She Said . . . What?! —Common Sense When Kids Talk to Judges

He said/she said. We hear this phrase a lot in child custody cases. It captures the idea that disputing former partners give conflicting accounts of reality. (For same-sex couples: he said/he said, or she said/she said.)

Those charged with finding the facts do not assume one person’s account is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. Hence the phrase, “he said/she said.” No one quarrels with this truism.

But when it comes to “the child’s voice” in a custody dispute, some lean toward a different position. They believe children’s reports about their parents’ behavior are for the most part reliable and should strongly influence custody decisions. 

I’ve written about how it can harm children to place too much emphasis on their stated preferences during a custody dispute. It sets them up to be manipulated by parents who care more about winning their case than protecting their children’s relationship with the other parent.

Not only can it burden children to expect them to act as their parent’s adversary. What children say they want is not always what they truly want, and, at any rate, can be a poor guide to their best interests.

It should be obvious we cannot rely unquestioningly on children’s reports. This was brought home by Carolyn Hax, the syndicated advice columnist. On a school vacation, her sons enjoyed a fun-packed week of enriching activities: Imax theater, museum, trampoline park. To wind things down the day before returning to school, the family stayed indoors and watched movies.

Guess what the columnist’s son wrote for his assignment about how he spent his vacation. “We watched TV.” Hax concluded, “Kids, like the adults they’re watching so closely, sometimes tell the truth, and sometimes tell only part of it to create a certain effect.” Common sense.

Imagine the impact if the child’s report about watching TV for an entire vacation was delivered, not to a teacher, but to a judge hearing evidence on a parent’s ability to meet the child’s needs. In a custody case where children testify in open court, or speak with the judge in chambers, let’s hope the judge understands the limits of children’s reports.

P. S. The fact that children’s reports cannot be taken in full at face value does not mean what they say has no value. Some readers may, deliberately or not, misrepresent my position as encouraging authorities to discount children’s true reports of abuse. Far from it. In addition to concerns about the drawbacks of involving children directly in custody trials I have written extensively about how children can contribute valuable information in custody disputes. 

For a more in-depth treatment of the Payoffs and Pitfalls of Listening to Children, read my paper by that title. Or watch a speech I gave on the Benefits and Hazards of Involving Children in Custody Decisions, on DVD, or video download.

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Tips For Children Who Are Alienated or At Risk For Alienation

Children who feel pressured by a parent to disrespect and reject their other parent risk losing a healthy connection to both their parents. This is true whether the pressure is subtle or obvious, inadvertent or intentional.

“Welcome Back, Pluto: Understanding, Preventing, and Overcoming Parental Alienation” was created to help children facing this risk.

A parent left this review on Amazon.com:

“It has totally changed the dynamics of the alienation on its head in my household by opening my children’s eyes to what was really happening to them and how they can cope. I love that it gives children alternatives to listening to the preferred parent’s degradation of the target parent. Don’t give up if you are a target parent. Show your children this video, read Divorce Poison and get counseling. Your children deserve and need both parents in their life.”

Here are nine tips discussed in “Welcome Back, Pluto” that children and teens have found helpful. Perhaps one of more of these tips will resonate with a child you know who is caught between two parents.

  1. When you see the rejected parent, instead of thinking about how you do not like this parent, tell yourself that you will have a good time and act like you used to when you liked this parent. You will find that it feels much better to get along well with your parents. 
  2. Join after-school activities and get involved in interests outside the family. 
  3. Spend time with friends who understand you and help you find better ways to handle your feelings. 
  4. Find special things to do with each parent.
  5. Ask your parents to stop saying bad things about the other parent.
  6. When a parent bad-mouths the other parent, ask, “Why are you talking like this?”
  7. Ask your parent, “Will you still love me if I love my other parent?”
  8. If parents continue to bad-mouth each other, walk away, change the subject, or act bored.
  9. Express your feelings to your parent in notes or drawings.

These tips empower children to assert their right to give and receive love from both parents and strengthen their positive connection to a parent whom they are encouraged to reject. It helps them see they have choices.

The tips encourage children to create positive experiences with a parent who is the target of bad-mouthing. Behaving positively toward a person, even if the behavior takes effort and feels ingenuine, can evoke positive feelings. Acting nice toward a parent who deserves affection feels better than showing unreasonable contempt. Directing children’s attention to these better feelings helps them experience the direct rewards of healthier behavior toward others.

