CHAPTER 3
ALIENATED CHILDREN
How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child.
—WILLIAM SHAKESPEARE, KING LEAR
At age eleven, Jeremy was as close to his father as a boy can be. He told his sixth-grade teacher that he was going to attend his father’s college, enlist in the navy, and then work for the State Department, just as his dad had done. Within two months of his parents’ separation, Jeremy insisted that he hated his father and never wanted to see him again. His hatred spread like a virus to encompass everyone associated with his father. He didn’t want to play with his cousins, and he rejected the grandmother who had been his favorite person in the world.
Divorce poison works fast—so fast that it catches target parents off guard, leaving them confused about exactly what is happening and bewildered about why it is happening. Learning about pathological alienation and the typical behaviors of alienated children helped Jeremy’s father and his relatives understand exactly what they were up against. It was reassuring to know that others had similar experiences, and that the problem has been recognized and described by mental health professionals.
Experts disagree about how to label and treat this disturbance. Despite their differences, though, most experts agree that alienated children share certain traits and behaviors first identified by Dr. Richard Gardner. Whether you are the target of attempts to poison the children’s affection, or have been accused of making such attempts, it is essential that you become familiar with these characteristics.
This goes far beyond the usual type and amount of criticisms and complaints that children heap upon their parents. You will see a degree of contempt and cruelty reserved for one’s worst enemies. The children treat the target parent as unworthy of even the smallest amount of regard and respect. Their obnoxious behavior commonly prompts others to remark that the children are acting like spoiled brats. One child poured soup over his father’s head in a restaurant. Another child punished her mother by always ordering the most expensive item on a menu and then not eating any of it. Some of these children threaten to kill the parent. Formerly compliant children now scream profanities at the parent, confident that this will please their other parent, who will champion the children’s “right to express themselves.” In less extreme cases, children merely shun the target parents; they fail to greet them, avoid conversation and eye contact, and leave without saying good-bye. These can be easily recognized as signs of alienation because they represent abrupt departures from the child’s usual behavior.
Normally, children who treat a parent with gross disrespect understand that they are violating acceptable manners and rules; they feel guilty for their transgressions. By contrast, alienated children engage in all sorts of sadistically cruel behaviors toward a parent without expressing the slightest bit of guilt. The children act as if they are entitled to receive material benefits from the target parent while treating the same parent with malice, disregarding his or her feelings, and exhibiting no gratitude for past or current contributions to their welfare. It is as if the parent has been relegated to a status of subhuman scapegoat and thereby fair game for any mistreatment. One study described these children as “pitiless in their condemnation.”
TRIVIAL EXPLANATIONS FOR THE HATRED
Ask these children why they hate their parents and most cite common minor grievances that couldn’t possibly account for the extreme turnabout in their feelings. “She’s always telling me to brush my teeth,” a little girl whined. “That’s why I don’t want to be with Mom.” Alienating parents usually accept such complaints, though absurd, as reasonable explanations for why the child would not want to associate with the other parent.
“This letter is to inform you that I am not going to see you anymore. I don’t love you anymore,” a twelve-year-old girl wrote to her mother, with her father’s support.
What did this mother do to lose her precious daughter’s love? What horrible abuse did she visit on her child? The letter continued, “You don’t respect me. You treat me like a baby. You don’t care about how I think or how I feel.”
Sound familiar? It will to every parent of a preteeen or teenager, or to anyone who remembers how she felt during those years. If such feelings were grounds for terminating parent-child relationships, all children in junior high school would be living apart from their parents.
Unfortunately, therapists who are inexperienced in this area may accept the child’s reasoning. In the case of our twelve-year-old letter writer, the court’s social worker wrote a report that referred to this child as a “young adult” and castigated the mother for not treating her as such. The social worker recommended that the mother get counseling to learn how to deal with teenagers. What is frightening is that such reports wield great power over custody decisions in our courts. I do not know this social worker, but, given her overidentification with the child, I would not be surprised if she had some unresolved issues from her own adolescence. The result of her report was the complete cessation of the mother-daughter relationship. Seven years later this bereaved mother sought my help in reuniting with her estranged daughter.
To justify their wish to stop seeing a parent, children often recite a litany of that parent’s past mistakes, errors in judgment, and minor personality weaknesses. They magnify the rejected parent’s negative traits and behavior, and treat the parent as though he or she lacks any redeeming virtues. In an intact family, normal parents would consider it preposterous if their children wanted to disown a parent for such frivolous reasons. Prior to the onset of divorce poison, most alienated children showed respect and affection for both parents, regardless of the parents’ alleged faults. Certainly, prior to the marital separation, no court would terminate parental rights based on the type of insignificant allegations lodged by alienated children. And no therapist would recommend that a parent give up her relationship with the children because of her children’s complaints. Despite normal parent-child conflicts, children continue to sleep in their parents’ home, have meals with parents, talk to parents, vacation with them, and so on. When children become alienated in the aftermath of their parents’ separation, their explanations for the sudden and complete hatred or fear of the parent rarely make sense in light of their past history of treating that same parent with love and affection.
One of the most common excuses children give for rejecting a parent is that the parent refuses to accept the rupture of the relationship and continues to press for contact with the children. A father received the following letter from his thirteen-year-old daughter, “I do not wish to visit you at all this summer. The more you demand and force me, the stronger I will resist you. Every time you force me to go with you, I lose more respect for you. So now I wish to end my relationship, or what is left of my relationship with you.”
A mother learned that her ex-husband and his new wife were planning to relocate to another part of the country with her daughter. When this mother sought legal help to prevent the move, the girl held this against her and refused any contact with her. Of course, these parents would not have to force contact if their children were not resisting it in the first place. But the children’s circular reasoning casts the parents’ refusals to accept alienation as the cause of, and excuse for, the alienation. Some children claim that they intend to renew contact with the alienated parent “when the time is right.” From parents’ bitter experiences I have learned that very often the time is never “right.” Though some children try to reconcile after years of alienation, many do not. Either way, nothing can replace the lost years.
TAKE ACTION
Exercise self-restraint
Alienated children repay years of a parent’s love, compassion, and hard work with the most unbelievably rude and obnoxious behavior. In the face of such abuse, it is natural to want to retaliate, to lash out physically or verbally against the children or the parent fomenting the behavior. DON’T. Why?
- Harsh punishment and angry exchanges will escalate hostility rather than relieve it.
- Remember that your children are being manipulated to serve as vehicles to express their other parent’s hostility. Don’t punish them for the sins of the alienating parent.
- The children are primed to see you in a bad light and are looking for excuses to justify their rejection of you. Don’t help them.
- Your punitive reactions and loss of temper will play directly into the hands of the alienating parent. Even one lapse of judgment can be raised repeatedly in court and exaggerated to create the impression that it is typical of how you mistreat your children. Your behavior will then be mistaken as the cause of alienation rather than an isolated, desperate reaction to it.
Maintain contact
When children repeatedly complain about being forced to see the alienated parent, many parents make the crucial mistake of telling them, in effect, “If you are so unhappy being here with me, stop coming. Return when you have a more positive attitude.” Usually occurring in the early stages of alienation, this approach grows out of frustration and anger as well as an inadequate understanding of the potency of divorce poison. If your goal is to improve your relationship with your children, ceasing contact will not bring you any closer. Why?
- Maintaining contact is crucial for reversing alienation. We take this up in greater detail in chapter 5.
- Even when they seem to have no use for you, the children have a long history of depending on you for love and care. Surprisingly, if you counterreject them, on some level they will feel hurt and abandoned, and will channel their pain into more anger and alienation.
- Years later, children remember the perceived abandonment and blame the alienated parent for the ruptured relationship: “You said you didn’t want to see us anymore.”
- The absence of contact can be distorted in court to argue that you caused the alienation by your rejection of the children.
- As long as the children are dependent on the alienating parent, they may not be able on their own to resist divorce poison. When you lose contact with them, you lose the opportunity to help them escape or withstand the noxious environment. In too many families, when children are allowed to determine when to contact the alienated parent, they never see or talk to that parent again.
Develop a thick skin
To survive a campaign of hatred, you must learn to withstand high levels of verbal aggression and provocative behavior. If you allow yourself to feel crushed by the children’s rejection, it will be very difficult for you to demonstrate the self-restraint and commitment necessary to see the problem through to a successful resolution. As in most interpersonal conflicts, you would be wise to remember that cooler heads prevail. Cultivate the habit of reminding yourself that the children who inflict pain on you are themselves victims. Like brainwashed soldiers and brainwashed cult members, your children’s hostility is not fully their own. In a very real sense, they are not in their right mind.
Avoid getting drawn into a debate about the reasons for the hatred
It is tempting to dispute the rationalizations the children give for their newfound hatred. Resist this temptation and instead concentrate on having pleasant experiences with the children. Why?
- It is a debate you cannot win. The children believe their reasons are sound and will resent the implication that they are being absurd.
Children who are irrationally alienated usually give trivial—even ridiculous—excuses for rejecting a parent. A small percentage of children, though, give reasons that are anything but trivial. These children launch what are known in family law circles as “the nuclear weapons” of custody litigation: accusations of physical or sexual abuse.
