Parental Alienation: When Parents Break Children's Loving Bonds When children choose the other parent When the 'Ex-Factor' intervenes

1. Parental Alienation and
Exclusion
When Parents Break Children’s Loving Bonds
When Children choose the Other Parent
When the ‘Ex-Factor’ interferes
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What is Parental Alienation?
 Parental Alienation
 A set of processes and behaviours conducted and enacted by a parent to
deliberately and knowingly damage or sever the relationship between a child
and another parent with whom the child enjoyed a prior loving relationship
 Alienating Behaviour and/or Hostile Aggressive Parenting
 Various acts and omissions by a parent that damage the relationship between
the child and the other parent
 Hostile-Aggressive Parenting (HAP) may cause parental alienation.
 Alienating Processes
 A related set of acts, omissions and behaviours that together act as a system
or a process, the outcome of which is a particular alienating outcome or effect
upon the child
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When is it Not Parental Alienation?
 Children have their own reasons for hating parents!-oppositional behaviour
 Natural reactions to shattering the security of a family
 A child directs their negative behaviour to both parents
 The child is angry and hurt and still genuinely loves and expresses that love to
both parents
 Negative reactions are occasional and temporary
 Negative reactions occur in particular situations (e.g. changeover)
 Abuse
 Protective parenting
 Bad or inadequate parenting
 Extreme alignment
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How Does Alienation Work?
 What environment does it thrive in?
 Fear
 High conflict-hostile aggressive parenting
 Isolation
 Relocation or in extreme cases kidnapping
 Ignorance
 Poor parenting
 Poor or inadequate boundaries
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“Who controls the past controls the
future”
George Orwell

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7 Stages to Alienating a Child
Create a Loyalty ConflictStage 3
Force the Child to align strongly with
one parent against the other
Force The Child to
Resolve the Conflict
Manipulate the child to turn away from
the formerly loved parent
Stage 4
Create the Alienating EnvironmentStage 1
Discount the role of the other parent
Use isolation, conflict and power
Convince the Child to Contrary ‘Truth’Denigrate the target parent Stage 2
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7 Stages to Alienating a Child
The status quo for Legal, Social and Financial Services Stage 7 Enforce
Severance
Sever the Previously
Loving RelationshipStage 6Make the child unhappy and unwilling to be with
the target parent
Alienate the ChildStage 5Support the child to engage in irrational,
unfounded, exaggerated criticisms of the
rejected parent
When parents
often seek
help
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5 Main Parental Alienation Strategies
Manipulating the
child to reject the
target parent
Demoting and
devaluing the
rejected parent’s role
in the child’s life
Sabotaging time
the child spends
with the target
parent
Displaced
anger, hurt
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A Child or Children may be Alienated
Against a Parent if:
 Hatred by association-enmity towards the target parent’s extended family without
known reason
 No ambivalence
 Uses adult concepts beyond age and stage of understanding
 Parrots (a ‘mantra’) the favoured alienating parent without regard for their own
historical experience with the target parent
 The child asserts that their views have been independently formed but are unable
to explain or show evidence of how they came to such beliefs
 Refuses to spend time with visits or communicate with the rejected parent without
rational explanation
 Fixed negative beliefs about the rejected parent based upon past events that
would not ordinarily be warranted
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How Practitioners Can Help Alienated
Parents?
 “…waiting until things settle down is in most cases
futile.
It would appear that once the bond between children
and a parent begins to weaken and the contact is
interfered with the patterns can become easily
perpetuated.
Parents who give in to this pressure and wait for the
children to feel better about seeing them generally wait
in vain.”
Byrne K and Maloney L.
Australian Family Lawyer V. 8 no. 4 June 1993 p22-27
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Help Alienated Parents-Counter Measures :
 Expose the alienating pattern
 Be STRATEGICALLY EMPATHETIC and EMPATHETICALLY STRATEGIC!
 Timing-wait until children are receptive
 Educate them about alienation processes and about the range of
countermeasures available to them
 Attempt to work constructively and strategically with the alienating parent-“Know
your enemy”
 Tailor the approach for the type of person
 Know when NOT to deal with the alienating parent-obsessive
 Take the HIGH ROAD
“The best revenge is to be unlike him who
performed the injury. “-Marcus Aurelius
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How does Alienation Affect Children?
“Kelly and Johnston(2001) have…highlighted ongoing
parental conflict as a chief protagonist in the creation
of the alienated child….
Particular risk occurs when children are used in
the expression of marital [relational] conflict…
The intensity of the conflict…cause intolerable
anguish, tension and anger for the children”
Kelly, J.B., & Johnston, J.R. (2001)
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Why Coaching May Work
 The alienated parent needs to experience that they are supported, understood
and validated
 Education and coaching in how alienation works, how to counter it
 Focus on helping the child maintain a relationship with both parents
 Emotional, mental, spiritual resilience, flexibility and adaptability
 Emotionally and relationally strategic-not reactive
 Not all children realise what is happening
 Children may need to become adults before appreciating what has happened
to them and to the alienated parent
 A shattering experience-some parents and children are never reconciled.