Children usually need not fear a parent’s withdrawal of love if they fail to please the parent by rejecting the other parent. When their child asks, “Will you still love me if I love my other parent?” parents who are not too far out of touch with their children’s needs, and not too caught up in their hatred of their former partner, will be quick to reassure their child of their love. (Although in some tragic instances a parent has punished a child for not rejecting the other parent, or rejected a child who fails to condemn the other parent.)

The tips also help children shield themselves from being in the middle of adult disputes and encourages them to find gratifications outside the family to reduce their exposure to conflict in the family. Naturally, more severely alienated children will be less able to profit from these tips. As with all posts on this blog, on my Facebook page, on my website, and in my other writings, these ideas are general observations and not specific recommendations for your family. The reader must decide whether any suggestion is appropriate for a particular situation.

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Why Children Take Sides Against a Parent 

  At times parents find it difficult to show patience with irrationally alienated children who act disrespectfully. To respond sensitively, parents and professionals need to understand why alienated children act as they do. Also, when alienated children themselves better understand their motives, this can help them control their behavior. Here are some reasons why children might side with a parent (and sometimes other relatives) against their other parent.

  • Choosing sides makes some children feel less confused about which side is right, and they hope this will keep them out of the middle of their parents’ conflicts.
  • Children sympathize with parents who act sad and helpless.
  • Children choose sides to feel accepted. They learn to hate one parent to feel loved by the other.
  • Children may feel they have no choice but to reject a parent to please the other parent, and thus can avoid the alienating parent’s anger directed toward them.
  • Children may be manipulated to believe a parent is unworthy of their love and respect.

A future post will include tips for children who reject, or at risk for rejecting, a parent. If you cannot wait for the post, find these tips in the video, Welcome Back, Pluto, which speaks directly to children and teens.

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Blowback For Divorce Poison! Mother Jailed, Ordered to Pay $84k, and Stripped of Custody

Spain is a wonderful place to visit. World-class museums, unique architecture, distinctive cuisine. Welcoming to tourists. But not so hospitable to parents who lodge false abuse accusations to win custody.

In a stunning ruling rarely seen on this side of the Atlantic, a court in Granada ordered a five-year jail term for a mother convicted of filing false sex abuse allegations. She was also ordered to pay 40,000 euros ($42,000) each to the child and her father for the harm caused by the unfounded allegations, which the court found were fabricated in order to secure sole and exclusive custody of the couple’s 9-year-old daughter. 

And, in a brutal example of blowback—parents in custody disputes be forewarned—this mother, who subjected her child to unnecessary repeated intrusive examinations as a litigation strategy, was stripped by the court of parental responsibility for ten years.

The court’s ruling described the mother as lying and showing “cunning malice with obsessive overtones.” In other words, severe divorce poison.

The woman filed eight reports of abuse to the police and the courts during a two-year period and took her young daughter to be examined by gynecologists and psychologists on ten separate occasions. None ever found any evidence of the alleged abuse.

Ironically, as other countries move in the direction of taking seriously the serious harm caused by divorce poison (including alienating behavior outside the context of divorce)—offering protection for children and parents damaged by attempts to undermine the child’s relationship with a parent—some U.S. activists are trying very hard to prevent family courts from offering the same type of protection. These activists claim that research on parental alienation is not scientific, and therefore courts should be prohibited from considering evidence and interventions related to parental alienation. 

The activists are wrong. Look for an announcement next week on this page about a major article in an American Psychological Association journal showing that the concept of parental alienation rests on a strong and trustworthy foundation of scientific study.

Find more information about the Spanish case here: https://www.barrons.com/articles/spain-mum-jailed-for-falsely-accusing-ex-husband-of-child-abuse-01652878507

#DivorcePoison #ParentalAlienation

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Think an alienated child is well-adjusted? Dig deeper.

“Otherwise well adjusted.” That’s how some professionals rationalize doing nothing to help severely alienated children who reject a relationship with a good parent.

If a child does well in school, enjoys extracurricular activities, and behaves well in one parent’s home, the argument goes, a court’s efforts to help the child overcome an unreasonable aversion to the other parent are unwarranted and potentially abusive.

The fallacy of this argument becomes obvious if we apply it to a child who is physically or sexually abused. And that’s just the point Judge Kristina Karle made in a Summer 2021 panel discussion published in the American Bar Association’s preeminent journal in the field of trial practice, Litigation. (See my July 31, 2021 Facebook post.)

