Category: Uncategorized

Parental alienation is an observable family dynamic in which one parent, known as the alienating parent, engages in coercive mind-control and manipulative tactics of the child to force the child to reject a normal relationship with the other parent, known as the alienated parent. These tactics are known as alienating behaviors.

An additional criterion for making a finding of alienation is that the rejected parent’s behaviors either do not meet the definition of clinical significance for abuse and/or neglect or that the behaviors are not in proportion to the child’s exceedingly anti-instinctual behavior to reject a parent.

Factors Permitting the Progression of Alienation

Parental alienation is a progressive clinical condition. In the absence of timely and effective intervention by the judicial and mental health systems, alienation will inexorably travel along a continuum from mild to moderate to the severe stage.

The professionals in the judicial and mental health systems, along with other professionals who intervene in child custody cases, have enormous power to effect the progression of an alienation case – for better or for worse.

When non-specialists in alienation intervene in an alienation case, they typically get the findings not merely wrong but backwards. For example, the alienating parent is typically deemed to be a protective parent while the alienated parent is typically deemed to be an unsafe parent. This is not just wrong; this is catastrophically wrong.

Alienating parents exploit the situation of backwards findings by escalating their alienating behaviors with abandon.

Alienating parents further exploit the snail’s pace at which the judicial and mental health systems proceed to deepen and cement the alienation.

Another factor contributes to the snail’s pace at which the judicial and mental health systems proceed in alienation cases. This factor is that harm to the child from the psychological abuse being committed by the alienating parent goes either entirely unrecognized or is significantly under-appreciated.

The confluence of all these factors drive, enable, and embolden alienating parents to escalate their alienating behaviors to the catastrophic point that the alienation reaches the severest of the severe stage.

Early diagnosis is imperative.  Appropriate remedies via Court and mental health intervention must be swiftly applied if the child is to be saved from further abuse by the alienating parent.

Mild Alienation

Children in the mild category superficially exhibit only a few of Gardner’s 8 symptoms. It is significant that they typically do so only in the presence of their alienating parent.

FURTHER READING: Manifestations of Alienated Children – As Seen by an Expert

When in the absence of the alienat­ing parent, the child and their alienated par­ent share a mutually loving relationship with pleasant and cooperative interactions. 

Mildly alienated children may demonstrate minor resistance to visits, again usually only while in presence of the alienating parent at the transition. Contact with the alienated parent’s extended family proceeds as usual.

Children in the mild category gener­ally have a strong, loving, and compliant relationship with their alienated parent. The normal parenting plan is generally followed without resistance.

It can be anticipated with mildly alienated children that visits and other forms of contact with the alienated parent will be uneventful and actually pleasant and enjoyable. 

Mildly alienated children usually invite their alienated parent to their educational events, medical appointments, and social and extracurricular activities.

There are virtually no denigrations, therefore no need for frivolous rationalizations for the denigrations; they have no need to manufacture absurd or bizarre rationalizations as they are not rejecting the parent.

Incidents of cruelty or defiance are rare; over-alignment with the alienating parent is negligible, if at all.

It bears repeating that since mildly alienated children comply with the alienated parent’s parenting time and other forms of contact, they have no need to accept or manufacture false sexual and physical abuse allegations in order to justify the rejection.

The disrespectful, hostile, and aggressive behaviors that are prominent in moderately to severely alienated children are virtually nonexistent, if at all.

The triangulation of the child into the parental dyad in service of the alienating parent is generally minimal.

There is little cause and motivation to assume a stance of ambivalence, reflexive support of the alienating parent, or a charade of inde­pendence.

Mildly alienated children are typically reserved about expressing their positive feel­ings for their alienated parent in the presence of their alienating parent.

Mildly alienated children still have a need to protect their alienating parent from feeling threatened by a close relationship with the other parent.

The contact, involvement, and interaction between the alienated parent and child serve as an antidote to the program­ming by the alienating parent and is a major force to inhibiting the progression of these children along the continuum. 

Moderate Alienation

Moderately alienated children will manifest several of Gardner’s 8 symp­toms, and the intensity of the symptoms present is more severe than in the mild category.

The scheduling of visits can be problematical as these children demonstrate formidable resis­tance to contact, which is encouraged and supported by their alienating parent. 

Transitions are usually difficult and unpleasant if in the presence of the alienating parent but relatively smooth if not in the alienating parent’s presence.

The beginning of the visits can be somewhat rocky but soon ease as time lifts the repression of the child’s instinctive love and need for the alienated parent. Visits the become pleasant and cooperative most of the time with intermittent moments of defiance, denigrations, and/or detached behaviors.

Towards the end of the visits, moderately alienated children regress in anticipation of having to face an inquisition by their alienating parent concerning the occurrences during the visit.

Moderately alienated are in the untenable position of having to either lie about good times with the alienated parent; or else they have to instigate controversy and negativity during the visit in order to report back to the alienating parent about negative experiences during the visit.

Moderately alienated children report more extreme and frequent rationalizations to justify their denigrations and rejection of the alienated parent, and the rationalizations tend to be preposter­ous, frivolous, and critical of the alienated parent’s behaviors.

Lack of ambivalence is more pronounced, with moderately alienated children demonstrating a clear preference and need for the alienating parent. They begin to perceive their parents in black and white terms, with the alienating parent wearing a halo and the alienated parent sporting horns.

Moderately alienated children are protective of their alienating parent. They manifest the inde­pendent thinker phenomenon by spontaneously volunteering full ownership for having rejected, resisted, and/or denigrated their alienated parent.

Moderately alienated exonerate their alienating parent for having engaged in influence and brainwashing of them to denigrate and reject their alienated parent.

Moderately alienated children demonstrate greater alignment with the alienating parent, especial­ly regarding parental disagreements and the legal conflicts and proceedings.

Children in the mod­erate category may or may not experience guilt regarding the pain they have caused their alienated parent. Even should they experience guilt, they are not likely to acknowledge it nor apologize to their alienated parent for the hurt and harm they have caused them.

Borrowed scenarios take full stage as moderately alienated children denigrate their alienated parent with language well beyond their cognitive development and with negative events for which they did not have first-hand experience.

While children in the mild group express loving feelings for their alienated par­ent’s extended family members, children in the moderate group have appreciably repressed their loving and positive feelings for these relatives but are likely to attend visits with them. 

In sum, moderately alienated children will generally comply with their alienated parent’s parenting time, interact more agreeably with their alienated parent when not in the presence of their alienating parent, and can enjoy time with their alienated parent and extended family. The visits more likely to be uneventful in that moderately alienated chil­dren are reasonably manageable.

Severe Alienation

Children in the severe category likely present with most, if not all, of Gardner’s 8 symptoms, which will be manifested to a significantly impairing, negative degree.

Gardner (1998) described the severely alienated child’s resistance to visits as follows:

“Children in this category may become panic-stricken over the prospect of visiting . . . their blood-curdling shrieks, agitated states, and rage outbursts may be so severe that visitation is impossible” (p. 122). 

Severely alienated children will further typically manifest three additional manifestations relied upon in the scientific community to identify an alienated child. These manifestations are pathological enmeshment with the alienating parent; amnesia about a prior meaningful, positive relationship with the alienated parent; and a sudden, inexplicable rejection of the alienated parent.

To punctuate what Dr. Gardner stated above, severely alienated children become hysterical at the mere prospect of having to visit their alienated parent.

Severely alienated children most often do not comply with their alienated parent’s parenting time even in violation of Court orders – their contact refusal being encouraged and sanctioned by their alienating parents. 

Because alienating par­ents claim to be “empathetic to” and “respectful of” their children’s expressed feelings and wishes, alienating parents do not require their children to comply with court orders for the alienated parent’s parenting time. 

To be clear, alienated children are not free players in the alienation drama. Severely alienated children can no more express feelings and wishes different from those of their alienating parent than can a cult member express feelings and wishes different than those of the cult leader.

Common Interactions Between Severely Alienated Children and Their Alienated Parent Should Visits Take Place

Should there be contact with the alienated parent – usually only in the face of significant, Court imposed consequences for the failure of visit compliance – severely alienated children either cause extreme pain and consternation for their alienated parent; or else severely alienated children completely disengage from their alienated parent by sequestering themselves in their rooms for the entire visit.

When severely alienated children do interact with their alienated parent during these Court “enforced” visits, they behave provocatively, aggressively, defiantly, and disrespectfully.

Sometimes severely alienated children engage in antisocial behaviors to the point of physically assaulting their alienated parent and destroying home and property.

Some severely alienated children become so out of control that alienated parents may need to physically restrain them from self-harm or from harm to the family.

Alienated parents of severely alienated children are continually in fear of police intervention and potential arrest as a result of their children’s physically assaultive behaviors that are projected onto the alienated parent.

As a result of fearing their severely alienated children’s manufactured need for police intervention, alienated parents sometimes make the painful decision to termi­nate the visit prematurely – before their children either call 911 themselves or call their alienating parent, who then “quickly”rescues” their children by calling 911.

By orchestrating their alienated parent’s fear of potential arrest, severely alienated children thereby succeed in achieving early termina­tion of the visit.

What Occurs When Severely Alienated Children Disengage From Their Alienated Parent Should Visit Take Place

Severely alienated children may “choose” to disengage from their alienated parent and family members in the home by sequestering themselves in their bedrooms, virtually for the entire visit.

These children’s disengagement is so resolute and intended to be so hurtful that severely alienated children fail to abide by even the minimum social etiquette of uttering “hello” and “goodbye” to their alienated parent and to other family members upon arrival for the visit and upon exiting their bedrooms for departure. 

Alienating parents guarantee the success of their children’s complete disengagement from the alienated parent and other family members by supplying their children with food, snacks, drinks, and entertainment. All that is lacking is a potty chair!

Planned educational and exciting activities for the visit must be scuttled because severely alienated children cannot be trusted to remain home alone.

Leaving alienated children home alone, assuming there is no protective reason, is a perfect opportunity for alienated children to spy on their alienated parent. The purpose of the spying is to serve their alienating parent’s need for information that could be helpful to their custody and divorce proceedings with the alienated parent.

Severely alienated children’s disengagement during the visits places alienated parents in the frustrating and unpleasant situation of having to cancel the planned activities that had been promised to other family members. This is yet another double-bind situation for alienated parents because the family members often include stepchildren, who had been looking forward to the planned activities.

FURTHER READING: The Alienated Parent – Heartaches From Double Binds

Alienated parents may therefore decide – for several other valid reasons as well – to risk attending the planned activities without their alienated children participating. But this double-bind decision defeats the intended purpose for the visit’s planned activities, which is to improve the relationships between alienated parents and their children through enjoyable experiences with each other.

Furthermore, the alienated children’s double-bind decision to attend the planned activities without their children’s participation will be capitalized on by the alienating parent, who will claim that the alienated parent is not interested in nor cares about the child. Alienating parents may even label alienated parents’ double-bind decision as “abandonment” of their children.

Other Common Manifestations of Severely Alienated Children

When listening to severely alienated children, one can expect to hear outlandish and vile accusa­tions about their alienated parent and phony expressions of hatred for them.

False allegations of physical and sexual abuse have become all too common. This is traumatic, not merely for the alienated parent, but for the child, who now has to deal with the guilt from making knowingly false allegations against their alienated parent.

Black and white thinking predominates and allows for no positive qualities about the alienated parent nor recognition of a need for anything the alienated parent has to offer.

Severely alienated children are willing to take the hit and the heat and go to the mat for their alienating parent. Severely alienated children fully exonerate their alienating parent for having influenced them against their alienated parent and for having encouraged their antisocial treatment of their alienated parent.

When alienated parents cowardly and cravenly attribute the alienation to their children, who are not free agents, this behavior is an exquisite example of visiting the sins of the parent upon the child.

Exceptions to the Rule

Some children are able to resist the alienating parent’s programming and do not progress as far along the continuum as their alienating parent. 

Individual qualities, such as age, intelli­gence, and maturity are mitigating factors.

The child’s recollection about the fami­ly’s truths, memorabilia of the the prior positive relationship with the alienated parent, previous family therapy experiences, influence of peers, and education can all account for a child being an excep­tion to the rule. 

Nevertheless, time is on the side of the alienating parent. Without judicious intervention from the judicial and mental health systems, virtually all children, if not all, will eventually capitulate to the demands of a determined, obsessed alienating parent. 

What to Do?

Although the severity of an alienation case is determined by the child’s presentation, intervention must be implemented according to the presentation of the alienating parent.

Treatment will fail if it is not geared to the determination of the severely alienating parent to drive the alienated parent from the child’s life. And when treatment fails, the alienated child will eventually succumb to the alienating parent’s influence to utterly reject the alienated parent.

Ongoing, meaningful involvement between the child and the alienated parent is the single greatest factor that mitigates the alienation. Contact with the alienated parent is the greatest antidote to the alienation.

The usual recommendation for a gradual, limited step-up plan between the child and alienated parent is catastrophically wrong.

The gradual step up plan sends the child a contraindicated message. It sends the child the contraindicated message that there is something wrong with alienated parent, who can be tolerated only in small doses. Exactly the wrong message!

The step-up plan is catastrophically wrong for other reasons: The less the contact that the alienated parent has with the child to correct the revisionist family history and the alienation narrative, the more time the alienating parent has with the child to perpetuate the abusive alienation narrative.

The less time the alienated parent has with the child, the less opportunity there is for positive, enjoyable, reaffirming interactions and experiences. Experience between the child and the alienated parent is the most effective therapeutic intervention.

Conclusion

The most effective measure for preventing alienated children from progressing the alienation continuum is to remedy the case according to the standard of “Time is of the Essence!”

Alienated children suddenly and surprisingly manifest severe psychiatric symptoms that had not been manifested prior to the onset of the alienation. These symptoms weigh on children and encumber them.

Analysis reveals that the alienated child’s severe psychiatric symptoms are caused by the alienating parent’s coercive and manipulative control tactics. These tactics serve the alienating parent’s purposes and goals.

Severe psychiatric symptoms undermine a child’s functioning across all domains – psychological, cognitive, behavioral, and interpersonal.

Alienating Behaviors Meet the Standard Definitions of Domestic Violence and Domestic Violence by Proxy

Domestic violence involves the abuse of unequal power by exploiting another party to the intimate relationship. 

Alienating parents easily exploit their exceedingly unequal power over the child, who is virtually dependent for survival upon the alienating parent. 

The alienating parent’s exceedingly unequal power over the child is magnified when contact with the alienated parent is restricted or eliminated. 

The alienating parent’s behaviors are virtually the same as the DV behaviors found on the “Duluth Model of Power and Control Wheel,” which is used to assess for domestic violence.

Similarities Between Alienating Behaviors and Power and Control Wheel Behaviors

When alienating behaviors are compared to the behaviors in the Domestic Violence Power & Control Wheel, the similarities are striking.

Alienating Behaviors/ DV Power & Control Wheel Behaviors

• Limiting contact with the alienated parent/ Using isolation
• Limiting contact with extended family of the alienated parent/ Using Isolation
• Badmouthing the alienated parent/ Gaslighting
• Interfering with symbolic contact/ Using coercion, threats, intimidation
• Limiting communication with alienated parent/ Using isolation
• Conveying that the alienated parent is dangerous/ Gaslighting
• Creating dependency/ Using parental privilege and coercion
• Undermining the child’s relationship with a parent/ Using emotional abuse
• Brainwashing child to believe the alienated parent had sexually & physically abused child/ Gaslighting & using emotional abuse & intimidation
• Brainwashing the child that alienated parent is unloving, uncaring, unconcerned, & dangerous/ Gaslighting
• Brainwashing child to believe the alienated parent has abandoned the child/ Gaslighting
• Forcing the child to choose/ Using coercion & intimidation
• Weaponizing the child against the alienated parent/ Using children
• Threatening to. withdraw love if the child does not reject the alienated parent/ Using intimidation, threats, & parental privilege
• Using economic rewards & penalties to manipulate child/ Using economic abuse
• Using privilege & punishments/ Using coercion
• Requiring loyalty/ Using coercion, threats, & intimidation
• Asking child to spy on alienated parent/ Using intimidation & threats
• Asking child to keep secrets from alienated parent/ Using intimidation, threats & coercion

As with adult victims of domestic violence, the alienated child becomes incapacitated by the alienating parent’s abusive misuse of power.

Emotional Control

The alienating parents’ emotional control of the child requires the child to replace loving and positive feelings for and beliefs about the alienated parent with the alienating parent’s hateful and negative feelings for and beliefs about the alienated parent.

Among these negative feelings are: anger, hatred, disappointment, frustration, enmity, disgust, distrust, fear, and more.

The alienating parent’s coercive emotional control of the child to rob the child of the child’s own feelings and beliefs and replace them with those of the alienating parent meets the standard definition of “domestic violence.”

Behavioral Control

Alienating parents employ coercive manipulation that encourages their children to maltreat and physically assault their alienated parent. This cowardly and cynical exploitation of children is to facilitate alienating parents’ mission to drive the alienated parent from their children’s lives.

I have frequently witnessed alienated children employ antisocial behaviors to hurt, humiliate, defy, and emotionally and physically abuse their alienated parent. 

Not only do these behaviors meet the standard definition of domestic violence by proxy; these behaviors meet the DSM-5-TR definition of “child or adolescent antisocial behavior.”

