Badmouthing is the #1 Play the alienator's use, but what do we do when we are not sure if badmouthing is occurring because our child is shutting down?  The same thing we would do if our child was shutting down for any reason at all.  We get them to open up!  But this has to be done very strategically or it will only cause our child to double down on the shutdown.  Listen to Episode #3: Conquering the Shutdown to find out how you can strategically respond to the child shutdown.