Former prosecutor and chief of the Domestic Violence Child Abuse Bureau in the Monroe County, NY, District Attorney’s office, and the first woman to hold the position of Ontario County Judge, Judge Karle observed, “I had countless cases in which a child was regularly abused, yet excelled at school, got straight As. They could control their grades; they could not control the abuse. . . . We have to be very careful not to just reject concerns about high-performing children, thinking that if they are doing great in school, no abuse could be occurring. We’ve got to dig deeper.”

In other words, a child who looks well-adjusted on the surface, or in some settings, may be suffering in less immediately apparent ways. If we ignore this suffering, we fail to protect the child from further harm and leave the child at risk for future problems.

Unreasonably alienated children do not recognize the harm in devaluing, maligning, and disowning a parent. In most instances they believe the other parent approves of—may even be gratified by—their mistreatment of the parent. If the children are aware their negative attitudes have been influenced by the parent who shares those attitudes, they do not admit it.

Well-meaning professionals, who devote their careers to bringing greater awareness and understanding of the plight of domestic violence victims, can compound the problem. They may be too quick to assume that a parent who wants to erase the other parent from the child’s life simply seeks to protect the child from abuse. (Naturally it is vital not to err in the opposite direction and discount a parent’s concerns without a full examination.)

These professionals also tilt strongly toward assuming that when a child publicly states a wish to avoid a parent, the wish reflects what is best for the child and should be endorsed. Ideological biases lead such professionals to fall short of what we should expect from a forensic expert, which is to examine an issue from all reasonable perspectives. In Judge Karle’s words, to dig deeper.

The argument for letting children decide custody

Why would professionals, who should know better, want a child’s preference to dictate custody decisions. Part of their argument is that severely alienated children have thwarted previous attempts to help them. These children can be adamant about getting what they demand, claim they will be miserable if required to spend time with the rejected parent, and threaten to act out if they don’t get their way. In other words, even if the court believes a child is better off repairing the relationship with the rejected parent, the court is powerless in the face of the child’s vehement demands.

Another part of the argument is the assertion that it is not only wrong to force a child to spend time with a parent whom the child claims to hate or fear, but potentially traumatic. Critics condemn efforts to help a child restore positive thoughts and feelings about a parent, and overcome unbalanced and distorted negative beliefs and memories, as “forcing children to adopt a different view of a parent.”

Recapping the argument for a hands-off stance that allows children to avoid a good parent: Children hold the power to thwart efforts to reconnect them with a parent and doing so risks traumatizing children. The final leg of this stance is the “otherwise well-adjusted” argument: Even when we acknowledge it is unfortunate for a child to reject a good parent, if the child is doing well in other respects—school, friends, etc.—the upheaval to the child’s life is not worth the effort to remedy alienation. The cure is worse than the disease.

How is the alienated child NOT well-adjusted?

Setting aside the odd notion that a child who holds an irrational aversion to a loving parent can be considered well-adjusted, and that the loss of a parent and other relatives is not in itself cause enough to intervene—would we appease a child’s aversion to a doctor, dentist, or school? —in what other ways is this child NOT well-adjusted? Let me count them.

  1. The child harbors a set of distorted thoughts and memories about a parent that do not align with reality.
  2. The child acts empowered to mistreat a parent in a way that normally would be considered unacceptable and a significant behavior problem.
  3. The child who threatens to defy court-ordered custody arrangements demonstrates lack of respect for the law and for the court’s authority. How can a child who refuses to cooperate with the court’s intentions be said to be well-behaved and well-adjusted? If the child refused to attend school, wouldn’t we regard that refusal as a problem that needed to be understood and resolved? Or would we say that since the child feels so strongly about avoiding school, the best we can do is capitulate to the child’s demands?
  4. The psychological processes that accompany irrationally rejecting and treating a parent with cruelty may bleed into other relationships. These processes include categorizing people as allies or enemies, contempt for those who see things differently, and feelings of entitlement in personal relationships.
  5. The child learns to deal with interpersonal conflict through avoidance. Since some conflict is endemic to most relationships, this child may be at risk for prematurely terminating relationships rather than improving skills to manage conflict and sustain relationships. Thus, when a conflict arises with a friend, an alienated child who was empowered to reject a parent is apt to do the same with the friend: avoid the conflict by ending the friendship rather than strengthen conflict-management skills.
  6. A child who has been violent or threatened violence against a parent, and as a result is no longer expected to spend time with that parent, is apt to conclude that violence is an effective means to achieve goals. Not a lesson we want to teach children.
  7. Many children who, on the surface, appear comfortable with disowning a parent grow up with heavy doses of shame, guilt, anger, and remorse. (See my September 25, 2021 Facebook post on this tragic legacy here. Unlike children who suffer a parent’s death, alienated children cannot process their grief over losing a parent because, at the time, they think they have lost nothing of value. It is only when they belatedly realize the magnitude of what they lost, and how they were maneuvered to participate in bringing about the loss, that they face their grief and begin to work through it. By this time, it may be too late. See the last chapter of Welcome Back, Pluto for a poignant example.