Nothing to Do with the Alienated Parent-Child Relationship

Whatever had occurred between the alienating and alienated parents to have caused the alienating parent to feel negatively about the alienated parent has nothing to do with the relationship between the alienated parent and child. 

By definition, a case cannot be one of alienation unless the rejected parent’s behaviors were in proportion to the child’s exceedingly anti-instinctual behavior to hate and reject a parent.

Alienated Mothers – Victims of Domestic Violence by Proxy

The domestic violence by proxy behaviors that occur in alienation are whopping, not-so-secret occurrences that are being experienced by alienated mothers. 

Alienated mothers are being routinely battered by their sons and sometimes by their daughters at the behest of alienating fathers. 

Alienated mothers, who comprise 50% of my caseload, feel abandoned by the groups that intervene to protect women from DV. Alienated mothers feel they are being forsaken by the professionals in these groups who deny, for misguided reasons, that alienation is real.

Misguided Reasons for Denying Alienation

DV professionals fear that some DV perpetrators will play the “alienation defense card” as a means to be acquitted of their heinous and unpardonable acts. But this is a logical fallacy known as “appeal to the consequent,” which, in essence, throws the baby out with the bathwater.

The appeal to the consequent logical fallacy means that argument is denied or rejected because its consequence is undesirable. If this fallacy guided medical decisions, then chemotherapy would be banned because of the consequential side effects of nausea and hair loss.

Science provides the method to rule in DV just as science provides the method to rule in PA. 

It is not an either-or situation to protect women or to protect children.

What Alienated Mothers Want and Expect From Domestic Violence Professionals

Alienated mothers wish for their sons to get the desperate help they need to relinquish their antisocial, battering behaviors and have the expectation for becoming law-abiding, socially responsible adults. 

Alienated mothers fear that if their sons do not get preventive help in their youth, they will grow up to be perpetrators of DV in their intimate relationships. 

Alienated mothers are desperately attempting to save their physically violent sons from themselves and from the influence by their alienating fathers.

Screaming for Remedy

The concerns of alienated mothers are screaming for remedy. I agree completely. 

By denying the very real existence of alienation, a generation of potential adult DV perpetrators is being promoted and produced – however unintended –  by the very professionals committed to end DV.

It is incomprehensible to me that so many of these professionals, who have made the protection of women their life’s work, yet ignore the potential conflagration of minor boys becoming adult DV perpetrators.

Prevention of the perpetuation of DV begins with recognition that alienation is real, is abusive to mothers as well as fathers, and is most of all abusive of alienated children for whom DV behaviors are being normalized by alienating parents.

Harmful Effects on the Child From the Alienating Parent’s Coercive Power and Control Behaviors

The alienating parent’s coercive mind-control and manipulative behaviors of the child are a serious violation of the child’s boundaries. 

It is no wonder that alienated children, who had been functioning well or exceedingly well prior to the onset of the alienation, manifest severe psychiatric symptoms after the onset of the alienation.

I am speaking of an array of psychiatric symptoms that often include cutting, suicidal threats and ideation, eating disorders, drug and alcohol abuse, panic, anxiety, depression, other self-harming behaviors, juvenile delinquency, criminal behaviors, and more.

The Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) Studies

The harm to children from the alienating parent’s coercive control and manipulation is reflected in Adverse Childhood Experience (ACE) studies. I cite below four of the ACE studies.

Felitti, et. al., (2006) writing in “The enduring effects of abuse and related adverse experiences in childhood,” published in European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, made the point that household abuse and domestic violence can adversely affect brain development. This ACE study states:

“The organization and functional capacity of the human brain depends upon an extraordinary set of sequences of developmental and environmental experiences that influence the expression of the genome . . . Unfortunately, this elegant sequence is vulnerable to extreme, repetitive, or abnormal patterns of stress during critical or circumscribed periods of childhood brain development that can impair, often permanently, the activity of major neuroregulatory systems, with profound and lasting neurobehavioral consequences.”

Spinazzola, et. al., (2014) writing in “Unseen wounds: The contribution of psychological maltreatment to child and adolescent mental health and risk outcomes, published in Psychological Trauma, addresses the surprising degree of harm to the child from psychological abuse:

“Our findings strongly support the hypotheses that PM [psychological maltreatment] in childhood not only augments, but also independently contributes to, statistical risk for negative youth outcomes to an extent comparable to statistical risks imparted by exposure to physical abuse (PA), sexual abuse (SA), or their combination (PA + SA).”

Nurius, et. al,. (2015), writing in “Life course pathways of adverse childhood experiences toward adult psychological well-being: A stress process analysis” published in Child Abuse & Neglect, discusses the extent of psychiatric disabilities in adulthood from ACE experiences:

“Exposure to significant childhood adversity affects a daunting proportion of young people, constituting one of the most detrimental impacts on youth development. Early life adversities include experiences such as maltreatment, neglect, witnessed violence, and household dysfunctions such as parental mental illness or substance abuse . . . Exposure to these events generates step-dose patterns wherein greater exposure to multiple forms of stressful experiences are associated with a wider range of impaired health outcomes, including psychiatric.” 

Felitti, V. J. et al. (1998) writing in “Relationship of Childhood Abuse and Household Dysfunction to Many of the Leading Causes of Death in Adults: The Adverse Childhood Experiences, ” published in The American Journal of Preventive Medicine link ACE experiences to pre-mature death from physical diseases. They state:

“We found a strong graded relationship between the breadth of exposure to abuse or household dysfunction during childhood and multiple risk factors for several of the leading causes of death in adults. The number of categories of adverse childhood exposures showed a graded relationship to the presence of adult diseases including ischemic heart disease, cancer, chronic lung disease, skeletal fractures, and liver disease.”  

The Alienated Child’s Clinical Presentation

When science is applied to assessing an alienation case, it is obvious that alienating parents project their abusive behaviors onto the alienated parent.

Unhappy, deeply unhappy, having been coercively controlled by their alienating parent to forsake the irreplaceable loss of a parent.

Afraid, deeply afraid, having been coercively controlled by their alienating parent to override the survival instinct for a parent.

Hopeless, deeply hopeless, having been coercively controlled by their alienating parent to believe that their survival depends exclusively upon the alienating parent.

Insecure, deeply insecure, having been snatched of emotional security from having their alienated parent meaningfully in their lives.

Terrified, deeply terrified, having been coercively controlled by their alienating parent to believe that their alienated parent want to hurt them.

The Child’s Psychiatric Symptoms – Symbolic of the Family Dysfunction of Alienation

The alienated child’s threats of suicide and suicidal ideation are symbolic of the death of the relationship with the alienated parent.

The alienated child’s cutting is symbolic of having to cut a parent out of her/his life.

The alienated child’s other self-harming behaviors are symbolic of the harmed relationship with the alienated parent.

Failure to Accurately Assess the Cause of the Child’s Sudden and Surprising Psychiatric Symptoms

It is astonishing to me that the cause of the child’s sudden and surprising sprouting of psychiatric symptoms is typically attributed to the alienated parent. And it is stunningly astonishing to me when the attribution is made in the virtual absence of any contact between the alienated parent and child – typically for years.

The failure to adhere to the scientific method to make clinical findings is the cause of the catastrophic erroneous finding that the alienated parent is to blame for the child’s manifestation of severe psychiatric symptoms.

The scientific method involves avoidance of cognitive errors. The primary cognitive culprit in blaming the alienated parent for the child’s symptoms is the “causation fallacy.”

In a proper causation analysis, it must be found that the dependent effect had been preceded by the claimed causation. 

To the contrary of complying with causation analysis, the alienated parent’s reactions to the trauma from alienation are cited to be the cause of the child’s psychiatric symptoms.

Additional failure to comply with causation analysis is that the alienating parent’s behaviors are not even considered, and therefore not assessed, to be the possible cause of the child’s psychiatric symptoms. 

It is even more surprising that the alienating parent is typically not considered to be the cause when the child had begun to manifest psychiatric disturbances only after the onset of the alienation – when the alienating parent was the primary, if not exclusive, caretaker.

What non specialists in alienation due instead of undertaking a causation analysis is to rely upon the statements of the programmed child and on the statements of the highly-invested alienating parent that the alienated parent is the guilty party.

Using an analogy for the absurdity and unreliability of being informed exclusively by self-report, consider the DV victim who recants the abuse by claiming that she or he misinterpreted the behaviors of the DV perpetrator!

Despite the absurdity of accepting self-diagnosis in general, non-specialists in alienation unconscionably accept programmed alienated children’s self-diagnosis that the alienated parent is the cause of their sudden, inexplicable eruption of severe psychiatric symptoms.

Conclusion

Alienating parents engage in coercive mind-control and behavioral manipulation of the child to for their selfish, abusive purposes. These alienating behaviors meet the standard definitions of domestic violence and domestic violence by proxy. 

The frequent result to alienated children from alienating behaviors is the development of serious psychiatric symptoms.

Failure to undertake a scientific analysis to determine the correct cause of the child’s psychiatric symptoms is harmful to the child. A contraindicated treatment intervention is invariably the result and effective measures to treat the child’s debilitating functioning is delayed and even denied.

Safe Reunification Programs: Mislabeled as Unsafe Reunification Camps

False information is being spread about parental alienation and Court-ordered reunification programs, such as Turning Points for Families (TPFF).

These reunification programs, which are relied upon the Courts to provide safe and effective treatment for severe alienation, have been mislabeled and misrepresented as unsafe “reunification camps”.

Turning Points for Families, correctly named “A Therapeutic Vacation” is the program I developed to treat severe cases of parental alienation.

TPFF has been found by a peer-reviewed research study to be safe and 96.4% effective in reconnecting children with an unjustifiably and unreasonably rejected severely alienated parent.

Necessary reunification programs, such as TPFF, are relied upon by the Courts to restore healthy family functioning and to protect children.

Those who defame these reunification programs are perpetuating child abuse.

For the best interest of the child:

The lies about reunification programs posted on unregulated social media platforms and which are being perpetuated by biased, unethical, sensationalism-seeking zealots and by abusive alienating parents should be utterly rejected.

Triple Uncorroborated Hearsay Re: Turning Points for Families

Here is a brief list of the bad actors who perpetrate uncorroborated, double and triple hearsay and defamations about reunification programs such as TPFF:

• Danielle Pollack – daniellepollack.com
• Jill Jones Soderman – Foundation for Child Victims of Family Courts
• Hannah Dreyfus – Formerly of ProPublica
• Olivia Gentile – The Insider
• Kristin Thorne – Eyewitness News
• Dan Frosch – Wall Street Journal
• Richard Luthmann – Online Reporter
• Tina Swithin – One Mom’s Battle (OMB)

Some of the offenders are disgraced, unethical professionals who have lost their licenses to practice law and psychotherapy.

Facts About the Critics – What They Do Not Tell You

• Some have lost custody of their children by Court order.
• Some have been found by the Courts to be an alienating parent.
• Some have been found guilty of child abuse.
• Some have resentments, frustrations, and untreated anger issues as a result of their own custody battles.
• Some are disgraced professionals who lost their licenses due to unethical behaviors, malpractice, negligence, and fraud.
• Some have been successfully litigated for their defamation and slander.

Just the Facts, Ma’am – No Ad Hominem Attacks

Ad Hominem Attacks – Personal attacks used when argument lacks merit or factual basis.

When scientific analysis and logical reasoning are applied to the criticisms, it is crystal clear that they are all ad hominem attacks and not informed critiques.

Critiques are informed by neutral, validated, quality evidence, not by unproven speculation, an unsubstantiated belief system, and self-serving biased agendas.

Exploitation of Children by One Mom’s Battle

The “alienating parents’ industry,” has been born out of social media. Everyone is an expert online. This group that harms children is led by Tina Swithin, suspected to be an alienating parent herself, of One Mom’s Battle.

Swithin has been spreading a false narrative that Court-ordered reunification programs, such as Turning Points for Families, harm children.

Swithin has defamed our entire Court system!

Swithin perpetuates the knowingly false claim that judges intentionally give custody of children to known, child abusive, violent parents.

Swithin is not a licensed mental health professional and has no credentials in child custody or family matters. She has had no direct experience with or factual knowledge about Court-ordered reunification programs.

Swithin has interfered with and undermined Court-orders in multiple cases in which the Court had made findings of child abuse by the alienating parent and found the alienated parent to be a safe, protective parent.

FURTHER READING: Will the Real Tina Swithin Please Stand Up – Experts Inquire

Swithin has assisted alienating parents to thwart Court orders by encouraging alienating parents not to transition the children to the custody of their alienated parent, as so ordered by the Court.

By defaming the reunification programs relied upon by the Courts to heal family dysfunction and by assisting in the thwarting of Court orders,

Swithin is thereby perpetuating child psychological abuse!

Swithin claims to be a protector of children. To the contrary, Swithin has no problem exploiting as many minor children as possible.

Swithin uses coercive-control tactics to manipulate children into believing that the Court got it all wrong regarding their family dynamics.

Swithin posts graphic videos of children who have been incited by their alienating parents to needlessly and unjustifiably act-out and to become hysterical during the Court-ordered transition from the alienating parent to the alienated parent.

Swithin has invited the media to film these exploitative, traumatic-induced transitions in order to fuel her self-enriching, self-serving goals.

Swithin exploits children by advertising for minor alienated children to come forward and tell their false stories regarding their alienated parent and about their participation in a Court-ordered reunification program.

Some of the videos of the false stories that were posted on social media with Swithin’s assistance, in violations of Court orders, were made by children who had been kidnapped by their alienating parent from their alienated parent, who had sole legal and physical custody by Court order and who had not authorized the making or posting of the videos.

Swithin is a true perpetrator of domestic violence committed upon children!

FURTHER READING: Harmful Lies Perpetuated by Tina Swithin of One Mom’s Battle

The Critics’ Rejection of Science and the Law

When one closely examines the lack of evidence for the denial of the parental alienation phenomenon and for the criticisms of the Court-ordered reunification programs and the child protective basis for the Court orders, one cannot help but notice the glaring bias, ignorance, incompetence, and quest for sensationalism of those perpetuating the criticisms.

Notice the utter eschewing by the critics in their social media posts and articles of the extensive scientific research underpinning the phenomenon of alienation and their utter failure to cite the Court findings for alienation and the basis for the Court orders for the TPFF program.

Despite having been directly provided extensive scientific evidence for the phenomenon of alienation, none of these bad actors have included in their stories any of the science underpinning alienation.

And what more objective evidence could be provided about the family dynamics in a specific case than the findings of the court! These findings were based upon extensive evidence and testimony regarding many years of the family history.

But the Court findings and orders are shamelessly excluded from the misleading and distorted articles and posts by these unethical bad actors.

The Court orders found the alienating parent to be an abusive parent and the alienated parent to be a protective parent.

In contradiction to the Court findings, these unethical critics instead falsely report that the alienating parent is a protective parent and the alienated parent is an abusive parent.

There is no mention that the court had found the alienated parent to be a protective, loving parent and that the court took custody away from the alienating parent for protective reasons.

It is only after the Court orders the child’s protective removal from the abusive alienating parent and placement with the protective alienated parent that TPFF becomes involved in providing treatment.

When reporters provide only one side of a story, they are violating their professional standards to be neutral, objective, and thorough.

Unqualified Critics Should Not Be Given Credibility for Their Opinions

To the contrary of being qualified, self-proclaimed experts who deny alienation and criticize the Court-ordered reunification programs have not acquired the necessary education, training, and experience to render accurate opinions about parental alienation.

They would not be able to pass the rigid voir dire examination on parental alienation that my colleagues and I have passed multiple times over.

Many are not even licensed clinicians in any mental health discipline – let alone being licensed as a family therapist, and certainly lacking the highly specialized skills needed to become a specialist in parental alienation.

None of these self-proclaimed experts, to my knowledge, have assessed or treated a child for alienation nor interviewed the alienated parent in order to get a sense of the total clinical picture.

None of these self-proclaimed experts interviewed a single alienated parent who had participated in the TPFF intervention.

The Truth About the TPFF Outcomes

185 children participated in the TPFF intervention. Subsequent to each intervention, the Court heard testimony on all 185 children about how they did and the progress towards reunification. 

In all cases in which the alienating parent had not violated the Court-ordered protective separation, the children met the treatment goals of the program, and the alienated parents reported major improvements in their relationships.

Some of the bad actors are pushing false narratives about reunification programs for self-serving and biased motivations. They have showcased horrific videos of instigated minors making negative claims about their alleged experiences at TPFF.

These bad actors fail to verify the accuracy of these false allegations, which have been definitively found by the courts to lack merit.

NO CHILD was found by the court to have been traumatized or harmed by the intervention. Nor did any court find that the intervention had been unwarranted.

Reporters’ Biased, Distorted, and Knowingly False Claims About TPFF

Hannah Dreyfus – Formerly of ProPublica

Hannah Dreyfus previously wrote for the widely known online news publication, ProPublica.

She published a 2023 article about a case in which she falsely claimed that I had forced the children to go with their abusive parent. Dreyfus further claimed that this routinely occurs in the TPFF interventions.

The case Dreyfus published about was not my case. Dreyfus further fabricated a recording of an interview of someone she claims to be me discussing that case. It was not me.

