Once, in the back of the car, my son buckled in his seatbelt said, "My dad said, 'she is really one sick lady. I'm so sorry that your mom is mentally ill.'" What I said next was going to be a core memory for him.
That was one of the questions. In those early years there was one like it after every single exchange, from the same seat, on the ride home from his dad's.
What I say to parents now is what I wish someone had handed me on those rides home. The good news is you can go back and redo it. Kids give you second chances if you name what happened. What follows is what to say in the moment, what to say when you already answered wrong, and why the answer that helps your child most has almost nothing to do with the other parent.
I'm Michelle Mitchell, J.D. I am a former California litigator with 20+ years of prior litigation experience, and I no longer practice law. My work today is coaching-only. I'm a Certified New Ways for Families® Instructor with the High Conflict Institute, a Certified HCDP™ Coach and Educator, an AFCC-trained Parent Coordinator, and I'm on the court-approved provider list for the San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, and Marin Superior Courts. More about my background is on the Meet Our Coaches page. If your kid keeps asking questions you do not know how to answer without making it worse, this piece is for you.
The three seconds before you answer are the whole answer
Your kid asks the question and your first instinct is to answer it. That is the instinct to override.
The reason the answer feels so loaded is that the question is loaded, and the reason the question is loaded is that your kid has been holding it for a while before it came out. It came out in the car because the car is the safest place for hard questions. You are next to each other, not across from each other. Your kid is buckled in and cannot see your face all the way. You cannot walk away and neither can they. Every parent I coach hears the hardest questions in the car.
Three rules for what to do first, in this order.
One. Orient to your environment. Notice the car around you, the seat you are sitting in, the light coming through the windshield, the sound outside the window. This is not woo. It is a somatic move that pulls your nervous system out of the reaction it is about to have and puts it back in the room with your kid, and it takes about three seconds.
Two. Disengage from what is rising in you. Something is rising in you right now, and it is probably anger at your co-parent, or grief at what your kid is having to ask, or both. Name it internally. Not out loud. "I am angry. I am sad my kid is asking this." Naming it stops it from running the show. It does not make it go away and it does not need to.
Three. Give yourself a beat before you say anything. One full breath. There is a saying for this exact moment: “Don’t just do something, sit there.” Let the beat happen even if the silence feels long to you. It will not feel that long to your kid. The pause is what makes room for a response that does not put them in the middle. It also teaches them, at the level they will remember, that you can answer hard things with steadiness instead of speed.
This is the first move of the 4-Move Change Model™. Regulate first. The order matters. Every other move on this page assumes you have done the pause. If you skip it, the answer that comes out of you is not the one you want your kid to remember.
Trying to protect your kid usually puts them in the middle
You want to protect your kid, so you do one of two things. You agree with them about the other parent to validate what they are feeling. Or you defend the other parent so your kid does not grow up hating them. Both come from the same protective place. Both leave your kid worse off than doing neither would have.
Trashing sounds like this. "That is because Dad is a jerk." "He does not think about anyone but himself." "I am not surprised he said that." It feels honest. It feels like you are being on your kid's side. What you are actually doing is teaching your kid that they have to pick a side, and the side is yours.
Defending sounds like this. "Of course Dad likes me, he just has a different way of showing it." "Do not say that about Dad." "He does not mean what it sounds like he means." It feels like you are being the bigger person. What you are actually doing is teaching your kid that the feelings they walked in with are not real. That is a form of gaslighting, even when you do not mean it that way, and it is one of the most damaging things a well-meaning parent can do without knowing they are doing it.
Both moves put your child in the middle. Trashing teaches them they have to pick a side. Defending teaches them their feelings are not real. Neither leaves them safe with you, which is the one thing you are actually trying to give them in that moment.
The answer that keeps your kid coming to you
You think you owe your kid a full answer. You do not. The parent they keep coming to says less, not more, and validates the feeling without commenting on the other parent at all.
Two sentences that work.
"That sounds really disappointing."
"It's okay to feel that way, even when other people see it differently."
That is it. Nothing about fixing the situation, explaining the other parent's behavior, or reassuring your kid that it is not true. Kids can metabolize a feeling you name. What overwhelms them is a parent who leaps to defend or attack when what they needed was for you to hear them.
If your kid asked why Dad does not like you, a full response might sound like, "It's okay to feel that way, even when other people see it differently. Tell me more about what happened?" Notice what that response does not do: it does not tell your kid what to think about Dad, what Dad meant, or how you feel about any of it. It stays with your kid, in the car, on their side.
The follow-up question is the door. When you leave your commentary out, your kid usually walks through the door and tells you more. When you fill the space with your commentary, they close the door and stop bringing you the next question.
The work your kid is already doing that you don’t see
Kids in high-conflict co-parenting are already working at things you don’t see: managing their loyalty to both parents, afraid of picking wrong, trying to protect whoever is in front of them from getting sad.