These accusations are so extremely powerful that they usually result in an immediate court-ordered ban on all normal contact between the accused and his or her children. When the children are true victims of abuse, the court’s actions protect them from further harm. But when the children have been manipulated to make false reports of abuse, the ban on contact intensifies alienation, sometimes striking the death blow to the relationship.
Some people insist that children never make false reports of abuse. They are wrong. False reports do occur. They range from innocent misunderstandings to deliberate attempts to alienate children, sometimes in order to win custody.
A young child mentions that her father touched her “privates.” Her mother becomes concerned enough to make a report to the proper authorities. An investigation reveals that the girl had just participated in a program at preschool intended to help children protect themselves against sexual abuse. The warnings of the instructor were still on the child’s mind when her father bathed her that night and the result was the child’s alarming report to her mother. When false accusations stem from such misunderstandings, the accusing parents do not want to believe that their children have been abused. They express relief upon learning that the abuse did not take place, and they willingly reestablish contact between the exonerated accused and the children. In these cases, the children generally do not become alienated.
The situation is entirely different when false accusations are made by children who are alienated as a result of divorce poison. In such cases the children generally have some of the other characteristics discussed in this chapter. Sometimes, but not always, the details of the abuse accusation stretch credulity. Even after investigations establish the innocence of the target parent, the children and the favored parent may cling to the charges of abuse.
Some children are aware that they are giving a false report. Either on their own, or with a parent’s coaching, they have decided to lie. Other alienated children magnify an isolated act of physical restraint or discipline into an accusation of physical abuse. And still others, through repeated and suggestive questioning, are manipulated not only to make false allegations of physical or sexual abuse but to actually believe they have been victims of abuse. In other words, they are not consciously lying. They believe their false stories.
The Genesis of a False Accusation
An award-winning book published by the American Psychological Association shows just how easily children can be manipulated to give false accounts that bad things have happened to them. In Jeopardy in the Courtroom, Cornell University professor Dr. Stephen Ceci and his colleague Dr. Maggie Bruck describe studies that reveal the type of conversations with children that can lead to false allegations.
In one study children were simply asked to repeatedly think about whether different events had ever happened to them, such as getting their finger caught in a mousetrap and going to the hospital to get the trap off. After ten sessions, more than half the children told false stories about fictitious events in their lives. In fact, their stories were so elaborately embellished with details that experts could not detect which events were real and which were not. Even more remarkable, after the researchers told the children that the events never really happened, many of the children continued to insist that they remembered the fictitious events occurring. ABC news correspondent John Stossel interviewed some of these children for the show 20/20. One four-year-old-boy had already been told by his parents that the whole mousetrap story was just in his imagination and that nothing like this had ever happened. Yet when Stossel asked the boy if he ever got his finger caught in a mousetrap, with his parents there beside him, this child said he remembered the event and then gave a detailed account. Stossel reminded him that his parents already said that it never happened, but the boy protested, “It really did happen. I remember it!”
In another study, a stranger named “Sam Stone” visited a preschool classroom. He said hello, walked around the room for two minutes, then said good-bye and left. That was it. He touched nothing. During the next ten weeks, the children were interviewed four times and asked to describe Sam Stone’s visit. One month following the fourth interview, another adult interviewed the children, this time asking about two events which did not occur, “Did Sam Stone do anything to a book or a teddy bear?”
The investigators learned that they could produce false reports of Sam Stone’s behavior both by bad-mouthing Sam Stone and by asking the children leading, suggestive questions. The bad-mouthing took the form of telling stories to the children, prior to Sam Stone’s visit, about Sam Stone’s clumsiness. For example:
You’ll never guess who visited me last night. [pause] That’s right. Sam Stone! And guess what he did this time? He asked to borrow my Barbie and when he was carrying her down the stairs, he tripped and fell and broke her arm. That Sam Stone is always getting into accidents and breaking things!
The day after Sam Stone’s visit, the children were shown a soiled teddy bear that had not even been in the room during Sam’s visit. They were asked if they knew how the teddy bear had been soiled. An example of a suggestive question was the following: “Remember that time Sam Stone visited your classroom and spilled chocolate on that white teddy bear? Did he do it on purpose or was it an accident?”
By the time of the final interview, an astounding 72 percent of the youngest preschoolers falsely incriminated Sam Stone. Like the children in the mousetrap study, they embellished their stories with fabricated details, such as reporting that they saw Sam Stone on his way to the store to buy chocolate ice cream. Once again, the children fooled the experts.
The investigators showed videotaped interviews of the children to specialists who interview children for purposes of criminal investigations and who treat children suspected of having been abused. These experts were confident in their judgments about which events really occurred and which were made up. But the experts were wrong. In fact, the very children they rated as most accurate were the children who were least accurate. Substitute Mommy or Daddy for Sam Stone and you begin to see how children can be manipulated to give convincing, yet false, negative reports about a parent. Memory expert Dr. Elizabeth Loftus concludes, “Just because a memory report is expressed with confidence, detail, and emotion does not necessarily mean that the underlying event actually happened.”
False beliefs about abuse hurt children beyond the damage done by the alienation. A child who believes that she has been sexually abused by a relative can develop problems similar to those of a child who has actually suffered abuse. The child comes to distrust her caretakers in the same way she would if actually abused. Her view of sexuality is corrupted at an early age, and this may lead to problems in sexual adjustment as an adult. Her ability to trust in close relationships is impaired.
Exploiting Abuse to Produce Alienation
Some cases are complicated because they involve both abuse and divorce poison. In these cases, a child has been abused in a parent’s home. But the alienation that follows results more from the influence of the other parent than the abuse incident. Consider the following.
A divorced mother’s date deliberately exposed himself to her young daughter. When the father learned of this incident, his first reaction was not concern for his daughter but outrage at his ex-wife. He saw this as an opportunity to exact revenge on his ex for leaving him. Even though she had no more contact with the perpetrator, the father took her to court to try to restrict her access to their child. He argued that his daughter was now afraid to see her mother. To support this position, he tried to convince the girl that her mother’s house was unsafe and that her mother was unable to protect her from bad things. Rather than help his child move past the unfortunate episode, he exploited the episode. He repeatedly brought it up, acted as though she was irreparably damaged by the isolated incident, and did all that he could to keep it fresh in her mind.
By the time the court evaluator interviewed the child, she was certainly alienated from her mother. But the father’s negative behavior played a much larger role in the alienation than the interaction with her mother’s date. The mother had the good fortune to be assigned a custody evaluator who looked beyond the father’s explanation and recognized that the child’s rejection of her mother was not reasonable or normal. Because the abusive incident was not typical of the environment provided by this mother, the evaluator recommended no change in custody. Another evaluator might well have assumed that the child’s alienation was justified and that the child’s reluctance to be in her mother’s home deserved respect and accommodation. In such a case, the professional might have recommended extremely restricted contact between mother and daughter to take place in an artificial, court-supervised setting. The complicated nature of so many of these cases dictates the need for specialized expert examinations of all children who report abuse.
In some cases, although children have no direct experience with abuse, they have witnessed physical altercations between their parents. As tensions heat up in a deteriorating marriage, isolated acts of domestic violence, unfortunately, are all too common. These frighten children. If they perceive one parent as the aggressor, their sympathies will naturally lie with the other parent.
Let us suppose that a husband and wife’s argument escalates to the point of mutual shoving, grabbing, and pushing. Each receives minor bruises. The wife calls the police, who come to the home and ask the husband to leave for the night. The children have had ringside seats to the entire shameful spectacle.
It is now up to the mother to talk to the children about the incident. She can express her regret that they had to see their parents acting in this manner. She can remind them that this is not typical of how their parents behave. She can reassure them that they will be seeing their father very soon, that the hostility is between the parents and does not involve the children, and that both parents love them very much.
Or the mother can exploit the incident in a bid to gain the children’s alliance with her and against their father. She can send the message that, because she is so angry with their father, they should be too. She can exaggerate the severity of the aggression. She can speak about their father as a violent man from whom they all need protection. She can make the children afraid to see him again.
Even without the mother’s programming, the children’s reunion with their father is apt to begin awkwardly. If he handles the moment with sensitivity to their feelings, before long their relationship is back to normal. But if the children are out of contact with their father for a prolonged period of time, they are more likely to adopt their mother’s viewpoint. Their last contact with their father will leave a disproportionate imprint on their thoughts and feelings about him. Love and comfort built up over years of living together will be erased by an isolated incident that lasted a few minutes. In such a case, the children will cite the episode of domestic violence as the reason for their hatred and fear of their father. A careful investigation, though, will reveal the mother’s role in fostering the alienation. As we will see later in this chapter, the situation is very different when domestic violence has been chronic. In such families children may develop an aversion to a violent parent that is reasonable and would not qualify as pathological alienation.
Responding to Children’s Reports of Abuse
I must emphasize that reports of child abuse need to be taken seriously. Adults abuse children at an alarming rate and our society has historically been reluctant to acknowledge the problem. Some of this abuse undoubtedly occurs in families with high levels of parental animosity. It would be a serious mistake, then, to automatically dismiss reports of abuse merely because they emerge during acrimonious divorce disputes.
