Your Teen Just Repeated What Your Ex Said About You. Here’s How to Respond
Every time a child becomes the carrier of one parent’s opinion of the other, they’re pulled into what family researchers call parent-child triangulation, being drawn into the adult conflict as messenger, judge, or ally (Kerig, 2005). It doesn’t require a hostile divorce. It happens in ordinary co-parenting relationships, in a single offhand comment repeated at the wrong moment. And it comes with a measurable cost.