This article, in which Dreyfus fabricated comments falsely attributed to me, is just one of Dreyfus’ many examples where she shamelessly and blatantly ignores the facts and manufactures falsehoods.

Dreyfus’s ongoing false reporting about alienation and effective treatment perpetuates child abuse and callously disregards the safety of children.

Dreyfus’ claims about Turning Points for Families and about me are utterly false and serve her self-interested, biased agenda to discredit the concept of parental alienation.

The truth is that Courts order the Turning Points for Families Intervention after hearing extensive evidence and taking extensive testimony regarding the family dynamics.

Alienation cases have usually proceeded for many years, with extensive evidence regarding the ongoing, severe alienation being provided in testimony to the Court.

It is only when the Court has made its findings of abuse against the alienating parent and determined the alienated parent to be the safe parent that the Court orders a protective removal of the children from the alienating parent and then refers the family to TPFF in order to restore healthy family functioning.

The referral to TPFF is typically ordered only after multiple traditional reunification therapies have already failed.

As with all of Dreyfus’s articles about alienation, her confirmation bias against alienation is glaring. Note that Dreyfus routinely fails to discuss the findings of the Court and the basis for why the Court had referred the case to TPFF.

Even when Dreyfus had been provided with the Court’s findings of alienation and the rulings that ordered reunification programs, she fails to include that information in her articles.

Even after having conducted many hours of interviewing of specialists in alienation and having been provided with the overwhelming scientific evidence for the phenomenon of parental alienation, Dreyfus biasedly and sinisterly failed to include or even mention the scientific underpinnings for alienation.

Because of her false reporting about alienation and about safe and effective reunification programs like TPFF:

Dreyfus has done immeasurable harm to alienated children everywhere and to all potential children who may become victims of parental alienation.

My lawyer reached out to ProPublica, and, after a few back and forth emails with ProPublica’s Associate General Counsel, Sarah Mathews, Hannah Dreyfus mysteriously no longer worked at ProPublica.

My lawyer will be initiating a fraud and defamation case against ProPublica and Hannah Dreyfus.

Olivia Gentile – The Insider

Olivia Gentile writes for the publication, The Insider.

Gentile has written articles in which she falsely claims that I support children being placed in the custody of an abusive parent. She also wrote misleading articles of interviews with children who stated they had participated in the TPFF intervention.

When the Court refers a case to TPFF, the Court has found the alienating parent to be abusive and the alienated parent to be the safe and protective parent.

For these reasons, the Court has ordered a change in custody from the alienating parent to the alienated parent in order to protect the child.

Gentile’s claim that I support children being placed with abusive parents is not only false, it is an insult to the Court system that works tirelessly to make decisions in the best interest of the child.

In all of her articles regarding reunification for parental alienation, Gentile fails to verify any of the information she writes about with Court findings and rulings.

What is particularly alarming is that Gentile is exploiting alienated children by slandering these necessary and successful treatment programs that the Courts rely upon to help and protect alienated children.

This child psychological abuse distorts, undermines, and compromises the child’s critical reasoning skills, emotional stability, and self-esteem.

Gentile’s false and deceptive reporting, capitalized upon by alienating parents in support of their legal endeavors, is perpetuating the child psychological abuse.

Kristen Thorne – Eyewitness News New York

Ms. Thorne is an investigator reporter for Eyewitness News In New York City.

She produced a short TV documentary on parental alienation and interviewed children who stated they had participated in my reunification program, Turning Points for Families.

Thorne reported that parental alienation is a disputed phenomenon and that Turning Points for Families traumatizes children.

Parental alienation is not a disputed phenomenon according to qualified professionals. For more than 3 decades I have specialized in parental alienation. It is very real; it is exceedingly harmful to children; and it results in detrimental lifetime consequences to the child.

For Thorne to deny that parental alienation exists is downright irresponsible and insensitive.

Thorne is further perpetuating the child psychological abuse and coercive-control by the alienating parent.

The Turing Points for Families intervention has been found to be safe and effective:

TPFF Study for Safety and Effectiveness

Courts rely on my program as a valuable resource to reunify alienated children with their alienated parent.

Thorne’s false reporting that TPFF traumatizes children has frightened lawyers and judges and has prevented some of these interventions from being ordered by the Court.

Thorne’s interviews of these children are exploitative. She puts them right back in the middle of the abusive loyalty conflict between their parents.

Dan Frosch – Wall Street Journal

Dan Frosch is a reporter for the Wall Street Journal.

Frosch contacted me to discuss all aspects of my reunification program, Turning Points for Families and two complaints against me that he had found online.

Frosch misrepresented the facts in his article about reunification programs.

We discussed the TPFF intervention extensively. I further told Frosch where he can obtain all the filings regarding the two meritless complaints.

Of significance is that in one complaint, I had never been involved in the case at all!

This meritless complaint against my co-defendant, the alienated mother, has been dismissed with penalties and was deemed by the Court to be frivolous as well as meritless.

My motion for summary judgment with penalties on this meritless and frivolous complaint is about to be heard. The complaint against me alleges the very same falsehoods that have already been dismissed against the alienated mother.

The other meritless complaint was not about the TPFF intervention nor about my therapy. The complaint alleges that I falsely claim that there is science underpinning the phenomenon of parental alienation. To the contrary, there is overwhelming science that recognizes the phenomenon of alienation.

Frosch deceptively reported about a very isolated, extremely severe alienation case from another reunification program. That case had also been referred by the Court to the intervention program.

Frosch misrepresented reunification programs in general by making it appear as if one case reflects standard treatment outcomes – as if what he had reported was actually the full clinical picture. It was not.

The Turing Points for Families intervention has been found to be safe and effective.

Slanderous articles like Frosch’s make it difficult for Courts to order these reunification programs, which are relied upon to help, treat, and heal severely abused alienated children.

Frosch also made it seem like the two complaints against me were serious and had merit. He, too, shamelessly ignored the truth that was apparent in the online filings I had referred him to.

Frosch did not report objectively. He left out that the frivolous and meritless complaints were made by alienating parents who had lost custody of their children by Court order.

Conclusion

Misinformation and disinformation about reunification programs like Turning Points for Families are being spread on unregulated, biased news and social media platforms.

This slander and libel is harmful to abused children who are counting on the Courts for help, and need Turning Points for Families.

William Shakespeare is regarded as the preeminent dramatist of his time. Shakespeare’s body of literary works shed light on the trauma to a child and parent who are victims of parental alienation.

What Hamlet and the Alienated Parent Have in Common

In Shakespeare’s Hamlet, the protagonist, King Hamlet, captures the essence of the tragic dilemmas that alienated parents experience. Consider how Hamlet gives meaning to his dilemmas, which are strikingly similar to those of alienated parents:

“To be, or not to be: that is the question:
Whether ‘tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And by opposing end them?”

The above soliloquy, “To be or not to be” reveals Hamlet’s inner turmoil that he suffers due to his irreconcilable choices & conflicting emotions. 

Being pulled in opposite directions, and additionally having to grapple with the consequences from action or inaction, Hamlet became paralyzed. In the end he tragically descended into madness and erratic behaviors.

The Alienated Parent Is Trapped by Multiple Dilemmas Occurring in Alienation

Alienated parents must manage ongoing, insufferable dilemmas occurring in their alienation case. These dilemmas are created by the alienating parent, their children, and the many professionals that intervene in an alienation case.

Double Bind Dilemmas That Alienated Parents Face

When alienated parents fail to fully exercise their parenting time the alienating parent capitalizes on this in court and uses it as the basis to file a motion to rescind parenting time.

If alienated parents pursue a relationship with their resistant children, they are labeled “aggressive” or “insensitive” to their children’s wishes. 

If alienated parents do not pursue a relationship with their children, they are accused of abandoning them. 

Out of fear of arrest for false DV or abuse allegations made by the alienating parent and confirmed by their children, alienated parents often make the difficult decision to discontinue visits.

If alienated parents do not keep their visits, they are accused of failing to exercise their parenting time. 

When alienated parents show physical affection to their children, they risk that this normal parenting gesture will be characterized as inappropriate sexual contact.

If alienated parents do not show affection to their children, they are accused of being cold, unfeeling, and disengaged. 

Alienated parents are accused of lacking interest in their children when they do not appear at their games and other activities, most of which they have not been informed about or invited to. 

When alienated parents do appear at their children’s games, if they are lucky enough to know about it, they are accused of stalking their children because they do not want them there.

Some alienated parents have chosen not to appear at their children’s games in order to spare their children the embarrassment from their alienating parents rashly pulling them off the playing field upon the alienated parent’s arrival. The alienated child is collateral damage being used to deprive the alienated parent of even minimal contact with their children. 

Some alienated parents have been openly accused of being pedophiles when they appear at their children’s games. You can understand why they might not want to go.

When alienated parents buy presents for their children, they are accused of “buying” or “bribing” their children, perhaps to see them.

When alienated parents do not provide financial support beyond what they are legally obligated to do, they are labeled as “stingy” and “selfish.

Alienated parents are further accused of “robbing” their children of support, which they are now “showering upon” their new family. 

Alienated parents are always walking on egg shells with their children –  afraid of consequences, such as abuse allegations, should they set limits on their children for their maltreatment, disrespect, and even physical abuse. Alienated parents are thereby labeled “incompetent parents.”

When alienated parents do set appropriate limits on their children and respond to their cruel, hurtful maltreatment, they are accused of overreacting and being emotionally abusive.

Unqualified Therapists Misjudge the Alienated Parent

Alienated parents are faced with the dilemma of participating in reunification therapy with a therapist who is not qualified to treat a case of alienation in order to have some contact with their children, as little as that might be.

Unqualified therapists provide a contraindicated therapy that often makes the alienation dramatically worse and may cement it, thereby perpetuating the child psychological abuse.

Many of these therapists require alienated parents to apologize to their children for false allegations of physical abuse and even sexual abuse. The rational provided is that “this is the child’s reality.”

The detrimental consequences to a child from believing false abuse allegations are exactly the same psychological consequences as if the abuse actually occurred. The consequences to the alienated parent who is forced to confess to false child abuse in front of a mandated reporter is immeasurable.

When an alienated parents resists the demands made by an unqualified therapist for them to apologize to their children for misdeeds they did not commit, the therapist labels the alienated parent as “uncooperative” with the therapy, “insensitive” to their children’s feelings, and “defiant” of the therapist.

This does not bode well for what the therapist will write in the treatment summary to the court. Some therapists even terminate the therapy, which deprives the alienated parent of the scrap of contact they have with their children.

Alienated Parents Are Faced With the Impossible Dilemma Resolution

Frustration, anger, fear, sadness, and helplessness build up in alienated parents as a result of facing these multiple, ongoing, no-win, repetitive double-bind situations. 

Alienated parents are faced with the impossible dilemma of not being able to adequately and convincingly document a case to dismiss the unqualified, harmful reunification therapist without appearing to the court to be a hostile parent who may be a risk to their children.

It is no wonder that Dr. Steven Miller declares that alienated parents may present with the 4-A’s: angry, anxious, agitated, and afraid.

Therapist Jane Major (2006) sums up the alienated parent’s double-bind situation as follows:

“It is common in alienation that alienated parents are in a chronically defensive position. They are continuously defending themselves against one wild accusation after another. Instead of being proactive, they are most likely to become passive. In the face of overwhelming hostility from the other parent, alienated parents cope by trying not to rock the boat. Tension builds. Something snaps and people react. Families with alienation are volatile families. (p. 281)”

Conclusion

Alienated parents are attempting to manage one crisis situation after another in the face of multiple double-binds of “darned if I do; darned if I don’t.”

There should never be to judgment that the alienated parent is flawed; unstable; unjustifiably hostile to unqualified, harmful therapists; and a risk to their children. Before such judgments are made, the traumatic situation of alienation must be ruled out as the cause of the alienated parent’s presentation.

It has been my experience, working with more than 350 alienated parents, that they are, and have always been, the stable, protective, and loving parent whose first priority is the best interest of their child.

My Fantasy Regarding Parental Alienation

Whenever I am about to deliver a presentation on alienation, I yearn for a call from the organizers, I’m hoping to hear the following:

• “Linda, your presentation has been cancelled!”
• “In fact, the presentations of all your colleagues have been cancelled.”
• “We no longer need specialists in parental alienation.”
• “You have worked yourselves out of a job!”
• “The professionals who intervene in child custody had an epiphany & have come to see the light.”
• “They finally recognize what abused children have decisively and irrefutably revealed, forever.”
• “Children do not reject parents – not even abusive parents!”

Here is how I would respond – “Well, better late than never!”

The Regrettable Reality for Alienated Children

Regrettably, I have yet to receive this call. All too many professionals who intervene in child custody are still asleep at the wheel. And honestly, I cannot comprehend this. 

Yet it is only logical to “make the leap” to the acknowledgment that a non-abused child would surely not reject a loving, protective parent with whom the child had had a positive relationship prior to the onset of the alienation.

In my 24-year professional work experience with 3000 abused and neglected foster children, I cannot recall a single child who had rejected a parent. And what child would be more likely than an abused child to reject a parent, yet does not do so. 

To the contrary of rejecting their abusive parents, foster children seek contact with their parents. The most frequently asked questions by these children were, “When is my next visit,” and “When can I go home?”

Substantial research confirms my finding that abused children seek to bond with their abusive parents.

One such study was undertaken by Baker, Miller Bernet, Abadayo (2019) of an estimated 12,500 moderately to severely physically abused children who did not reject their parents and who sought attachment-enhancing behaviors to their abusive parents. 

The research further confirms, counterintuitively, that the more intense the abuse, the more intense is the child’s bonding to the abusive parent. 

Why Abused Children Seek to Bond With Their Abusive Parents

Due to our long dependency period on our parents, the instinct to have and need a parent is part of our instinct for survival.

An abused child’s counterintuitive behavior of wanting to bond with their abusive parent is rooted in numerous psychological factors: 

• We believe we are half our mother and half our father, if we believe one of our parents is unloving and/or evil, we are going to believe that we are not loveable and are evil. 
• Should a parent have maltreated or abused us, we believe that we are bad and thereby deserving of punishment. 
• To think of oneself as bad or evil is counter-instinctual—ergo the powerful desire to bond with parents as a form of denying that the abuse had ever occurred. 
• Abused children seek to bond with their abusive parents in order to gain the parent’s approval and love in hope of “undoing” the negative self-perception of being evil and bad. 

Abused children do not reject their parents! Children of divorce do not reject a loving parent unless influenced.

It is alarming that so many professionals fail to recognize this logical conclusion.

Instinct for a Parent in Psychology

One does not have to be Sigmund Freud to grasp the child’s compulsion to bond to a parent. 

Nor does one need a degree in family therapy to recognize that the child’s instinct for a parent is so powerful that it is rarely, if ever, overridden. 

What else does the reader think accounts for the universal imposition of the incest taboo across human civilization? And so Freud counseled his patients about how to manage compliance with the incest taboo.

Freud argued that the child sublimates the desire for the parent of the opposite gender through a process in which the child identifies with the parent of the same gender in order to attract a partner like the opposite-gender parent. 

What an elegant solution! Is it not a common expression, “I married my mother” or “I married my father?” 

How the Arts and Literature Capture the Child’s Instinct for a Parent

Is art mimicking life or is life mimicking art? The process is cyclical over time. 

And when it comes to the child’s insatiable love for a parent, peruse the literature, art, and music of the great masters to recognize the pervasiveness of the child’s exceedingly powerful instinct for a parent – almost surely occurring beginning with the birth of human civilization.

The ancient Greeks were cognizant of the child’s unquenchable, instinctive need and love for a parent—however symbolically they represented the instinct. Sophocles was so persuaded of the child’s instinct for a parent that, in his tragedy, Oedipus Rex, he had, Oedipus, the King of Thebes, fall in love with his mother and marry her after he had unwittingly killed his father. (Oops!) 

Shakespeare’s Hamlet fantasized a sexual relationship with his mother, Gertrude, and contemplated killing his uncle, Claudius, who had murdered Hamlet’s father and then married Hamlet’s mother. Ultimately, Hamlet procrastinated about doing away with his uncle until after his mother’s death—accidentally imbibing the poison that Claudius had set out for Hamlet. 

And ladies, let us not forget about Electra!

Travel to any art museum and study the paintings of parents and children. Perhaps the Renaissance section would be most apropos as these painters so realistically portrayed the human spirit and the child’s enchantment with, love for, and tie to a parent. 

Then again, we have our own Norman Rockwell, who was indefatigable in his depiction of loving, tender, humorous, affectionate, parent-child relationships. 

And then there are those performers in the world of music, my personal favorite being Pavarotti. His rendition of “Mama” is absolutely spellbinding. 

I was recently again mesmerized by the performance of Verdi’s opera, Il Trovatore. If you want to be transfixed by the experience of an adult-daughter coveting her mother’s lost love and epitomizing loyalty to her mother, this would be the experience. 

This adult-daughter was so committed to avenging her mother’s unseemly death that she was willing to sacrifice everything, including her “adopted” son, in order to redress her mother’s vile murder: “Madre, Madre, you are avenged.” 

Conclusion

Those who are concerned about children must come to recognize that uninfluenced children do not reject their parents.

