1.6 Solution Strategies

  • Training and Awareness
  • Support during the Alienation phase
  • Legal Framework
  • Execute Legal Support
  • Run Family reunion

Increase Awareness and Do Trainings

Decision Makers need to understand the whole concept

  • students in graduate school
  • psychologists who are still studying
  • attorneys
  • family law courts
  • judges
  • psychologists
  • social workers
  • health clinicians
  • mental health providers
  • Child Protective Service workers
  • police officers
  • school teachers
  • legislative bodies
  • financial institutions

need to be trained to be aware of this problem. We want them to recognize it early when it’s mild or moderate. If the child is in counseling with somebody or the parent is seeing somebody as a therapist, we want that therapist to recognize Parental Alienation when it is first starting, because then it’s more treatable, it’s more fixable. 1 2 3 4

It’s malpractice when a clinician is practicing outside of their area of expertise. A lot of these therapists may not realize they’re doing it. That ignorance isn’t bliss. When the alienating parent alleges alienation, you have an obligation then to say, let me explore this. Is this my area of expertise? And if I don’t know the eight manifestations and I don’t know the 17 alienating strategies and I haven’t taken a CEU course and I wasn’t trained in family dynamics and I’ve never been to a conference like PASG and I don’t collaborate with one single known expert in the field on alienation. This is outside my area of expertise. I have an obligation to do one of two things. Get an expert to supervise me or say, I’m in way over my head. I have to pass this case. I cannot treat it. 2

Most of us know someone who’s a victim or a perpetrator of parental alienation. Please learn more about this problem, and don’t be a bystander when you see it happening. Let’s all work together to protect the best interests of a child in the way that it’s really in their best interest. 3

Professionals have to do a thorough assessment

Learn what is in the best interest of a Child

The truth is it is in the best interest of the child to have 4

  • the right to love both parents equally
  • the right to not be pulled apart
  • the right to not be burdened down
  • the right to love both parents equally
  • the right to not have to make a decision
  • the right to not be broken
  • the right to take back his/her independence of thinking
  • the right to take back what has been ripped from her/him

And for the children who are suffering we have not acted in the best interest of the child because none of this was their fault. None of this was okay. Eliminating parental alienation now, that’s in the best interest of the child. 4

Realize how suggestible children are

We have research now from Elizabeth LOFTUS and Julia SHAW that a researcher can implant a false memory in this subject in as little as the third weekly interview. She managed to implant a false memory in college students, not exactly a dummy population, that they have committed a crime in adolescence. There’s not that long the distance time-wise between adolescence and college.
What the crime was that she, the subject had gotten into a fight with their best friend that got so badly out of control, that the police were called and their friend had to be obviously hospitalized or whatever.
She was successful in implanting this memory in 75% of the subjects. Whopping statistics. When you think about a minor child, dependent upon a parent for love, approval and nurturing, who has contact with a parent incessantly, how easy it is to implant false memory in that child. A false balloon ride kids were convinced they took that they never took. 2 5

Linda GOTTLIEB reviewed many cases as an expert where the forensic evaluator had absolutely no training on the suggestibility of children. They did nothing in their rapport to raise the alternative hypothesis to the child’s telling the truth, to the child was influenced as to rule out this as suggestibility by the parent. 2

Don’t trap into Intuitive Reasoning for a counter-intuitive case

The use of the word counter-intuitive is more than a warning for professionals (and others) to be careful. Rather, it is a warning that no matter how careful professionals might be, those who do not specialize in this area will almost always make major errors – often catastrophic errors – with respect to diagnosis, causation, treatment, and prognosis. This is true not only for the mental health professionals who evaluate, manage, and treat such cases but also for the legal professionals who evaluate, manage, and litigate them. 6

We accept the word of the programmed, brainwash child and the word of the alienating parent. (Even) clinical professionals rarely, if ever, check the story out with the other parent and they believe the patient sounds credible, they sound believable. Well, of course they do. A person with a personality disorder is expert at mimicking normal behaviour. They fool all too many people in my profession and when the clinician relies on just what they’re reporting, it’s relying on what’s called intuitive reasoning. In a counter intuitive case, like alienation is, it’s profoundly counter intuitive, you can’t just rely on intuition. Too many people in the clinical and legal profession believe that the child is credible when they say, “I don’t want to see a parent. I hate that parent. I never want to see him again.” You have to be able to reason backwards. When the alienating parent shows genuine support for the relationship between the other parent and child, you know what and how the child behaves. They will accept the other parent like this. 2

The non-specialists in alienation will say, “Oh, this is a relationship problem between a child and a parent, I know-how to treat that.” Well, there’s a world of difference if the child is rejecting the parent for legitimate protective reasons or if it’s the result of a brainwashing. Very often clinicians will accept the word of the parent “My child is going into a state of panic, they’re getting nausea, they’re threatening suicide just at the mere fear of having to see the other parent”. In the protective environment of a therapists office this is absolute nonsense. They haven’t seen a parent in three or four years. You’re going to tell me that just the mere threat of seeing that parent is going to cause suicidal threats? 2

