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My son is almost 2 years old. He does not eat a good variety of foods and I am definitely partly to blame for that. His father and I have 50/50 custody. His father is definitely stricter than me. Today I was visiting my son at his dad's and my son woke up from a nap crabby and acted like a typical 2 year old. He wanted everything and nothing to eat. My son kept telling his dad "no" to everything he offered him. My son's dad said to our son, " fine, I don't care. Don't eat anything. It doesn't hurt me any." I feel like this approach is harsh and invalidates my son's feelings. I also think it's extremely rude. He's a 2 year old. I don't think you should tell your child, you don't care. I don't know how to approach this or how to explain to his dad that this is inappropriate or what how to give a better example of what he could've said. Any help?

There is a lot of good advice for this stuff in narcissistic and emotional abuse websites. There is a video on youtube that talks about just becoming "boring." Basically you answer all questions with the most boring thing you can think of. Like, "how was your day? what did you do?" Your reply would go into extreme detail about doing the dishes and folding laundry and so on. These types of people thrive on drama and conflict. They know they are lying and trying to gas-light you when they tell you completely incorrect versions of your fights and encounters. They know it will catch your goat every single time. Its infuriating when they lie to you about something you were there to witness and both of you know it's a lie but he says it's not. They know that it's infuriating. Dont care. If you do care, don't let them know. Ignore the lies in the emails. Agree with the lies in person where it cannot be used against you. Unfortunately you have to do a little manipulating of your own to deal with people like this. Once you've become too boring, they will find a new victim to create drama with. Usually it happens pretty quickly. Hang in there.

Thank you. That sounds like reasonable advice. It makes me want to cry when this happens and I want to just tell his dad he cant take him. I know this is unreasonable and thats why i posted here. I am open to as much advice as possible.

My son's father and I have 50/50 custody. When his father comes to pick him up or I drop him off, my son cries and sometimes reaches out to me and says "no! Mamma, mamma!" My son never does this when he's dropped off to me or I pick him up. He is always happy. Should this raise any red flags? I know his father doesn't give him the attention I do and he has a lot more toys at my house. I don't think his dad is mean to him but I don't really know because I'm not there. All I know is that when I am there, his dad spends a lot of time doing his own thing while my son plays by himself. Would this be concerning to anyone? My son will be 2 years old in April and it has been this way for maybe 9-10 months. Thank you