Unapologetic Parenting Carl Knickerbocker

We hear mixed messages about leaving relationships all the time. If only you were stronger, you would have left sooner. If only you were stronger, you would have stayed longer and tried harder. Weak people focus on themselves too much...and weak people don't focus on themselves and their needs enough.Such messages are unhelpful and often get us nowhere except bogged down in shame and self-doubt.The better path is to focus on what's ahead and to pour our energy into moving fo...

Hypothesis: the heart of so many of the family court’s judgment errors boils down to the emotional illiteracy of the lawyers, judges, therapists, and other paraprofessionals attached to the system. The family court system is not trauma informed. The judges are not therapists and spend the least amount of time learning about the case out of all the players. The therapists attached to the system are often opportunists to make matters worse for their own gain. Facilitators and e...

Court-ordered coparenting is pretty much doomed to fail when one of the parents is highly narcissistic. When the courts take a one-size-fits-all approach to coparenting expectations and standards, they end up creating a sure-to-fail situation where everyone involved loses. That is, everyone except those who directly profit from the increased conflict, legal expenses, and court-ordered therapy work that is generated by trying to force those who are incapable of collaborative parent...

We begin with the principle (the fact) that the narcissist's words and actions are caused by their disorder...not by you. Their words and actions are disordered, not personal.From there, we focus our attention on the things we love and the things we are creating. We avoid mantras and affirmations that refer back to the narcissist because such affirmation work to produce more of the same. Instead, we direct ourselves to the things we love about ourselves, our kids, our home, our li...

We do not teach out kids about narcissism, borderline, and other disorders because of their other parent. We teach them about high-conflict individuals and about the importance of standards and boundaries because those lessons are crucial to a good life. Whether the other parent is high-conflict or narcissistic or not, it is important to teach our kids about how to handle themselves in a real world that is populated by significant numbers of problematic people.