Raising Resilient Children with a Borderline or Narcissistic Parent

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. She resides in Fort Collins, Colorado.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. She resides in Fort Collins, Colorado.

• Author NoteIntroductionPart I: When the Other Parent Is Narcissistic or BorderlineChapter 1: Self-Focused Parenting Chapter 2: What the Narcissistic Family Is Like for ChildrenChapter 3: What the Narcissistic Family Is Like for YouChapter 4 Narcissistic Family System: Patterns and ProblemsPart II: Building ResilienceChapter 5: Resilient Parent, Resilient ChildChapter 6: Changing DirectionsChapter 7: Building Your Own ResilienceChapter 8: Self-Compassion: Key to Developing Healthy Self-WorthChapter 9: Creating an Environment to ThriveChapter 10: Responsive ParentingChapter 11: Help Your Children Develop Self-CompassionChapter 12: Help Your Children Have Their Own LivesPart III: Parenting Will Be DifferentChapter 13: What to Say: Handling Family CommunicationChapter 14: What Not to Say and DoChapter 15: Responding to Emotional and Physical DangersChapter 16: Assessing Your SituationChapter 17: Parenting in the Same HouseholdChapter 18: Parenting After DivorceChapter 19: Being a Good Enough ParentChapter 20: Final WordsAppendix A: Vocabulary of Feeling WordsAppendix B: Communication PromptsAppendix C: Suggested ReadingNotesBibliographyIndexAbout the Authors

If you are raising a child with a high conflict partner, you owe it to your children to read this book. With compassion toward everyone involved, the authors help parents overcome their fear and doubt to stop caretaking their partner—a child-like adult with a personality disorder—and put their energy into protecting their real children from high conflict behavior, which can put them at risk for lifelong psychological problems. With the publication of this well-written and exciting book, parents now have the tools to be their child’s advocate, setting them up for a lifetime of success.