When Your Ex Badmouths You to the Kids: What to Actually Say

Eddie Eccker, Voyages Counseling

Your daughter gets in the car after a weekend at her mom's house. Somewhere around the second stoplight, not looking up from the window, she says: "Mom says you never really wanted us."

You have about four seconds to decide who you're going to be.

Most of us go one of two directions in those four seconds. Some of us correct the record: that is not true, and let me tell you what actually happened. The rest of us go quiet and grip the wheel and let it sit there in the car with us. Both are understandable, and both usually make it worse.

I've written this with a dad at the wheel and a mom doing the talking because that is who tends to search for it. It runs the other way just as often. Everything here applies in either direction.

The legal question is real. It just isn't this question.

Search parental alienation in Colorado, and you will find attorneys, one after another, and they are answering a legitimate question: is this documentable, does it rise to a standard, can it change your parenting time? If that's where you are, talk to your attorney. That's their work, not mine. It's worth knowing that Colorado changed the rules in 2023 with what's called Kayden's Law, and courts here now look harder at alienation claims, especially when abuse has been alleged. Your attorney can tell you what that means for your case.

But that question moves on court timelines. Months. Filings. Meanwhile, it is another afternoon, your kid is in the back seat, and she just said the thing.

Why correcting the record sometimes backfires

When you rebut, you think you're defending yourself. What your child experiences is three other things.

You've confirmed the topic is a war zone. She floated something into the air and watched it detonate. She'll be more careful next time, which means the next thing she hears, she keeps.

You've handed her two opposing accounts of two people she loves and asked her to hold both. A child can understand that two adults disagree. What she cannot do without real distress is carry two contradictory stories about the two people she is attached to, and most adults don't manage that well either.

And you've made her the judge. Somebody has to be lying, and she has to decide who. Kids resolve that by picking a side or by going silent. In my experience, it is often silence, and often with you, because you're the safer one to disappoint.

One more thing worth naming: "I'm not going to say anything bad about your mother" is, depending entirely on how you say it, saying something bad about their mother. Kids read tone long before they read words, and they know what it means.

What you actually say: 3 parts

Acknowledge that she heard it. Not the content. The experience. That sounds like a hard thing to hear. You are not agreeing with it, and you are not fighting it. You are telling her that what just happened to her is real.

Then say the true thing about you, not the false thing about her. I wanted you. I want you now. That's it. It's a statement about your own heart and your own conduct. It contains no comparison, no rebuttal, no "unlike some people." Your child can hold that sentence without convicting anyone.

Then leave the door open and don't walk through it yourself. If you ever want to ask me anything about the divorce, you can ask me. I'll tell you the truth, and I won't make you carry it. Then stop. Do not follow up. Do not ask what else Mom said. The moment you start collecting intelligence, you've made her a source, and she'll feel it.

That's the whole script. It takes eleven seconds, and it is much harder than it looks, because everything in you wants to spend the next twenty minutes on the record.

The move most parents miss

Here's a part that's easy to overlook: give your kid a line of her own.

Children in this situation generally assume that when an adult talks, they have to listen. It does not occur to most of them that they are sometimes permitted to decline. So hand them the words:

• "Mom, I don't want to talk about Dad."

• "Please talk to Dad about that, not me."

• "This is making me uncomfortable, and I want to stop talking about it."

Then say the two sentences that make it usable. You will not be in trouble with me if you say that. And you will not be in trouble with me if you don't. There is no performance requirement, because you're not deploying your child as an agent. You're telling her a door exists, and whether she opens it is entirely hers.

Some kids will never use it. It still matters that they know it's there. Kids who understand they're allowed to have a boundary carry themselves differently even when they don't exercise it.

You don't have to diagnose your ex

Everybody who searches this is one click away from a narcissism checklist, and I understand the appeal, since a label makes the chaos feel like something you can read.

But it changes nothing about what you say in the car. And you cannot reliably diagnose a person you are in active conflict with. Nobody can, not me, and not the people I've spent hours with. If you're wrong and your kids find out you spent their childhood calling their mother a personality disorder, that costs you and the kids, and you can't always get that back.

