When They Use the Children Against You and What Not Today is Building

April 28, 2026

What Not Today gives you when manipulation comes through the people you love most and the life being constructed quietly, one decision at a time.

By Tobia Bradley, CDC  |  Divorce Coach  |  Ashby Jones and Associates, LLC

Parts 6 & 7 of 7  ·  The Not Today Method Series

This is the hardest blog in this series to write. And I think it may be the most important one for some of you to read.

Because there is a particular kind of pain that belongs specifically to the parent who is not just dealing with a difficult divorce but dealing with someone who has turned the children into instruments of the conflict. Someone who coaches them, manipulates them, uses them to deliver messages, rewards them for taking sides, or is slowly and methodically trying to damage the relationship between those children and you.

If that is your situation, I want to speak directly to you. Not around it. Directly to it.

You are not imagining it. And you are not powerless inside it.

What manipulation through children actually looks like

Parental alienation and manipulation through children can be hard to name because it often looks ordinary from the outside. It is rarely dramatic. It is usually quiet, cumulative, and designed to be deniable.

It looks like children who come home from the other household using language they did not have before, phrases that sound like an adult’s words in a child’s mouth. It looks like a child who is suddenly distant or guarded with you, who seems to be monitoring what they say, who has stopped bringing you the ordinary things children bring their parents. It looks like the other parent involving the children in adult information about the case, about finances, about you. Things no child should be carrying.

It looks like the text that arrives through your child’s phone rather than yours. The message sent through them so there is no record. The question they are asked to ask you so the child becomes the go-between.

It looks like a custody exchange where the children arrive anxious or withdrawn, and leave looking relieved to go back.

These things are real. They are harmful. They are documented in research on high-conflict divorce as some of the most damaging experiences children can have. And they are, for the parent on the receiving end, one of the most excruciating parts of this entire process.

Your children are not betraying you. They are surviving the environment they are in. Those are two very different things.

What Not Today does when the conflict comes through your children

Here is what I want you to understand about Not Today in this context: it does not fix the other parent’s behavior. Nothing you do will change a person who is committed to using your children as leverage. That is a hard truth and I will not soften it.

What Not Today does is change what you can control and in doing so, it changes everything about how this plays out over the long arc of your children’s lives.

First: it stops you from becoming evidence against yourself. When your children come home carrying something that was put there by the other parent, an accusation, a distortion, a message designed to provoke you, your reaction is the trap. The reactive response, the confrontation, the visible distress in front of the children, all of it becomes material. Not Today means you receive what they bring with warmth and calm. You respond to the child, not to the message inside the child. And then you document it, quietly, and share it with your attorney.

Second: it keeps your children from feeling responsible for your pain. When a child is being used as a messenger and they see that the message hurt you, something complicated and damaging happens inside them. They feel responsible. They may start protecting you by not telling you things which means they start carrying even more alone. Your calm is not indifference. It is a gift. It tells them: you did not hurt me. You are safe here.

Third: it builds the contrast that children eventually notice. Children who are being manipulated are still watching. They are watching both parents. Over time, not immediately, not without setbacks, but over time, they register the difference between the parent who uses them and the parent who protects them. That contrast is not invisible. It is the foundation of the relationship you are building with them for the rest of their lives.

Your steady, consistent, loving presence is not passive. It is the most powerful thing available to you in this situation.

How to respond when children bring you the conflict

When your child comes home and says something that you know came from the other parent, something designed to hurt, to provoke, to test, here is what Not Today looks like in that moment.

You breathe. You do not react to the content of the message. You respond to the child in front of you.

You say something that receives them without taking the bait. “That sounds like a lot to be thinking about. I’m glad you’re home.” Or simply: “I hear you. I love you.”

You do not correct the record in the moment. Not because the record isn’t wrong. Because your child is not the place where that correction happens. The correction, if it is legally relevant, happens in writing, to your attorney, documented with a date and context.

You do not ask probing questions about what was said at the other household. You let your child lead. If they want to talk, you listen without editorializing. You ask about how things felt for them, not about the other parent’s behavior.

And after they are asleep, you write down what happened. Factually, briefly, with a date and time. That documentation is doing its quiet work even when it feels like nothing is changing.

The long arc

I want to tell you something that I have watched happen more times than I can count, and that I believe with everything I have.

Children who are being manipulated or exposed to parental alienation do not stay confused forever. They grow. They develop their own judgment. They begin, often in their teenage years and certainly by adulthood, to understand what happened and who the people in their lives actually are.

The parent who kept the door open who did not retaliate, who did not use them in return, who was simply and consistently there, calm and loving and present on their parenting time.  That parent does not lose. Not in the end. Not in the relationship that matters most.

I have sat with adult children of high-conflict divorces who described finding their way back to the parent who had been patient. Who said: I didn’t understand then what I understand now. Who came home to the parent who had never stopped being home.

That is the long arc. Not Today is how you stay on it.

Keep showing up. Keep the door open. Keep being the parent who does not make them choose.

And now as we come to the final word in this series, I want to tell you what all of that keeping-going is quietly building.

