🦚When your ex lets your kids down...again

He was bursting with anticipation. It was his birthday, and what’s more, he was going to see his dad. His dad, who’d promised him a certain Lego set during his last weekly visit, supervised by child protection workers. “Maybe daddy and I can start building it together,” he told her, his face lighting up at the thought of this extra bonus. He’d been talking about it every single day. He’d told everyone at school. He’d drawn pictures of what he’d build with it.

On his actual birthday, at the next supervised visit, daddy showed up empty-handed.

“He forgot,” the boy told his mom quietly when she picked him up. He didn’t seem angry. Not even really surprised. Just... disappointed.

The mom felt like absolute garbage. She’d hyped up this promise, believed her ex would follow through for once, and now her kid was crushed.

His dad told him: “I’ll bring the Lego set next Friday.”

The boy lit up again. Started planning again. Drew more pictures.

Friday came. The supervised visit happened.

No Lego set.

This time, her son cried in the car on the drive home.

Here’s what this mom wrote to me: “I feel like shit for giving him such a bad experience of a father figure. I feel bad but I told myself this time I'm not going to cover for his failure and compensate for his loss because in the past I would’ve went and bought it so he wouldn't feel bad. This time I said I want him to feel the disappointment his dad causes him but I feel like a horrible mom.”

The guilt is crushing

I know how she feels. Every cell in your body screams at you to fix it. To run to the store, buy that Lego set, wrap it up, and tell your kid, “Surprise! I got it for you!”

You don’t want your child to hurt or to associate their birthday with disappointment. It breaks your heart to see them being let down over and over and over again.

But the hard truth is that when you compensate for your ex's broken promises, it’s not your child you’re protecting. You’re protecting your ex from the natural consequences of their own behavior and enabling that behavior.

Your guilt isn’t about failing your child

It’s about something much deeper.

You feel guilty because you “chose” this person (as everybody likes to tell you). Yes, they’re wrong but you can’t help wondering if they’re right. You’re gutted because your child has to deal with this parent and is going to grow up broken because of this. You’re worried that professionals will judge you for not protecting your child from disappointment or somehow blame you for the other parent’s actions. You even feel responsible for managing everyone’s emotions. And you also feel powerless because you can’t control what your ex does or doesn’t do.

Please, please, if there’s nothing else you take away from this newsletter, I want you to take this away: your child having another parent who’s always disappointing them isn’t your fault. You didn’t make your ex forget that Lego set, or that promised outing, or that parent-kid meal out. You didn't make them promise something they had no intention of delivering, and the absolute last thing you did was, in any way, to create this situation.

Your ex did.

The shame belongs to your ex, not to you.

What happens when you compensate for a neglectful ex

When you rush in to buy the Lego set (or make up for whatever it is) yourself, here’s what your child learns:

The other parent doesn’t have to keep promises because the healthy one will fix it. Your children start expecting you to be the backup parent for everything. They stop holding the other parent accountable because hey, you’ll make sure they get what they need anyway.

My healthy parent is anxious and doesn’t trust me to handle disappointment. Children are incredibly perceptive. When you frantically try to prevent them from feeling any negative emotions, they pick up on your anxiety. They start to believe that disappointment is something they can’t survive.

I can’t trust my own experience. When the other parent says they’ll bring or do something and doesn't, but then you provide it “from the other parent,” you’re gaslighting your kid. They know you did it. Now they’re confused about reality.

Love means rescuing people from the consequences of their actions. This sets your child up for really unhealthy relationships later in life. They'll tolerate unreliability. They'll make excuses for people who let them down. They’ll become the fixer in their own relationships. Or the entitled one who’s constantly letting other people down.

What your child learns from natural consequences

When this mom doesn’t compensate, when she lets her child feel that disappointment, here’s what he learns:

Dad is unreliable, and that’s information I need. Her child will learn, slowly and with her support, exactly who his father is. Not who mom wishes he was, and not who he pretends to be. Who he actually is, as shown through his actions.

I can survive disappointment, and mom trusts me to do it. She’s showing her son that she believes in his resilience and that negative emotions won’t destroy them. He’ll learn that he’s strong enough to feel sad, angry, or let down and come through it.

I can trust my own perceptions. When dad doesn't deliver and nothing magically appears anyway, the little boy learns that his read on situations is accurate. He learns to trust his gut instincts about people.

Real love means being present through hard feelings. Instead of rescuing him (actually, the one she’s rescuing is his dad), she’s supporting him. She’s sitting with him in his disappointment. She’s letting him feel uncomfortable feelings and also validating them. She’s teaching them that love doesn’t mean you have to prevent people from feeling any pain. Sometimes all people need is for you to be there for them as they feel the pain.

The financial burden you’re taking on

Let’s be honest about another piece of this: compensating for your ex’s failures costs you money you probably don’t have, especially if you’re a mom who’s being financially abused by said ex.

You’re already carrying most of the financial load. You’re the one buying school supplies, winter coats, birthday party gifts for their friends, groceries, and paying for activities and probably even medical costs and school supplies. You’re stretching every dollar.