Skip the label. Notice the pattern instead. The most reliable signal isn't a symptom list; it's this: after contact, you don't feel angry so much as off. Disoriented. Like you can't quite locate what happened or who's crazy. I used to train staff in a psychiatric setting, and I'd send them in to talk with a patient, and afterward I'd ask how they felt, and they'd say, "I don't know. It's weird, something's off." That feeling is useful information. It doesn't diagnose anyone, and it isn't proof, since sometimes what you're picking up is your own unfinished business with this person rather than anything they did. Over time, though, it tells you what kind of interaction you're in and how much of yourself to bring to it.

Consistency beats argument, and it takes years

Your kids are running a long experiment whether anyone told them or not. They are comparing what they're told about you against what they observe about you, over and over, for a decade.

Every unremarkable weekend is a data point. Every time you show up for the game. Every time they mention their mother and your face doesn't change. Every time you say "that sounds hard to hear" instead of launching. None of those feel like victories, but over years they are what actually works.

You are not going to win the argument. What you can do is outlast it. Many kids in this situation arrive at their own conclusions somewhere in adolescence, and when they do, it is often not gentle toward the parent who was doing the talking. Some kids take much longer, and I won't pretend every one of them gets there. You don't have to help that along. You just have to still be there, unchanged, when it happens.

Before you call it alienation

Sometimes a child pulls away from a parent for reasons that are not manufactured. A parent who drank, who disappeared for a stretch, who was frightening in the home, or who simply has not been easy to be around will sometimes get a child's rejection that no one had to coach. That isn't alienation. That's a kid reacting to something real, and the honest work in that case is different.

So before you decide your ex is poisoning them, ask the question you'd least like to ask: is there anything in my own conduct, past or present, that my kid could be responding to? If the answer might be yes, a family therapist is the right person to help you tell the difference, and to help you repair what can be repaired. Colorado courts have become more careful about this distinction for good reason, and you should be too.

When it's more than badmouthing

Watch for a child who refuses contact but can't articulate why. A child using adult vocabulary and adult details: money, the settlement, who did what to whom. A child who talks about the other parent's grievances in the first person plural, as though the two of them are a unit with a shared case.

That's a different situation than a bitter comment on a Sunday, and it wants more than a script. That's the point of bringing in your attorney and a therapist who does family work. Both, and in that order or in parallel, not one instead of the other. In Colorado, the court may appoint a child and family investigator or a parental responsibilities evaluator to interview your child and make recommendations. Knowing those terms will help when you talk to your attorney.

Frequently Asked Questions

Should I correct my child when my ex says something untrue about me?

Correct the record about yourself, not about your ex. "I wanted you" lands. "That's a lie and here's what really happened" makes your child the judge of which parent is lying, which is a job no child can hold. State the truth about your own conduct and stop there.

What do I say when my kid asks me directly if it's true?

Answer honestly at the level they asked, and don't expand. If the honest answer is complicated and both of you played a part, "there were things both of us handled badly, and none of it was about you" is true and doesn't require you to build a case. If that isn't true in your divorce, don't say it. "I'll tell you what I did, and I'll leave your mom's part for her to tell you" is honest and still keeps your child out of the middle. Then let them ask a follow-up if they want one.

Is it okay to tell my kids their other parent is lying?

Rarely, and not because you owe your ex protection. It's because a child asked to categorize a parent as a liar will usually protect that parent and quietly resent you for making them choose. You don't need them to reach a verdict. You need them to feel safe with you.

Can I teach my child to stand up to a parent who badmouths?

Yes, and it's one of the most useful things you can do, as long as you give it to them as an option rather than an assignment. Offer specific words, tell them they won't be in trouble for using them, and tell them they won't be in trouble for not using them. Then let it be theirs.

When does badmouthing cross into parental alienation?

Clinically, the concern rises when a child begins refusing contact without being able to explain why, adopts adult language and details about the divorce, or speaks about one parent's grievances as though they share them. Whether it meets a legal threshold in Colorado is a question for your attorney; whether it's affecting your child, and whether the rejection has a real cause, is a question for a therapist. They aren't the same question and you may need both answered.

Support for parents in Colorado

If your co-parenting situation has gotten to the point where every exchange costs you the rest of the day, you don't have to sort it out alone. Voyages Counseling works with parents, kids, and families across Colorado, in person and by telehealth, from offices in Centennial, Lone Tree, Castle Rock, Central Park, and Colorado Springs.