This point merits emphasis. We should not assume that all children in divorced families who allege abuse and reject the alleged abuser are acting under the influence of divorce poison. Children who actually are treated cruelly or witness a parent’s repeated and excessive violence or out-of-control behavior have good reasons to avoid contact with the perpetrator. This should never be confused with alienation resulting from divorce poison. In one case, the responsibility for alienation lies with alienated parents whose own behavior has pushed away their children. In the other case children’s alienation is aided and abetted by the favored parent. In both cases, the guilty parties may shirk responsibility for their children’s alienation and blame the other parent. But no therapist who truly understands the type of alienation being discussed in these pages would mistake the two situations.
TAKE ACTION
When a child makes a claim of abuse, as soon as possible seek a professional evaluation of the child, the alleged perpetrator, and the person to whom the child reported the incident. The more time that elapses between the original report and the professional examination, and particularly the more times a child has talked with an adult about the incident, the more likely that the accuracy of the child’s report will be suspect. Including all parties to the allegation allows the evaluator to investigate more of the factors that will help determine whether or not the child’s report is likely to be accurate. The evaluator should have experience with abused children and with irrationally alienated children. It is best if the initial evaluation is videotaped, with the camera capturing both the interviewer and the child. A videotaped evaluation will allow other experts who may subsequently become involved to reach opinions about the accuracy of the child’s report without subjecting the child to a series of examinations. The videotape will also reveal the extent to which an examiner has used or avoided suggestive and coercive interview techniques that could taint a child’s ultimate credibility and testimony. (Parents should not conduct their own taped interviews of their children.)
POLARIZING PARENTS: SAINTS AND SINNERS
“I don’t want you to have any part in my life because everything in my life has been good except when you have forced me to go with you,” a ten-year-old boy told his father.
Ordinarily children have mixed feelings about their parents. They like certain things; they don’t like others. Even children who have suffered abuse from a parent can think of positive things to say about the abuser and have some good memories of better times spent with that parent.
When a child has been poisoned against a parent, that parent is all bad in the child’s mind. By contrast, the other parent is all good. In any conflict between the favored parent and the target parent, the children automatically take the side of the favored parent. These situations bear a striking resemblance to the behavior of a racial bigot who is primed to believe anything negative about members of the hated race. Alienated children uncritically accept every allegation the favored parent makes against the other parent, even when there is obvious contradictory evidence. One mother told me that her ex moved their daughter to another country in order to keep the mother from seeing her child. After years of being brainwashed, the girl actually accused the mother of moving away.
TAKE ACTION
Expose the children to people who treat you with positive regard. When you are with your children, spend time with others who treat you with respect and affection. Especially try to surround yourself with other children, such as nieces and nephews, who demonstrate their love. Observing other people valuing you will help offset the exclusively negative image held by your children. Also, it will be more difficult for the children to maintain their rudeness in an environment that regards such behavior as aberrant. As a result of wanting to fit in, the children may begin to treat you better. In turn, positive behavior can awaken positive attitudes.
Not only do the children endorse every complaint made by the favored parent, they incorporate the parent’s words into their own descriptions and catalog of complaints. This is most obvious when the language goes far beyond the child’s normal vocabulary and understanding, or expresses attitudes that are decidedly unchildlike. When asked why she did not want to see her father, one five-year-old explained, “He buys me too many toys. He’s just trying to spoil me.” A six-year-old boy complained about his mother, “She keeps violating my privacy.”
Even when using adult language, alienated children never recognize that their hatred is the result of manipulation. They resent any suggestion that their opinions are influenced by the other parent. In this respect they are like adolescents who emphasize their independence while wearing exactly the same clothes as all their friends. “No one told me what to say” is a popular refrain.
Older children appreciate that a parent’s bad-mouthing could meet with disapproval from outside observers, such as a therapist or judge. Although these children do not believe their negative attitudes have been influenced by the favored parent, they nonetheless seek to protect that parent from criticism by denying that the parent has ever bad-mouthed the other parent. The children insist that their hatred and rejection is their autonomous response to the alienated parent’s mistreatment.
I consulted in a Canadian case in which a psychologist asked a boy what his dad thought of his mom. The boy replied, “I have no idea. I never asked him.” He was lying. Numerous taped phone calls caught the father bashing the mother in the most explicit and crude language and coaching his son to make false allegations against the mother. Moreover, the boy was well aware that his father was seeking to prevent the mother from ever seeing her son again.
Once the children are successfully poisoned, the offending parent may, in fact, tone down the bad-mouthing, confident that the goal has been accomplished. When the children object to seeing their other parent, the favored parent can then pay lip service to the importance of the children’s relationship with the rejected parent. They claim either that they are helpless to change their children’s negative attitudes or that they believe they must “respect” their children’s choices.
Naive court-appointed evaluators who examine the children at this later stage of alienation mistakenly conclude that the children’s rejection of a parent is indeed independent of the other parent’s behavior or wishes. One therapist concluded that the children’s rejection of their father was not influenced by the mother because, during an interview, the children expressed their hatred for their father without looking to their mother for cues.
TAKE ACTION
Resist the temptation to argue with your children about the origin of their criticisms of you even when they use exactly the same words your ex does. If you attribute their attitudes to your ex, whether or not they realize what they are doing (and many times they do not), they will feel dismissed. You will only incur further resentment. Instead, briefly acknowledge their complaints and then try to change the mood with a fun activity. Before the children can acknowledge that they have been influenced by their other parent they will need to understand the general concept of mental persuasion. Chapter 7, “Poison Control,” describes a strategy you can use, preferably with the guidance of a therapist, to lay this groundwork.
“I don’t understand. What do you mean, ‘He doesn’t want to see his grandma ever again’?” The elderly woman was understandably bewildered. Her relationship with her eldest grandson had always been marked by mutual love, affection, and enjoyment, spared the ambivalence that characterizes children’s relationships with parents. Now he wanted to have nothing to do with her, and she could not think of a single thing that she had done to warrant excommunication. What this grandmother thought must surely be a temporary aberration became an estrangement made permanent by her death a few years later.
Divorce poison delivers a cruel blow to the extended family. In what Dr. Richard Gardner calls the “spread of animosity,” children regard as enemies not only the hated parent but everyone associated with that parent, including grandparents, aunts, uncles, cousins, and friends. As a result, children lose contact with one-half of their family and their heritage.
One of the key benefits to children of an extended family, especially grandparents, is that these people usually love and are loved with much less ambivalence than parents. They don’t have to place as many restrictions on children and are usually delighted to see them. The result is that children normally have a reservoir of love for healthy grandparents that is undiluted by the frustrations that parents and children visit daily upon each other. Parents do well to support this unambivalent love, especially embattled divorced parents, because the grandparent-grandchild relationship may be the only one in which children experience themselves as a source of joy. I wrote about this in The Custody Revolution and feel strongly about it. My convictions are undoubtedly shaped by my own experiences growing up. Both my parents gave me the strong sense that my grandparents were to be accorded only love and respect. If my parents had criticisms of my grandparents, I never heard them. I checked with my older brother and his memory matches mine. Despite slight and infrequent frustration with my grandparents’ minor and quite reasonable restrictions (no ball playing in the house; keep the noise level down), I never recall feeling anything other than love and affection for them. They were solid presences in my life—adored, respected, and venerated.
When divorce poison enters the equation, children face their grandparents with hatred or at least with a great deal of conflict about showing their love. Even when the result is not the complete loss of contact, the relationships are tainted with discomfort, hesitation, inhibition, and the loss of the specialness that comes with relatively unconditional positive regard.
The spread of animosity extends even to pets! I recall watching a videotape of a child who was described by her mother and her teachers as a sweet girl who loved animals. When the father’s little dog sought her attention, this “sweet” child could not summon up even the slightest affection for this cute dog. The dog made repeated efforts to snuggle, and the girl rebuffed the dog, and even pushed the dog away. The dog clearly did not understand such irrational behavior, and continued repeatedly to seek affection. Like members of an alienated extended family, the dog must have wondered (if dogs can wonder) what he did to deserve such contempt. This video was a poignant testament to the extent to which everything associated with the target parent becomes tainted in the child’s mind.
The spread of hatred is one of the best ways to distinguish between children who are the victims of divorce poison and those whose alienation is a response to mistreatment by the hated parent. Children who are severely abused by their fathers, for example, generally welcome the loving involvement of their father’s relatives. Victims of divorce poison, though, act as if every relative of the hated parent has behaved in an equally offensive manner deserving of swift and total abandonment. In this respect the children are following the lead of the favored parent.
Some parents and professionals resist the notion that one parent can be primarily responsible for a child’s alienation. They believe that both parents must play a significant role. I think the spread of hatred is the clearest indication that a child’s alienation can be, and often is, independent of the behavior of the people being rejected. Very often the child goes from loving to shunning a relative without having had any contact with the relative in the intervening period. No one could attribute such alienation to the behavior of the relative.
One woman told me that shortly following her brother’s separation from his wife, her nephew stopped speaking to her. The last thing he said to her was that his mother told him and his siblings that when they saw their aunt and uncle they no longer needed to kiss them or say hello because “they are strangers to you.” As far as his mother was concerned they did not exist. His mother took the separation from his father as a reason to essentially declare war on the father’s entire extended family, despite the close ties that existed between her children and their aunts, uncles, and cousins.