For one thing, it requires certain types of thinking that are not commonly taught to professionals. Some advanced medical concepts, for example, reasoning backwards from effect to cause and conditional probability, which is the probability of one thing given another thing, or the probability of one event given that another event has already occurred.
And that expertise is not necessarily common among the people who deal with these cases. The field itself and the phenomenon is very counterintuitive. It may or may not run counter to professional intuition. The professional intuition has to be at a specialist level. So I wouldn’t say it’s counterintuitive for someone who is a specialist in this area. Just like quantum physics, if you’re a professor of physics, it’s not counterintuitive to you. If you’re a normal person, it is.
If something’s counterintuitive, the main point is not to be careful. The main point is not to use intuition. Again, unless it’s professional specialty level intuition. So that makes most people skeptical. I think many judges, when they hear that it’s counterintuitive, either they think that’s implausible or they think they’re an exception to the rule, their intuition will get it right. One thing that’s counterintuitive is that it requires specialty level expertise. The average lawyer and the average psychologist don’t believe that right from the start, especially if they’re senior people who have been doing it a long time. 6

The message is “Don’t use intuition” unless it is specialty level intuition, sophisticated professional intuition, not just professional intuition, because “I’m a doctor”, “I’m a lawyer” or someone’s a psychologist. And that leads to a lot of errors because if you’re using intuition even when you shouldn’t, then you tend to have great confidence in your incorrect conclusions. That’s almost true, by definition. It feels right. No matter how wrong you are, if it was intuitive thinking, it feels right. And consequently, they tend to have great confidence in their incorrect conclusions. And that’s a huge problem. 6

Clinicians have an obligation to generate all plausible hypotheses to explain the clinical presentation the manifestations or symptoms of the patient in front of them. And they don’t do that. The evidence was that they would rather rely on their intuition. “I’m looking at your face, I know what you’re saying is true. I know what you’re thinking is true.” Are they that good that we can do that? 2

Pattern recognition turns out to be a big deal in these cases. If the professional doesn’t have specialty level pattern recognition, or better yet, subspecialty level pattern recognition, you’re liable to make a lot of mistakes and miss the important patterns. 6

Be careful with alienated children

Therapists mostly want to get children to tell them what was or what is happening to them in ways other than words. And for younger children, drawing and using different materials is a very good way to get them to show you. I asked them to show me how much love they feel for this person, how much love they feel for that person. How much love do you feel for the dog? And they’ll readily tell you, “Oh, the love for mommy poured into daddy because daddy didn’t want us to love mommy.” Or, they’ll tell us that the love for mommy or for daddy had to go into their feet. Oh, why is the love for daddy in your feet? “Well, it means that I can put my shoes on and mom can’t see it when I go to daddy’s because if she sees it, she cries.” They’ll tell you what’s happening to them without you ever having to ask the question, tell me what’s happening to you. 7

Understand the severity of psychological splitting

The first thing is to understand the severity of the splitting reaction in children. And that’s something that you have to spend a little bit of time working out because children can appear to be very, very split and very hostile. I’ll meet a child quite often who will be vehement in their rejection of a parent. However, part of our assessment process is always to see the child in clinical observation with the parent that they’re rejecting. 8

Sometimes I can see a child who on the surface is very, very hostile to a parent. But when you bring them into the company of the parent that they’ve been rejecting, pretty quickly you see that actually that connection can be picked up again, and the child becomes far less split. 8

Make sure to not treat the wrong trauma

It is difficult for professionals who are not specialists on Parental Alienation to not be manipulated by the alienator. Certain methods of therapy, like EMDR, can do more harm than good when false accusations in PA cases occur. 9

When you get a child into therapy who’s in the middle of a high conflict divorce, there’s a process of differential diagnosis. You have to establish whether or not the child has actually experienced a traumatic event that involves some sort of horrific like death for example and whether or not they are dysfunctional because of that trauma. And so that process itself takes a while. Typically EMDR therapists are often exploited by alienating parents. They’ll take them for the therapy and say: “My child is experiencing this trauma. And it’s because of all these bad things the targeted parent is doing to them.” 9

An incompetent therapist will take it as face value and just say: PTSD – post traumatic stress disorder. And they’ll write it down and start treatment. They don’t even find out or test. Is the trauma being experienced by the child being involved in the divorce? Are they experiencing it between the alienating parent and the child out of a sense of loyalty conflict? Or is there something actually going on in the targeted parent-child relationship where there’s actual real emotional abuse or physical abuse? 9

Shawn WYGANT has been involved in about 162 cases across the United States. The times that he ran into the EMDR therapy where the therapist has become aligned with the alienator, they didn’t go through that process. If you have a non-abused child that is not traumatized by alleged bad behaviour by the targeted parent or fictitious allegations that had been made by the alienating parent, then the EMDR part of the protocols is for them to imagine the trauma that the alienator says this child is experiencing at the targeted parent’s house. Then they imagine a trauma that they really haven’t experienced or exaggerated dramatic scripts. And they call it up into their mind. And they’re supposed to think about it. 9