The professionals who intervene in child custody must be informed that children want and need meaningful involvement from both parents. 

Substantial research and clinical literature reinforces a child’s powerful instinct for a parent and how it is part of our instinct for survival.

We must continue to educate ourselves about the pernicious, child abusive phenomenon of parental alienation.

Parental alienation is routinely missed, misdiagnosed, and mismanaged by professionals who do not specialize in it. To the great detriment to children, non-specialists make findings in an alienation case that are not merely wrong, but are backwards.

Backwards findings in an alienation case means that the alienating parent, who is psychologically abusing the child, is found to be the protective parent; and the alienated parent, who is the protective parent, is found to be an abusive parent.

Steven Miller, MD (2013) explains why non-specialists in alienation get the dynamics so profoundly backwards: 

“Cases of severe alienation are likely to be highly counterintuitive. Clinicians who attempt to manage them without adequate skills are likely to find themselves presiding over a cascade of clinical and psychosocial disasters.” (p. 11)

Alienation is so profoundly counterintuitive that non-specialists typically make a multiplicity of erroneous findings that are catastrophic for the abused alienated child.

Compounding the probability that non-specialists will almost always make backwards findings is that they tend to give unjustified weight to findings that had been informed primarily, in not exclusively, by their intuitive reasoning. 

Intuitive reasoning means using one’s instincts or gut reaction to determine if someone is reporting accurately, truthfully, and fully.

How contraindicated for the safety of children to rely upon findings have been informed primarily by intuitive reasoning in a counterintuitive clinical condition! 

I cite here some of the more counterintuitive issues arising in alienation cases. 

A Practitioner Licensed in Any Mental Health Discipline Is Assumed to be Qualified to Render opinions in Cases of Parental Alienation

Almost nothing could be further from the truth. And nothing could be so catastrophically incorrect for an alienated child. 

In order to render accurate opinions in an alienation case, one needs to be a specialist – and not merely an expert – in alienation.

Just as the medical field is comprised of various specializations and sub-specializations within the discipline of medical practice (e.g. the orthopedist who specializes in the hand, the knee, or the hip, etc.), alienation is a sub-specialty within the discipline of family therapy, which is a specialized discipline within the field of mental health. 

In order for a physician to practice in their respective specializations and sub-specializations, the physician must acquire years of additional training, education, and experience beyond the requirements needed to obtain a medical license. 

As with the sub-specialist in a medical condition, for a clinician to be qualified as a specialist in alienation, the clinician must obtain additional specialized training, education, and experience beyond the requirements for their primary mental health license.

Family therapy’s specialized knowledge base – which, of note, conflicts in fundamental ways with the knowledge base of every other mental health discipline – is why the discipline of Marriage and Family Therapist has been licensed as a protected title in all 50 states. 

Underscoring the exceedingly specialized nature of parental alienation, Dr. Miller (2013) writes:

“Cases of severe alienation often exceed the expertise of highly skilled practitioners unless their special expertise includes treatment of severe child alignment, treatment of severe mental illness, and treatment of severe personality disorders … In addition, one must have extensive experience, outstanding intuition, and sophisticated clinical skills.” (P. 11)

The Alienating Parent Likely Suffers Psychopathology But is Deemed to Be Healthy by Non-Specialists

Research finds that severely alienating parents almost surely have one or more personality disorders.

Someone with a personality disorder has an uncanny ability to mimic normal behavior and are experts at impression management. 

Because alienating parents present deceptively well, non-specialists counterintuitively deem them to be healthy and to be a protective parent. 

Dr. Miller addresses the counterintuitive enigma of the psychologically-unbalanced alienating parent to present remarkably normal. Dr. Miller states that alienating parents tend to present with the 4-Cs: cool, calm, charming, and convincing. 

Contributing to the erroneous finding by non-specialists that alienating parents are remarkably healthy, they have been informed primarily, if not exclusively, by fallible intuitive reasoning.

How common is it for clinicians to make erroneous findings in general – even regarding clinical conditions that are not counterintuitive? 

Consider the 2009 research study entitled, “Current Status and Future Prospects of Clinical Psychology: Toward a Scientifically Principled Approach to Mental and Behavioral Health Care.”

Researchers Baker, McFall, and Shoham documented the prevalence among mental health clinicians to ignore science and rely simply upon their “experiences” with interviewing patients to inform their findings. These researches state:

“Clinical psychologists’ failure to achieve a more significant impact on clinical and public health may be traced to their deep ambivalence about the role of science and their lack of adequate science training, which leads them to value personal clinical experience over research evidence.” (p. 67)

Writing in her article entitled, “Ignoring the Evidence: Why do Psychologists Reject Science,” Newsday science editor, Sharon Begley (2009) quotes Walter Mischel of Columbia University, who stated:

“The disconnect between what clinicians do and what science has discovered is an unconscionable embarrassment” … there is a “widening gulf between clinical practice and science.” (p. 1)

I have lamentably found that the tendency to ignore science and to rely primarily upon intuitive reasoning to inform findings is rampart in the entire mental health field. 

The Alienated Parent, Who is the Healthy Parent, May Not Present Well 

Alienated parents are trauma victims and are typically underfunctioning because of this. They are reacting to a situation that would distress even the most psychologically stable parent.

Consider how anyone would react if they were experiencing the following trauma:

• Being unjustifiably denied court-ordered access to their beloved children 
• Being falsely accused of marginal parenting behaviors and often child abusive behaviors 
• Having to exhaust their finances in order to enforce their parental rights and to fight one false allegation after another
• Desperately having to attempt to protect their children from being triangulated into the legal and parental battles by the alienating parent
• Feeling pained for their children, who are being psychologically abused by the alienating parent.

As a result of trauma, alienated parents do not always handle stress as well as they prior to the onset of the alienation. 

When alienated parents are counterintuitively misperceived and misjudged to have character flaws and psychopathology due to the trauma from alienation, they are victims of the fundamental attribution error (FAE).

The FAE occurs when faults that are a situational reaction to trauma are interpreted to be internal or characterological.

Because of the reaction to trauma from the alienation, Dr. Miller states that the alienated parent may present with the 4-As: anxious, agitated, angry, and afraid.

Psychological Evaluations Are Inappropriately Relied Upon to Evaluate Parenting Abilities

Psychological tests, such as the MMPI, are commonly used to assess the litigants’ parenting abilities; but these tests are, counterintuitively inappropriately suited for this purpose.

First, the authors of these tests have cautioned that the tests should be used for hypothesis generation only and not hypothesis confirmation. 

This means that the test results must be corroborated by other evidence, such as in-person clinical interviews. Should the clinical interview dispute the test findings, the test findings must be discarded.

Second, the tests’ referenced population, which is the 1980 census, has not been matched to someone undergoing a contentious custody case and particularly not someone who is a victim of alienation.

Consider the following written by Joel Klass, M.D. and Dr. Joanna Peros, PSYD, RN in their article, Ten Signs of Questionable Practices in Custody Evaluations,” The American Journal of Family Law, (2011). Vol. 25 (3), (PP.81-86):

“Most psychological tests are not normed on parents undergoing the stress of custody evaluations…. Judges should know that psychological tests can carry a warning that they are not to be used without clinical correction or for forensic purposes to determine legal issues.” (P. 82) 

“Far more important than the psychological test results are other real-life conditions under which the child thrives or fails.” (P. 83.)

“When a patient in a hospital is talking to you while their EKG machine is showing a straight line, you throw out the machine and not wheel out the patient.”

“So it is with psychological testing. Reality trumps all the psychological tests known….An overreliance on limited validity psychological test results can violate the basic legal right to have judgments based on actual behavior and not on thoughts, feelings, or psychological tendencies.” (P. 83.)

Gerald H, Vandenberg, PhD, ABPP, writing in “Custody Evaluation: The Expert Witness and the Assessment Process,” published in The American Journal of Family Law (2002). Vol. 16, (4). PP. 253-259) state:

“The data [from the MMPI test] must be interpreted and cross-checked using multiple sources of information and considering the overall context. For example, a “paranoid” scale on a given test may have multiple meanings both in relation to other information and in relation to context.” (P. 257.)

Third, these psychological tests have not been determined for their error rate, which may be as high as 50%. Not much weight should be given to a finding that is 50% inaccurate!

Fourth, these psychological tests are typically scored by a computer and not by a human being. I am not aware of any computer that has the ability assess for the traumatic situational context of the test taker.

Fifth, these tests reveal virtually nothing, if at all, about parenting abilities. 

The best means for assessing parenting abilities is observation of the parent-child interactions in a variety of settings. Somehow this common-sense assessment tool escapes the resourcefulness of non-specialists.

When a Child Rejects a Parent, It Is Assumed That The Parent Must Have Done Something Dreadful

Because it is anti-instinctual for a child to reject a parent, non-specialists counteractively rush to judgement that the rejected parent must have done something to “deserve it.”

It is exactly because it is so anti-instinctual to reject a parent – to do so even as an adult – that the rejected parent’s culpability must not be assumed. It is catastrophically inappropriate for the child to make this assumption.  

The key point to consider is not whether or how strongly the child has rejected one parent and aligned with the other. The key point to consider is why these dynamics are occurring.

In order to assess for the why of the child’s rejection with one parent and alignment with the other,the scientific method requires that all plausible competing hypotheses to explain these dynamics must be generated. 

An obviously plausible competing hypothesis is that of a brainwashing of the child by the other parent. The evidence for and against each hypothesis must then be assessed in order to determine which hypothesis correctly explains the why of the child’s rejection.

Children Counterintuitively Bond to an Abusive Parent

Extensive research and my evidence-based practice of having worked with 3000 abused and neglected foster children find that children counterintuitively bond to an abusive parent. Even more counterintuitive is that, the more intense was the abuse, the more intense is the bonding.

There are several reasons why abused children so counterintuitively bond to their alienating parent. It is outside the purpose of this article to provide a detailed discussion of the reasons. But briefly, the reasons children align so strongly with an abusive parent include the hope of:

• Undoing of the abuse 
• Denying the abuse had occurred
• Gaining the alienating parent’s approval
• Gaining the alienating parent’s love
• Overcoming the self-perception of being bad that resulted in the abuse

The finding of my evidence-based practice that abused children do not reject their parents and instead seek attachment behaviors is confirmed by an impressive research study by Baker, Miller, Bernet, and Adebayo (2019).

This study of an estimated 17,500 moderately to severely physical abused children found that these sought attachment enhancing behaviors with their abusive parents.

When assessing the dynamics in a case in which alienation is alleged, a marker for an alienating parent – who is an abusive parent – is the child’s intense, rigid bonding to and alignment with that parent.

The Relationship Between the Severely Alienating Parent and Child Appears to Be Healthy Bonding

Non-specialists in alienation counterintuitively perceive the unhealthy bonding between a severely alienating parent and child to be close, warm, loving, supportive, and protective relationship. Almost nothing could be further from the truth. 

The alignment between a severely alienating parent and child is a “pathologically enmeshed relationship.” This pathologically enmeshed relationship is profoundly detrimental to the child across all levels of functioning—cognitive, emotional, behavioral, and interpersonal.  

Pathological enmeshment is a severe psychiatric condition for the child in which the alienating parent violates the child boundaries, creates dependency, and discourages, instead of encourages, the child’s appropriate separation/individuation.

The alienating parent must employ coercive-control, mind-manipulating tactics in order for the child to override the survival instinct to have and need the other parent. The alienating parent’s behaviors in this regard clearly meet the standard definition of domestic violence.

The alienating parent’s use of coercive-control, mind-manipulating tactics are aimed to achieve the following:

• The child’s repression of her/his own loving, positive feelings, wishes, beliefs, and opinions regarding the alienated parent
• Indoctrination of the child with the alienating parent’s feelings, wishes, beliefs, and opinions regarding the alienated parent
• Undermining the child’s emotional and cognitive development in order to perpetuate the child’s dependency upon the alienating parent 
• Co-opting the child in the alienating parent’s campaign to defeat and victimize the alienated parent
• Manipulating the child to act out and adopt the alienating parent’s anti-social maltreatment and victimization of the alienated parent. These behaviors meet the standard definition of domestic violence by proxy  

Pathological enmeshment is a severe psychiatric condition for the child.

Pathological enmeshment—being anything except healthy bonding—is therefore profoundly counterintuitive.

An Alienation Case Appears to Be a Simple Parent-Child Relationship Problem: It Is Much More Than That

Intuitively it appears that the alienated parent-child relationship is the overt problem is of a child who is rejecting a parent. 

Intuitively, it makes sense to intervene where the shoe noticeably pinches—the damaged parent-child relationship (or the symptom)—and overlook what is not visibly recognized but is truly dysfunctional—the alienating parent’s behaviors (or the cause). 

But to the contrary, it is the overly-close, pathologically enmeshed relationship between the alienating parent and child that is significantly more dysfunctional than is the overly-disengaged relationship between the alienated parent and child.

Child protection is our first priority. In an alienation case, child protection requires a removal from an unreformed alienating parent who is committed to the perpetuation of the abusive alienation narrative.

When non-specialists focus on that a child perceives the parents so unrealistically instead of why the child is doing so, they are violating the clinical axioms to “treat the underlying condition” and to “determine treatment priorities.” 

Dr.  Miller (2013) cautions that clinical attention in an alienation case must focus on the:

“Serious comorbid psychopathology, particularly on the part of the alienating parent…the underlining psychopathology is often associated with severe cognitive distortion (including shared delusions and/or other a quasi-psychotic thinking), profound emotional dysregulation, and extreme or bizarre behavior.” (p. 11)

The Claim of 50/50 Parental Contributions to the Child’s Rejection is a Counterintuitive Presumption

There should never be the presumption of equal material parental contributions to the child’s rejection of a parent – what is known as a “hybrid case.”

The presumption of a hybrid is profoundly incorrect and is almost always the result of science being ignored. But when the scientific method is applied to the clinical condition of “child rejection of a parent,” the hybrid presumption is virtually always ruled out. 

When non-specialists make the hybrid presumption, they have almost surely done so by violating the clinical axiom to “consider severity” and by committing the cognitive error of “failure to establish a causal connection” between the alienated parent’s behaviors and the onset of the rejection.

First, by violating the clinical axiom to “consider severity,” non-specialists fail to recognize that the alienated parent’s behaviors are utterly out of proportion to the child’s exceedingly anti-instinctual rejection of a parent.

Second, when non-specialists have held that the parents had equally contributed to the child’s rejection, they failed to assess each parent’s behaviors for severity. 

For example, the alienated parent’s alleged contributing behaviors to the rejection (e.g. intermittent expression of anger, not keeping all promises, making children do homework before playing video games, etc.) pale in comparison to the alienating parent’s extreme, vicious contributing behaviors to undermine or sever the relationship between the alienated parent and their child.

Consider Some of the Commonly Employed Alienating Behaviors

Withholding the child from the alienated parent’s court-ordered parenting time.

Disrupting the alienated parent’s parenting time with incessant, protracted calls to the child.

Making unilateral major decisions for the child, e.g. for education, health, activities, etc. and neither consulting with nor informing the alienated parent, who has joint legal custody.

Telling the child the alienated parent had abandoned her/him when not showing up for activities not informed about.

Making the child believe the alienated parent is unloving, uncaring, dangerous, selfish, etc.

Changing the child’s surname to that of the alienating parent’s birth surname or the stepparent’s surname.

Making false allegations of domestic violence and child abuse against the alienated parent.

Making the child complicit in confirming false DV or child abuse allegations against the alienated parent.

Hybrid cases are very, very, very, very rare.

Alienating Parents Disingenuously Claim They Support Their Child’s Relationship With the Alienated Parent

Non-specialists accord alienating parents unwarranted credibility for their proclamations that they “encourage” and “support” their child’s relationship with the alienated parent. 

But despite claims of their extraordinary efforts, alienating parents are somehow clueless about how to use their authority to gain their child’s cooperation. Somehow non-specialists counterintuitively fail to hold alienating parents accountable to back up their proclamations with actions.

Alienating parents’ disingenuous proclamations of support and encouragement for their child’s relationship with the alienated parent are no more than an “empty vessel” making considerable noise but signifying nothing.

Alienating parents proclaim that they reason, plead, encourage, and urge their children to keep parenting time with their alienated parent. But alienating parents fail to impose consequences when their children fail to comply.

Alienating parents instead cowardly and cynically place the blame for the alienation on their children’s shoulders by alleging that their children have minds of their own and have autonomously chosen not to have a relationship with their alienated parent. 

When alienating parents project the blame for the alienation upon their children, this is an exquisite example of visiting the sins of the parent upon the child.

Alienating parents are, however, quite adept at using their authority to get children to do what they really want them to do when they really want that: it happens every time the Court imposes substantial consequences on the alienating parent should they not require their child’s compliance with the alienated parent’s parenting time. 

Alienating parents cannot claim, counterintuitively, that they are simultaneously competent as a parent and genuinely support the alienating parent’s relationship with their child when the child fails to comply with the alienated parent’s parenting time.

Rejection of a Parent Is Erroneously Claimed to Be a Phase in Normal Child Development 

It is intuitively reasonable for a child to distance from one parent while being close to the other as the child traverses the continuum of developmental stages. But this continuum is not on the same continuum upon which alienation is found. It is highly deceptive to assert that these two very different continuums are one.