In a surprising number of families, divorce results in the total rupture of relations between an ex-spouse and the former in-laws. At first, the children shun the extended family in order to show loyalty to the favored parent. Over time, the children come to believe that the rejected family is truly deserving of contempt.
A boy in rural Kansas was raised by his paternal grandmother from the age of two to twelve, even though his parents were married for five of these years and lived next door. Four years after the divorce, when the boy’s mother learned that her ex had a girlfriend, she began bad-mouthing the man and his entire family. She told her former mother-in-law that she wanted to have nothing to do with her anymore. The next time the boy visited his grandmother, he walked in the house without greeting her, kept his head down, avoided eye contact, and went straight to his room, where he stayed for several hours.
How do children justify rejecting their grandparents? In some cases they offer no reasons. The alienating parent decides to break relations with his former in-laws and the children merely follow suit. Often, though, children do give a reason for their negative opinion of their grandparents. They usually recall an episode in which the grandparents defended the alienated parent against the children’s criticisms. After that, the grandparents were enemies.
Alienated children succumb to a type of tribal warfare. They categorize every relative as either ally or enemy. No one can be neutral. Failing to take a stand against the alienated parent is equivalent to siding with that parent against the other parent and the children.
In the typical scenario, the alienated parent has confided in her family that the children have been denigrating her. But not having seen it themselves, the family is ill prepared for the harshness of the children’s negative attitudes and the dramatic change in their behavior. When the relatives witness it firsthand, they are appalled. They respond as they would to any other instance of the children acting rudely and disrespectfully. They try to reason with the children and they reprimand them. When the children give trivial reasons for their newly acquired attitudes, the relatives dismiss these as ridiculous. If the children claim that they have been abused, they are called liars. In turn, the children feel misunderstood and they resent the implication that they are distorting reality.
The children respond by rejecting the relatives. Before they know what has happened, the relatives have lost the children’s affection. In many cases that is the last time they ever see or speak to the children. Alienation often strikes with vicious speed and little advance warning.
One little girl said she didn’t like Grandma anymore because Grandma yelled at her for being mean to Mommy. The girl called her mother a retard and butthole and said that she didn’t have to do anything her mother asked. Prior to the alienation this girl would have acted contrite after a reprimand from her grandmother for such obnoxious misbehavior. But the rules are different for alienated children. They have learned that they can get away with disrespectful behavior when it is encouraged and sanctioned by the other parent. When this girl told her father how Grandma reacted to her criticisms of Mommy, the father said Grandma didn’t love them anymore and he would try to protect her from having to go to see her “mean” grandparents ever again.
This grandmother reacted naturally, but ineffectively, to her granddaughter’s rude behavior. Many relatives of alienated parents make the same mistake. They fail to recognize that the alienated children and their favored parent are sitting in judgment of them. Relatives who defend the target are guilty of siding with the enemy. This places relatives in a difficult bind: To maintain a relationship with the children they are asked to agree that the target parent is not worthy of love and respect. But there is a way to escape this bind.
Strike While the Iron Is Cold
The first step calls for restraint. When the child is rude and hateful to the parent, you can say that you are sorry to see this. But don’t try to “talk sense” into the children. Don’t criticize them. Don’t punish them for their obnoxious behavior toward the rejected parent. These types of well-intentioned reactions only serve to convince the children that you do not understand their position. They will conclude that your loyalty to the rejected parent blinds you to the gross mistreatment they are convinced this parent has inflicted on them.
Following a course of restraint is difficult for two reasons. First, the children may not accept your position of neutrality. They may insist on your explicit allegiance. Second, it is natural to feel a strong urge to defend the maligned parent. If you give in to this urge, however, the children will reject you and you will have lost the opportunity to influence them in a positive direction.
Restraint does not mean passivity. While avoiding confrontations about the alienation, you need to inoculate the children against the spread of animosity. Try to postpone any conversations about the alienation until you and the child are engaged in an enjoyable activity. Child psychiatrist Dr. Fred Pine calls this approach “striking while the iron is cold.” Children are more receptive to our communications when they are in a good mood. At the right time, comment on how much fun you have together. Reminisce about past good times. Ask the child what her favorite time was with you in the past. Then ask her to tell you what made that time so much fun. Give your understanding of what she is saying and ask if you are correct: “So you enjoyed planting the flowers with me because I let you get your hands in the dirt and we laughed a lot.” The purpose here is not merely to reinforce the good memories. It is to get the child to acknowledge the good times and give enough details so that it will later be more difficult for her to rewrite the history of the relationship and discount the fun she had in the past. Often, when confronted with the evidence of a better past relationship with the target, children give excuses such as “I was just pretending to have a good time” or “I only smiled in the picture because you made me” or “I only liked the trip to Disney World because Daddy [if Mom is the alienated parent] was there.”
Once you have emphasized the good relationship you enjoy, let the child know that you are aware that she no longer likes her mom or wants to be around her, and add that you hope she doesn’t stop loving you. If this is brought up before the hatred has spread, she will most likely protest that this could never happen.
The next step is to tell her that sometimes when parents are angry with each other they try to get their kids to take sides. Then tell her something like the following: “I’m afraid that because Dad is so angry with Mom right now, and you are so angry with Mom, that Dad may try to get you to be angry with me. What will you do if Daddy wants you to stop loving me?”
The basic idea is to help the child anticipate the pressure that might be brought to bear on her to renounce you, and then give her some tools to cope with the pressure. Preventing alienation is easier than overcoming it. As with most of the advice in this book, it is preferable first to seek guidance from a therapist who understands these problems. In many cases, the helpful messages will be better received and more effective if they come from a therapist whom the child trusts.
The best coping tools depend on the specific circumstances. The child might simply observe to herself that the father is trying to manipulate her and remind herself that she can continue to love you. Or, if she is able to assert herself with her father without fear of his retaliation, she can defend her love for you and ask him to please stop trying to get her to dislike you. In general, it is best if children learn to tell their parents that they do not want to be placed in the middle of their battles. Dr. Gardner’s classic book, The Boys and Girls Book About Divorce, might be helpful for children six years of age and older. The book advises children to think for themselves when it comes to their parents’ criticisms about each other. One important caveat: Some children will experience the instruction to assert themselves in this manner as an additional and oppressive burden. This is another reason to enlist the aid of a therapist who might be able to work with the parents to help them understand their child’s feelings and needs.
Create a Demilitarized Zone
If a child’s alienation from a parent is severe, as a relative you must do everything possible to maintain some degree of affection with the child. A cordial relationship with the child gives you more leverage to help overcome the alienation. What this means is that you may have to bite your tongue when the children bad-mouth your relative until you can formulate a comprehensive plan along the lines suggested in chapter 7, “Poison Control.”
Using this approach, you agree with the child that, because she feels so strongly about the alienated parent, you won’t discuss that parent while the child is with you. You must avoid any hint of criticism of the favored parent. Such criticism will make it impossible for an alienated child to behave affectionately with you without feeling disloyal toward the criticized parent and fearing reprisals for “consorting with the enemy.” Instead, concentrate on creating positive experiences with the child.
This does not mean that you will never try to actively reverse the alienation. It means that you are letting the child know that your home is a safe haven outside the battle zone. In your home the child is free to put aside the hostilities and simply enjoy your company. This allows you to maintain a positive connection with them that positions you to help reverse the alienation. Later in this book you will learn many subtle ways to chip away at this problem.
IS YOUR CHILD IRRATIONALLY ALIENATED?
Professionals disagree on how to label children who reject a parent for no good reason, but they agree on the characteristics of children suffering from this disturbance. If children have several of these signs, consider having them evaluated for pathological alienation.
Unreasonable, persistent, negative attitudes (anger, hatred, fear, distrust, or anxiety) about a parent who was viewed more favorably in the past. Such attitudes often are freely expressed to the parent and others.
No apparent guilt for treating the parent with malice, contempt, and utter disrespect; exploits parent by accepting money and gifts without gratitude.
Explanations for the hatred or fear that are trivial, irrational, inadequate, and out of proportion to the rejected parent’s behavior (or false allegations of abuse).
One-sided views of parents: children describe the alienated parent exclusively or predominantly in negative terms and deny or minimize positive feelings, thoughts, or memories about that parent. By contrast, children describe the other parent as nearly perfect.
In any conflict between the parents, the children automatically support the favored parent without exercising critical thinking or considering other perspectives. Some children ask to testify against a parent in court.
Parroting adult language: The children’s expressions echo the alienating parent—often clearly beyond the child’s normal vocabulary and understanding—or concern adult matters such as court motions, evidence, and testimony.
Preoccupation with the favored parent while in the rejected parent’s presence, including frequent and lengthy phone conversations and texting.
Declaration of independence: The children profess that their rejection of one parent is their own decision and that the other parent had no influence on the alienation.
Hatred by association: The children denigrate and reject relatives, friends, even pets associated with the rejected parent, despite a previous history of gratifying relations
ALIENATION WITHOUT DIVORCE POISON
Before proceeding further, we must be clear that divorce poison is not the only cause of alienation. Children can reject one parent when the other parent has done little or nothing to foster alienation. In some cases the alienation is justified. In other cases the alienation reflects a child’s exaggerated response to a difficult situation.
