CHAPTER 4
MALIGNANT MOTIVES
The Court has no doubt that the cause of the blind, brainwashed, bigoted belligerence of the children toward the father grew from the soil nurtured, watered and tilled by the mother. The Court is thoroughly convinced that the mother breached every duty she owed as the custodial parent to the noncustodial parent of instilling love, respect and feeling in the children for their father. Worse, she slowly dripped poison into the minds of these children, maybe even beyond the power of this Court to find the antidote.
—FLORIDA JUDGE RICHARD YALE FEDER
From the time of your baby’s birth, even during the pregnancy, you dedicated yourself to ensuring your child’s safety and well-being. You provided food, clothing, pediatric visits, diapers, car seats, vegetables and vitamins, lullabies and bedtime stories. You willingly contributed your time, energy, and money to the care of your child. Your former spouse probably did the same.
So how could a loving parent deliberately poison his own child’s affections? The anger and disappointment that accompany divorce may explain occasional bad-mouthing. But to understand more malignant behavior, bashing and brainwashing, we need to look further. How could loving parents do something that so obviously violates their children’s trust, which so clearly damages their emotional well-being? What kinds of people do this to their children? Why do they do it? And how can we respond effectively?
As we search for the motives behind divorce poison, we should keep one thing in mind. A motive explains only the impulse to tamper with children’s affections. But an impulse is not an action. Parents often inhibit behavior toward their children rather than succumb to impulse. For example, we don’t spank every time we feel like doing so. Most divorcing parents go through a period when they feel chronic impulses to bad-mouth their ex-spouse, but they often suppress these when their children are present.
What is it that allows some loving parents to suspend their role as their children’s protector—to renege on their basic parental responsibility—rather than inhibit their behavior as they do other behavior they regard as destructive to their children? In many cases the answer is simple: They do not regard it as destructive to their children. Many parents who bad-mouth are so preoccupied with hurting their ex-spouses that they choose not to think about the impact on their children. Other parents appear incapable of recognizing that their own thoughts and feelings and their children’s needs may not be identical. Such parents will often refer to themselves and the children as a single unit. At the onset of the separation one mother told her husband, “We don’t want to see you. We don’t need you. Why don’t you just stay out of our lives?” When this woman thought of her family, she drew no distinction between her feelings and those of her children.
The blurring of parent-child boundaries allows parents to pursue, with single-minded determination, their goal of demeaning the ex, even when this means embarrassing the children; even when this means confusing them, depriving them, or scaring them.
I remember one particularly cruel example. An accountant who had successfully alienated his children from their mother became enraged when his wife refused to postpone a custody hearing for which he felt unprepared. While driving his children to a court-appointed therapy session, he vilified their mother, as he had done many times before. This time, though, he told them that their mother’s refusal to postpone the hearing would cause his cancer cells to spread all over his body and kill him. The father actually did have cancer, but his oncologist testified that the father’s condition had a cure rate of over 90 percent. Furthermore, the idea that the man was currently facing death was totally fabricated and without any medical basis. The father knew this. But his children did not.
This man’s rage at his wife, his wish to have the children align with him against her, and his unwillingness to modulate his outbursts led him to behave sadistically toward his own children. He made them think that he was near death’s door and that it was their own mother who was pushing him through it. To make the scenario even worse, he tied his impending death to the struggle over custody. The children knew that they were the subject of the legal battle, so it was no surprise that they felt some degree of responsibility themselves for his “impending death.” Unfortunately, after many years these children still have not recovered their love for their mother.
In their determination to undermine the relationship between the children and the target, parents act as though nothing is more important to their children than the parent’s own concerns. An example occurred in a telephone conversation between a mother and her son. I use the word conversation loosely because it was mainly a one-sided diatribe in which the boy struggled unsuccessfully to be heard. This mother expected her boy to be her “comrade in arms” in a custody battle. She told him that Daddy suffered from a mental illness and could become violent at any moment (this was not true). She told him that she knew he was scared of his father, even though the boy showed no such inclination. She ordered him to tell everyone he saw that he was afraid of his father. She also told him to call 911 and tell them to send out the police because he was afraid. And then when the police arrive, she said, tell them that you are afraid of your father and that you need to live with your mother.
Throughout the call the boy kept trying to change the subject rather than agree that his father was a horrible person. He tried to tell his mother about a project he was working on for school and about fun things that were occurring in his father’s home. The mother ignored his comments. She pursued her agenda until her son finally gave up. The rest of the conversation consisted of the mother repeating her warnings about the father and the son repeating “Yes, Mom” in a flat, monotone voice. When she was convinced of her success, the mother hung up. Her son did, in fact, call 911 and repeat verbatim what he had been coached to say. After many years this boy still refuses to speak to his father.