And now you’re supposed to also buy the gifts your ex promised?

One mom told me she’d bought Halloween costumes, scooters, birthday presents—all things her ex had promised and never delivered. She’d spent hundreds of dollars trying to protect her kids from disappointment. Hundreds of dollars she desperately needed for actual bills. I did a similar thing. When my ex sold all our kids’ bicycles in a yard sale, I went and bought them all new (well, second-hand) bikes.

Here’s what this other mom realized: she was subsidizing his image as a good dad while barely keeping her own head above water.

That’s not fair to you. And it’s not sustainable. After paying for everything myself for years, I had to draw the line at my kids’ tertiary education fees, and they found jobs to pay for these themselves.

How to actually support your child through broken promises

So, if this mom doesn’t want to enable dad by buying the Lego set, what can she do?

She can validate his feelings without bashing his dad. “I can see you’re really disappointed that daddy didn’t bring the Lego set. It’s okay to feel sad when someone doesn’t do what they said they would.”

She doesn’t have to make excuses for her ex. She doesn’t need to say “Daddy forgot” or “He got busy” or “He probably couldn't afford it.” Those are all lies designed to protect her ex’s image. Her child can handle “Daddy didn't bring it.”

Be the steady, reliable presence. This is where she’ll shine. She shows up. She does what she says she’ll do. She keeps her promises. She repairs things or doesn’t make excuses when she slips up. Over time, her child will understand the difference between the parent he can rely on and one he can’t.

It’s important for her child to process this at his own pace. Some kids will cry. Some will get angry. Some will seem fine and then have a meltdown three days later about something completely unrelated (that’s actually about the broken promise). All of this is normal and healthy.

She can redirect without replacing or invalidating. Instead of buying the Lego set the dad promised, maybe she does something with him that costs nothing, like building a fort, having a movie night, or making cookies. She’s showing him that time and presence matter more than expensive gifts.

You’re not the bad guy here

It might feel like you’re throwing your ex under the bus, that you’re teaching your child, deliberately and with relish, to stop trusting the other parent. Maybe even that you’re alienating your child from the other parent, and you might be worried that this is how courts will see your failure to jump in and compensate every time your ex disappoints your child.

I get this concern. I really do. But let me reframe it slightly (so you can too, if it ever comes up with any professionals).

You're not trying to make your child distrust the other parent. You’re just allowing your child to experience reality. There’s a big difference.

Trying to make them distrust the other parent would be badmouthing them, pointing out every failure, building a case against them. That is harmful and you should avoid it and remedy the situation right away if you ever catch yourself doing it.

Allowing your child to experience reality means stepping back from interference. It means not lying about why the Lego set (or the shared activity) didn’t show up or didn’t happen. It means not covering for them. It means letting the other parent’s actions (or inactions) speak for themselves.

Your child will form their own conclusions based on repeated patterns. That’s healthy and appropriate. They’re learning to trust their own judgment.

I know it sucks, but here’s the truth.

You can’t make your ex be a better parent by compensating for their failures.

You can’t love your child hard enough to make up for their other parent’s neglect. You can’t buy enough Lego sets or Barbies to erase the disappointment of an unreliable father. You can’t control your child’s other parent, and you can’t control their relationship with that parent. You need to accept that.

But there is a lot you can control. For instance, how you behave, the promises you make, your own integrity, and your own presence.

And sometimes, the most loving thing you can do is step back and let your ex’s actions speak for themselves while you stay steady, available, and trustworthy. Your child doesn’t need you to be both parents. They just need you to be an honest, reliable, present one.

Want to know how I can help you?

Struggling with the guilt of not compensating for your ex's broken promises?

Book a 30-minute consultation, free of charge with me. We’ll talk through your specific situation, and you’ll leave with clarity on what’s actually best for your child, not what guilt is telling you to do. Whether or not we decide to work together after our call, you’ll walk away with a practical perspective you can use right away.

Want to know more about what I do?

Resources

The resources I’ve picked are all about helping your kids work through disappointment and becoming more resilient when one of their parents consistently lets them down.

This article, entitled “Mom, Dad! But You Promised!”: The Importance of Keeping Promises to Your Children highlights the importance of keeping promises to children and points out how you, as the healthy parent, can model the kind of consistency they’ll never see in the other parent.

BUILDING RESILIENCE IN CHILDREN outlines how to balance protection with allowing kids to face challenges, and gives a step-wise approach: support them in problem-solving, then reflect together on what worked and what didn’t to strengthen resilience and adaptability.​

Helping Children Handle Disappointment and Failure focuses on teaching positive coping skills (e.g., identifying feel-better activities), encouraging a growth mindset, and using family culture and conversations to normalize setbacks and learn from them.​

Working Through Disappointment to Build Resilience in Kids offers practical tips like acknowledging feelings first, using perspective-shifting questions (“what would you tell a friend?”), reconnecting socially, and revisiting the incident later to highlight the child’s coping and growth.