One cannot conclude, merely by knowing that a child is alienated from a parent, that divorce poison is the cause.
Ever since Ira moved out of his house in a Chicago suburb, his two teenage daughters have refused to spend time with him. Ira blamed this on his wife, and hired a lawyer to defend his parental rights. The lawyer asked if I would help convince the court to force the girls to see their father.
After investigating the situation I told the lawyer that my testimony would not favor his client’s position. I had learned that Ira suffered from a serious psychiatric disturbance. For years he had intimidated and behaved sadistically toward his wife and children. After Ira left, his wife hired an attorney, filed for divorce, and began to assert herself. The girls realized that they now had a chance to protect themselves from further abuse.
This was a case in which the children’s alienation was clearly warranted by their father’s behavior. They had good reasons for resenting and fearing him. In fact, Ira had become more volatile since the separation, due in part to the stress of living alone and the divorce litigation. I thought that Ira would need to make major changes before his daughters would reasonably want to renew their relationship.
Like many abusive parents, Ira was unable or unwilling to acknowledge his responsibility for the problems in his relationship with his children. Instead he accused his wife of poisoning the children against him. Although in some cases it is difficult to determine each parent’s contribution to alienation, it was clear to me that Ira’s daughters were not victims of divorce poison. First, there was clear evidence of Ira’s abuse. Second, there was no evidence that Ira’s wife did anything to undermine the girls’ affection for their father. And third, the girls lacked most of the characteristics of children who have been manipulated to turn against a parent. They did not talk about their parents in black-and-white terms. In fact, they were quite angry with their mother for being so passive and submissive over the years and not protecting them better. Also, their rejection of their father did not extend to his relatives. The presence or absence of the spread of animosity is often the best way to discriminate between children who are suffering from divorce poison and those who are responding to genuine abuse. Victims of abuse generally maintain contact with the abuser’s extended family, unless the relatives defend the abuser. In this case, Ira’s parents had sympathy for their grandchildren and daughter-in-law and the girls maintained cordial contact with them.
Ira’s relationship with his daughters was the sort of parent-child relationship that usually becomes alienated even in the absence of divorce. As adults, children of such abusive parents learn to avoid their parents or see them only under strictly limited circumstances.
Even when a parent does not physically or sexually abuse the children, alienation can occur if the children witness domestic violence, frightening displays of rage, or the aftermath of violence. Severe emotional abuse, neglect, abandonment, or very poor treatment by a chronically angry, rigidly punitive, intimidating, extremely self-centered, or substance-abusing parent can also result in alienation. In such cases, the children may not be ready to cast aside their resentment merely because the parent has decided to come back into their lives or treat them better.
The fact that children have good reasons for rejecting a parent does not rule out the possibility that the favored parent also contributes to the alienation. Talk to child protection workers and you will learn that most abused children never give up their quest for acceptance and love from the abuser. I have seen this in my own work with many abused children. Some of these children suffered acts of unspeakable cruelty that no person should have to endure. Many had to be taken from their homes to protect them from further harm. In the early stages of my career I was puzzled that so many of these children wanted to return to the homes in which they were so severely mistreated. In fact, child protection agencies are reluctant to remove a child permanently from an abusive home if they believe a chance exists to improve family functioning while ensuring the child’s safety. The loss of a parent, even an abusive one, is not taken lightly. When divorce poison enters the equation, though, the favored parent may welcome the child’s total repudiation of the other parent. He or she never entertains the possibility of repairing the relationship and sparing the child the loss of the parent.
TAKE ACTION
The presence or absence of the spread of animosity is often the best way to discriminate between children who are suffering from divorce poison and those who are responding to genuine abuse. Abused children generally welcome love and affection from all sources, including relatives of the abuser who have caused them no harm.
Up to this point we have discussed alienation that results from the destructive behavior of parents: either the favored parent or the rejected parent. Some cases of alienation have less to do with the behavior of parents than with mistakes children make themselves. Rejecting a parent may be a child’s misguided way of coping with difficult feelings.
Consider the case of a woman who endured years of suffering in an unhappy, conflict-ridden marriage. Following her divorce she fell in love with a man who lived in another state. He was unable to relocate his work and he did not want to move away from his two young children, so, when they married, the woman moved in with him. In what was the most difficult decision of her life, she agreed that her two teenage children could remain with their father so that they would not have to make all the adjustments required by a move: changing schools, giving up friends, living apart from extended family, joining new athletic leagues, finding new music teachers, and so on. She made arrangements to see the children during all school holidays, three-day weekends, and most of the summer.
Her son, Jeff, was not happy with this arrangement. He didn’t want to move, but he was hurt and angry that his mother did. He felt rejected by her and complained that she put her own needs and those of her new husband ahead of those of her family. Why, he asked, was it more important that her husband live near his children than it was for her to live near hers? Of course, he had a point.
It became a serious problem, though, when Jeff’s anger and disappointment in his mother snowballed into complete rejection. He refused to see her. He refused her phone calls. He deleted her E-mail. He ignored her on Mother’s Day. He said he no longer would have anything to do with her.
Jeff’s father tried to reason with his son. He talked about the close relationship the boy and his mother shared prior to her decision to move. He explained that in two years, when Jeff went off to college, he would be separated from his mother regardless of where she lived. The father reminded Jeff of the many things his mother did to show her love over the years. Jeff’s dad supported the mother’s right to find happiness and encouraged his children to have sympathy for her decision. Nevertheless, Jeff held stubbornly to his position that his mother’s actions were inexcusable and that she no longer deserved his love and affection. He was adamant about having no more contact with her.
Given the history of their relationship, Jeff’s sweeping condemnation and repudiation of his mother was unreasonable and was not shared by his sibling. Whether or not she did the right thing in moving away, she clearly did not deserve the degree of scorn and rejection coming from her son. And the father certainly was not contributing to the alienation. This is an example of what I call “child-driven alienation.” It was not justified by the behavior of the rejected parent, and it was not promoted by the behavior of the favored parent.
There were no villains in this drama, only a child struggling with difficult feelings and seeking to assuage his disappointment by closing his heart.
In Jeff’s case, further exploration of his feelings revealed that it was not so much his mother’s move that was at the root of his complaints. Had his mother been offered a great job opportunity in another state, he might well have given his blessings to the move. Jeff was most upset about her remarriage. Like most children, he harbored a secret hope that his parents would reconcile. The remarriage dashed this hope. Psychotherapy helped Jeff form a more balanced view of his mother’s behavior, and recover his love for her.
Parents’ reactions can help alleviate or aggravate instances of child-driven alienation. Favored parents can do their best to counter their children’s irrational attitudes. Or, if they are gratified by the children’s anger at the other parent, they can passively accept their children’s position and do nothing to improve the situation. Or they can welcome, approve, and reinforce their children’s negative attitudes, thereby entrenching the alienation. In such a case the children may have their own reasons for being angry with a parent, but without the contributions of the favored parent, the anger would dissipate over time and not result in the total rupture of the relationship. In an intact family children get angry with their parents without rejecting them entirely. After a divorce, though, one parent may sanction the children’s disowning the other parent. This may temporarily gratify the favored parent, but in the long run he or she must demonize the ex to justify the alienation or else face the fact that he has visited a terrible deprivation upon their children.
Target parents, too, can have an impact on child-driven alienation. The more they follow the seven rules discussed on Chapter 2, the more likely rejected parents will recover their children’s affection. The more they react with rigid, counterrejecting, insensitive behavior, the more likely their children’s negative attitudes will harden and become permanent.
Exclusively child-driven alienation—those in which neither parent contributes significantly to the problem—is the least frequent path to parental alienation. In my experience, when it occurs, the most common triggers are a parent’s relocation, remarriage, extramarital affair, or religious conversion of the parent or child.
Most instances of exclusive child-driven alienation involve older children. Younger children are more susceptible to their parents’ influence. But teens often assume that their parents are stupid dolts whose opinion is worth less than that of a perfect stranger. Like Jeff, they will defend their mistaken beliefs rigidly and self-righteously while stonewalling their parents’ attempts at persuasion. Also, children who are themselves adults at the time of their parents’ divorce sometimes take sides in the dispute and refuse to have any further contact with the parent they blame for the divorce.
TAKE ACTION
If your alienated teen is unreceptive to parental input, ask a person whom your child respects to intervene. This can be a favorite relative, teacher, religious leader, coach, scoutmaster, the parent of one of your child’s close friends, or even the friend himself. Teens often are more willing to entertain ideas that come from people other than their parents.
UNDERSTANDING THE ROOTS OF ALIENATION
When a child is severely alienated, we must identify the roots of the problem if we are to have the best chance of helping the child. This lets us know where to concentrate our efforts.
In many cases it is easy to determine when a child’s alienation is primarily the result of the favored parent’s influence, when it is a reasonable response to the alienated parent’s mistreatment of the child, and when it is driven mainly by the child’s own motives. In other cases, though, understanding the roots of alienation is complicated because there’s a mixture of causes with no one clear primary element. Of course, this does not stop parents locked in a vicious custody dispute from blaming each other for their child’s troubles. Frequently each parent accuses the other of brainwashing. It can be difficult to sort out each parent’s contribution. Sometimes both parents are engaged in a battle for their child’s mind and soul. Each is guilty of brainwashing in an effort to win the child’s allegiance. But often one parent is more actively engaged in brainwashing. What looks like the other parent’s brainwashing may be a frustrated reaction to alienation or a desperate or crude attempt to resist or reverse it.