Dig deeper to help alienated children

As I concluded in “Ten Parental Alienation Fallacies That Compromise Decisions in Court and in Therapy,” published in an American Psychological Association journal: “We should not let a child’s good academic grades, friends, and community activities distract attention from serious problems in character development and interpersonal relationships; from impaired functioning in cognitive, emotional, and behavioral domains; from unnecessary yet significant losses; and from the long-term consequences of growing up with such losses and with unresolved and unnecessary conflict with a loving parent.”

What advice do I offer professionals who stand ready to allow a child to torpedo a life-long relationship with a loving parent and that parent’s relatives because the child is “otherwise well-adjusted”? Professionals who think we should allow a child to make this major life decision, harmful in the present and for a long time to come—extending even into the next generation when the child’s own offspring have one less set of grandparents to dote on them? Professionals who think we should grant a child’s demand to avoid a parent rather than risk “disrupting” a child who is “otherwise well-adjusted”? . . . . . . DIG DEEPER.

#DivorcePoison #ParentalAlienation

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Parental Alienation’s Tragic Legacy of Shame, Guilt, & Remorse


A woman lamented to advice columnist extraordinaire, Carolyn Hax: “I’m so ashamed. I don’t even know how to make it up to my mom, who through all of this always told me she still loved me, even with all the hard words I threw at her. I’m beating myself up now wondering why I chose to believe my dad when there were so many signs I was wrong.” 

This daughter’s lament captures so much of what is vital to understand about parental alienation. Inducing a child’s alienation from a parent is not a victimless crime. It creates lasting harm. Shame. Guilt. Remorse.  And more shame. And that’s just the child’s suffering. What of the scorned and forsaken mother, who endured years of heartbreak at the loss of her daughter?

How very sad that no one came to this girl’s aid when she needed it. No one helped her resist her father’s manipulations.

Perhaps she saw a therapist and was represented by a guardian ad litem who dismissed the problem as a temporary aberration resulting from the parents’ conflict, destined to be short-lived. Perhaps they didn’t believe that a father could wield so much influence over his daughter’s relationship with her mother. So they absolved the father of major responsibility for the problem and instead attributed it to multiple reasons with no primary cause. Or worse, didn’t believe that children can be manipulated to forsake a parent who didn’t deserve it. So they blamed the bereft victim mother, turning a deaf ear to her pleas that she had done nothing to warrant her child’s hatred, and that her vindictive and coercive ex-husband engineered and drove the process.

To defend their stance, the therapist and guardian ad litem may have cited publications by a social work professor or a law professor claiming that no solid science backs the idea that children can be manipulated to turn against a loving parent. Yes, they will admit, some parents bad-mouth and bash their ex’s in exactly the manner I describe in my publications. But we don’t know enough about the power of parental influence, the skeptics argue, to conclude that alienating behavior can cause children to align with one parent against the other. 

If parents can’t influence their children, I suppose we’ll need to eliminate the entire branch of psychology that studies parenting and the impact on children of their parent’s behavior, personalities, and mental status. For that matter, let’s also wipe out the parenting advice section of bookstores.

What does it take to maintain the illusion that children can’t be manipulated to turn against a good parent, or that science does not support this possibility? Blinders. The skeptical professors review a small segment of the relevant science while overlooking huge swaths of research on the psychology of influence and persuasion; the potency of suggestion, selective attention, and confirmation bias; the impact of family violence and coercion, psychological child abuse, and intrusive parenting; cult recruitment; and other fields of social science.

Or, they cite a study of nonalienated children to make the obvious point that parents can occasionally bad-mouth each other without their children rejecting either parent. [See my April 24, 2018, post titled: Backlash Against Parental Alienation: Denial and Skepticism About Psychological Abuse.] This is especially true when the parents’ negative behaviors are mild and occasional rather than a relentless campaign of interference.

