Today I’d like to answer this question “how I detach from my adult narcissistic, verbally abusive child who has my grandchildren and uses them as weapons when I try to set boundaries for myself. I am emotionally exhausted.”

When your child is verbally abusive, it’s natural for you to care for your grandchildren. You want the best for them and for their future, and you don’t want to be bothered by the verbal insults from your child. So you may really want to emotionally detach; you may want to be there for them physically and even emotionally, but at the same time, you don’t want what your kid is doing to affect you mentally. Let’s say they may be calling you names like “stupid mom or dad” or all those things.

When it comes to emotional detachment here, it doesn’t mean that you become emotionless or you feel numb or you just shut down everything so that you cannot feel what they say. It simply means that focusing on yourself and going inwards and looking at what the implications of your child’s actions are to you. Like, do they define you? Do they make you feel like you’re a bad mom or a bad grandparent?

Most of the time you may want to take care of your grandchildren not because you care so much about them but because you may be trying to compensate for something. Especially when it comes to caring for someone. Sometimes you may be doing that maybe as a form of avoiding the guilt which will arise if you don’t do it. Let’s say you may feel that if I don’t take care of them, you will feel guilty when they grow up, and you were not there for them. But that is not how it’s supposed to be. You should be taking care of them, just arising from your own compassion or from you just being human.

So when you focus on you, you go to this deep level and look at the actions of your child as not a reflection of who you are. They might call you names, they might do whatever they want. Of course, I’m talking about verbal abuse, not physical abuse, verbal abuse. But if you internalize that, that is where the first solution is. If it is draining you emotionally, that is where the solution is. So without you really working on that, you’ll always feel hurt and feel harmed by their actions.

Now, once you emotionally detach or reach the point where their words hold no power over you, it becomes much easier for you to take care of your grandchildren. You reach a stage where someone can call you names, but it doesn’t bother you as much; you may even laugh about it because you know it’s not a reflection of who you are. Additionally, you may begin to feel compassionate towards your child as well, not just towards your grandchildren. This understanding may arise from recognizing that your abusive child turned out that way due to various factors, some of which you may have been knowingly or unknowingly involved in.

So it always trickles down to you working on your stuff, you going inwards and understanding that people come from a different perspective and it’s not actually your job to want to take care of someone. Even if it’s your grandchildren, you may really feel that it’s your job, but it’s not your job. You just take care of them because they’re a compassionate human being, but not as a chore or a task. If you see it as a task, that’s where you will really, really have a challenge because you will feel that you have to do it.

And something behind having to do something is there’s always some bit of resentment and some bit of force to it or some bit of guilt to it. But when you just do it, but you’re not emotionally dependent on the outcome of that. You’ll be doing it and you’ll be doing what you can possibly do. You’ll be doing more like what you can control. If you feel that the children are being weaponized and there’s nothing you can do, that is also doing it because you’ve analyzed the situation, but now you’re approaching this perspective from a clear mind, not with tainted emotion.

So when you’re trying to take care of your grandchildren from a perspective of tainted emotion, being judgmental, or lacking compassion, you may not effectively care for them. You may be using them as just a distraction from you looking inwards and that’s what most happens. We may use kids as distractions from looking at ourselves, looking at how we are hurting.

So you can take care of your grandchildren but first take care of yourself. Take care of yourself and get to the point where the words of your verbally abusive child do not affect you as a person. Or you don’t internalize them. The point where you are so compassionate, the point where your compassion even gets to this verbally abusive child. And that doesn’t mean that you entertain the abusive child. That is different. It is more of an inner level thing.

Note from the Author

If you’re ready and you’d like my help with healing, finding peace in life and breaking free from these toxic patterns, then you can book a FREE BREAKTHROUGH CALL with me HERE. Happy healing 💙💙. Feel free to share and comment! Use this information with caution, it comes from my own thoughts & bias, experiences and research😊.