Relief from alienation requires an understanding of all the contributing factors. The child may have her own motives, the rejected parent may be responding in a rigid manner that reinforces the negative attitudes, and the favored parent may be actively or passively supporting the rupture of the parent-child relationship. In addition to the actions of the parents and child, sometimes the circumstances of the marriage and divorce play a key role.
Problematic parent-child relationships during the marriage can pave the way for alienation when the marriage fails. The mother and child, for example, may have always had an overly close relationship that excluded the father. During the marriage the mother subtly undermined the father’s authority or openly disparaged him. Following the separation, the father had trouble eliciting the child’s respect.
In one family, sixteen-year-old Janet had been distant from her father for five years prior to the marital separation. Her dad, Gerald, was somewhat introverted, not very sociable, and not very warm. Gerald rarely told his daughter he loved her, but he did show his love in nonverbal ways. When his daughter was younger, they played together. He took the family on several enjoyable vacations. He worked long hours and went without many material things so that he could support Janet in private school and extracurricular activities that were really beyond his means. But he failed to attend many of these activities. When he was laid off from his job, Gerald was so depressed that he withdrew even more and became short-tempered with his wife and child. He began to feel like an outsider in his own family. In truth, his wife and daughter did act as though he were superfluous. This family pattern actually went back several generations in the mother’s family. She grew up in a home with her mother, aunt, and grandmother, but no father. When she left Gerald, she and Janet moved into a house with her mother, sister, and grandmother. Her family had little use for men, and now Janet was being raised in the same tradition.
The seeds for Janet’s alienation from her father were sown in their distant relationship, for which Gerald certainly had to take some responsibility. With daily contact, and her mom’s limited support, Janet had been able to sustain a relationship with her dad. But the relationship was too weak to withstand the strain of her parents’ divorce. With her father’s absence and the mother’s complete lack of support, Janet became increasingly alienated.
When her dad insisted on some minimal contact, Janet said she was scared of him, although she admitted that he had never physically hurt her or even threatened to hurt her. She told a judge that she was unnerved by his presence at school games where she was a cheerleader. Although Janet thought her stance was reasonable, it was really quite irrational. Here was a man who had dedicated himself to her welfare all of her life, and she claimed to feel safer in the presence of strangers than with her own father.
Dr. Gardner’s organ-transplant principle comes to mind, because it underscores the unique and indispensable role that each parent occupies in the child’s life. Dr. Gardner points out that if a child needed a kidney transplant, the target parent would be one of the very few people on earth who would volunteer to give up one of his kidneys. It makes no sense to banish from your life one of the two people among the billions on earth who has this level of commitment to your welfare. Gerald may not have been father-of-the-year material, but he was Janet’s only father. In any reasonable accounting of his role in her life, the assets certainly outweighed the liabilities. Janet’s alienation from her father was not justified by his behavior, yet it was not solely the result of her mother’s manipulations. Each member of the family, and the divorce itself, played a significant role in creating the problem.
In another family, a teenager succumbed to her father’s influence, denigrated her mother, refused to see her, and testified against her in court. Although the mother had been much more involved in raising her daughter, there was a significant factor that accounted for the girl’s willingness to side with her father against her mother. When this girl was five years old, her father had abandoned the family. The girl did not see him again for three years. This episode left her with a fragile sense of her importance to her father. When he demanded allegiance from her in a war against her mother, she viewed this as an opportunity to solidify their bond. Though her father was certainly guilty of dispensing divorce poison, we should not overlook the girl’s own psychological makeup as a central contributing factor to her alienation. The search for the roots of alienation is not a quest to place blame but to find effective solutions to this tragic problem.
When parents or judges ask therapists to treat alienated children, the therapist’s understanding of the roots of the problem will guide the treatment. Is the alienation justified or unjustified? Is it primarily the result of divorce poison, mistreatment by the target parent, or the child’s own mistaken decisions?
In cases of child-driven alienation, it would be insufficient to work exclusively with the favored parent, because that parent is not the source of the problem. The primary work has to be with the child. On the other hand, with children who are frightened to be with a parent because of the parent’s violent behavior, it makes little sense to try to help the children overcome their fears without first helping the parent develop better self-control and providing a setting in which the parent-child contacts can take place safely. When a parent tries to poison his child against the other parent and the child succumbs by becoming severely alienated, it makes little sense to work exclusively with the child without reducing her exposure to the noxious environment. This requires legal assistance, which is discussed in chapter 8, “Getting Professional Help.” Even the most skilled therapist will have a slim chance of reversing the alienation by meeting exclusively with the child for one forty-five-minute session a week, and then returning the child to the brainwashing parent.
TAKE ACTION
Don’t overlook your own possible contributions to your child’s alienation. If you are working with a therapist who has sufficient understanding and experience in working with alienated children, pay careful attention if the therapist tries to explain how you have contributed to the alienation. If your behavior has legitimately turned off your children, it won’t help merely to blame your ex and deny your culpability; this will only complicate the problem. Instead, learn what you can do personally to help your children recover their affection, respect, and trust. Chapter 7 gives more specific advice along these lines.
Before searching for the roots of alienation, it is necessary to determine whether the child is truly alienated. A child’s hostility, reluctance to spend time with a parent, or even refusal to see the parent does not always mean that alienation is present. We must be careful not to confuse situations that superficially resemble alienation with the real thing. Some parents make this mistake innocently. Others knowingly raise false allegations of alienation to support their bid for custody. Parents, therapists, and judges who misidentify alienation will aggravate rather than relieve a child’s distress.
To avoid this error, keep in mind that severely alienated children relate to one parent, but not the other, in a consistently negative manner. As we will see in the following sections, a child is not severely alienated when the hostility and apparent rejection
- is temporary and short-lived rather than chronic (not to be confused with intermittent alienation that returns when in the presence of the favored parent)
- is occasional rather than frequent
- occurs only in certain situations
- coexists with genuine expressions of love and affection
- is directed at both parents
Normal Reactions to Divorce
Divorcing parents worry about how their breakup will affect their relationship with their children. Their worry might lead them to be oversensitive to any negative behavior on the children’s part.
Occasional hostility from children is normal, and parents should expect more of it in the early weeks following the breakup. This is a time when children most need their parents’ attention, patience, sensitivity, compassion, and reassurance. And it is a time when parents, preoccupied with their own distress, are least able to call upon these qualities. Many children express their sadness and uncertainty by becoming more defiant and belligerent. Unless their difficult behavior becomes chronic, and is directed at only one parent, it probably does not represent true alienation. It would be a mistake to assume that temporary and occasional displays of hostility mean that the children are being subjected to divorce poison, just as it would be a mistake to assume that they are reacting to mistreatment by a parent. The more likely explanation is that the difficult behavior represents a reaction to the divorce itself.
It takes children time to get used to the idea of seeing their parents in two different homes. Kyle was a clever ten-year-old boy. After his parents announced their intention to divorce, and his father moved out of the house, Kyle refused to meet with his father for lunch unless his mother was present. This was his way of registering his objection to the divorce: He would not cooperate with the transitions between parents necessitated by the divorce. He also hoped that he could engineer a reconciliation, like the girls did in his favorite film, The Parent Trap. Because his parents did not go along with his plan, Kyle’s manipulations were short-lived and in no way resembled the chronic hatred expressed by alienated children.
How tolerant should parents be of their children’s refusal to cooperate with scheduled times of contact? As in most dilemmas of parenting, there is no absolute and universal prescription. It is best to avoid the extremes of being overly harsh and punitive or overly lax and passive. Ask yourself whether your child is staying in touch with you in other ways and whether the general tone of your relationship has remained positive or is growing more negative. Is your child receptive to a suggestion to make up the time or to meet for dinner? Parents of teenagers should be aware that their children may have outgrown the parenting plan that was established when they were younger. Teenagers normally choose to spend more time with peers and less time with both parents. Don’t mistake this natural process, which affects both parents, for the type of rejection exhibited by alienated children.
As a general rule, absent clear signs of divorce poison, I recommend that parents regard a child’s first two consecutive refusals of contact as temporary reactions (unless contacts are scheduled very infrequently, such as when a parent lives in another state). Beyond this, parents should take active steps to understand the basis for the child’s refusal and to ensure contact. The principle is the same as if your child refused to attend school. You would insist on attendance while trying to get to the root of the problem.
Parents should be even more lenient regarding phone contact. Children differ in their enjoyment of phone conversations, and the same child will react differently from one call to the next. If the call comes at a time when she is involved in an enjoyable activity, she may not want to stop what she is doing to come to the phone. Accept this normal behavior. Don’t let your feelings be hurt. And don’t leap to the conclusion that your child is alienated. With computer-literate children, try communicating through E-mail and instant messaging. I regard computer webcams as one of the greatest boons to relationships between divorced parents and their children, especially when the parent lives far away.