The fact is that rejection of a parent is never healthy for the child and is never a dynamic in any stage of normal child development. Of note, this rejection is not seen even in abused children. 

In alienation, however, there is a tenacious, intransigent enmeshment between the child and the alienating parent that requires the child’s fanatic, inflexible rejection of the other parent.  

In normal development, the child’s closeness and distance with parents is flexible and fluctuates between the parents at different developmental stages – but never to the rejection of one parent for the sake of being close to the other parent. Nor in healthy childhood development would the closer parent permit the child to reject the other parent.

It Is Intuitively Believed That the Child’s Best Interest Is Served When Children Have a Voice in the Custody Outcome 

Counterintuitively, it would appear that children would have strong, independent feelings and wishes for the outcome of the divorce and custody proceedings. But not so alienated children, who will only mimic their alienating parent’s wishes for the outcome.

And typically, suggestibility of the child by the alienating parent is not ruled out before giving weight to the child’s expressed wishes.

Giving a voice to an alienated child regarding custody is a disastrous idea because it further cements the psychological abuse that has been inflicted upon the child by the alienating parent.

Alienated children have been coercively manipulated by their alienating parent to sacrifice their relationship with their alienated parent as the price to pay in order to keep the alienating parent’s love and approval. This is an exploitive, terrorizing loyalty demand of the child by the alienating parent. 

Professionals should perpetuate this abuse – however unknowingly – by indicating to alienated children that their wishes are important to the outcome of the custody proceedings.

The Cause of the Child’s Psychiatric Symptoms is Counterintuitively Attributed to the Alienated Parent 

Severely alienated children frequently manifest severe psychiatric disturbances that can include panic, suicidal ideation, threats, cutting, etc. The alienated parent is intuitively asserted to have been the cause. 

Despite how fanatic the assertion is made by the alienating parent, the child, and the child’s therapist, non-specialists presume it to be true. This presumption is made despite the fact that the child had not manifested any psychiatric disturbance prior to the onset of the alienation. 

Such assertions are all the more fantastic given that the alienated parent has typically not had contact with the child in many, many months if not years.

It is far more likely that the loyalty conflict that the alienating parent had inflicted upon the child is the case of the child’s psychiatric disturbances. 

The scientific method must be applied to the evidence in the case in order to determine the true cause of the child’s disturbances.

Successful School Performance Intuitively Suggests That the Child Is Developing Normally

Successful school performance is not sufficient evidence of normalcy in a child – particularly not in an alienated child.

Alienated children may experience the school setting as a safe-haven to freely express their opinions. 

The school setting provides an environment in which children do not fear reprisals for expressing theirowngenuine beliefs and opinions. 

If successful school performance were a marker against which to evaluate normalcy, then anorexics—who are on a slow suicide—would be considered emotionally stable because they are obsessed with achieving an A or A+ average. 

Conclusion

In addition to alienation being a sub-specialty within the specialty discipline of family therapy, and family therapy is a specialty discipline within the discipline of mental health, alienation is a profoundly counterintuitive clinical condition.

Given the profound life-time harm to the child from alienation, a mental health practitioner should not be intervening in an alienation case unless having acquired the highly specialized training, education, and experience to be considered a specialist in alienation. To do so is to practice outside one’s area of expertise – a serious board and ethical violation.

After treating alienated children for 3 decades, nothing I hear surprises me anymore.

I am including some of the more alarming and bizarre comments I have heard alienated children say to their alienated parent over the years. Some remarks had to be excluded because they are too offensive.

FURTHER READING: Manifestations of Alienated Children – As Seen by an Expert

Campaign of Denigration

5-Year-Old to Father, Who Is a Doctor

“You do not know what to do when I get sick, but my mom does.” 

14-Year-Old to Mother, Who Is a Psychologist

“You have an anger-management problem; you are passive-aggressive; you should be your own patient, but you’ll never cure yourself; do your patients know how crazy you are?”

12-Year-Old to Mother

“Don’t you dare come near me. I order you not to touch me.”

6-Year-Old to Father

“My mommy says you are not the boss of me. I don’t have to listen to you. Everything with you is junk. I’ll be happy if you don’t pick me up anymore.” 

5-Year-Old to Father

“My mommy doesn’t listen to you either. Mommy doesn’t care what you want. I hate you daddy; but not as much as mommy hates you.” (He then punched his father in the stomach.)

14-Year-Old Boy & 16-Year-Old Girl About Father

“You need to understand all the reasons why we hate him so much! We hated the trip he took us on to Hawaii. And then we hated going to Fiddler on the Roof.”

7-Year-Old Boy to Father

“You don’t treat me with love, so I don’t treat you with love.” 

7-Year-Old to Father

“The babysitter said I am not allowed to talk to strangers so that’s why I hung up on you.”

15-Year-Old & 13-Year-Old Girls to Father

“The parenting books you are reading is like training manual that makes us feel like a dog.”

13-Year-Old & 16-Year-Old Boys to Mother

“We hate you. Go to hell! What is your problem? Are you sick in the f—ing head?” 

12-Year-Old Girl to Mother 

“You are a bitch, c–t, fatso, white trash, a piece of shit, and demented. You were worthless to me and my sister when I lived with you. That’s why I live with dad now. Get ready for my sister to come and live with us too.”

Two Teenage Girls to Father

Addressing their father by his first name, they declared to him, “Stop coming to pick us up for visits. We don’t want to see you. Mom already told you that. Get on with your life without us.” 

3-Year-Old Girl to Mother

“My daddy says you are not my mommy. My daddy told me I have a new mommy.” My daddy said he lives with my new mommy.”

“My daddy said I have to call her ‘mommy’ and I have to call you ‘stupid Joan.’ My daddy says you’re a c–t and a bad mommy so I’m going to keep you for myself.”

4-Year-Old & 6-Year-Old Boys to Mother

“My daddy said you’re breaking up the family because, ‘Mommy does not love daddy anymore. Mommy loves someone else.’”

“Daddy said you are making him cry. Daddy said, ‘Mommy and her friend will make daddy go away.’” 

“Daddy said, ‘Mommy has a boyfriend and that makes her a bad mommy. The boyfriend does not like daddy and wants him to disappear. Mommy loves her boyfriend more than she loves you.’”

12-Year-Old Girl to Mother

“Your hairstyle is out of the 50’s. None of my friend’s mothers have hairstyles like you. It’s embarrassing. I won’t be seen with you in public ever again.”

7-Year-Old to Father

“I checked my schedule, and you’re not on it. Go away. It’s not your scheduled time to visit. I do not want to see you. I will let you known when I want to see you.”

12-Year-Old Girl to Father

“You’re worthless to me. What I want for Hanukah is that you burn to death slowly in a fire. I would not care if the next time I saw you it was at your funeral. I would not cry for you.” 

14 and 16-Year-Old Girls to Mother

“We would not be upset if you dropped dead tomorrow. We don’t give a crap about you.”

7-Year-Old to Father

“I don’t have to be here if I don’t want to. I hate you; I hate you; I hate you. Get out of my life.” (The boy then physically attacked his father by kicking, punching, and spitting at him.)

Weak, Frivolous, Absurd Rationalizations for the Denigration 

10-Year-Old to Mother, Who is a Doctor 

“Your floor is too dirty for my dog to walk on. If you want me to visit you, you must put a kitchen in my bedroom so we (Rocco and I) can stay in my room for the visit.”

12-Year-Old to Mother 

“You dribbled soda on your blouse during the movie. I can’t trust that you won’t be careless again. You’re old. You’re not young and hip. I’m never coming to see you again if you don’t change.”

9-Year-Old and 11-Year-Old Girls to Father

“You embarrassed us when you asked to speak to the store manager, so we’re never coming back to your sleezy apartment again.”

“Forget you have kids. Find another woman to torture like you tortured mom and have kids with her so you can forget about us.”

17-Year-Old Girl to Father

“You should have bought me that iPad out of the goodness of your heart after mom couldn’t afford her share. Why would I want to see or talk to you ever again if I can’t count on you for support?”

14-Year-Old Boy and 16-Year-Old Girl with Father

“He never abused us. Things just built up over time”

“He always makes promises never to do things again. He states that he won’t do anything bad again, but he keeps doing it over and over. There were always problems with him. There was no peace”

(These children were unable to provide specifics for what the father had allegedly done wrong)

12-Year-Old Boy with Younger Sister about Father

“He refuses to stop doing the same stuff. Every time we forgive him, he does it again. We keep giving him chances, and somehow, he just makes a mess of things. We always forgive him, and he uses us. He makes us feel unwanted.”

(These children were unable to provide specifics for what the father had allegedly done wrong)

21-Year-Old Boy to Mother

“You deserved to be hit by dad because you are a nag and you talk too much. You don’t know when to shut up.”

“You were not there for me when I was younger. My sister does not trust that you will be there for her either. That is why she’s not coming back from dad.”

7-Year-Old Boy Regarding His Father

“I hate my father because he broke into our home. And he robbed my piggy bank before he left and abandoned us.” 

(The father was in the military serving overseas. The mother had locked the father out of the home and told the boy that his father had abandoned them.)

14 and 16-Year-Old Girls to Father

“The sleeping arrangements were no good; the mattresses were too soft; the sheets were too cold; the food was yucky or too hot or too cold; it was boring by you. We will never sleepover again.”

12-Year-Old Boy to Father

“I hated the Adidas sneakers you bought me because they were too expensive. You think you can buy me with gifts. You just can’t buy somebody to make things all better.”

13-Year-Old Girl to Mother 

“You don’t treat me like a daughter. You think buying me a dinner will make everything right between us. You can’t build a relationship over dinner.”

8-Year-Old Girl With Mother

“My mother tries to bribe me to visit her by giving me $20. She thinks a Barbie doll will make me want to see her. She only buys me clothes to run a guilt trip on me.”

14-Year-Old Girl to Mother

“I hate you when you tell me what to do. I hate all those things you tell me to do which I hate doing. You were mean to me when made me keep my room clean.”

13-Year-Old Girl to Father 

“You have such a mean face when you stare at me. You have no idea how intimidating and creepy you would look.”

“You gawked at me with those eyes when I wouldn’t clean my room. You frightened me to death.”

15-Year-Old-Girl to Mother

“You pointed at me in anger when I did something wrong. You put your teeth together and foamed at the mouth when you got mad. You pointed your finger in a malevolent way.”

14-year-Old Boy and 16-Year-Old Girl About Father 

“Why can’t you just believe that he didn’t abuse me and that things just arose?” 

“I can’t think of why I hate him, but I know there must be reasons or I would not feel this way.”

“Why can’t you just accept that he is just a negative person?”

“Isn’t it abuse if your father dragged you out of bed for a visit when you didn’t want to go?”

7-Year-Old Boy with Father

“My father would beat me. I can’t think of an example right now. But I know he must have beat me because my mom said he did.” 

13-Year-Old Girl About Mother 

“She is always making us see family we don’t want to see. How could you not get angry about that? Wouldn’t you think that’s abuse?”

12-Year-Old Girl to Father

“I peed in my pants because of you. I always got a yucky feeling when I looked at those panties.”

“Something must have happened if I feel this way. Why must I tell you what makes me feel this way about you?

14-Year-Old Girl With 4 Younger Siblings to Father

“I remember that you slapped us around a lot. I was scared of you. We were scared of you. But it happened so long ago I forgot exactly what you did to us. Why don’t you ask mom. I’m sure she remembers cuz she said she does.”

Presence of Borrowed Scenarios

5-Year-Old Boy to Father

“Mothers are more special than father’s because I came from her tummy. That’s why I should be with my mom.”

13-Year-Old Girl About Mother

“Jane [her mother] is a very good actress; she knows how to fool the therapist into believing that she really cares about her children. I see that she has fooled you.”

16-Year-Old Girl to Mother

“My dad said that your punishments don’t fit the crime. I refuse to abide by them for that reason.”

14-Year-Old Boy to Mother 

“It was not a stipulation in the child support award that dad had to pay for school lunches separately. School lunches are not in addition to child support, which is already more than you deserve.”

Three Teenage Siblings to Father

“Why is it okay to give only four child-support checks in a year and a half? I read in the papers how you owe back child support and alimony. I also read you are trying to cut mom’s alimony.”

17-Year-Old-Girl to Mother

“Dad said that the child-support he pays you should go further. He said you get more than enough to pay for my driver instruction lessons and you should pay for it.” 

“Dad said you are probably squirreling away the child support so you can live the life you always wanted but he couldn’t give you no matter how much he tried.”

12-Year-Old Girl to Mother

“You tricked me when you bought me that iPad. You didn’t do it out of love. You only got it for me so that I would see you.”

6-Year-Old Girl to Mother

“My daddy says he can’t buy me a Barbie doll for my birthday because you stole all his money.”

“My daddy says you abandoned me. You threw me away.

17-Year-Old Girl to Mother

“What kind of mother would desert her children by studying for her college degree? That’s why WE had to divorce you.”

12-Year-Old Girl to Mother

“You are not normal. You have to live with your sister. Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for having to live with auntie? Why can’t you keep a man and have a normal married life like dad does?”

8-Year-Old Girl Reported to Have Said to Father

While watching the Sleeping Beauty movie with her father, the girl said to him, “The prince will not come back for her. He’s going to abandon her.” 

5-Year-Old Boy About Father

“Daddy is never sorry for missing my games. He is never sorry for anything. He always has to be right.”

(The mother never informed the father of their son’s games.)

15-Year-Old Girl to Father 

“You lie about your concern for your children. You give your children doubts that you love them.”

12-Year-Old Girl to Father

“When I was 5-years-old, I know you tried to trade me for the boy next door.”

16-Year-Old Girl to Father 

“I know you want to sodomize my stepbrother and then cut him into little pieces.”

7-Year-Old Girl to Mother 

“My dad says the swimming pool that you take me to is dangerous for me and that you never remembered to put sunscreen on me.”

12-Year-Old Girl to Father

“When I was born, I know you were drunk in the delivery.”

Repetitive Borrowed Scenarios Commonly Made by Alienated Children

• He/she is faking by pretending to care about me.
• He/she is not benefiting from his/her anger management classes.
• He/she deserves an Academy Award for pretending to be nice in front of you.
• This is not the way he/she is inside. He/she fools everyone by pretending to care.
• He/she has fooled you like he/she has fooled everyone else.
• We can’t count on him/her; he/she is not trustworthy.
• He/she is not exactly the father/mother of the year.
• His/her attitude changes. He/she’s not like this at home. 
• He/she knows how to fool a therapist.

Lack of Ambivalence

13-Year-Old and 15-Year-Old Boys to Mother 

“We were just pretending to enjoy buying the camping equipment. We never wanted to go camping in the first place.” 

“It’s time you realized that there is nothing we enjoy doing with you, so you might as well forget about us. We are not going to any more camping with trips with you.”

12-Year-Old Girl to Mother 

“Your values are not like dad’s or mine. Dad is above reproach. He is of good moral character.”

 “You have never been my role model, you aren’t now, and you never will be! My stepmother is my role-model.”

12-Year-Old Girl About Father

“My father is of little importance to me. I never had any use for him. I could take him or leave him—mostly leave him. I could have a very productive and satisfying life if he only left me out of his.”

Three Siblings Ages 10, 12, & 15 to Father

“Our mom is always there for us; she is responsible, respectful, caring, and selfless at all times! We wouldn’t change a thing about her. Life with her is terrific! It’s been peachy! We don’t have any use for you and we don’t miss you.”

Reflexive Support of the Alienating Parent

16-Year-Old Boy to Father

“Mom told us if we don’t keep the visits you, she will have her thrown in jail. Why would you punish her for our choice not to see you? If you send her to jail, we will never see or talk to you again.”

16 and 14-Year-Old Siblings to Mother

“If you make dad pay this fine for his not making us see you, you’re taking food out of our mouths.”

12-Year-Old Girl to Mother

“You never did your wifely duties, if you know what I mean. No wonder dad was unhappy. That’s why we divorced you.”

15-Year-Old Girl to Mother

“You keep saying dad alienated us. He didn’t.”

“If you only looked in the mirror you will see why we grew to hate you and chose not to see you.”

“Stop blaming dad. Dad always encouraged us to see you. He doesn’t care one way or another about our relationship with you.”

Repetitive Examples of the Independent Thinker Phenomenon Said by Children of All Ages

“It makes us mad that you keep saying in Court we are alienated.”

“If anything, telling the judge we’re alienated makes us alienated.”

“We have not heard anything we told you from dad/mom. We have minds of our own. We were not influenced to say anything we said.”

“You must think I’m stupid since you think mom/dad tells me what to think about you. That is just another issue I am adding to my complaint list about you.”

Cruelty Towards the Alienated Parent Without Guilt or Remorse 

Repetitive Comments Expressed by Alienated Children of All Ages

“You brought this on yourself. I won’t apologize, and I’ll hit you again if you come near me.”

“You don’t deserve my respect and civility. I’ll let you know if and when you have earned it.”

“God is punishing you for taking us back to Court. I hope your life is as miserable as you made mom’s.”

“You’re overreacting. My punch was not that hard. You’re such a baby.”

“I will kick you again if you take my phone away.”