While the parental alienation deniers and skeptics ignore or spin the relevant science and avoid placing blame with the dispenser of divorce poison, the public has no difficulty recognizing the potency of parental manipulation. Carolyn Hax got it right away. “It sounds as if you have been the target of heavy manipulation,” she replied to the woman who signed her letter, “So Ashamed.” Rather than absolve the alienating father of responsibility for the tragedy he set in motion, Hax laid the blame squarely where it belongs: “The fault lies with the person manipulating you.”

Hax’s reply was followed by readers’ thoughts. Her readers were even more emphatic. 

“I can tell you, having been abused for years, that part of an abuser’s framework is to isolate children from the other parent. Make no mistake about it, your dad was manipulating you to keep you away from your mother as part of the abuse.”

The last reader’s comment is the most poignant: “I teared up, thinking about how much joy you brought your mom by telling her you finally know, and believe, the truth. Trust that she meant what she said about always loving you.”

True. But, oh, how we wish this mother and daughter —and the hundreds of thousands like them—were spared the tragedy of the lost years. 

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Removal from An Alienating Parent Not a “Last Resort”

 

Some law professors and mental health professionals assert that removing an alienated child from the custody of a parent with whom the child claims to feel aligned—and placing the child in the custody of a parent whom the child claims to hate or fear—is a draconian move that surely will traumatize the child. Judges have referred to this remedy as “a last resort.”

In contrast, those who acknowledge the harm to victims of divorce poison regard such a move as a reasonable option to protect children from further exposure to toxic parenting and the damage it causes. In this view, removing a child from an environment that will not stop twisting the child’s heart and mind against the other parent is not a last resort. It is a priority.

Enter Lord Justice McCombe, Lady Justice King, and Lord Justice Peter Jackson. [I wrote about Justice Jackson’s wisdom and sensitivity in a 2017 Facebook post.] In a recent UK Court of Appeal decision (Re S) these judges, citing an earlier decision in the High Court of Justice, drew a distinction between a highly significant change and a last resort:  “We agree that whilst a change in the child’s main home is a highly significant alteration in that child’s circumstances, such a change is not regarded as ‘a last resort.’ The judge must consider all the circumstances and choose the best welfare solution.” You can read the decision here.

There is a lot these judges got right. I will discuss just a few highlights in their well-reasoned decision.

The judges criticized the lower court for not addressing the mother’s innuendos of sexual impropriety on the part of the father. The mother expressed concerned about the risk of sexual abuse because, at the request of their 3-year-old daughter, the father would lay alongside the child to help her get to sleep.

Referring to the mother, the Justices wrote, “She had been bringing the matter up on and off since May 2015. It is particularly striking that she should promote suspicions about the father, despite the lack of any evidence, when she is at the same time impervious to proven allegations against Benhayon. This state of affairs was capable of providing support for the father’s case in relation to alienation, but it did not receive any attention in the judge’s overall evaluation.”

According to an Australian jury, Benhayon—who claims to be the reincarnation of Leonardo Da Vinci—is a cult leader who had an “indecent interest in young girls as young as ten whom he causes to stay at his house unaccompanied.” The mother in the UK case was a devout follower of Benhayon, imposing his recommended dietary restrictions on her young daughter and teaching the cult’s beliefs to her.  One such belief is the importance of moving in a counter-clockwise direction. The father expressed concern that his daughter was preoccupied with complying with the counter-clockwise prescription, such as mixing pancake batter only in that direction. 

A court-appointed social worker reported that the girl accused her dad of not being like her and her mom because he did not share their beliefs. The social worker concluded the girl was at risk of becoming alienated from her father and was at risk of being harmed if her mother maintained her commitment to the cult.

Another noteworthy element in the Court’s decision is its recognition of the importance of moving quickly when children are exposed to alienating behaviors. In a 2015 paper published in a law journal, I wrote: “What often occurs is that the children remain out of touch with their rejected parent as the litigation slogs through a quicksand of legal maneuvering and failed psychotherapeutic attempts to remedy the problem.”

The Court cited another case in which judicial delay contributed to the entrenchment of two children’s alienation from their mother. In that case, despite the mother’s plea for a swift decision, the lower court took a year and half to issue its decision. According to the European Court of Human Rights, the court’s delay “added to the overall period during which [the mother] did not have meaningful contacts with her two children, while [the father] continued to be able to alienate the children from her. This delay in deciding the case is contrary to the principle of exceptional diligence.”