TAKE ACTION
If your child occasionally refuses a scheduled contact, avoid over-reacting or underreacting. Don’t rigidly insist on each contact regardless of extenuating circumstances. Express your disappointment in a mild tone, and let her know that you are looking forward to the next time. Unless you live far away from your child and contacts are relatively rare, allow two consecutive refusals before taking more active steps to understand the problem and to ensure contact. Don’t assume, without other evidence, that she is becoming alienated. But don’t naively overlook this possibility either. Refusing a scheduled contact may be your child’s way of asserting some control as a means of managing the initial anxiety triggered by your separation. If you fail to show some flexibility, your child may become more anxious and become even more uncomfortable about the contacts. When refusal of contact becomes more frequent, though, it is clear that your child needs help to resolve the difficulty. Ignoring repeated refusals of contact will establish a pattern that can harden into alienation if not understood and corrected.
Separation Anxiety
Lois was seventeen months old when her parents separated. She got along very well with each parent when she was in their care. But when it was time to leave one home for the other, she screamed and clung to the parent she was leaving. Fortunately, her parents knew that children between fifteen and twenty-four months of age are often anxious about separations, and they regarded Lois’s vehement protests as normal. Neither parent accused the other of fostering alienation.
Mindy, fifteen months old, cried and hid behind her mother’s legs when her father came to the door to take her for the day. Mindy’s mother thought it would be traumatic to insist on the exchange when the girl was so frightened. This was not a case of divorce poison. The mother would have done the same if her daughter refused to attend day care. We wouldn’t even say Mindy was alienated from her father, because her protests were specific to the exchanges. When her mother was present, Mindy loved playing with her father. In this case, all it took to resolve the problem was some brief education for the parents about normal child development.
In some families, a mother who has no difficulty leaving her protesting child with the baby-sitter allows her anger at her ex to create a blind spot when it comes to fostering the child’s contact with the father. When these situations are mishandled, they can result in alienation, manifested in the child’s chronic anxiety around the absent parent. I have worked with families in which the young child’s normal separation protests resulted in the cessation of contact with the father. Because the child was given no opportunity to become secure with the father, the relationship was compromised even when the child outgrew the toddler years.
Parents, experts, and even cultures disagree about how best to help children with separation anxiety. Some advocate a quick parting, and point out that the child’s protest is short-lived. Others advocate a gradual approach, giving the child time to get used to the separation. Using this approach, parents may enact an elaborate routine around separations with frequent hugs and kisses. Other parents adopt a strategy somewhere between these two extremes.
For a funny depiction of the gradual approach, watch Steve Martin in the movie, A Simple Twist of Fate. His daughter was anxious about attending kindergarten. To relieve her anxiety, the character played by Martin sat directly behind the girl the entire first day of school, and throughout the week he gradually moved further and further back until she no longer required his presence. The gradual approach is more the custom in cultures such as Japan that show greater tolerance for a young child’s dependence on a parent.
TAKE ACTION
Prepare young children for transitions to the other parent with only a little advance notice, using a relaxed and matter-of-fact tone, much as you would announce a pending trip to the store. Use the same tone to let them know when they will return. Young children are very sensitive to a parent’s moods. If a parent conveys anxiety about an upcoming separation, either by tone of voice or by too many reassurances, the child will “absorb” the parent’s anxiety and have more difficulty with the separation. If the children’s distress at the time of the exchange worries you, ask the other parent to call fifteen minutes later (or use a third party if direct communication between parents is a problem) to let you know whether they have calmed down.
Another situation in which separation anxiety might be mistaken for alienation is when a child protests contact with a parent who is unfamiliar, as in the case of a divorced father returning from an overseas military or work assignment. The mother may have done everything possible to promote the child’s bond to the absent parent. The child may even be excited at the prospect of seeing his father. Nevertheless, when it comes time to separate from the mother, the boy is scared. If the parents are sensitive to the child’s anxiety and allow the relationship to develop gradually, he will become more secure with the father. If, however, the parents are impatient for the child to be with the father, or the father assumes that the mother has programmed the son against him, he will react in ways that complicate the situation and may provoke the child’s alienation.
Similar considerations apply to a young child who is afraid to spend the night with his father because he has never slept away from home. Rather than accept the child’s rejection of overnights or ignore the child’s feelings, the parents should work to help the child feel comfortable in his father’s new home. Without this assistance, the resistance to overnights may become more entrenched. When children act on their fears, the fear usually grows stronger. Although not initially an alienation problem, if handled incorrectly by either parent, this situation could develop into a more pervasive rejection of the father.
Difficult, Troubled, and Shy Children
Some children, by temperament, have more difficulty adjusting to stress, new situations, or transitions. They may show this difficulty with defiant, oppositional, or withdrawn behavior when having to switch from one activity to another at home or in school. When this problem occurs during exchanges between parents’ homes, it is important not to mistake this for alienation. The negative behavior is temporary, the child is able to show affection for the parent once he or she adjusts to the transition, and the same negative behavior occurs with both parents.
Children who are depressed may withdraw from both parents or act irritable with both. If divorced parents don’t communicate with each other about their experiences with their children, they may falsely conclude that the negative behavior occurs only in their home, and that their children are becoming alienated.
Children prone to explosive outbursts, such as those suffering from a bipolar disorder, may say mean and hateful things and act aggressively in the midst of an emotional meltdown. At these times they are acting irrationally and do not discriminate the object of their attacks. They are just as likely to treat the other parent or a sibling in the same manner. This should not be confused with alienation.
Nine-year-old Nolan came to his father’s home with a chip on his shoulder. He refused all the father’s suggestions for enjoyable activities. When his favorite television show was preempted by a news bulletin, Nolan went into a rage. He broke his Game Boy and cussed at his father, telling him he hated him and never wanted to see him again. Had he been unaware of Nolan’s bipolar disorder, this father might have worried that his son was being alienated. Instead, Nolan’s dad was certain that his ex was not dispensing divorce poison. He knew she needed and looked forward to a break from caring for this difficult child. She certainly wouldn’t do anything to make Nolan reluctant to be with his father. She did have a better feel for managing her son in a way that reduced the frequency of meltdowns. For this reason, Nolan was more comfortable with her and less eager to leave her home. But he was not alienated from his father. Nolan wanted to see his father and, when he was calm, usually enjoyed being with his dad.
Avoiding the War Zone
Some parents fight with each other every chance they get. Exchanges of the children take place in a climate of great tension, ranging from smoldering but obvious resentment to screaming, cursing, shoving, and outright violence. In such cases, at least one parent has no hesitancy about exposing the children to the awful hostilities.
To protect themselves from tension, fear, and embarrassment, children in explosive families sometimes tell one parent that they no longer want to see the other parent. The rejected parent, aware that the children receive a steady diet of divorce poison, assumes that the children’s withdrawal from contact means they are alienated. This may not be true. Many of these children continue to feel love for the rejected parent. But they feel a desperate need to get out of the crossfire, and they don’t know how else to do it except to cut ties with one of the warring factions.
Aware of the damage caused by exposure to high conflict, some therapists believe it is best to spare children such exposure, even when this means losing contact with a parent and often that parent’s entire extended family. I think they are mistaken. Of course, parents’ battles can devastate a child’s sense of security and well-being; that’s why I wrote this book. But so can the loss of a parent. As the child gets older, he will become better able to protect himself from his parents’ animosity. He may never recover, though, from the rupture of the parent-child relationship and the loss of the extended family. So I advise maintaining the relationship while doing everything possible to shield the child from the shrapnel of his parents’ attacks.
TAKE ACTION
To protect children from exposure to destructive tension, transfers should be arranged so that both parents are not present at the same time. This is best accomplished by having one parent drop off the children at school in the morning and the other parent pick them up at the end of the day. Another option, particularly for younger children who do not attend school, is to leave the children with a relative or friend and have the other parent pick them up ten minutes after the first parent has left. Your community may also have a special facility that monitors child exchanges for a small fee. Ask your local family court services for a referral.
Thy Parent’s Keeper
Occasionally a depressed or emotionally unstable parent depends on her child to take care of her. The child becomes worried about leaving this parent alone. When it is time to be with the other parent, the child protests. This is not a case of alienation: The child still loves the other parent, and actually thrives in that parent’s care. But the child’s fear of something bad happening to the emotionally distraught parent keeps her by that parent’s side.
One mother was so bereft when her husband left her that she remained in bed for days and neglected most of her responsibilities. She told her eight-year-old daughter that she didn’t know how she could live without her during the extended weekend the girl was scheduled to spend with her father. As a result, the girl told her father that she didn’t want to see him that weekend. This mother was despondent and not deliberately manipulating her daughter. But some parents do express a desperate need for the children in order to discourage them from spending time with their other parent.
TAKE ACTION
If you are depressed, get the adult help and companionship you need. Spare your child the role of caretaker. Most children cannot care for a parent’s emotional needs without sacrificing their own healthy development.
Situation-Specific Reactions
Owen, sixteen years old, was not emotionally prepared for his father’s remarriage shortly after the divorce was final. The boy felt very uncomfortable in his stepmother’s presence and decided to avoid her. As a result, he refused to spend the night in his father’s apartment. Though this was a problem, and probably was influenced by his mother’s contempt for the new wife, it was not alienation. Owen regularly met with his dad in restaurants and played tennis with him, but he insisted that his stepmother not be included. Although this was a problem that needed to be solved rather than catered to forever, it was not alienation.