When you have dramatic false scripts like being rejected and potentially killed by a mother, the little child then is traumatized by a false memory and then comes to find in her/himself what has now become part of her/his autobiographical story. 9

EMDR therapy is a recognized therapy for real instances where a child or a parent or an adolescent has experienced real trauma. It’s called Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing. It was designed for war soldiers who had seen death or people who had been surrounded by death and real horrific experiences. Those are initially called potential traumatic stressors, because not all soldiers come back and exhibit post traumatic stress disorder. 9

The whole family is your client (and not the alienating parent)

When families are embroiled in conflict, the family should be treated as the client, not one of the family members. Because if a child is suffering from some sort of emotional issues within a family conflict and you don’t address the family as a whole, the child’s problems exist within the context of the conflict. 9

Helping the Affected

Helping the Alienated / Targeted / Victim Parent

Act before the child has aged out

When a child has aged out, there’s no overall authority that can put pressure on the alienator. “Stop your naughty behaviour.” It’s no longer considered child abuse. It’s really heart-breaking. 2

Research demonstrates that early intervention and rapid enforcement of court ordered parent child contacts can help prevent a child’s avoidance of a parent from hardening into a long term estranged relationship, especially when avoidance is encouraged and supported by the other parent. 10 11

Know with whom you are fighting

[many alienated parents run after the alienated children and do everything to bring them back. They send presents which come back. They write messages which are ignored. And these parents continue to fight for a smile from the children they have lost.
It is certainly important to continuously show the child that you are still there and that you love them. But is is not a war for love that you fight with the child which you start to loose every day when the kid takes one more step away from you.
Do understand that this is a fight that the other parent, the alienating parent started. To win this fight, you have to find ways to stop the alienating behaviors. You have to stop the other parent.]

Don’t tell children that they have been alienated

We know that if a child comes up with an idea him/herself, they’re going to believe it much more than if you tell them. You cannot just say to a child, “You’re alienated, you’re a puppet, you’re coached, you are brainwashed.” Nobody likes to hear that. It actually backfires “No, no, I’m thinking for myself.” 12

Trying to correct them will not change their opinion of you and in fact typically pushes them closer to the alienator. 3

One of the important things to think about is not that we kind of educate the child about parental alienation. “You were alienated, this is what happened to you.” Sure, the child at some point will have questions about what happened in the past. And you can begin to engage the child or the adult child in kind of critical thinking. But first and foremost the child simply needs to know that there will be a safe place for them to return to. 8

Change your behavior to indirectly change others

In a (single person) therapy you don’t have any control over the other parent. But if you change your behavior, it can change the behavior of the other people sort of indirectly. 12

You have to nurture yourself. You have to take care of yourself. You have to know you have a life. 2

Take care of yourself and your value of being a parent

It can be empowering just to know that you can still grow and change as a parent. And that can possibly, ultimately impact your child. One job as a targeted parent coach is to help that parent hold the value that they have to their child simply by being that parent, because they’re getting so many messages that you don’t count and you don’t matter, but they do. 12

When Nick WOODALL is working with parents who’ve been rejected, what he does to help them is to first of all get back in touch with their inner parent. But it’s also important for them to live as full a life as they can. They need to be healthy in as many dimensions as possible. They need to be physically healthy, psychologically healthy, emotionally healthy and spiritually healthy, they have to retain the whole of who they are because that’s who the child needs to re-attach to. The healthier the parent can be, not only is that better for them as they live their life, but equally provides a platform against which the child can then properly reconnect. Adult children also need to know that when they come home, which is how we describe a reconnection, that the parent that they’ve been estranged from, the parent that they’ve rejected will be as whole and healthy as possible. You see, one of the difficulties that children of all ages face when they’ve been alienated is the guilt and the shame that they feel for having done that. And one of the things that’s critical for parents who’ve been alienated is to be able to have dealt with things so that they can simply welcome the child back into their life. 8

Learn to see alienation from the child’s point of view

Only you know, when you can no longer take the stress of fighting, of putting yourself through sending email after email and text after text and not getting responded and being blocked. Nobody walks in your shoes, but you. 2

[But before you think you loose a fight against the alienator and his weapon, learn to see alienation from the child’s point of view. Understanding what is important for the child can significantly reduce your pain from what is happening on stage.]