“I am behaving perfectly OK. I am being taught good manners by my father. You deserve my rejection.”

“You are just faking you are hurt to impress the therapist. You deserve to loose your parenting time.”

“You are just trying to make mom look bad. It was just a love tap I gave you.”

“If you scream ‘ouch’ once more when I pull your hair, I am never coming to see you again.”

Independent Thinker Phenomenon

8-Year-Old Speaking for Himself and Siblings, 6 and 4-Years-of-Age About Father

“Our daddy does not feed us on his visits. We were thinking you would want to know this. No one told us to say this!”

12-Year-Old Boy About Father

“My mother is not trying to alienate me from my father. My mother didn’t say anything bad about him or that I should not see him. She tells me I should go on the visits if I want to.”

13-Year-Old Boy to Mother

“My dad is not controlling me. My dad is not trying to turn me against you, and he’s not trying to make me hate your new boyfriend. He tells me to go on my visits with you and him—if I want to. But I don’t want to. It’s my choice not to see you.”

14-Year-Old Girl to Mother

“My father wants me to have a relationship with you. He tells me to go with you if I want to. But I choose not to go. It’s not my father’s idea. You keep blaming him. It’s not him. It’s me. I chose not to go with you.” 

15-Year-Old to Father

“I don’t know why you say mom is coaching us. You keep thinking our mom is making us do this. But she’s not.” 

“It’s like we’re being told by our mother what to say. Like our mother is making us do this. It’s just the opposite. Our mother tells us to go. She’s not controlling our actions.”

“Why do you think our mother is telling us to say bad things about you? But she’s not badmouthing you. That’s the problem with you, you don’t trust that it’s our own thoughts.”  

15-Year-Old to Father

“It’s our words! We are not alienated. We don’t believe you when you say that you will stop saying we are alienated.” 

“We have told you over and over that our mother never did anything to alienate us. How many times must we say this before you are convinced?”

14-Year-Old to Mother

“Once and for all, accept that we can think for ourselves. Dad did not brainwash us. It’s you trying to brainwash the judge.”

Examples of the Independent Thinker Phenomenon Made by Alienated Children of All Ages

“Mom/dad tells us we can have a relationship with you if we want to. But WE don’t want to. It’s our choice. We have our rights.”

“We know the age in this state that the judge must listen to our wishes. Mom/dad never told us that.”

“Stop trying to look good for the judge by blaming mom/dad for the situation. He/she is not responsible for our feelings about you.” 

“We told our lawyer the truth about you and that it was all our ideas.” 

“Our lawyer will set the judge straight that it’s OUR own feelings about you and our own choice to have nothing to do with you.”

Spread of the Denigration to Family and Friends of the Alienated Parent

14-Year-Old to Father

“I don’t remember your witch-of-a-wife being ever nice to me. I will not sleep over if she is in your house.”

8-Year-Old to Mother

“Granny violates my space by hugging me. I will not see her unless she promises to keep a safe distance between us.”

“I don’t know what a safe distance is, but dad will tell her.”

6-Year-Old to Father

“Grandma has an official record of all the times you hit mommy in the stomach when I was in her. Grandma says she is going to send you up the river. Good for her. What does it mean to send you up the river?”

16-Year-Old to Mother

“Your sister is not part of my family. Family means love and caring. Your sister never treated me like a niece when she helped you make all my birthday parties. So I don’t consider her my aunt.”

Pathological Enmeshment

14 and 16-Year-Old Siblings to Father

“We talked to our mother, and we agreed that the change in parenting schedule we are offering you is much better for us and for her. We decided that it was good for everybody except for you. Take it or leave it.”

13-Year-Old to Father

“I have reviewed your financial settlement offer to mom, and it doesn’t due her justice. If it weren’t for her helping you with your business, you would have gone bankrupt. It is only fitting for you to double your offer to her. If you do not do this now, I will not see you again.”

11-Year-Old to Mother 

“Dad showed me the banking statements. It is clear that you took all the money and gave it to your lawyer in order to bankrupt dad.”

13-Year-Old-Girl to Father

“I don’t remember any details of you how sexually abused me since I was 8. But I do remember recently talking about it with mom, so I know you must have done it.”

Overempowerment 

12-Year-Old to Father

“I will not come back see you, unless you promise not to come to my bat mitsvah.”

14-Year-Old to Mother

“If you ever try to hug me again, I will file a CPS report of sexual abuse.”

8-Year-Old to Mother

“My communion is off limits to you.”

9-Year-Old to Father

“What’s it to you if my mom changed my last name at school. It’s all about what I want. Who cares about what you want.”

11-Year-Old to Mother

“You lied to the judge when you told him that you were the primary caretaker. Dad did everything for us. You were running around with your friends having a good time. It was too much work for you to do anything for us.”

Amnesia About a Prior Positive Relationship

Declared by Alienated Children of All Ages

“I only smiled in the pictures because you held a gun to my head if I didn’t.”

“I didn’t know any better when I said I loved you. Now I can see who you really are.”

“I told my therapist that the vacations were only fun because mom/dad was also there. I never had a good time with you on vacations.”

Conclusion

To anyone listening to the absurdities expressed by alienated children, it’s obvious they’ve been brainwashed. How come the professionals miss it?

Alienating parents are on a continuum from mild to moderate to severe. By the time an alienation case gets to Court because it did not settle, the alienating parent is almost surely in the severe category.

Assessing alienating parents for severity is determined primarily by how effective they have been in limiting and excluding the alienating parent from involvement in their children’s lives.

Mild alienating parents may not consciously engage in other alienating behaviors. But by the time a case reaches the point of contentious custody litigation, they can no longer claim ignorance of what they are doing. If it is not their intention to alienate, they will relinquish their alienating parents as soon as a professional calls their behaviors to their attention. If they persist in their alienating behaviors despite being so alerted, they have marched into the moderate category.

Moderate alienating parents know exactly what they are doing. Their goal is to selfishly keep the children mostly to themselves but are willing to allow the alienated parent some participation in their child’s life. The participation is mostly around limited contact with their children. Moderate alienators do not wish to share decision making and legal custody.

Severe alienating parents have a mission in life which is to drive the alienated parent from any involvement with their children. The seek to obtain legal orders to deny visitation, and will violate the alienated parent’s Court-ordered parenting time. They make unilateral decisions for their children and do not provide updates on their child’s developments.

Severely alienating parents’ mission is to drive the other parent from their child(ren)’s lives. The alienator employs very specific behaviors that are purposefully selected for their severity, intensity, and effectiveness. These behaviors are designed to manipulate a child to reject a loving, protective parent.

Alienating parents utilize 17 alienating behaviors that were initially identified by Baker and Fine (2007, 2013). These behaviors have been found to have an exceedingly low error rate in numerous replicated studies.

Not all 17 alienating behaviors are required to identify an alienating parent. Identifying an alienating parent is instead determined by the effectiveness of the behaviors that are utilized.

Badmouthing the Alienated Parent to the Child, the Court, and the Professionals

Alienating parents use verbal and non-verbal communications to portray the alienated parent as an unloving, unsafe, uncaring, uninvolved, and unavailable parent. These communications include body language, emotions, and facial affect in addition to verbal communications.

Alienating parents rely upon a range of exaggerations, distortions, and utter fabrications to paint the alienated parent as unloving, uncaring, uninvolved, and dangerous.

First, alienating parents exaggerate the alienated parent’s minor flaws and parenting mistakes to the point that the alienated parent appears to be nothing in proportion to nor indicative of whom she/he actually is.

Second, alienating parents distort the alienated parent’s qualities to reflect that parent as incompetent both as a human being and as a parent.

Third – at its worst – alienating parents often maliciously fabricate serious allegations of child abuse and domestic violence alleged to have been committed by the alienated parent. This is also an example of the alienating behavior known as conveying that the alienated parent is dangerous.

Any positive parenting or human qualities that the alienated parent has are blatantly overlooked, diminished, or disregarded.

Examples of Common Badmouthing Behaviors 

Alienating parents will fail to apprise the alienated parent of their child’s activities and tells the child that the alienated parent did not show up because she/he does not care about the child.

Alienating parents reschedule the alienated parent’s visit, does not inform the child that the visit had been rescheduled, and tells the child that their alienated parent had cancelled the visit. Excuses for the alleged cancellations include the alienated parent had planned a really exciting activity with her/his fiancée and future stepchildren.

Alienating parents convey to the child that the alienating parent missed the child’s birth because of being passed out from drinking.

While an alienated parent attempts to encourage the child to emerge from the alienating parent’s car at a transition, alienating parents stand by and do nothing to encourage the child to cooperate. 

As the alienated parent is describing exciting activities planned for the visit to encourage the child to transition, alienating parents remain silent and unsupportive and instead roll their eyes, shake their head negatively, and smirk at the alienated parent.

When alienating parents need to take their children for an emergency medical examination, they fail to alert the alienated parent and erroneously inform the emergency room doctor that she/he has sole legal custody. 

Justifications for the alleged sole legal custody include that the alienated parent had voluntarily surrendered joint custody in the hopes of having child support rescinded, that there is a child abuse history, and that the alienated parent had moved far away.

Limiting Contact

Limiting the alienated parent’s contact with the child is the single most successful alienating behavior in achieving the alienating parent’s mission to drive the alienated parent from the child’s life. 

Obsessed, severely alienating parents are incapable of subverting their anger and hostility for the alienated parent to their children’s best interests and have engaged in some of the most vicious, abusive tactics to withhold contact. 

Limiting the alienated parent’s contact is a double whammy for the alienated parent because this allows the alienating parent disproportionate contact – if not unfettered contact – with the child so as to facilitate the brainwashing process. And the absence of contact or limited contact thereby denies the alienated parent meaningful time with the child to counteract the alienation narrative.

Contact between the child and alienated parent is the single most effective antidote to the alienation.

Alienating parents limit or deny contact between the child and alienated parent even if doing so involves violating court orders. Alienating parents appear impervious to involving their children in the violation of court orders, which thereby normalizes antisocial behaviors for the child.

Alienating parents will do what it takes to thwart the alienated parent’s contact with their children even if that means engaging in behaviors that are extreme, irrational, harmful to the child, and even behaviors that have the potential to place their child’s life in danger.

Examples of Limiting Contact

Alienating parents make the contact between the child and alienating parent particularly difficult and unpleasant with incessant protracted calls with the child.

Alienated parents have shown up unannounced at the alienated parent’s home claiming that their children sent an emergency text requesting rescue. Alienating parents do not first contact the alienated parent to ascertain the adult perspective on the alleged need for rescue.

Alienating parents will cowardly place the blame for contact refusal on the child by claiming the contact refusal was the child’s free choice and they are only respecting their child’s wishes not to enforce the parenting plan – as if the child were a free agent. 

Alienating parents are essentially asserting “plausible deniability” for having withheld contact by claiming that they do everything possible to encourage their child’s contact with the alienated parent. 

Alienating parents are unable to cite any actions they have taken in support their claims of encouragement for their child’s relationship with the alienated parent. 

Alienating parents will unilaterally schedule sleepovers, extracurricular activities, playdates, special events, and activities on the alienated parent’s parenting time. 

Alienating parents will unilaterally schedule summer camp, vacations, and other summer activities during the alienated parent’s parenting time.

Alienating parents have encouraged and sanctioned their children’s physical assaults of their alienated parent in hopes that the alienated parent will give up and walk away.

Alienating parents have withheld their children from graduations, religious ceremonies, and social activities because the alienated parent planned to be in attendance.

Alienating parents have reported false child abuse allegations by the alienated parent to the child’s school personnel, coaches, and religious leaders, etc., who have then prevented the alienated parent from attending any activities.

Alienating parents have physically removed their children from the playing field because the alienated parent arrived to watch.

Alienating parents encourage their children to runaway from the alienated parent’s home during a visit – even in the middle of the night and in adverse weather conditions.

Alienating parents have kidnapped and hidden their children from the alienated parent, who had sole legal and physical custody.

Alienating parents have manipulated their children to feign suicidal ideation to prevent their participation in a court-ordered intensive reunification program. These children were then unnecessarily placed on black box warning, SSRI medications.

Interfering With Communication

Alienating parents make indirect contact between the alienated parent and their child virtually impossible so that the alienated parent and child are deprived of the joyful experience of each sharing their activities and daily events.

Examples of Interfering With Communication

Alienating parents will surreptitiously change the child’s cell phone number and not provide the new number to the alienated parent, thereby precluding contact via calls and texting.

Alienating parents will block phone calls and messages from the alienated parent.

Alienating parents will plan activities or the daily schedule so that the child’s availability is precluded from participating in the court order for the alienated parent’s calls or FaceTime.

Interfering With Symbolic Communication

Alienating parents deny their children the opportunity to have memories or symbols of the alienated parent.

Examples of Interfering With Symbolic Communication

The child is prohibited from having photographs of the alienated parent and extended family.

Photographs are destroyed and discarded. 

It is common for alienating parents to cut out the alienated parent’s head from the photograph and permit the child to keep the gruesome photograph that remains. This is truly a macabre, denigrating behavior that teaches the child to fear and disrespect the alienated parent.

Alienating parents do not allow the children to keep gifts, cards, or other memorabilia of the alienated parent. Presents are either returned unopened or discarded.

Clothing from the alienated parent is either refused, destroyed, or thrown away. Sometimes the clothes are donated to charity with the explanation that the clothes are cheap and not worthy to be worn.

Withdrawal of Love

Alienating parents program their children through words, body language, and behavior that their love is conditioned on the child’s loyalty to them. The child’s positive feelings to have and need the alienated parent is a sign of disloyalty to the alienating parent. 

Examples of Withdrawal of Love

Alienating parents actively discourage their children from talking positively about the alienated parent. This is done by verbally dismissing the child’s comments, by rolling eyes, and by revealing the disapproval in facial affect.

Alienating parents openly express anger for and frustration with the child’s positive talk about the alienated parent.

Alienating parents will withdraw emotionally and physically from the child’s positive expressions about the alienated paernt. The child interprets this withdrawal as withdrawal of love.

Conveying that the Alienated Parent Is Dangerous

Alienating parents engage in a number of alienating behaviors or strategies to convey to the child, the court, and the professionals in the case that the alienated parent is dangerous and that the child is in harm’s way when in the care of the alienated parent.

This alienating behavior is a particularly malicious form of badmouthing because it almost surely will result in the alienated parent’s contact being greatly restricted and supervised if not outright rescinded while the CPS investigation is undertaken. This alienating behavior is therefore very commonly used due to its effectiveness.

What is particularly heinous about false sex abuse allegations is that the alienating parent distorts a normal, affectionate interaction between the alienated parent and child to make the child believe it is inappropriate. The child becomes utterly confused about healthy and unhealthy touching.

Examples of Conveying that the Alienated Parent Is Dangerous

Alienating parents make reports of their suddenly “recovered” memories of having been a victim of DV by the alienated parent multiple times throughout the marriage and even during pregnancy.

Alienating parents report having suddenly “recovered” memories of witnessing the alienated parent having physically, emotionally, and sexually abused their children throughout the marriage.

Despite this alleged DV and child abuse history, the alienating parent had not filed contemporaneous reports of the DV incidents to the police nor to the district attorney; made no reports to CPS; filed no contemporaneous motions for a protective order. 

The alienating parent did not seek therapy for the alleged abuse; DV incidents were not a basis for seeking divorce; the alienating parent had consented to the alienated parent’s unsupervised parenting time a part of the divorce settlement.

Despite this history of uncorroborated child abuse and DV allegations, alienating parents abuse the CPS and judicial systems by availing themselves of this highly effective alienating behavior to unjustifiably restrict, if not eliminate, the alienated parents’ parenting time.

Of even greater abuse of the system and of their children, alienating parents involve their children in perpetrating this horrific fallacy.

Alienating parents buttress their false abuse allegations to the point of suddenly signing their children up for therapy, coaching their children how to report the false abuse allegations, and having their children unnecessarily diagnosed with a mental health disorder.

It takes merely three occurrences of the child verbalizing the false abuse allegations of having been physically or sexually abused by the alienated parent for the allegation (s) to become the child’s truth.

Should a child come to accept the false belief of having been sexually abused by a parent, the child will suffer the exact same risk potential for serious psychiatric disturbances as if the abuse had actually occurred.

Forcing the Child to Choose

Alienating parents know exactly how to use their authority to get their child to do exactly what they want them to do. 

It is a canard when alienating parents claim that, short of physical force, they are unable to gain their child’s cooperation for contact with their alienated parent.

Alienating parents seduce their children away from the alienated parent with exceedingly desirable enticements that had often been previously denied due to inappropriateness.

Examples of Forcing the Child to Choose

To the contrary of their feigned ineptitude, alienating parents effortlessly and effectively use their powers of persuasion to get their children to reject contact with their alienated parent. 

Alienating parents are able to force the child to reject by secretly offering the child unjustified benefits, adult privileges, unearned compensation, and special treats well beyond what their alienated parent had planned for the visit.

In order to get their children to refuse contact with their alienated parent, alienating parents seduce their children away with thrilling competing activities, highly coveted toys and electronics, extraordinary privileges beyond their child’s ability to safely handle, a once-in-a lifetime event, and other experiences that had far exceeded the child’s expectations of receiving prior to the alienated parent’s scheduled court mandated visit.

