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.
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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