Returning to the case at hand, the UK court opined, “In a situation of parental alienation the obligation on the court is to respond with exceptional diligence and take whatever effective measures are available. The situation calls for judicial resolve because the line of least resistance is likely to be less stressful for the child and for the court in the short term. But it does not represent a solution to the problem. Inaction will probably reinforce the position of the stronger party at the expense of the weaker party and the bar will be raised for the next attempt at intervention. Above all, the obligation on the court is to keep the child’s medium to long term welfare at the forefront of its mind and wherever possible to uphold the child and parent’s right to respect for family life before it is breached. In making its overall welfare decision the court must therefore be alert to early signs of alienation. What will amount to effective action will be a matter of judgment, but it is emphatically not necessary to wait for serious, worse still irreparable, harm to be done before appropriate action is taken.”

Amen.

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Do Nothin’ Til You Hear From Me

            What should you do if your child rejects you?

            Ask a therapist this question before 2002 and the answer was probably, “Be patient. Your child will reach out within a couple of years.”

            After my first book on parental alienation was released in January 2002—recommending a proactive approach in place of passivity—the tide began to turn. Therapists learned that in many families with irrationally alienated children, absence did not make the heart grow fonder.

            Some therapists pushed back. Dr. Janet Johnston and Dr. Judith Goldman claimed that an unspecified number of young adults from the group of 37 participants in their study had actively resisted or refused contact with a parent but subsequently reconciled with the rejected parent during their late teens or early twenties. Some people cited this finding when they advised alienated parents to bide their time, rationalizing that parental alienation will resolve itself within one or two years, certainly by the time the child is 18 years old. Drs. Johnston and Goldman concluded that their study’s results support a “strategy of supportive voluntary counseling and/or backing off and allowing the youth to mature and time to heal the breach. Specifically, when teenagers feel more empowered and their autonomy respected, they are more able to distance themselves from the polarizing parental conflict and more likely to reinitiate contact with the rejected parent.”

            Dr. Johnston’s body of work on the psychology of children from divorced homes is outstanding. But I knew she was mistaken when she advised parents to back off and expect time to heal these type of family wounds. By the time Drs. Johnston and Goldman published their study, I had already accumulated an overflowing folder with heart-wrenching pleas from parents who had not seen their alienated children, now adults, for many years.

            A 2011 study (Hands & Warshak) classified 29% of college students from divorced families as alienated. We can’t use this study to estimate the prevalence of parental alienation in the general population. But to the parents whose children in that study viewed them in a predominantly negative light, it doesn’t much matter how many other parents are in the same boat. Estranged parent–child relationships are tragic regardless of the prevalence of these problems.

            Even if a teen reunites with a parent after two years, this amounts to a lot of suffering. Think of all the formative experiences that would have—and should have—been shared, but weren’t. Witnessing the child’s preparation for and celebration of school performances. Participating in the process of selecting, visiting, and applying to colleges, and watching the child open the college decision letters.

            Rejected parents miss out on milestones such as seeing their child prepare for the high school prom and celebrating graduation from high school. They don’t witness the joys and heartbreaks of their child’s early romantic relationships. And if the children ever do reconcile, they can’t turn back the clock to make up for these lost experiences. So much sadness. So much regret. And most unnecessary if professionals better understood the psychology of parental alienation.

            This is why I wrote DIVORCE POISON (2002). It is why I wrote the second edition (2010). It is why I wrote and produced (with Dr. Mark Otis) the video, WELCOME BACK, PLUTO: UNDERSTANDING, PREVENTING, AND OVERCOMING PARENTAL ALIENATION. And it is why I continue to work to raise awareness of this problem and contribute to our understanding of what we can do about it.

            I will end the post with this thought. If you see a child becoming unreasonably alienated from a good and loving parent, doing nothing will accomplish nothing. Waiting for the child to make the first move toward reconciliation may be a prescription for prolonged heartache. Do nothin’ till you hear from me? You may be waitin’ a long time. Or forever.

——————————-

Note: this post’s title comes from the 1940s song of the same name (music by Duke Ellington; lyrics by Bob Russell). Some consider the tune one of Ellington’s best. In addition to Ellington’s version, with baritone Al Hibbler on vocals, the song climbed the pop charts with versions by Stan Kenton & His Orchestra (Red Dorris, vocals) and Woody Herman & His Orchestra (Woody Herman, vocals). Click this link [https://youtu.be/0I8gk1fI-jI] for the great Billie Holiday’s 1956 version—check out Ben Webster’s smooth-as-silk tenor sax solo about two minutes into the track. After Lady Day’s version, navigate to Anita O’Day’s styling of the song: https://youtu.be/PD6GdMjiQ60. And don’t miss Ella Fitzgerald’s pitch-perfect rendition: https://youtu.be/BfqD9z6k6Ns.