By treating her son as an accomplice in the custody dispute—a peer—and demanding his support, this woman was obliterating the usual psychological boundary that exists between adults and children. Kids should be able to look to their parents for support and guidance, not the other way around. When they are required to devote themselves to their parents’ emotional needs, they must prematurely surrender a part of childhood.
TAKE ACTION
If parent-child boundaries are blurred or in danger of becoming blurred, begin a dialogue with your child about similarities and differences between people. First, talk about relatively neutral topics, such as similarities and differences in appearance and in preferences for food, color, music, TV shows, and so on. How is your child like, but also different from, his two parents? Enlist your child’s interest in the conversation by challenging him to think of three ways in which he is like his mother and his father, and three ways in which he is different from them.
Next, move the discussion into the area of feelings. Parents and children don’t always feel the same. Begin with feelings other than anger. How is your child like and different in the things that make him happy? Scared? For example, your son loves cartoons; you love romantic movies. He may be afraid of the dark, but you aren’t. You may be afraid of snakes, while he enjoys handling them. Again, challenge him to think of his own examples.
Once the principle of different feelings has been taught, use an example that involves anger: Your boy may be furious with his sister and say he hates her, but you continue to love both. Examples like this can be used to show your child that he does not have to share the hatred of the alienating parent. “Because Daddy is very angry with Mommy, he wants you to be angry with me too. But you don’t have to be. You don’t have to feel everything the same as Daddy. You can have your own independent feelings.”
Helping children insulate themselves from a parent’s malignant influence is important. But it is usually not enough. To stop divorce poison, we must identify the specific motives, feelings, personality traits, and situations that drive the perpetrator. Different motives call for different responses. A strategy that ends bad-mouthing in one parent may intensify it in another.
Parents who bad-mouth and bash are angry people. Some may feel rejected. Some may feel betrayed. Some may believe they have been treated unfairly. Many want to get even. One way to retaliate is to deprive the ex of the children’s love.
A man whose wife initiates the divorce tells her, “If you want to leave me for another man, our children are going to know what kind of woman you are. Leave me and you can say good-bye to your children.” Since the court will not generally agree that this is a good reason for children to lose their mother, his next step is to undermine the children’s regard for her so that they will not want to see her.
When divorce poison is driven by revenge, the most effective antidote is to eliminate the provocation. Ask yourself, “Why is he or she so angry? Is there anything I can do about it?”
Sam knew exactly why his ex-wife was bad-mouthing him to their children. When Trish decided to leave him after twenty years of marriage, he punished her by being dishonest during the divorce negotiations. He hid much of their financial assets from her. As a result, Trish received a very unfair settlement, and they both knew it. She retaliated by running him down in front of the children, telling them that he was a liar and a cheat. As his children suffered from the bad-mouthing, and his own initial anger about the divorce subsided with time, Sam did something very unusual. He instructed his lawyer to revise the original divorce settlement. This move surprised Trish. Though she didn’t thank Sam (she was getting what she should have had all along), she did feel less angry and restrained her bad-mouthing. It was the beginning of a more trusting coparenting relationship. Everyone benefited.
In most cases the anger behind divorce poison is a response to real or perceived offenses that cannot be undone. All you may be able to do is reduce the rage. A common example is marital infidelity. If you were unfaithful in your marriage, and your ex-spouse is retaliating by turning the children against you, you cannot eliminate the provocation. But you can acknowledge your wrongdoing. You can apologize for the pain you have caused. You can express regret, and ask that the children not be made to pay for your sins. By conveying that the rage is understandable and a valid response to betrayal, you may accelerate the process of healing.
You should also consider joint therapy. It offers a safe, neutral environment in which to express rage and disappointment. And it provides a forum for civil communication. A bad-mouthing parent, blinded by his anger, is more likely to accept advice when it comes from an impartial mental health professional (or a pastor or rabbi) than from the target of his anger.
Some couples who agree to get therapy have so much animosity and distrust that they cannot agree on a therapist. If you find yourself in this situation, don’t give up. Ask your attorneys to consult with each other and select a therapist they both respect. Or one party can make a list of three recommended therapists and the other selects one from the list. It is in everyone’s interest that the therapist be experienced, competent, and unbiased. Consult chapter 8, “Getting Professional Help,” for more tips on choosing a therapist and getting the most out of your therapy sessions.
TAKE ACTION
When divorce poison is driven by revenge, the most effective antidote is to eliminate the provocation. Ask yourself, Why is he or she so angry? Is there anything I can do about it?
- Eliminate the provocation, if possible.
- Reduce the rage by taking responsibility for your part in provoking it.
- Send a “peace offering” letter, apologizing for the hurt you have caused and asking that the children not be punished for your mistakes.
- Get joint therapy.
Bad-mouthing parents act superior. But many actually feel inferior as parents. They put down the other parent in order to convince themselves, the children, and the world that they are the better parent and more deserving of love.
