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The significance of the young child’s attachment and narcissism: Reasons for not involving significant others with your children while they are still adjusting to your marital separation and divorce generally fall into two main categories. They have primarily to do with the child’s attachment to the parents and the child’s narcissism (child’s belief that it’s all about the child; that the world revolves around the child):

1. Avoiding the “revolving door” of significant others. Your young child has attachment issues naturally and is feeling the loss of the family unit and when your child is with one of you the child feels the loss and absence of the other parent. The child does not need a new mother figure or father figure in the child’s life who disappears from the child’s life only to be replaced by another significant other who again disappears.

2. Avoiding the parents refocus on and to the “significant other” and away from the child. The parent may not realize the extent to which the child feels estranged and separated and no longer focused on. The child no longer has the immediate and undivided attention of that parent. The child feels distanced from the adult language and affection that had been solely focused on the child and now seems to the child solely focused on the significant other. The adult language between the parent and the significant other is also new and different, in that the child does not understand the subtleties and has not heard such language used by his mother and father for quite some time if ever.