What this practice is not

Not Today is not a solution to a high-conflict situation. I want to be honest about that, because this would be dishonest if it suggested otherwise.

The other person may not change. The legal process will move at its own pace. The pain of what has happened to you, to your children, to the life you thought you were building does not simply dissolve because you have learned to put the phone down.

Not Today does not promise you a different situation. It promises you a different relationship to the one you are in.

That is not a small thing. In fact, I would argue it is the only thing that is actually within your reach right now. And it turns out to be enough, more than enough to change the trajectory of everything.

Not Today does not change your situation. It changes your relationship to it. And that changes everything.

What it is actually building

Every time you practice Not Today. Every time you put the phone down, take the breath, send the two-sentence response instead of the twelve-paragraph one, choose the evening with your children over the text thread, you are building something.

Four things being built, one Not Today at a time: • A record. Month after month of calm, consistent, child-focused communication that tells a story about who you are. Judges notice patterns. Attorneys notice patterns. So, eventually, do your children. • Capacity. The nervous system is trainable. The reflex that once pulled you into the reactive loop in thirty seconds begins, with practice, to slow down. The space between provocation and response gets wider. You become, gradually and genuinely, harder to destabilize. • Presence. The evenings you protect from the conflict are evenings your children actually have you, not a distracted version, not a frightened version, but you. Fully there. And those evenings are the ones your children will carry. • Yourself back. High-conflict divorce is a sustained assault on identity. Not Today is the daily refusal to let that assault succeed. Every time you respond from your values rather than your fear, you are practicing being the person you actually are.

The life you are building is made of ordinary days. Not Today is how you protect them.

What you will look like six months from now

I want to paint a picture. Not a perfect picture, an honest one.

Six months from now, if you practice Not Today consistently, not perfectly, not without setbacks, but consistently here is what will be different.

The messages that used to cost you two hours will cost you twenty minutes. Not because they hurt less. Because you have built the reflex to contain them.

The evenings with your children will have more of you in them. The dinner conversations will be real. The bedtimes will be unhurried. Your children will begin, slowly and without knowing why, to relax into you differently.

The record you are building in your written communication will be doing its quiet work. Your attorney will notice. Perhaps others will too.

And something inside you, something that has been running on emergency power for a long time will begin to rest. Not completely. Not yet. But enough that you can feel the difference between who you were at the beginning of this and who you are becoming.

That becoming is Not Today’s real work. Everything else, the legal positioning, the communication strategy, the protection of your evenings is in service of that. Of you. Of the person your children need you to be and that you are, underneath everything, already becoming.

A final word

I started this series by saying that Not Today sounds almost too simple to be real.

I want to close it by telling you what I have watched those two words do.

I have watched them give back afternoons that the conflict had claimed. I have watched them change the tone of custody cases. I have watched them create space for children to come home to a parent who was actually present. I have watched them, over months and years, help people rebuild something that high-conflict divorce had spent a long time trying to dismantle.

Their identity. Their steadiness. Their sense of who they are when the conflict is not in the room.

That is what is being built. Quietly. In the ordinary moments. One Not Today at a time.

Keep showing up. Keep the door open. You are still here. You are still standing. And that, right now, in the middle of all of this is everything.

With love and honesty,

Tobia Bradley, CDC

Certified Divorce Coach  |  Ashby Jones and Associates, LLC

The Not Today Method Series — Complete You have read the complete series. That matters. Part 1  ·  Not Today: Two Words That Can Change Everything Part 2  ·  Why You Keep Getting Pulled In Part 3  ·  Not Today Is Not Silence Part 4  ·  The Gray Rock and the Green Tree Part 5  ·  Not Today with Your Children Part 6 & 7  ·  When They Use the Children Against You and What Not Today Is Building

Ready to go deeper?

If this series has resonated with you.  If you found yourself in these pages and want to take the next step, I would love to talk with you. Individual coaching is available for clients of Ashby Jones and Associates, and I am here to walk alongside you through whatever this season is asking of you.

There is no pressure and no agenda. Just a space to talk about where you are and what might be helpful. Reach out whenever you are ready.

Contact Tobia Bradley, CDC

tobia@ashbyjoneslaw.com 

About Tobia Bradley

Tobia Bradley is a Certified Divorce Coach (CDC) and the Client Relations Manager at Ashby Jones and Associates, LLC in South Carolina. She brings more than 25 years of experience in family law, and now dedicates her work to the human side of divorce — the emotional, relational, and personal dimensions that the legal process alone cannot address. She is the creator of Not Today: The I Am Method. She facilitates The Cardinal’s Path Workshop, a free 12-week wellness program for divorce clients, in partnership with a licensed counseling practice.

A Note Before You Go

I am a Certified Divorce Coach (CDC) with over 25 years of experience in family law. I am a coach, not an attorney and not a licensed therapist or mental health counselor. Nothing in this blog post constitutes legal advice, therapeutic counseling, or mental health treatment. If you have legal questions, please consult a licensed attorney. If you are experiencing a mental health crisis, please reach out to a licensed mental health professional.

This blog is written by Tobia Bradley, Certified Divorce Coach. Nothing in this post constitutes legal advice or therapeutic counseling.