Alienating parents will schedule sleepovers and playdates during the alienated parent’s visiting time so that the visit either does not occur or is terminated early.

Alienating parents promise gifts/rewards if child provokes an argument, threatens to run away, act miserably if the child returns home early from the visit.

Alienating parents reward children with gifts, electronics, and privileges if the child maltreats and physically abuses the alienated parent thereby making future visits unpleasant and even dangerous for both child and alienated parent.

Telling the Child the Alienated Parent Does Not Love Him or Her

Another particularly malicious form of badmouthing is brainwashing the child to believe that the alienated parent does not love her/him.

Examples of Telling the Child the Alienated Parent Does Not Love Him or Her

As previously discussed, alienating parents fail to inform the alienated parent about their children’s activities and events and then tells the child that their alienated parent did not show upon because he or she does not love them.

When CPS suspends the alienated parent’s contact while investigating the falsely-reported child abuse allegation, alienating parents tell their children that their alienated parent has abandoned them because she/he does not love them.

Should the alienated parent remarry, alienating parents tell their children that their alienated parent no longer loves them because they now have a new family and stepchildren who replaced them.

Confiding in the Child

Alienating parents make their children allies in their battles with the alienated parent by confiding in them about adult issues and particularly about the custody and legal proceedings. 

Confiding in the child has a two-fold contradictory effect on the child: one effect is to make the child uncomfortable and anxious to be triangulated into parental conflicts; the other, contradictory makes alienated children feel special, honored, grown up, appreciated, and loved. 

In the end, it becomes clear to alienated children that their alienating parent is dependent upon them for their emotional support. This further harmfully empowers alienated children over their alienating parent in addition to having been empowered by the alienation process over their alienated parent.

As child psychiatrist Salvador Minuchin characterized the dysfunctional phenomenon of the triangulating parent to coopt the child as an ally against the child’s other “target” parent, “the child is standing on the shoulders of the triangulating parent.” Consider this imagery. 

Alienated children are clueless about how abusive and exploitative of them that their alienating is being. The most mature minor child is unable to adequately cope with these issues, which the adults cannot handle adequately.

Confiding in the child is a particularly abusive alienating behavior. It inflicts unnecessary stress and worry as a result of being trapped in the middle between their parents. It distracts children from the childhood tasks upon which they should be focusing their time and attention.

Examples of Confiding in the Child

Alienating parents portray themselves as a victim of the alienated parent thereby gaining the child’s pity and empathy and fostering the child to assume a protective role with the alienating parent – which is absolute role reversal and a reversal of healthy family hierarchy.

Alienating parents share with the child the contempt order filed by their alienated parent and tell their children that their alienated parent wants to send them [the alienating parent] to jail for respecting their children’s choice not to visit with the alienated parent.

How cruel, cowardly, and cynical are alienating parents for inflicting this guilt trip upon their children, especially knowing that their children were responding to their [alienating parent’s] wishes and not the other way around.

Confiding in the child is the initiation of the pathologically enmeshed relationship between an alienating parent and severely alienated child. 

Pathological enmeshment is a severe psychiatric condition for alienated children because it robs the child of autonomy. In this emotionally and mentally violent attack upon the child, the alienating parent employs coercive control tactics to strip the child of the child’s feelings, wishes, and need for the alienated parent and compels the child to embrace the alienating parent’s feelings about the alienated parent.

Forcing the Child to Reject the Alienated Parent

Forcing the child to reject the alienated parent is a sinister, craven alienating behavior. Alienating parents manipulate their children to do their dirty work of eradicating the alienated parent from the child’s life.

Examples of Forcing the Child to Reject the Alienated Parent

Alienating parents manipulate their children to be the messenger of bad news delivered to their alienated parent. These messages typically uninvite alienated parents to their children’s special events, medical appointments, school events, and social activities. These messages also cancel parenting time.

Being human, alienated parents sometimes respond inappropriately to the bad messages delivered by their manipulated, messenger children. As a result, alienated parents may strike out at their children with anger and frustration upon receiving these messages. 

What a double hoorah for the alienating parent to the great detriment of their children, who now have the additional guilt to manage for being a the bad-news “messenger.” There is no better an example than this of visiting the sins of the parent upon the child.

Asking the Child to Spy on the Alienated Parent

Asking the child to spy on the alienated parent is a craven alienating behavior which literally means what it states. The alienating parent manipulates the child, when visiting the alienated parent, to covertly obtain information that will assist the alienating parent in gaining an advantage in custody, financial, and other divorce issues.

This abusive alienating behavior involves the child in a disrespectful and an antisocial behavior, undermines the child’s learning about how to rely upon conflict resolution to solve interpersonal problems, and will afflict the child with unresolved guilt for having deceived a parent. All of this portends the child’s poor prognosis in life. 

Examples of Asking the Child to Spy on the Alienated Parent

Alienating parents manipulate their children to “forget” to bring their school computer to the visit with their alienated parent so that they must use their alienated parent’s computer for homework. Alienated children then use this opportunity to take screen shots of information requested by their alienating parents, such as their alienated parent’s financial statements and legal documents.

Alienating mothers, for example, successfully manipulate their children to spy on their father by making statements such as, “If we knew how much daddy’s pay increase was, we can get more money so I can buy you that new iPhone you want.”

Alienating fathers, for example, successfully manipulate their children to spy on their mother by telling them, “If you found out how much mom’s live-in fiancée is contributing to her support, I could reduce my alimony payment. I would then use some of the savings to buy you a car.”

Asking the Child to Keep Secrets From the Alienated Parent

Asking the child to keep secrets from the alienated parent is another alienating behavior that normalizes deception for the child and makes the child complicit. 

Examples of Asking the Child to Keep Secrets From the Alienated Parent

An alienating father, who planned to abscond with his child to live permanently out of the country, told his child, “If mommy finds out that we are taking this great vacation to Italy to see grandma and grandpa, she will go to court and stop us.”

An alienating mother told her child, “If daddy knew I returned to work, he would cut your child support, and I won’t be able to continue to pay for your phone and car insurance.”

An alienating mother told her child, “If your father knew we are planning to move to another state before we actually moved, he would get the court to prevent it. Then you will not be able to see your boyfriend who already moved there. But if your father learns after we have moved, the judge is unlikely to order us to move back.” 

Referring to the Alienated Parent by First Name

The alienating behavior of encouraging and permitting the child to call their alienated parent by first name reflects the alienating parent’s attempt to diminish the importance of the alienated parent-child relationship.

Alienating parents claim they have not encouraged their children to call their alienated parent by first name. Alienating parents alternatively achieve this goal by simply referring to the alienated parent by their first names to and in front of their children.   

Encouraging Child to Call a Step-Parent as “Mom” or “Dad”

Alienating parents entrench the alienation narrative, in front of and to the child, by referring to the stepparent in parental terms or names that convey parental status.

The dependent alienated child, needing to belong to and to go along with the new family, is subtly manipulated to accede to the alienating parent’s orchestrated plan for the child to anoint the stepparent with parental status. This further entrenches the stepparent to substitute for the alienated parent.

Alienating parents introduce the stepparent to the child’s school, coaches, medical providers, parents’ friends as the child’s biological parent with the expectation that all will accord the stepparent legal parental status and authority.

Withholding Medical, Academic, and Other Important Information From the Alienated Parent

By using both deceptive and unlawful measures of providing false or misleading custody documents to the child’s providers, alienating parents endeavor to exclude the alienated parent from:

• official medical, academic, and other relevant records
• being contacted for emergencies
• report cards
• being notified about special events
• activities
• parent-teacher conferences
• visiting their child’s classroom
• father-daughter dance
• mother-son activities

Alienating parents are notorious for engaging in behaviors to keep the alienated parent from involvement in all important – and even unimportant – aspects of the child’s life. Clearly the areas of health, education, social and sport activities, and religious observance are the most important.

Alienating parents do whatever they can to keep alienating parents in the dark about their child’s developments in all areas whenever possible.

We can see how effectively and skillfully alienating parents employ this alienating behavior when we observe the many examples of the manifestation of denigration that alienated children exhibit to exclude their alienated parent from involvement in all aspects of their lives.

FURTHER READING: Manifestations of Alienated Children – As Seen by an Expert

Changing the Child’s Name to Remove Association with the Alienated Parent

A behavior sine qua non of alienating parents is to change any part of the child’s name that has a special emotional or legal connection to the alienated parent.

If the alienating parent is the mother, she attempts to divest the child of the father’s last name by either changing her child’s last name to her birth name or to the name of her new husband. Alienating mothers change their children’s last name likewise on any special uniforms or clothing.

Alienating mother’s attempt to register their children in school with their maiden name or that of with their new husband’s last name.

If the father is the alienating parent, he changes the child’s first name to a nick-name if the child’s first name has special meaning for and connection to the mother.

Cultivating Dependency/Undermining the Authority of the Alienated Parents

The alienating behavior of cultivating dependency has the two-fold effect of making the child perceive the alienating parent as sole supporter and provider of survival needs while simultaneously undermining the authority of the alienated parent.

As previously discussed, the alienating behavior of confiding in the child is a precursor to the development of a pathologically enmeshed relationship between the alienating parent and child. The alienating behavior of cultivating dependency does likewise. 

In cultivating dependency, alienating parents fail to encourage their child’s appropriate separation/individuation and thereby makes themselves indispensable to the child. Alienated children fail to develop critical thinking skills and self-confidence to develop her/his own opinions and be in touch with his genuine love and need for the alienated parent. 

Conclusion

Gardner’s 8 manifestations and Baker and Fine’s 17 alienating behaviors are widely relied upon in the scientific community to assess a case for alienation to a high degree of clinical certainty.

Child psychiatrist Richard Gardner’s 8 manifestations are accepted in the scientific community to identify an alienated child. The manifestations do not appear in non-alienated children of divorce nor in severely physically abused children and have been shown by research to have an exceedingly low error rate.

Here are my observations and thoughts regarding the 8 manifestations which were exhibited by more than 800 alienated children from my practice.

Not all manifestations are required to make a finding for an alienated child. The finding is made based upon the severity and presence of the more impactful ones.

Campaign of Denigration

A normal and meaningful relationship with the alienated parent is defied if not utterly rejected.

Contact and communication with the alienated parent via visits, texts, FaceTime, phone calls, events, etc. are avoided and frequently refused. In severe cases, children cease all contact and communication with the alienated parent.

Alienated children behave miserably, defiantly, disrespectfully, aggressively, and/or disengaged from the alienated parent should there be contact—usually only because the court had imposed consequences on the alienating parent for violating the alienated parent’s parenting time.

Alienated children hurl denigrations at their alienated parent resulting in alienated parents feeling worthless, selfish, unloving, malevolent, undeserving, unsafe, dangerous, etc.

Alienated children make the alienated parent feel like a persona non grata, typically exclaiming, “You are not my mother/father” and “I don’t have to listen to you because you are not the boss of me.”

Pictures and other memorabilia of the child’s prior positive relationship with the alienated parent are removed, if not destroyed.

Alienated children “un-invite” the alienated parent to their activities, special occasions, tournaments, birthdays, holidays, parent/teacher conferences—even to their religious events, graduations, weddings, and births of their children.

Reunification therapy is resisted if not utterly refused.

Alienated children endeavor to deny their alienated parent’s participation in significant decisions affecting them, i.e. medical, educational, social activities, school trips, religious affiliation, etc.

Gifts and cards from the alienated parent are returned unopened. Alienated parents should not expect as much as a phone call from their children expressing appreciation.

Alienated parents should not expect to receive as much as a phone call from their children on their birthday and holidays.

Alienated children assert that they are happier, physically and mentally healthier, more optimistic about life, etc., because the alienated parent has been marginalized or utterly eradicated from their lives.

Severely alienated children have bought into their severely alienating parent’s mission in life to drive the alienated parent from their children’s lives. Severely alienated children act accordingly to aid and abet the achievement of their severely alienating parent’s mission in life.

Hurtful Insults Said by Alienated Children to Alienated Parent

• You’re a narcissist
• You’re wacko
• You’re a moron
• You’re just a sperm donor
• You’re boring
• You’re miserable
• You’re not my parent
• You’re crazy
• You’re mean

Hurtful Rejections by the Alienated Child to the Alienated Parent

• You should be with your mommy because you came out of her tummy.
• If you come to my doctor’s appointment, I will have the nurse throw you out for spying on me.
• Don’t you dare come to my birthday party. You have a creepy look that frightens my friends.
• It you come to my game, I will have my coach arrest you for stalking me.
• I had the feeling of not liking you from the day I was born. Stay away from me.
• Don’t you dare come to my soccer practice! I will cry and scream and say I don’t know you.
• What I want for Christmas is that my father burns to death in a fire so I never have to see him again.
• You are on a need-to-know basis, and you do not need to know about my education.
• I don’t have to listen to you anymore. You are not my family, mommy. I have a new mommy now.

Weak, Frivolous, and Absurd Rationalizations

Having engaged in the exceedingly anti-instinctual behavior to reject a parent, alienated children must concoct rationales for overriding the survival instinct to need and have a parent. 

Alienated children thereby fabricate and remain armed with a laundry list of vague injustices, unsubstantiated misdeeds, and minor disappointments that are falsely claimed to have been inflicted upon them by their alienated parent.

When alienated children are asked to provide and describe specific incidences or examples of their parenting issues with their alienated parent, they are unable to do so. The can offer no examples that justify their unnatural rejection and denigrations of their alienated parent.

Alienated children’s rationalizations for rejecting their alienated parent are utterly out of proportion to anything that the alienated parent had actually done.

On the other hand, alienated children will fabricate, exaggerate, and/or distort their alienated parent’s minor parenting flaws which are then used to justify the rejection. 

Of even greater concern for the alienated child’s prognosis at present and for life is that they often report false allegations of child physical, emotional, and sexual abuse against their alienated parent.

When alienated children make such false allegations, it opens up pandora’s box of trauma not only their alienated parent but for them as well.

Frequently fabricated domestic violence allegations are also made. 

Initially alienated children confirm the abuse allegations claimed by their alienating parent; later alienated children frequently fabricate abuse allegations from their distorted imagination.

Frivolous Rationalizations for the Denigration

• She only buys me clothes to run a guilt trip on me so I will see her. It’s not working.
• She’s faking by pretending to care about me. I will not be around hypocrites.
• Your dress has wrinkles; we don’t want to be seen in public with you.
• You spilt soda on your shirt in the movies. I can’t trust you won’t do that again so I’m not coming back.
• We keep giving him chances, but he keeps doing it again. I can’t tell you exactly what he does wrong but we’re done with him. This is our last visit.
• I don’t know why we hate him. We just do. But he must have done something bad or we would not hate him like we do.
• You don’t build a relationship over dinner, so from now on, the dinners are cancelled.
• I don’t care that the judge ordered me to see you. The judge cannot tell me to do something I don’t want to do. I have my rights. 
• Why can’t you believe that you did not abuse us but things just arose for us not wanting to see you again.
• It makes me angry when you stare at me. You have such an intimidating scaring look. CPS said I don’t have to visit with you if you abuse me. I’m telling my caseworker no more visits.
• My lawyer said she will stop the visits because you show me photos that we were once close, and I don’t like it when you lie to me.

Lack of Ambivalence

Alienated children engage in black and white thinking about their parents and about the family history. 

Black and white thinking about our parents, about our family history, and about the world around us is not normal and reflects the alienated child’s significant break with reality. 

Normal cognitive development functions in the extended grey area of human experiences—which is where alienated children do not live.

As a result of their black and white thinking, alienated children will recite a long list of deficits about their alienated parent while minimizing or denying positive attributes, exceptional parenting abilities, or redeeming qualities. 

As a result of their black and white thinking, alienated children will praise a long list of their alienating parent’s inappropriate and questionable parenting behaviors and flaws while minimizing or utterly denying their alienating parenting mistakes—even significant parenting mistakes and abusive or neglectful behaviors.

Alienated parents receive no recognition or appreciation for their time, energy, and involvement in their children’s lives; they receive no credit for their contributions to their children’s emotional and financial support and for which they continue to contribute.

Alienating parents receive extraordinarily disproportionate recognition and appreciation for their contributions to their children’s emotional and financial support and investment of their time and energy as compared to what they had actually contributed.

Alienated children idealize the alienating parent and demonize the alienated parent.

Alienating parents appear to possess a halo, while the alienated parent appears to sport horns.

Of immeasurable concern for alienated children’s prognosis in life is how they misperceive that which is normal and appropriate for that which is abnormal and inappropriate.

Alienated Children Misperceive Their Alienated Parent’s Behaviors

• Love becomes hate 
• Appropriate discipline becomes emotional abuse
• Normal affection becomes sexual abuse 
• Meaningful concern becomes a boundary violation
• Observation of their activities becomes not respecting their wishes to stay away
• Failure to comply with inappropriate, harmful demands, becomes not respecting their wishes

Alienated Children Misperceive Their Alienating Parent’s Behaviors

• Pathological enmeshment with them is perceived as healthy bonding
• False child abuse allegations against their alienated parent is perceived as protection
• Delusional opinions about the alienated parent is perceived as reality
• Withholding the alienated parent’s parenting time is perceived as abandonment
• Prevention of the alienated parent from participating in decisions is perceived as lack of concern

Lack of Ambivalence Examples

I don’ t need my mom in my life. Dad is all I need. He always paid for everything for us. Mom never brought money into the family She just stayed home because she was lazy and did not want to help dad support the family. Why would I need her now?