#DivorcePoison  #ParentalAlienation  #Reunification

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Backlash Against Parental Alienation: Denial and Skepticism About Psychological Abuse

A boy wrote a letter to his mother telling her that she belonged in a mental institution, that she was nothing to him, that she was nothing but a screw-up, that she was sick, selfish, that he wanted to have nothing to do with her or any of her relatives, and that he hoped she died a horrible, painful death. In other words, this boy disowned his mother with the most aggressive, vile, and hateful language.

The father’s attorney attempted to minimize the child’s alienation by claiming that the boy merely loved his dad a lot more than he loved his mom.

Attorneys spin the facts to zealously advocate for their clients’ positions. We expect it.

But what excuse do others have for denying the reality that a child can become irrationally alienated from a good and formerly loved parent? And for denying the reality that the child’s unjustified rejection of one parent can be traced to the other parent’s relentless manipulations to drive a wedge between child and parent?

How could anyone who works in the family law system deny the reality—affirmed nearly unanimously by legal and mental health professionals—that children can be influenced by one parent to turn against the other parent?

Encouraging a child to align with one parent against the other, and teaching a child to hate a parent for no good reason, is cruel. If a teacher did this to a student, bad-mouthed a child’s parents and systematically undermined the child’s love and respect for her parents, that teacher would be out of a job.
“Stealing the soul,” is how I described this process in DIVORCE POISON—enlisting children as agents in their own deprivation and violating children’s trust.

Leading authorities on divorce agree. Dr. Joan Kelly and Dr. Janet Johnston held no punches: “Whether such parents are aware of the negative impact on the child, these behaviors of the aligned parent (and his or her supporters) constitute emotional abuse of the child.”

Society has a checkered track record in recognizing and protecting children from abuse. Denial and minimization intermittently subdue awareness and acknowledgment. It has been this way with physical abuse, with sexual abuse, and with psychological abuse. So we should not be surprised that a subculture of parents and professionals denies that children can be manipulated to reject a parent for no good reason—or that they go so far as to claim that most children will turn against the parent who is abusing them in these ways.

How do deniers rationalize their apparent blindness? Here are five strategies.

To the parent who loses her child, or the child who loses a parent, it matters little whether we label the loss a syndrome, a disorder, a condition, or a problem. What matters is whether a child is suffering and whether a parent’s behavior contributes to a child’s suffering.

1. Deflect attention from the reality of divorce poison and its destructive impact with debates about whether parental alienation constitutes a bona fide syndrome. The claim is that because the official manual of psychiatric diagnoses (DSM-5) does not include the term “parental alienation,” the problem must be bogus. You also will not find “reckless driving syndrome” in the DSM-5. But you would be wise to avoid getting in a car with a driver who has this problem. Children need protection from reckless, toxic parenting, regardless of how we label the parent’s behavior. Moreover, the DSM-5 does refer to the concept of irrational parental alienation. The diagnostic manual mentions “unwarranted feelings of estrangement” as an example of the diagnosis: Parent–Child Relational Problem.

To the parent who loses her child, or the child who loses a parent, it matters little whether we label the loss a syndrome, a disorder, a condition, or a problem. What matters is whether a child is suffering and whether a parent’s behavior contributes to a child’s suffering.

2. Claim that it is only a speculation, hypothesis, or theory that children can become alienated from one parent when exposed to the other parent’s negative influence. As I explained in my article, “Bringing Sense to Parental Alienation,” there is nothing theoretical or speculative about the existence of irrationally alienated children. These children can be directly observed by anyone willing to look.

3. Attribute unsupportable, fake positions to parental alienation studies, and then refute the fake positions—a tactic known as “attacking a straw man.” For instance, a recently published study claimed that “the alienation hypothesis” (see denial strategy #2 above) maintains that parental denigration is only unilateral, not reciprocal, and that all children exposed to parental denigration become alienated from the target of denigration. When the study found that a group of volunteer college students reported that both parents denigrated each other, and the children did not reject either parent, the authors of the study concluded that “the alienation hypothesis” was not supported and that parental denigration does not cause children to reject the parent who is denigrated.

The problem with this line of reasoning is that no scholar has claimed that parental denigration necessarily leads to a child rejecting the denigrated parent. Of course many children whose parents badmouth each other maintain relationships with both parents. Rejecting a parent is an extreme consequence, not a common one. Furthermore, anyone who has worked with irrationally alienated children knows that these children are reluctant to admit that their favored parent maligned their other parent— in fact, these children are reluctant to admit anything negative about the parent whom they favor.