This is why the hard questions come out sideways, in the car, at bedtime, at the end of a good day when you thought everything was fine. Your kid has been running the calculations for a while about whether it is safe to ask, and what version of you is going to answer, and what your face will do, and what will happen next. When they finally ask, they are not being difficult. They are running a test on whether you are a parent they can be honest with.
The way you answer decides whether they bring you the next question, or whether they stop bringing them at all. Kids who stop asking are not kids who no longer have the questions. They are kids who decided the cost of asking was too high. That is the part parents do not always see coming, because when the questions stop the surface gets easier. The surface getting easier is not the same as your kid getting easier. It is your kid deciding to route around you.
Every time you validate a feeling without commenting on the other parent, you are voting for a version of the relationship where they keep bringing you the questions. That is a long-term investment that does not always feel like anything in the moment. It is one of the most important things you are doing in these years, and it barely shows on the outside.
The parent they can be honest with, later
When you refuse to make them pick a side, you become the parent they can be honest with. That is the relationship you are going to want when they are older.
Older kids in high-conflict families sort themselves out over time. Some of them come to conclusions about the other parent on their own, once they have the vantage point to see the dynamic for what it is. Some of them do not. What is consistent across the ones who stay close to at least one of their parents is that the parent they stay close to is almost always the parent who did not spend their childhood telling them what to think about the other one.
The parent who kept their commentary out of it is the parent who gets the phone call at 22 about the breakup, the phone call at 27 about the job, the phone call at 34 about the pregnancy. The parent who spent years narrating the other parent's failures is the parent who often does not get those calls, because talking to them was never actually about the kid getting to think out loud. It was about the kid being asked to hold the parent's story.
This is the trade you are making right now, in the car, when your kid asks a hard question about the other parent. Every answer that stays out of your kid's business is a deposit in the account you will draw on later.
When you already answered wrong. Go back and redo it.
If you are reading this and thinking about an answer you gave last week or last year that you wish you could take back, this section is for you.
You can go back and redo it. Kids give parents second chances when parents name what happened.
A version of the redo sounds like this. "Hey, when you asked me about Dad the other day, I do not think I answered that well. What I wish I had said is that it makes sense you are asking, and I am glad you told me. I want you to be able to bring me hard questions like that."
That is the whole move. The redo does not need an explanation of what was wrong with your first answer, a relitigation of the moment, or any big production. You just name that you would answer it differently now, and offer the answer you wish you had given.
Kids remember the redo more than they remember the misstep. The redo teaches them something that a perfect answer would not have taught them, which is that a parent can look back at a moment they got wrong, name it out loud, and try again. That is the modeling that changes how your kid handles the moments they get wrong for the rest of their life.
Save this for the moment it comes up
Save this piece for the next time your kid asks a hard question about their other parent. The rules are simple and easy to forget in the moment: orient to the room around you, disengage from what is rising in you, give yourself a beat, then validate the feeling without commenting on the other parent. And if you already answered wrong, go back and redo it.
The pattern of asking is going to keep coming up as long as your kids are living between two homes with two versions of the truth. What changes over time is how well you catch yourself in the pause and how consistently you leave your commentary out. It is a practice, not a fix, and it gets easier the more you do it.
The moments this piece walks through are going to keep coming up. Every question in the car, every day back from the other house, every moment your kid brings you something hard and you have three seconds to answer. Reading a blog and doing it live are different skills, and doing it live gets easier when you practice with other parents practicing the same thing.
The 6-Week High Conflict Co-Parenting Skills Intensive™ builds the whole pattern. 1-to-1 Coaching works your specific dynamic. If the harder work is the written channel with the other parent instead of the questions from your kid, SAFE™ Ghostwriting is a communication partner inside your co-parenting app. And Solid Ground is the ongoing room of parents practicing week after week. The first 100 members lock in the founding rate for as long as they stay.
For more on the dynamics underneath these questions, read parental alienation: what actually works when your kids won’t speak to you and parallel parenting when conflict is high.
And if the piece was useful, send it to another parent who is trying to get this right.
Frequently Asked
What do I say when my child asks why their other parent does not like me?
Should I defend my ex when my child says something negative about them?
What if I already answered a hard question the wrong way?
Why does my child seem to test me with hard questions about their other parent?
How do I regulate before I respond to my kid in the moment?
Not legal advice. This article is general educational content for parents navigating high-conflict parallel parenting. It is not legal advice and does not create an attorney-client relationship or any attorney-client privilege. Michelle Mitchell, J.D., is a former California litigator with 20+ years of prior litigation experience and no longer practices law; her work is coaching-only. For legal advice specific to your situation, consult a licensed family law attorney in your jurisdiction. Individual results vary.
Michelle Mitchell, J.D.
former California litigator, 20+ years prior litigation experience. Founder of High Conflict Resolutions, LLC. Certified New Ways for Families® Instructor (High Conflict Institute), Certified HCDP™ Coach and Educator, AFCC-trained Parent Coordinator, trained in Peter Levine’s Somatic Experiencing®. Court-approved provider for the San Diego, Riverside, San Bernardino, Santa Clara, and Marin Superior Courts.