I was just pretending to have fun on the camping trip because dad threatened to take mom back to court and throw her in jail if we did not have a good time. I never liked the camping trips anyway, and I just faked liking the trips to Disney, Niagara Falls, the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, Statute of Liberty, Washington, DC…  I can’t remember all the places he took the family but I faked a good time on all the trips.

My father is a teacher and teaches me everything I need to know. I learn nothing from you. You’re a dumb-head who never worked a day in your life since I was born.

My mother is a therapist, and she teaches me right from wrong and how to behave. I’m doing just fine without you in my life. You have no credentials to tell me I’m not treating you right and have a lot to learn about getting along with adults. 

The Independent Thinker Phenomenon

Alienated children proclaim uninfluenced ownership of their vicious denigrations and hostile treatment towards their alienated parent. 

Alienated children proclaim full responsibility for their abusive, disrespectful, sometimes physically assaultive, and rejecting treatment of their alienated parent.

Alienated children spontaneously and adamantly affirm that their alienating parent had not influenced them against the alienated parent—as if an alienated child is a free agent.

The independent thinker phenomenon is no better an example of the visitation of the sins of a parent upon a child.

Independent Thinker Examples

I know you think my mom brainwashed me. She didn’t. I can think for myself. Mom did not tell me that you hit her in her stomach when she was pregnant with me.

All my feelings about you come from within me. Stop telling me that dad is behind my hatred for you. 

I wish the judge would understand that my mom never said anything bad about dad. I know my dreadful experience with dad since I was two years old. 

I’m very mature for my age; I can remember for myself that my mom stopped being there for me right after I was born. Please tell the judge that my dad did not turn me against my mom.

Cruelty Toward the Alienated Parent With No Remorse

Alienated children typically inflict a cruelty so wounding upon their alienated parent that a serpent’s bite pales in comparison. Pouring salt on their parent’s wounds, these children reveal no remorse or guilt for having caused such pain. A child will even say that the alienated parent deserves it.

This manifestation, perhaps more than any other, raises concern that the alienating parent has successfully implanted in the child the seeds of an antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Once have becoming characterological, ASPD is irreversible.

Cruelty Examples

You brought it on yourself getting arrested. We only told the CPS worker that we think you touched us inappropriately. Ha-ha! You spent a night in jail.

I hope you have to spend all your retirement funds on lawyers, so what. You don’t deserve to live well.

I don’t care that your computer got smashed when I threw the hammer at you. I was aiming at your head not your computer.

Your hand will have to be broken, not just strained, before I am sorry that I had hit you.

Reflexive Support of the Alienating Parent

Alienated children uncritically and dogmatically align with their alienating parent against the alienated parent in virtually all, if not all, disagreements and hostilities between them. 

The alliance between the child and alienating parent is so strong and inflexible that an alienated child will defend the alienating parent even in the face of court findings against the alienating parent. 

The alliance between the child and alienating parent is so powerful, rigid, and irrational that the child perceives the alienated parent’s disagreements with the alienating parent as an attack upon them [the child].

For example, alienated children characterize their alienated parent’s legal motion to enforce parenting time as taking “us” back to court.”

Reflexive Support Examples

You did not do your wifely duties; that’s why WE divorced you.

Dad was right to take all the marital assets. He earned them and you just stayed home and did nothing to contribute to the family. 

Why are you taking dad to court and taking dad to the cleaners? What does that mean “taking dad to the cleaners?”

Why are you trying to put mom in jail for not seeing us. She encourages us to see you but we choose not to see you. Stop blaming mom for what we do. 

Technically, dad, the settlement agreement gave you three months to get your stuff out of the garage. It’s now three months and a day. Mom was right to throw you stuff in the garbage.

See how deceitful he was to record our transfer from mom to him! He’s just recording to get mom in trouble so she will lose custody.

Borrowed Language & Borrowed Scenarios

As a result to the brainwashing process, alienated children sound scripted and rehearsed. 

Alienated children use sophisticated language, concepts, and terminology well beyond what is commensurate for their age.

A sign of brainwashing is when a child is unable to define their words and explain the meaning of their phrases. 

The expressions and concepts expressed by alienated children mimic those of their alienating parent. 

Alienated children reveal an intimate knowledge of events—particularly negative events involving their alienated parent—for which they had not witnessed nor had had personal experience.

Borrowed scenarios, sine qua non, confirm the alienating parent’s brainwashing of the child against the alienated parent.

Borrowed Scenarios Examples

My mom told me your punishment does not fit the crime so I don’t have to abide by the punishment.

My mom told me if you loved me, you would let me have a sleepover instead of visiting you.

He’s only nice because you’re here. He knows how to fool the therapist. 

He’s is faking that he cares. It’s not the real him.  He can’t be trusted to stay this way. As soon as the session is over, he will change back to what he really is.

He’s putting on a show in court. He deserves an academy award for fooling the judge.

You should have paid for my driving instruction even though the settlement agreement said you didn’t have to.

You deserved for dad to hit you because you don’t know when to shut up.

Stop asking me to tell you when you beat me. I can’t think of an example right now. But I know you must have beat me cuz mommy said you did.

You are not benefitting from your anger management classes. I’m not coming back until you have changed.

Spread of Animosity

The child’s denigration and rejection of the alienated parent typically extends to the alienated parent’s friends and family. Relatives such as grandparents, with whom the child had previously had a loving relationship, are inexplicably expelled from participation in the child’s life.

Alienated child express no remorse when the efforts for contact by these relatives are rebuffed. Presents are returned unopened and calls go unanswered.

Stepparents are categorically and viciously rejected—even stepparents who had had a loving and meaningful parental relationship prior to the onset of the alienation.

Spread of the Animosity Examples

• Grandma is violating my boundaries when she hugs me. Tell her to stop.
• I will not visit you if your new wife is there.
• My aunt never gave me presents that I found useful. So that is why I returned her birthday present.

Additional Manifestations

• Sudden inexplicable rejection of the alienated parent and extended family.
• Amnesia about prior positive experiences; erasing of memories about these experiences.
• Pathological enmeshment with the alienating parent which results in over-empowerment of the child.

Definition of Pathological Enmeshment and Its Three Forms

Pathological enmeshment is a severe psychiatric condition for the child in which the child is robbed by the alienating parent of the child’s own genuine feelings for and beliefs about the alienated parent and substitutes those of the alienating parent.

Infantilization

The alienating parent treats the child as much younger than would be required by the child’s developmental stage. This undermines the child’s sense of autonomy, creates dependency upon the alienating parent, and thereby makes the child feel insecure and unable to appropriately separate/individuate.

Adultification

The alienating parent treats the child as an equal by triangulating the child into adult issues and parental disputes by inappropriately confiding in the child.

The issues shared with the child include unresolved legal, financial, divorce, and custody conflicts with the other parent that are the subject of ongoing legal proceedings. 

Alienated children are thus inappropriately put in the position to cope with stressful issues that are well beyond their emotional and cognitive capacity to handle—issues which even adults find difficult to handle.

Through adultification, alienating parents subvert and sacrifice the best interests of their children to their needs, goals, and wishes.

Adultification is a form of unhealthy over-empowerment of the child.

Parentification

Parentification is a reversal of healthy family hierarchy in which the alienating parent anoints the child with a parenting role. This is done in order to fulfill the alienating parent’s emotional needs and to help achieve that parent’s goals and wishes with respect to custody and other legal matters.

An example of parentification behaviors occurs when alienating parents attempt to make their child feel sorry for them by alleging they had been “victimized” by the alienated parent.

Other examples of parentification behaviors occur when alienating parents convey to their child that they will lonely and upset while the child is visiting the alienated parent; that they do not have enough money to live on because the alienated parent snatched all the marital assets; that they are at a disadvantage in court because the alienated parent used some of the marital assets to buy off the judge and the court-appointed evaluator. 

When alienating parents make their child feel sorry for them the, alienated children assume a “therapeutic” role and attempts should be dropped to comfort their alienating parent.

Parentification is a form of unhealthy over-empowerment of the child which makes the child even more powerful than the alienating parent and not merely more powerful than the alienated parent.

Conclusion

The manifestations of an alienated child are blatantly obvious when you know what you are looking for and are willing to keep an open mind.

Parental Alienation Defined

Parental alienation is an observable family dynamic in which one parent brainwashes a child to reject the other parent for no protective reason. This frequently occurs in high-conflict divorce and custody cases and is easily recognizable by mental health professionals who specialize in diagnosing it.

Rejecting a parent is anti-instinctual behavior. Alienated children must therefore buy into the brainwashing in order to override this instinct to need and love a parent.

The brainwashing by the alienating parent is so powerful, children feel coerced to manufacture their own denigrations about the alienated parent.

The “rationalizations” for rejecting the alienated parent are utterly out of proportion to anything that parent has done, and for which no uninfluenced child would ever reject a parent. Consider the following frivolous rationalizations:

• We hated the trip he took us on to Disney.
• The floor is too dirty for my dog to walk on.
• Momma violates my space when she hugs me.
• I could not speak my truth.
• My lawyer will make sure I never have to see you again.
• The judge will listen to my demands, I have my constitutional rights.

Alienated children’s denigrations often include false sex abuse allegations. Believing a false sex abuse allegation is exceedingly harmful to a child because a child will suffer the same risk factors as if the sexual abuse had actually occurred.

Believing a false sex abuse allegation portends a poor prognosis in life if the child is not disabused of this false belief.

The phenomenon of parental alienation involves all the family members and describes the interactions between and among them.

Parental Alienation Syndrome Defined

As opposed to PA, which focuses on the family members’ interactions with each other, PAS centers on the child. By definition, a syndrome can apply only to an individual and cannot apply to a relationship. 

Child psychiatrist, Richard Gardner was the first to coin the label “PAS” after observing 8 co-occurring symptoms in a child when in the context of adversarial custody and as a result of brainwashing behaviors of the child by one of the parents against the other parent.

FURTHER READING: Manifestations of Alienated Children – As Seen by an Expert 

Dr. Gardner clearly stated that a diagnosis of PAS required observation of parental alienating behaviors that had resulted in the 8 symptoms developing in the child.

The Fallacious Anti-Syndrome Claim Rejected

Dr. Richard Gardner described eight co-occurring symptoms that had he observed in a sub-group of children whose parents were undergoing divorce and when one of those parents was observed to be brainwashing the child to think negatively about the other parent.

This is exactly the faithful DSM-5 necessary and sufficient criteria for a syndrome, which is:

“A grouping of signs and symptoms, based on their frequent co-occurrence.” (p. 830)

The eight manifestations of an alienated child irrefutably qualify as a syndrome.  That is, when you see the occurrence of one of the symptoms in child whose parents are engaged in a contentious custody battle, you tend to see the occurrence of all or most of the manifestations.

As I discussed in a previous article, the erroneous anti-syndrome claim is based upon Kelly and Johnston’s 200, so distorted DSM definition of syndrome that it effectively changed the necessary and sufficient criteria of a syndrome.

The Fallacious Claim That the DSM-5 Task Force Rejected the Concept of PA 

It is a deliberately-orchestrated, fallacious argument to claim that PAS was not included in the DSM-5 because the concept had been rejected by the DSM-5 Task Force. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The fallacious claim the DSM-5 task force rejected the concept of PA has been resoundly and specifically disputed by child psychiatrist, William Bernet, in a 2017 article co-authored with two other child psychiatrists, who had contributed to the family relational section of the DSM-5.

In this 2017 article entitled, “Child Affected by Parental Relationship Distress” (CAPRD), published in the peer-review Journal of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, these authors affirmed that PA, by name, is an example of CAPRD. 

CAPRD appears in the relational section of the DSM-5 along with two other DSM-5 relational problems, “parent-child relationship problem” and “child psychological abuse”, both of which these authors also state occur in PA.

The Low Known Error Rate of Gardner’s 8 Symptoms

Extensive research and the clinical literature find that Gardner’s eight symptoms identify an alienated child have an exceedingly low error rate. 

In fact, Harvard educated physician, Steven G. Miller, determined that Gardner’s 8 symptoms have an error rate of <1%. Only a biopsy has a more accurate error rate, which is 0%.

My evidence-based practice found results consistent with Dr. Miller’s finding for the <1% error rate of Gardner’s 8 symptoms.

All 750+ alienated children with whom I had directly treated manifested all or most of the symptoms. The severity of the alienation was assessed according to the number and severity of the symptoms that the child manifested. 

These observations confirmed that the 8 symptoms have a very high detection rate for identifying an alienated child.

By the same token, of the 1000 non-alienated children with whom I had directly treated and who were experiencing their parents’ divorce, they did not manifest even one symptom let alone a cluster of them. 

These observations confirm that the 8 symptoms have a very high rate of ruling out for a non-alienated child.

I have found the same consistent results for the 8 symptoms in my forensic document review of a few thousand children.

The PA Family Phenomenon in History

No one can credibly argue that the phenomenon of PA—regardless of its label over time—does not exist. By perpetuating this erroneous claim, alienating parents and their lawyers are endeavoring to distract the court’s attention from the very real psychological abuse that the alienating parent is inflicting upon the child.

The child psychiatrists who founded the Family Therapy Movement labeled the very same family dynamic occurring in PA as “triangulation.” Triangulation spawned the birth of the Family Therapy Movement in the 1950s. 

Family Therapy’s Founders described triangulation as a dysfunctional cross-generational alliance between a “triangulating” parent and child with the goal of marginalizing and dismissing the “target” parent.

The dynamic was observed to play out on child psychiatric wards during the child’s visits with their families. The child’s psychosis resulted from the triangulation dynamic.

Parental Alienating Behaviors and Strategies

Severely alienating parents utilize several of the 17 alienating behaviors that have been shown by Baker & Fine (2007, 2013) to be highly specific for and suggestive of an alienating parent. 

This means that these 17 alienating behaviors have been shown by replicated research studies to have a low error rate for ruling in an alienating parent and for ruling out a non-alienating parent engaged in a custody dispute.

Baker and Fine’s 17-alienating behaviors have been widely accepted and relied in the scientific community for identifying an alienating parent.

PA is Examples of DSM-5-TR Relational Problems

1. Child Psychological Abuse
2. Child Affected by Parental Relationship Distress (CAPRD)
3. Parent-Child Relational Problem
4. Domestic Violence
5. Domestic Violence by Proxy
6. Child or Adolescent Antisocial Behavior
7. Delusional Disorder
8. Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another

1. Child Psychological Abuse

Occurs because the alienating parent undermines the child’s psychological need for the alienated parent, sanctions and encourages of the child’s antisocial treatment of the alienated parent, often berates and terrorizes the child to compel loyalty, and makes the child complicit in breaking the law by violating the alienated parent’s court-ordered parenting time.

2. Child Affected by Parental Relationship Distress (CAPRD)

Occurs when the alienating parent triangles the child into parental conflicts, requires the child’s allegiance and loyalty, enmeshes the child in efforts conquer and defeat the alienated parent, and to exploit the child as a spy on the alienated parent.

Many behaviors occurring in CAPRD meet the criteria of domestic violence (as when the alienating parent uses coercive mind control to rob the child of the child’s own feelings, wishes, opinions and opinions with respect to the alienated parent and then implanting that parent’s.)

Many behaviors occurring in CAPRD meet the criteria of domestic violence by proxy (as when the alienating parent encourages and sanctions the child’s emotional maltreatment and physical assault of the alienated parent.  

3. Parent-Child Relational Problem

As reflected in the child’s pathological enmeshment with the alienating parent and in the damaging, dysfunctional detachment from the alienated parent.

4. Domestic Violence

Domestic violence because of the alienating parent’s coercive control and manipulation of the child to reject the alienated parent and to substitute her/his feelings, wishes, and beliefs for those of the child’s and

5. Domestic Violence by Proxy

Domestic violence by proxy because of the alienating parent’s encouragement and sanction of the child’s emotional maltreatment and physical assault of the alienated parent.

6. Child or Adolescent Antisocial Behavior

As reflected in the child’s emotional and frequent physical maltreatment of the alienated parent and extended family.

These behaviors, coached and permitted by the alienating parent, are particularly harmful to the child because the seed is being planted for the development of an antisocial personality disorder (ASPD). Once it becomes characterological it is virtually irreversible.

7. Delusional Disorder

This occurs as a consequence of the child’s pathological enmeshment with the alienating parent resulting in the child feeling compelled to introject the alienating parent’s highly distorted—if not delusional—views of the alienated parent and of the family history.

8. Factitious Disorder Imposed on Another

This occurs because alienating parents coerce their children to make threats of suicide or to claim other severe psychiatric symptoms as a means to avoid contact with the alienated parent, who is blamed for having caused the child’s symptoms. 

Some professionals have incomprehensively accepted this prima facia claim that the alienated parent is the cause of the child’s symptoms—even when there had been no contact with the child for many years.

Conclusion

The truth about parental alienation is that it is real, it is diagnosable, and it is abusive to children.

EFFECTIVE TREATMENT – TURNING POINTS FOR FAMILIES