Such parents fail to appreciate that the bad-mouthing and bashing they use to bolster their image as parents accomplishes the exact opposite. It demonstrates, for all to see, a severe parental deficiency: the willingness to sacrifice their children’s needs in order to feed their own weak egos.
In The Custody Revolution I described how excessive narcissism leads some parents to fight for custody. Readers let me know that it also leads to divorce poison. How can you tell when narcissism is behind efforts to turn your children against you? Look for some of the following traits:
- an overly inflated view of the person’s own importance (not to be confused with genuine positive self-regard—a narcissistic man is “a legend in his own mind”)
- a tendency to exaggerate accomplishments
- an excessive need for admiration
- a noticeable lack of empathy (He does not put himself in other’s shoes.)
- excessive envy
- a constant belief that others envy him
- an imperious, condescending manner
- a sense of entitlement that pervades interpersonal relationships
I consulted on a case in New York City in which a man clearly fit the above profile. Vincent was well known in his community as a father who sought positions of authority in nearly every extracurricular activity that involved children. He was the scout leader, the soccer and baseball head coach, the Sunday school teacher, the safety chairman of the Homeowners Association, and so on. He did everything possible to build his résumé as a parent.
Initially Vincent impressed his neighbors. Then one by one they became disillusioned with him. They described him as someone who acted as if he were entitled to their favors. He took advantage of them. They also said Vincent always drew attention to himself. He would tell anyone who was willing to listen about how much prestige and influence he had in the community, about how much he did for his son, about how pious he was.
After his divorce Vincent married a woman with custody of her daughter. He quickly became embroiled in two separate custody disputes. First, he tried to erase his stepdaughter’s father from the girl’s life. Second, he tried to diminish the role of his son’s mother in the boy’s life. In both cases he seemed on a mission to persuade the children (and the courts) to accept him and his wife as their only legitimate parents. And in both cases the judge ruled against Vincent and expressed concern about his inability to recognize the damage he was causing.
Excessive narcissism is not restricted to men. Wanda continuously ran down her husband in front of their two boys, with little regard for the children’s feelings. She craved attention from other men and dreamed of a better life, and finally she decided she deserved more. She told her husband that she was leaving and agreed that the boys would alternate weeks with each parent.
While the children were on a trip with their church youth group, Wanda moved into an apartment in another school district, closer to the friends with whom she liked to party. She took with her nearly all of the children’s clothes (except old clothes that no longer fit) and most of the furniture. Her apartment was too small to accommodate everything, so Wanda rented a storage unit. In an incredible display of disregard for her family, she also took the refrigerator, which her mother had given them, and moved it into storage since her apartment was already equipped with one. Wanda told her husband that the children would have to stay with him the first week because she needed time to get settled. So the children returned from their vacation to an empty house.
The teenage son was furious with his mother. He had no clean clothes to wear to school and none of his familiar possessions. When he came to her apartment the next week, he discovered that his “bedroom” was the den, with no privacy. He saw that the refrigerator, which she took, was not there. And he had to wake up earlier than usual in order to take the city bus to his school, which was three blocks from his father’s house. The boy complained and asked to spend more nights in his father’s home. Wanda responded by accusing her husband of brainwashing. She failed to appreciate that her self-centered behavior angered her son. The boy’s younger brother was also upset by the move, but he tried to please both parents by keeping his complaints to himself.
Parents who make false accusations of parental alienation often have narcissistic traits. Their self-centered behavior antagonizes their children, but such parents blame the resulting problems on the other parent. Narcissists rarely take responsibility for the havoc they create in their relationships.
TAKE ACTION
To protect against false charges of divorce poison made by a narcissistic ex, keep a list of your ex-spouse’s behavior that creates problems in his or her relationship with the children. Include behaviors such as repeated broken promises, bad-mouthing you to the children, and ignoring the children’s legitimate needs.
Continue to support your children’s love and respect for your ex. Help them appreciate his or her positive qualities in addition to empathizing with their dislike of the narcissistic behavior. If you are accused of alienating the children, it is important to demonstrate that: (1) although the children have a strong preference for you, they have a balanced view of their other parent and are not alienated, (2) their difficulties with the other parent are a direct and realistic reaction to the treatment they have received from that parent, and (3) rather than exploit their complaints to turn the children against your ex, you have done the opposite by encouraging the continuation of the relationship. In most cases, even when a parent has significant psychological problems, children are better off maintaining ties in some form. In the long run your children will be grateful that you helped them achieve this.
Some narcissistic parents successfully manipulate their children to side with them against the other parent. Children may join in a campaign of denigration in order to curry favor with the parent whose capacity for genuine reciprocal attachment is more limited. The children sense the shallow emotional investment of the self-absorbed parent, and do what they can to preserve their tenuous tie to this parent. Particularly when narcissism is combined with aggression, children may fearfully endorse the parent’s campaign of hatred rather than risk becoming targets themselves. I will have more to say about this in the next chapter.