One alienated parent kept knocking every Sunday whereas the daughter shouted “You’re a jerk, we hate you, you’re such a…, we never want anything to do with you.” because the other parent and the step parent were telling them, “Your parent is a jerk, doesn’t love you, we only love you.” They even put notes on the door “You’re a jerk, don’t come back.” Eventually the targeted parent stoped coming. But the daughter later said, “I was shocked. I never thought my parent would actually go away.” From her point of view the knock was proof that the parent loved her. She knew she wasn’t going to be able to open the door and see the parent and have a visit. So she counted on that knock as a very powerful reminder that the parent was still there. From the alienated parent’s point of view, not getting the door open is a failure. The parent didn’t realize that the knock was all that mattered to her. 12

The research shows that the adult children who have the best outcome (they never have good outcomes but the best outcome) with less anxiety, less depression, less use of drugs and alcohol are those young alienated adults whose parents did not give up, who kept fighting. 2

Learn how to instill critical thinking skills into children

For mildly and moderately alienated children when parents still have access to them, targeted parents and other people can help instill in children compassion, forgiveness and integrity. If children develop those three values, it will be much harder for them to become alienated. Targeted parents should encourage their children to think of themselves as a compassionate person, not by saying “Do you want to be compassionate?”, but by noticing when their child is already engaging in compassionate behavior and saying “That was so compassionate of you.” To talk about those values. If a child cares about somebody else’s feelings and is able to forgive them for their normative flaws, has integrity, meaning they can be true to how they experience the targeted parent with their own eyes, ears and feelings, they’re going to be much harder to alienate. 12

Start from a place of compassion and notice that your child is upset

If the child comes to the targeted parent and says “I’m mad at you, because you stole my college money.” The targeted parent might think that the kid is mad at the parent because it believes a lie. A normal and completely rational response of the targeted parent would be 12

  • I didn’t steal the college money. Look, here is the bank statement.
  • How dare you say that? Look at everything I’ve done for you.
  • How could you say that? You know, that’s a lie.
  • Who told you that?

None of that works. You have to start from a place of compassion and notice that your child is upset and you start there. There are ways to interact with the child that don’t inadvertently reinforce the negative message that you’re unsafe, unloving and unavailable. When your child is mad at you and you say “How dare you?” or “Who told you that?”, what you are conveying to your child is “I care more about my reputation” or “I care more about being right than the fact that you’re standing in front of me suffering because you think I did something terrible.” And so you inadvertently reinforce the negative message. And that’s how the favored parents get the targeted parents to do their work for them. A big part of coaching is teaching parents how not to do that. 12

Take legal action in severe cases

[When you lost contact with your child, free the child from the loyalty conflict through hard court intervention.]

Make sure you have specialists in your support team

[Is Parental Alienation their area of expertise? Do they know the eight manifestations and the 17 alienating strategies?]

There’s a concept in statistics and probability that turns out to be extremely relevant to these clinical cases. And that concept is the concept of a base rate and ignoring the base rate which is called base rate neglect. A base rate is almost synonymous with the prior odds or the prior probability of something being true before you look at the evidence.
If I came to you with a piece of green cheese and told you that this is from the moon because the moon is made of green cheese, one reason you would know that’s not true is that the probability of it (the moon) being made of green cheese is zero. And showing me some evidence of green cheese does not change that at all.
So more to the point, there are base rates all over the place in a PA case. Before I know anything about your lawyer, the chances are your lawyer is not a specialist in trying PA cases. Before I know anything about a forensic evaluator or maybe a clinical psychologist or a psychiatrist, I know most people don’t specialize in this area. The base rate for expertise would be low.
If we’re looking at the court or a judge, what is the probability that the judge has specialty level expertise in this area? Not just a good judge or a sympathetic judge or a smart judge. Specialty level expertise: very low. There aren’t very many specialists around even among the mental health professionals. 6

What are the chances that you can win a PA case for a targeted parent or have a good outcome at all, with a two-day trial? Close to zero, because it’s so counterintuitive. You don’t have enough time to teach the science to the smartest judge around. 6

The statistical point is very simple. Whenever you’re judging a probability of anything, you have to take the prior probability or prior odds and multiply that by the weight of the evidence. The human brain is not wired to do that well, at least not unless you’ve been taught specifically how to do it. The human brain tends to ignore the base rate and to focus on the evidence. Well, it’s a good judge, the judge was taking notes, the judge seemed interested. But if the base rate is very, very low, you have to multiply the two figures. I’m oversimplifying a bit, but that’s an accurate statement. And so it’s a dangerous cognitive error to ignore the base rates and it’s particularly dangerous in PA cases because there are base rates all over the place. And if you ignore one, you’re in trouble. If you ignore all 12 of them, or all 20, then you’re in even greater trouble. 6

Do not disclose case details (on Social Media)

Rejected parents sometimes turn to social media to vent their frustration. Bad idea. 10

Be well prepared before going to court

Three Goals Presenting a Parental Alienation Case in Court are 10

  1. Parental alienation is real.
  2. Parental alienation is occurring in this case.
  3. The children need proper intervention. 
Parental Alienation is real

[At least some of the involved decision makers may not even recognize that Parental Alienation is existing.]

The number of yearly PA Cases in U.S. Trial and Appellate Courts has steadily increased to about 100 since its first mentioning in 1985 until 2018. Overall, a significant change in the child custody arrangements occurred in 61% of the cases. 10

Parental Alienation is occurring in this case.

