intervene more effectively for the benefit of the children. Using their years of experience, the authors present ideas for staying together as well as knowing when to leave the relationship and how best to do that. Emphasis throughout the book is on supporting and strengthening the reader with encouragement, concrete ideas, skills and compassionate understanding.

Margalis Fjelstad, PhD, has been a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist for thirty years. For over 25 years she trained and supervised family therapists and was the Clinical Director of Threshold Educational and Counseling Services. She is noted for her work with clients who grew up with a mentally ill parent and those who take on a caretaking role with a borderline or narcissistic family member. Her books, Stop Caretaking the Borderline or Narcissist: How to End the Drama and Get on with Life and Healing from a Narcissistic Relationship: A Caretaker’s Guide to Recovery, Empowerment & Transformation, have been extremely well received. Fjelstad retired from clinical practice in 2016, but continues writing and doing phone consultations with callers from all over the world who have questions about a current or former relationship with someone who has BPD or NPD. Please go to her website at margalistherapy.com for more information. JEAN MCBRIDE, MS, LMFT, is a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist. She has maintained a private practice for thirty years. Her areas of specialization include divorce adjustment, high conflict divorce, parenting after divorce, and remarriage and stepfamilies. As president of Divorce Transitions, she taught court ordered parenting after divorce classes to over 20,000 parents in person and online, using a curriculum that she developed. She has additionally developed programs for stepfamily adjustment, and Are You Ready to Remarry? She is the author of Encouraging Words for New Stepmothers, and Talking to Children about Divorce: A Parent’s Guide to Healthy Communication at Each Stage of Divorce. McBride has been a popular speaker on the topics of divorce and remarriage and has trained professionals for the Stepfamily Association of America, Collaborative Divorce, and The Association of Family and Conciliation Courts. You can reach her at her website, divorcehelpforparents.com.