Researchers who genuinely want to learn about the forces that lead children to irrationally reject a parent will begin by studying alienated children. Studying children who are not alienated merely makes the obvious point that their parents occasionally bad-mouth each other without alienating the children from either parent. This is the sort of “scholarship” that gives social science a bad odor because the study advocates for and confirms a bias against the existence of parental alienation.

4. Ignore studies that fail to support one’s pet theories. For example, while promoting skepticism about the notion that children can be manipulated by a parent to hate the other parent, the authors of the study mentioned above failed to cite the largest study, published by the American Bar Association, that explicitly attributed children’s problems to being brainwashed by one parent against the other. They also failed to cite the volume of scientific evidence about various mechanisms by which children’s attitudes can be influenced and by which negative stereotypes about a parent can be promulgated.

Does any reasonable person seriously believe that children are immune from a parent’s influence?

Children’s feelings and behavior toward each parent are influenced by the way their parents treat each other. Does any reasonable person seriously believe otherwise—that children are immune from a parent’s influence? If so, tell that to all the child psychologists and authors who study and write about how to raise smarter, healthier, happier, and better behaved children.
Ironically, one of the authors of the straw-man study, in a previous article, railed against scholars who selectively cite research that confirms their biases, a tactic he called “cherry picking” or “stacking the deck.” Pot, meet kettle.

5. Promulgate, or accept without investigation or critical scrutiny, dramatic and exaggerated claims that the evaluator, therapist, child representative, and judge in a case mistook a child’s justified rejection of a parent for unjustified alienation, or that children removed from toxic alienating environments have been abused by the family court system. Such claims are repeated without considering all the evidence weighed by the court in reaching its decision.

We have a lot to learn about the roots of parental alienation and about why some children become ensnared in a campaign of hatred toward a parent while others resist. And why some children draw closer to the target of bad-mouthing and reject the parent who dispenses divorce poison, a phenomenon called “blowback” in the video, WELCOME BACK, PLUTO: UNDERSTANDING, PREVENTING, AND OVERCOMING PARENTAL ALIENATION.

But the existence of parents who effectively teach their children to hate the other parent, and of children who absorb this lesson, is beyond dispute.

Exactly two weeks before Parental Alienation Awareness Day in 2017, British High Court Justice Russell delivered her judgment in a Liverpool family court case. She wrote, “By manipulating her children, [the mother] has achieved what she has always wanted and stopped contact with their father. She has done so either because she cannot help herself or because she had quite deliberately set out to expunge their father from their lives. These children have suffered significant emotional harm as a result of their mother’s manipulative actions.”

Do the deniers and skeptics think Justice Russell was deluded?

As journalist Kathleen Parker observed, “Anybody old enough to drink coffee knows that embittered divorcees can and do manipulate their children. Not just women, but men, too.”

We may not want to face the fact that some parents prey on the children in their charge—physically, sexually, or emotionally. Often these parents carefully groom children to engage in harmful acts that victimize children. Whether children are victims of sexual abuse or psychological abuse, we must not turn a blind eye to them.

The fact that some children are able to resist does not obscure the reality that such abuse exists. Professionals who feed denial and skepticism play into the hands of those who want us to look away.

Because deniers and skeptics contribute to a backlash against protecting psychologically abused children from efforts to alienate them from a parent, 13 years after it was introduced we still need Parental Alienation Awareness Day to shine a light on the plight of children and parents caught in this maelstrom, and to remind us that much work remains to be done.

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Mistakes Alienated Parents Make: 1. Losing Your Temper

Alienated children can be rude, obnoxious, and hateful. They express and provoke great hostility. It is understandable that the target of gross mistreatment feels like responding in kind. But losing your temper with your children will just make things worse.

If your children are succumbing to divorce poison, they will be unfazed by your criticisms of their attitudes and behavior. They know that their other parent encourages and is gratified by their rejection of you. And they no longer respect you enough to care about gaining your approval.

Also, you cannot expect to win your children’s affection by fighting with them, frightening them, or telling them off. Any aggression that you show, either verbal or physical, will merely play into the hands of your ex. Your behavior will be taken out of context, blown out of proportion, and then used to justify the children’s rejection.

To learn about the seven common errors that rejected parents make, and strategies to effectively copy when your relationship with your children is being challenged, and to overcome children’s alienation, see Divorce Poison: How To Protect Your Family from Bad-mouthing and Brainwashing.

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