Use the Five-Factor Model (incl. 17 strategies and 8 behaviors). For every of the 5 factors and related behaviors do quantitative and qualitative analysis. E.g. showing the presence of a prior positive relationship with facts is helpful to determine the proportionality of the child’s rejection of or resistance to a parent. 10

It is important that you do not conflate causation with reaction. Just because there is bad or sub optimal behavior does not mean there is “abuse”. 10

Proper Intervention

The treatment should be tailored to the cause of the ruptured or damaged parent child relationship. If the rejected parent actually engaged in abuse or neglect of the child (not just alleged by the favored parent and/or child) then the appropriate treatment in such circumstances would be the one designed for abusive parents, not alienated parents. 10

If you have a case of moderate to severe parental alienation, traditional psychotherapy will not work. Reunification is not “therapy” and should not be considered as such. Lay a proper foundation of expert testimony educating the court as to WHY a specialized intervention program is necessary. And WHY a temporary no contact order is necessary. 10

Helping the Child

Alienation-specific treatment is where the child’s negative perceptions of the rejected parent are considered distortions. Those distortions are challenged in a clinically appropriate way. The focus of the alienation specific treatment is to help the child experience the rejected parent is safe, loving and available. 12

Stay out of the fighting

Change how do we approach children whose moms and dads are getting divorced. And this can be done by who know the family 1

  • school counselors
  • therapists
  • friends
  • clergy

And there’s a fairly simple message to the child, which is 1

  • Stay out of it
  • Stay out of the fighting
  • If mom and dad are arguing, either ignore it or go to a different room, but stay out of it.
  • If your mom or dad tries to talk you into something or to do something about the other parent, just somehow try as best you can to stay out of whatever it is that they’re disagreeing about.

That’s not always going to work and children are not powerful enough sometimes to always stay out of it. But that is the advice that I think should be given to children in situations like this. 1

Therapy and Re-Parenting

In therapy with adult children when they begin to recover, what we find is the same thing over and over again. They go back to the age that they were when the original split occurred. And they begin the developmental process. And if they have a parent who understands and is well and healthy, then they can be re-parented back to full health. And it doesn’t take very long, but they can be re-parented back to health.
The tragedy for too many of these kids is that they only realize that there’s a real problem in their own mind until they’re too old to reconnect because the parent has died. And that’s the biggest tragedy of all. 7

Helping the Alienating / Favored Parent

Get treatment for the person who’s doing those behaviors. It’s the child’s right to have a relationship with the other parent. And if that person is not supporting that and not recognizing their own role in not making or not allowing that to happen, that’s abuse. 13

It’s unclear whether these people are treatable. In other words, a lot of these people have personality disorders that might be very, very difficult to treat. 1

Sometimes Parental Alienation occurs when one parent unknowingly turns their children against the other parent. 14

If severe Parental Alienation has occurred, which is child abuse, the child should be removed from that household. And almost always simply go to the other parent, the victim parent or the targeted parent. And then a good therapist can work with the preferred parent with the personality disorder and you can try to see if that person can make some progress. With a person with borderline personality disorder, there are good therapists who help the person go back and try to understand how they came to have this particular personality issue. And sometimes some of these people are reachable. 1

Sometimes it’s child abuse that’s inadvertent, a parent is simply incapable of holding back their own psychopathology. Very often these are trans-generational transmissions of trauma that come crashing out in the here and now. 8

And part of the work that therapists do is really to sort of help those parents to be directed off to get their own therapy, so that they can perhaps move forward in a congruent and healthier way. 8

Change the Legal Framework

Certifications

We do have valid and reliable methods of assessment for abuse to protect children and family members who are victims of domestic violence. We rarely use them. But we could use them and demand that our institutions require certification and training of custody evaluators to use them while still protecting the rights of parents to their children, and not have discriminatory practices. 3

Change Parenting Stereotypes

We cannot change our laws and policies about parental alienation until we start changing our parenting expectations and stereotypes. And they have a strong impact and minimize the damage done by the alienator. 3

See more about: Gender Bias and Social Stereotypes

A Justice System for Family Issues

The courts have a mandate to deal with the problem but the courts are based on an adversarial criminal justice system that isn’t well suited to family issues. In many ways the courts actually criminalize parents who are separating and divorcing. The courts are slowly starting to recognize Parental Alienation. 14

Shared Parenting

There’s a lot of interest in what’s called shared parenting. And that improves the child’s relationship with both parents. And it seems to be very helpful, even if the parents say we don’t get along. 1

Co-parenting is an important life skill. 14

It would be worth considering having custody default to 50/50 parenting as a starting position. This is sometimes referred to as a rebuttable joint custody. It is almost always better to have both parents involved in the child’s upbringing. 14

Some have argued that equal parenting initiatives are just a fathers’ rights issue but it’s a social justice issue. When sons grow up and if they choose to have children, they won’t have the same rights to their children as a mother does unless we do something. 3

Unfortunately: Parenting Stereotypes negatively influence the political discussion

