Change WiFi mode without dropping SoftAP clients

I know that here is not the right place to do this question, but I haven’t found help anywhere else.

I’m working on an application where WiFi-AP mode is used to serve a web page, where clients can select a network for the module to connect to as client. My issue is when the user types, for example, the wrong password and WiFi-STA cannot sucessfully stablish the connection.

How can I force the ESP8266 to stop trying to connect with the wrong password, without dropping clients connected to the WiFi-AP??

I’m not sure if it’s the right board to post to, if not, please feel free to move it elsewhere.