 Taking the high road requires special qualities, skills and
knowledge
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Some Proposed Assessment Criteria
 About the child
 Is the child exhibiting fear, hatred to, or claiming to be harassed by, the alienated parent?
 Has the child denigrated the alienated parent?
 Has the child repeated (borrowed) accusations made against the alienated parent or
using adult concepts beyond the child’s age and stage to formulate such allegations ?
 Has the child made false or unsubstantiated allegations against the alienated parent or
supported the alienating parent in making such allegations?
 Is the child displaying severe opposition to spending any time with the alienated parent in
a meaningful relationship?
 Does the child show any absence of guilt or disregard for the alienated parent?
 Has the child attempted self harm or suicide and claimed this was because of the
alienated parent?
 Has the child written or communicated to the alienated parent that they do not want any
further contact with them?
 Does the child exhibit violent opposition to any contact with the alienated parent?
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Some Proposed Assessment Criteria
 About the parents and the context
 Are one (or both) parents engaged in a high conflict relationship?
 Has one parent interfered with shared care to the extent that the other parent spends
less or no time with the child?
 Has one (or both) parents violated court orders for shared care or other interventions?
 Are reasons for reduction of, or interference with contact or shared care without
credibility, implausible or not compelling?
 Are reasons for considering the child’s relationship with the alienated parent as
unhealthy, abnormal or risky prior to separation and onset of conflict without credibility,
implausible or not compelling?
 Are one (or both) parents engaged or engaging in violating IVO’s, stalking, vandalising
the other parents house or property or other criminal behaviour?
 Have one or both parents engaged in any of the 5 alienation strategies of denigration,
sabotaging shared care, destroying or undermining memories, manipulating the child to
hate the other parent, or devaluing and demoting the other parent?
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15. References and Resources
 Dialogue-In-Growth-Mens Action in Open
Thinking
W: www.dialogueingrowth.com.au
E: info@dialogueingrowth.com.au
T: 0414 888 413
 SpeakEASY Counselling and
Psychotherapy
W: www.speakeasycounselling.com.au
E: info@dialogueingrowth.com.au
T: 0414 888 413
 Other support groups & resources
 An Example of Parental Alienation AKA Extreme
Alignment-
http://www.familylawwebguide.com.au/spca/pg/news/
view/614/index.php&wide_print=1&max=1000
 Parental Alienation CENTRAL (Australia)-
http://bringingpeace2alienatedchildren.blogspot.com/
 Poison Parents-
http://www.parentalalienationcrisis.org/index.asp?pag
eid=64961
 Divorce Poison and Parental Alienation-
http://www.divorcepoison.com/
 Parental Alienation Programme 'Family Bridges' and
Blog-http://www.warshak.com/alienation/pluto-dvd-
2.html
 Hostile Aggressive Parenting and Parental Alienation-
http://www.hostile-aggressive-parenting.com/
 Parental Alienation-UK resources-http://www.parental-
alienation.info/
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References and Resources
 Baker, A. J. L. (2007). Adult children of parental alienation syndrome: breaking the ties that bind. New York:
W.W Norton & Co.
 Gardner, R. (1987). Parental alienation syndrome and the differentiation between fabricated and genuine
sexual abuse. New Jersey: Creskill, Creative Therapeutics.
 Gardner, R. (1989). Family evaluation in child custody, mediation, arbitration and litigation. New Jersey:
Creskill, Creative Therapeutics.
 Gardner, R. A. (2004). Commentary on Kelly and Johnston's "The Alienated Child: A reformulation of parental
alienation syndrome.". Family Court Review Vol 42(4) Oct 2004, 611-621.
 Johnston, J. R., & Kelly, J. B. (2004). Rejoinder to Gardner's "Commentary on Kelly and Johnston's 'The
Alienated Child: A reformulation of parental alienation syndrome.'". Family Court Review Vol 42(4) Oct 2004,
622-628.
 Kelly, J. B., & Johnston, J. R. (2001). The Alienated Child: a Reformulation of Parental Alienation Syndrome.
Family Court Review, 39(3), 249-266.
 Lowenstein, L. F. (1998). PARENT ALIENATION SYNDROME: A TWO STEP APPROACH TOWARD A
SOLUTION. Contemporary Family Therapy: An International Journal December, 20(4), 505-520.
 Lowenstein, L. F. (2007). Parental Alienation: How to understand and address parental alienation resulting
from acrimonious divorce or separation. London: Russell House Publishing.
 Lund, M. (1995). A Therapist's View of Parental Alienation Syndrome. Family and Conciliation Courts Review,
33(3), 308-316.
 McIntosh, J. (2003). Enduring Conflict in Parental Separation: Pathways of Impact on Child Development.
Journal of Family Studies, Vol. 9(1), 63-80.
 Warshak, D. R. A. (2010). Divorce Poison: How to Protect Youir Family from Bad-mouthing and
Brainwashing. New York: Harper Collins.
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