Structured Family Mediation

There’s another movement that is somewhat under way in the United States which has to do with the way Family Court operates. Official name is “Structured Family Mediation”. And it’s been proposed to be the way that family disputes get solved. Not second or third but by default the first step. That would be a really, really big step. 1

It is wonderful when mediation or counseling works but with moderate to extreme alienation it’s usually too late for either option. 14

Courts to take Legal Action

Many parents Jennifer HARMAN has interviewed have sought court intervention to help them. And the judges tell them to kiss and make up, play nice. We don’t tell victims of bullying to go and shake hands with their bully on the playground. It doesn’t work that way. 3

The child doesn’t have the time for this to be spun out over many, many years of going back to court and trying to resolve it through parents being told they need to get along better, mediation and all those kinds of things. 8

Frequently the only solution is to go back to court and ask for a new court order in favor of the target parent. 14

Treat this as a Child Protection Case

Parental alienation is child abuse. A system that would deal with this problem in a way it should be, would be one that recognizes that any child that is either resisting or rejecting an attachment relationship with one of their parents, is a child who is demonstrating that there is a very, very serious problem. These cases wouldn’t be treated as custody and visitation cases. They’ll be treated as child protection cases, because what we know is, when a child is beginning to reject a relationship with an attachment figure, there is something very serious at the heart of this and that it needs to be dealt with very swiftly. 8

What you need is a thorough investigation into what’s going on as early as possible in a case and then the proper remedial action taken, just in exactly the same way that we would do if a child was being physically harmed or sexually abused or neglected. 8

Sometimes it’s child abuse that’s inadvertent, a parent is simply incapable of holding back their own psychopathology. But whether this is deliberate and conscious, or whether it’s unconscious, the child is still at risk of the same kinds of harm. And therefore, we need to think of it in terms of it as child abuse and child protection. 8

Separate the children from the Alienator

You don’t want the child’s welfare to get hung up in the issues of a malicious parent. The court does have to take steps that if Severe Parental Alienation has occurred, this is child abuse. And the child should be removed from that household. And almost always simply go to the other parent, the victim / targeted parent. 1

Either the behaviors of the aligned parent are constrained but if that’s not possible, then the child needs to be removed from the source of the harm. 8

If here is a serious personality disorder, the only way that they will comply is if there are real consequences from the court like the threat of losing custody permanently or high fines. Some people suggest jail time, which would be a last resort. At least they can’t do any more child abuse if they don’t have custody. 2

Many non specialists in Parental Alienation will say, “Oh yes, it’s alienation. Yes, alienation is child abuse. But it would also traumatize the child to take them away from the abusive, alienating parent.” First of all, that’s pure speculation. There isn’t a single case in the clinical literature known so far that documents any trauma to a child from being removed from that environment. As a matter of fact, the research shows the opposite. There is virtually no risk so far that we know of anything to doing a removal. 2

The only successful way is to bring in a court intervention that stops that parent doing what they’re doing. So what you’re doing is you are using the the legal framework to put in place the conditions that allow a therapist then to begin to do the therapeutic work. If the therapist attempts to do this work without having that framework in place, then not only is it unlikely to work, but the therapist is actually likely to make it a whole lot worse for the child. And therefore it’s critical that you get the case management right and you bring the legal constraint in, and then you do the therapeutic work within that space. 8

Clinical Social Worker Linda GOTTLIEB had kids who came into her office during an “Evaluation for Alienation” and they went into the face of their alienated parent, “We hate you. We never want to see you again. We’ll never go into your sleazy apartment. Forget about us. Move on. Marry someone else and have kids with that person.” The alienating parent knew she couldn’t fool her because she (as a specialist) knew exactly what was happening. And she was getting ready to tell her, she’s an alienator. The only remedy in this case is going to be takeaway custody at least temporarily until to see if she gets help. She looked at the father and said, “I want to resolve this now.” The kids were sent to the waiting room. And she said, “Okay, how about starting weekend visits this weekend?” And the father said yes. And Linda looked at the mother and said “But YOU have to tell the kids”. They were called back into the room and the mother looked at the kids, they were 9 and 11 at the time. She said, “Your father and I have ended this. No more fighting. You start your weekend visits this weekend.” The reaction of the kids, “Okay, mommy.” That’s how fast it was. 2

If a judge is willing to make the difficult decision to change custody when alienation becomes entrenched. There are few other options but to remove the children from the alienating parent. 14

So we need to intervene and get them away from the abusive behaviors. Get treatment for the person who’s doing those behaviors and repair the relationship that they’ve lost with the parent who is typically healthier and is a loving parent to them, a good enough healthy parent, and then stopping the abuse. Because the only way this will get fixed is if those behaviors stop. And it’s a miracle when kids are taken out of that abusive environment how much better they do. They’re given the permission to love this person and to reunite with siblings and other family members that they have been cut off from and estranged from because of the alienating behaviors of that parent. 13