TAKE ACTION
A child’s discomfort around a new stepparent may be eased by spending a vacation together away from home. Sharing new experiences in novel surroundings, apart from normal routines, can help jump-start the stepparent-child bond.
Fourteen-year-old Philip asked to move out of his mother’s home. He said he would spend time with her during the day, but wanted to sleep at his father’s house. The boy was unable to articulate the reasons for his decision, which made the mother think her ex-husband had poisoned the boy against her. Philip was not a victim of divorce poison, though, and he would not be described as alienated from his mother. He still loved her and wanted to see her. But he was bothered by his mother’s numerous boyfriends spending the night with her. He wanted to remove himself from the situation, though he was not fully aware of what made him uncomfortable.
The examples of Owen and Philip illustrate “situation-specific” reactions: resistance to seeing a parent under particular circumstances without being alienated from that parent.
Sharing a Wavelength
When parents are embroiled in a custody dispute, or compete for a child’s affections, they may become concerned that their child’s closer connection to the other parent signals alienation. Many times this concern is unwarranted. Even in intact families, children will often feel closer to, or more comfortable with, one parent than the other. And the parent they feel closest to may be different at various points in the child’s life.
A child’s greater compatibility with one parent has several possible roots. The parent and child may share similar biological rhythms, activity levels, interests, or temperament. The child may identify with the parent of the same sex. Children who exhibit this kind of preference are distinguished from alienated children because they continue to express positive regard for both parents and seek contact with both. Being less preferred is a far cry from being hated.
TAKE ACTION
If your child seems to occupy the same wavelength as your ex, don’t confuse this with alienation. As long as your child loves you and spends time with you, this is not something to worry about. Concentrate on the positive aspects of your relationship rather than compete with the other parent. Parent-child compatibilities are normal and may shift in time. Accepting your child’s natural inclinations will strengthen your bond. Protesting these inclinations will introduce unnecessary tension in the relationship.
Parent-Child Partnerships
At times a child’s closeness to one parent goes beyond the “same wavelength” phenomenon described above. Fifteen-year-old Rolanda’s father divorced his wife in order to marry his secretary, with whom he had been having a long-standing affair. The girl was hurt and angered by her father’s actions. She sympathized with her mother’s position as the spurned woman and felt that her mother deserved and needed her loyal support. She expressed a strong preference to live with her mother and took her mother’s side in financial disputes with her father. Nevertheless, Rolanda was not alienated from her father. She continued to express love and positive regard for him. After the divorce was final, over time Rolanda showed increasing interest in spending time with her father and his new wife, although she continued to feel closer to her mother. Noted divorce authorities Dr. Joan Kelly and Dr. Janet Johnston label this type of mother-daughter partnership an “alignment.”
Sam was a preschool boy who would be described as aligned with his father. He divided his time evenly between both parents’ homes, although he clearly preferred being with his dad. Sam’s father exercised a quiet yet firm authority over his son. The father was able to give Sam more latitude in his play, confident that he could assert control when necessary and that the boy would comply with the limits. This allowed Sam a feeling of greater freedom combined with the security of his father’s control. Father and son shared a close bond, expressed with frequent hugs and verbal affection.
By contrast, Sam’s mother was made anxious by her son’s high activity level. She resorted to ineffectual yelling and set limits that were too frequent and too rigid for her young son. To complicate matters, Sam looked very much like his father, and they shared the same facial expressions and mannerisms. This resemblance became an obstacle to the mother’s affection. In a subtle way she rejected Sam whenever his demeanor evoked memories of her hated ex-husband. As a result, much of their time together was marred by mutually frustrating interchanges.
When Sam was with his father and it came time to return to his mother, he would get visibly upset. Either he protested vigorously, clinging to his dad while sobbing and screaming, or he became melancholy and rested his head limply on his dad’s shoulder. This was not just a manifestation of normal separation anxiety, because, without fail, Sam eagerly left his mother to be with his father.
Sam’s mother accused her ex-husband of alienating the boy. She suspected that, prior to the exchanges, the father involved Sam in exciting activities and then abruptly ended them by telling Sam that he had to go be with his mother. In reality, the father hated seeing his son so upset and did everything possible to prepare Sam to have a good time with his mother. Sam clearly preferred his father’s care and was, in this sense, aligned with his dad. But he was not alienated from his mom. He certainly loved her and felt a bond with her, and once the difficult exchanges were accomplished, he eagerly sought her attention.
TAKE ACTION
If transitions between parents are very difficult, arrange to do something out of the home for a while, such as having dinner or running an errand, before returning home with your child. An out-of-home activity can serve as a buffer and dilute the emotional impact of transferring from one residence to the other.
The line between extreme alignment and mild alienation is very thin. In Rolanda’s case, the mother’s handling of the situation was a key factor that protected Rolanda from becoming alienated. Rolanda’s mother let her know that, although she did not condone the father’s affair, there had been problems in the marriage for many years, and the divorce was probably the best thing in the long run. In Sam’s case, the father continued to support his son’s love for his mother, and made sure the boy spoke to his mother every day.
Other parents exploit their child’s allegiance by actively promoting a completely negative view of the other parent or passively condoning the child’s rejection of the parent without doing anything to promote or encourage a healthier adjustment. The children in these families are particularly vulnerable to becoming alienated.
TAKE ACTION
If your child displays hostile or rejecting attitudes toward you, don’t assume the child is alienated and don’t assume she has been poisoned against you. Take an honest look at your own behavior and circumstances that may have contributed to the alienation. Ask the other parent for assistance in improving the situation. If he willingly cooperates, there is a good chance that the child is not alienated. If the other parent refuses to help, there is a good chance that he feels gratified by the children’s rejection of you and is contributing to alienation—if not actively, then passively, by condoning the children’s negative behavior toward you.
The conditions discussed above can be distinguished from alienation. But they can also be the forerunners of alienation if handled improperly. Rejected parents must follow the seven rules presented on Chapter 2. Favored parents must keep their child’s welfare uppermost in their minds as they work to support their children’s healthy relationships with both parents.
Whether a child is alienated and, if so, whether divorce poison has contributed to the alienation, are central and controversial issues for courts, therapists, and parents who must decide how to respond to the problem.
FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF PARENTAL ALIENATION
In chapter 2 we met Tina, whose husband, Wesley, accused her of brainwashing their son, Vince. Tina’s case really had nothing to do with pathological alienation. In the first place, Vince did not reject his father. He wanted a better relationship with him. Wesley was so possessive of his time with Vince that he would not allow the boy to attend any friend’s birthday party that occurred during their regularly scheduled weekends together. Wesley felt that, since they saw so little of each other, Vince should want to spend all his time alone with his father. As a result, Vince did not look forward to weekends with his father. But he was not alienated. And his mother did not brainwash him.
When the court-appointed psychologist examined the family, he concluded that Vince had none of the symptoms of pathological alienation. He recommended that Wesley consult with a therapist who could help him better understand his son’s needs and use their time together to build a stronger relationship.
Parents who make accusations of irrational alienation need to be sure that they are reading the situation accurately. If they mistakenly blame their children’s difficult behavior on the other parent, they may lose the opportunity to make changes in themselves that could improve their relationship with their children. Indeed, their denial of responsibility may push the children further away.
Parents who are falsely accused of brainwashing, like Tina, need information about alienated children to defend themselves. Tina’s attorney needed to show the judge that Vince’s behavior was not symptomatic of a child who has been poisoned against his father. All parents involved in litigation where alienation is alleged must insist that their attorneys be familiar with the issue and able to cope with relevant testimony in court. To ignore this information is to risk losing custody.
MISDIAGNOSIS OF PATHOLOGICALLY ALIENATED CHILDREN
If you have been falsely accused of alienating your child, check the following list of situations that may result in misdiagnosis of the problem. If any of these fit your family, bring them to the attention of your attorney and any mental health professionals involved in your case.
Your child occasionally criticizes your ex but does not engage in a campaign of denigration and does not refuse to spend time with the other parent.
Your child is antagonistic to both you and your ex.
You occasionally criticize your ex but do not engage in a severe campaign of denigration. Some experts fail to distinguish adequately between mild occasional bad-mouthing and systematic efforts to turn children against loved ones.
Although your behavior is bad enough that it could potentially influence your child to reject the other parent, your child has not succumbed to this influence and does not show the signs of irrational alienation described in chapter 3. It would be mistake to label your child as currently alienated. If the court believes that you are engaging in alienating behaviors, though, this raises concerns about the risk of future harm to the children and the court might act to protect them from becoming alienated in the future.
Your child’s alienation is a realistic and appropriate response to severe maltreatment at the hands of the other parent.
You have neither overtly nor covertly contributed to, influenced, or supported your child’s alienation at any point in time and have made considerable efforts to foster a healthy relationship between your ex and your child.
Your child exhibits only temporary or occasional resistance or reluctance to be with the other parent or make the transition between parental homes.
Your child refuses to spend time with the other parent only in certain circumstances, such as in the presence of the parent’s new partner.
So now we know the effects of divorce poison on children. But how do children get this way? How, why, and when is the poison administered? We take up these questions next, starting with the most difficult: “How could parents do this to their own offspring?”