Excerpt from a trial court’s decision in a child custody case:
To alleviate their stress, the children chose to align themselves with the plaintiff and see as little as possible of the defendant. By doing so, they minimize their exposure to parental conflict. Both children are doing well emotionally and physically with the status quo and little or no contact with the defendant. . . . Both children have made it known emphatically that they do not wish to spend time with the defendant or attend therapy with the defendant.
My previous post addressed one concern raised by the language of this decision: the idea that rejecting a parent is simply a child’s way of alleviating stress.
A second concern is the idea that children who want to see their mother “as little as possible” and have “little or no contact” with her, are “doing well emotionally and physically.” Even if the children’s rejection of their mother was somehow warranted by her behavior—and there is nothing in the trial court’s written decision to suggest that—in what universe are children who lose a mother, for any reason, doing well emotionally?
The Court may have been thinking only of the children’s surface emotions. Or, the Court may have intended to convey that the children were doing relatively well, considering their circumstances. Or perhaps the Court shared the view of mental health professionals who describe irrationally alienated children as “otherwise well adjusted.” As I’ve point out in previous writing, 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 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 to themselves when they devalue, malign, and disown 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.
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.
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.
- The child harbors a set of distorted thoughts and memories about a parent that do not align with reality.
- The child acts empowered to mistreat a parent in a way that normally would be considered unacceptable and a significant behavior problem.
- 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?
- 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.
- 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.
- 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.
- 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 26, 2021 post on this tragic legacy here: Parental Alienation’s Tragic Legacy of Shame, Guilt, & Remorse.) 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.
As I concluded in Chapter 11 of The Psychology of Alienated Children (forthcoming), “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 to 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”? To 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? To 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”?
In the words of Judge Karle, “We’ve got to dig deeper.”
*Portions of this post are revised from an earlier Facebook post.