Free the child from the loyalty conflict

When the court actually frees the child from the loyalty conflict which is a form of profound psychological child abuse, it’s like an albatross lifted away from around the child’s neck. That is just part of the programming that they are freed from with the court order for turning points for families. And they then do come voluntarily to family reunification programs. Kids who threatened to kill themselves, to run away, to self-harm, to do all sorts of things. 2

Children being freed from the loyalty conflict no longer have to choose, they no longer have to repress that instinct to love a parent and cut off half of themselves. It’s a freeing of the child. 2

Be cautious when asking the children to decide

The alienated little child can’t tell anybody the love they feel for the accused parent and then in the best interest of the courts they decide that the other parent’s involvement with the little child will depend on if the child wants to see that parent or not. A lofty and unreasonable decision to turn over to this young child who’s now maybe 13. This is an impossible decision to turn over to a child. It has the potential to damage them psychologically for the rest of their life. 4

However based on the testimony given by this little child and stories that he or she’s been told or true (although the child doesn’t remember any of them), if and when they [decide to] make contact with the other parent, well it’s unlikely to happen. 4

We’ve overburdened children with decision-making power that is not appropriate for them. 7

[It looks like until the court ask the kid to decide, until then it was a dispute between parents and it should be the responsibility to solve this dispute and get the child out of the middle of this conflict. By pushing the power to the child, judges also shift the responsibility for the conflict to that child. Whenever any of the parents is not happy with the decision of the child, they from now on blame that child. So from now on the child is responsible for how this separated family is doing in the future. It is no wonder that his is a significant psychological pressure on the child which until now was only a victim. Now that child is a responsible.]

Keep families together

There is an intense push in child abuse cases to reunite families to keep them together. Whether it’s physical abuse, substance abuse or domestic violence, they provide services and reunite the family as quickly as possible.
At Family Court and Divorce Court there are times when the process drags out for years and parents and children are to a large degree separated except for maybe a little bit of supervised time here and there. And there isn’t the same emphasis placed on keeping families together. 15

Reunification Program

Linda GOTTLIEB is Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist (LMFT) and Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW). She specialized in a four day intensive reunification program. Once she gets the court order, the rest is fairly simple. She calls it a therapeutic vacation because it’s a combination of talking and activities that the child likes. And these children jumpstart a reconnection. They do need follow up outpatient therapy when they go home with the alienated parent. And she stays involved in making sure that the therapist is qualified and knows how to maintain and enhance the reconnection. 2

That’s how easy it is to get them to come once the court frees them from the loyalty conflict. 2

What we’re talking about when a child suppresses that attachment relationship is their attachment gaze, as we call it, drops. And the same thing happens for the parents. So for the parent to be able to stand what happens to them, their attachment gaze drops as well because it’s too painful for them. And so what you’re doing as a therapist is helping both the child and the formerly rejected parent to lift that attachment gaze and when the two connect again that’s when the magic happens. And what you see then is a very, very rapid change in the child’s presentation. 8

But a part of them remains disconnected, a part of them remains split off. The child is almost alienated from a part of themselves. Even where there is a reconnection between the child and the formerly rejected parent, the child can still feel a sense of incongruence and there still can be difficulties in that relationship. And in those cases, very often what can be the most useful is to get some professional help from somebody who knows how to do that work, how to deal with trauma, and the associated kind of difficulties that that produces. 8

Support from Others

Support from Schools

Teachers and school counselors can be sympathetic and useful but many of the school boards have policies in place that don’t allow them to get involved. 14

Co-Parenting Tips

Co-Parenting Tips from Jay DAVIS

If you do not have to contend with serious issues like drug abuse or domestic violence, co-parenting, which involves both parents having active roles in the regular lives of their children, is the best method to successfully meet all the needs of your children. This also helps them maintain close bonds with both parents. 16

Put Hurt and Anger on the Back Seat

Being angry or hurt is normal. However, you can separate this from your behavior. Things can be a lot better if your actions are motivated by your children’s needs. 16

  • Get an outlet for your emotions. Do not vent your feelings to your child. Instead, seek alternatives like family, friends, a therapist, or even a pet. They can be great listeners and help you vent negative emotions. Healthy exercise can also be a great outlet.
  • Maintain focus on your child. Remembering that you have your child’s welfare at heart can help you act gracefully and with purpose if you feel resentful or angry. Look at old photos of your child to calm down and get to the right place mentally.
  • Do not communicate through your children. Sending messages to your co-parent through your kids puts them directly in the center of your conflict. Communicate directly and keep your kids away from your relationship issues.
  • Internalize your issues. Do not influence your children with negative statements about your ex or compel them to choose between their parents. Your child needs healthy relationships with both parents.

Better Communication, Better Co-Parenting

While it might seem difficult, the key to successful co-parenting can be proper communication that is cordial, peaceful, and purposeful. 16

  • Maintain a respectful tone. It is constructive to communicate with your ex like a colleague, with respect and cordiality. Try to relax, talk slowly, and remain neutral.
  • Learn to listen. Mature communication begins when you listen carefully. Even when you disagree with your co-parent on something, you have to communicate that you have listened and understood their side of things.
  • Exercise control and restraint. It is useful to remember that you need to keep communicating with the co-parent during the entire childhood of your kids, and possibly further. Teach yourself to avoid overreactions and, over time, you can successfully keep yourself immune to conflict.
  • Commit to regular communication. Communicating frequently with your ex can be difficult, especially right after the separation. However, doing this can tell your kids that their parents are united in their co-parenting efforts.
  • Focus on your kids. Communication with the co-parent should not involve your needs or their needs. Instead, prioritize and focus solely on the needs of your children.

Implement Teamwork in Co-Parenting

It can be taxing for your children to have to move back and forth between environments that are totally different. This can be avoided through the establishment of consistent guidelines between co-parents. 16

  • Handle medical requirements together. While either parent can be designated as the primary point of contact with medical professionals and with keeping doctor appointments, it’s vital to discuss and keep each other in the loop.
  • Take care of education. Inform the school about the living situation of your child. Discuss parent-teacher meetings, class schedules, and school activities with the co-parent and maintain civil behavior at school events.
  • Handle finances. Co-parenting can become even more challenging due to the higher cost of maintaining two households instead of one. Start with setting a budget and maintain records of expenses that are shared between co-parents. If your ex can provide your child with opportunities you cannot, you need to be grateful.

Twelve Commandments for Divorced Parents (Both of You)

Mr. Neal MEISELMAN is the author of “12 Commandments for Divorced Parents”, first published by Ann LANDERS in her nationally syndicated column on January 23, 1994. They may help avoid Parental Alienation. 17 18

  1. Never make visitation arrangements directly with children under 12.
  2. Never suggest visitation arrangements you have not discussed with the other parent. Always confirm with the other parent any visitation arrangements made with children 12 and older.
  3. Send and return children who are clean, well-rested and fed. Do not send or return a sack or suitcase full of soiled clothes.
  4. Do not use a telephone answering device to screen calls from the other parent or limit telephone access between your children and the other parent-except after your children’s actual bedtime, not the bedtime you would like them to have.
  5. Do not discuss divorce disputes with your children or allow them to hear you discussing your differences regarding them.
  6. Do not send messages or money with your children.
  7. Do not speak badly of the other parent or that parent’s relatives, friends or loved ones.
  8. Do not ask your children for information about the other parent’s household, friends, income or activities.
  9. Do not believe everything you hear from your children (about the other parent, their relatives or friends).
  10. Do not second-guess the other parent about rewards, discipline or anything else. It’s recommended that you write down agreed-upon rewards and disciplinary measures.
  11. Give a sympathetic ear to your children and affirm as often as necessary that you are not a referee or a mediator between your children and the other parent
  12. Be courteous. Do not honk your horn for your child to come out. Walk to the other parent’s door, but don’t go inside unless invited. Have the children ready to go. Always be on time. Smile.

[You could also agree that you do not pick up but the other parent always brings the kids to you. This will avoid the possibility to say: “The other parent is taking you away from me.”]

  1. William BERNET, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kjyvc2zVc6c ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  2. Linda GOTTLIEB, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aWuqahNnZAU ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  3. Jennifer HARMAN, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v3YdldNXZnQ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  4. Susan SHOFER, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cu4XXnKPwCM ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  5. False memories and false confessions: the psychology of imagined crimes https://www.wired.co.uk/article/false-memory-syndrome-false-confessions-memories ↩
  6. Steven MILLER, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zk675aYGHV4 ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  7. Karen WOODALL, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qd21RcWakP0 ↩ ↩ ↩
  8. Nick WOODALL, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itK1Ln6qh3c ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  9. Shawn WYGANT, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eH8f6FjDrUc ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  10. Ashish JOSHI, Parental Alienation and American Family Courts: Common Fallacies and Pitfalls, https://www.familyaccessfightingforchildrensrights.com/uploads/2/6/5/0/26505602/ashish_joshi_-_family_access_presentation.pdf ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  11. Richard Warshak Ten Parental Alienation Fallacies That Compromise Decisions in Court and in Therapy, Professional Psychology Research and Practice, 2015 ↩
  12. Amy BAKER, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m2zNV1Jvc5I ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  13. Jennifer HARMAN, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Vrs_hu1HSM ↩ ↩
  14. Theo BOERE, Carmen BARKLEY, Larry WATERMAN; Parental Alienation Documentary, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYV8GBrJv9k ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  15. Ben BURGESS, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YzGMqS8vpa4 ↩
  16. Jay DAVIS, https://davislawgroupma.com/co-parenting-advice-how-to-make-a-divorce-easier-on-your-children-bonus-ann-landers-12-commandments-for-divorced-parents ↩ ↩ ↩ ↩
  17. Neal MEISELMAN, https://www.thelawyersofdistinction.com/profile/neal-meiselman ↩
  18. Ann LANDERS, https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1994-01-28-9401280215-story.html ↩