Paradoxically, self-absorbed people can be charismatic and charming to others when their needs for adulation are gratified. Some of the rich and famous fall into this category. They may successfully seduce children’s allegiance through an aura of excitement and special treatment and the trappings of success that surround them.
Then there are the unlucky children who have two highly narcissistic parents. Such parents blithely fight each other and accuse each other of divorce poison, all the while being oblivious to or complacent about the impact of their battles on their children.
Narcissistic parents like Vincent and Wanda generally make poor candidates for therapy or mediation. Because they are deficient in understanding other’s feelings, they do not understand the necessity of compromise or how their behavior affects their children. Although you should try therapy as a first option, unfortunately it often takes the threat of legal sanctions, such as losing custody, to make an impact on such parents.
Because narcissists use divorce poison to compensate for feeling inferior as parents, anything you can do to support their egos in a reasonable manner may lessen their need to put you down. For example, encourage them to make unique contributions to their children’s lives, contributions they can brag about. This might be participating in scouts or assisting with special school projects. Narcissists are exquisitely sensitive to appearances. It can be helpful for them to retain the legal title of joint custodian even if the children spend relatively little time in their care and the other parent retains the authority to make most decisions. If, instead, the court strips them of this title, the resulting loss of face could exacerbate the brainwashing.
TAKE ACTION
To respond to narcissism:
- Bolster their self-respect by providing opportunities for narcissists to contribute meaningfully to their children’s lives.
- Attempt counseling.
- If divorce poison continues, consider legal action.
All parents regret some things they did or did not do for their children. Some divorced parents have so little tolerance for guilt that they try to deflect attention from their own failings by focusing on how much worse the other parent is. A man who spent too little time with his children, for example, decides to make up for this by rescuing them from a mother whom he now regards as the incarnation of everything rotten in a parent.
Guilt can also lead a parent to make a false accusation of brainwashing. I once received a call from a woman whose ex-husband had abandoned their daughter for seven years. After the failure of his second marriage, he decided to renew contact with his child. He expected that she would be thrilled to be reunited with her father. The reality was markedly different. His daughter was reluctant to spend time with him. To her he was a stranger. She resisted going on visits with him and she was reserved in his presence. Rather than accept responsibility for causing the situation and proceed in a more reasonable manner to gradually build a relationship with his child, this father accused the girl’s mother of fostering the child’s estrangement. His solution was to seek immediate full custody. Fortunately, he was unsuccessful.
TAKE ACTION
Therapy is often effective when guilt is the main motive behind bad-mouthing or false accusations of brainwashing. The guilty parent must be helped to appreciate that the best way to atone for past misdeeds is to focus on the child’s current needs. Bad-mouthing, bashing, and brainwashing only compound the child’s problems, and will in turn increase the perpetrator’s guilt.
Some parents doubt their ability to maintain their children’s love and affection. They regard the other parent as a competitor for the children’s love and are afraid that they will eventually lose the competition. To cope with their insecurity they try to drive a wedge between the children and the other parent. Their hope is that this will cement the children’s relationship with them.
From the time of the divorce Frances rejected every request made by her ex-husband to spend more time with his young son. In the face of growing hostilities, Frances’s father called a meeting to try to make peace. At the meeting Frances revealed that she left her little boy with a baby-sitter nearly every Saturday and Sunday, in addition to the full-time day care she used during the week. Her father gently suggested that she could allow the boy’s father and grandparents to care for the child some of these times. Frances was infuriated. Half screaming and half crying, she asked, “Why should I allow that? I don’t want my boy to become more bonded to his dad than to me.” At a deeper level Frances knew that her ex-husband had more warmth and affection to give a child and that her son probably would feel closer to his father in the long run. What she did not realize was that children have enough room in their hearts to love both parents, despite the limitations of each. You will find this type of insecurity in many instances of bad-mouthing and bashing.
TAKE ACTION
Reassure your ex of his or her importance to your children. Refrain from behavior that can appear to be a competition for the children’s favor. If the children enjoy a special activity with their other parent, don’t duplicate the activity in your home. Let them have unique pleasures with each parent.
Some parents denigrate ex-spouses merely because it feels good. They seek an outlet for their anger by expressing it to other people, and they hope that their audience will agree with their assessments. The audience is anyone who will listen: coworkers, relatives, friends, and at times, but not always, the children. Even when the children are not the intended audience, they will be hurt if their parents make no special effort to censor their comments when the children are within earshot.
When alienation occurs in these cases it may be an unintended consequence of the children’s overhearing repeated put-downs of their other parent. But often it is no accident that the children have been exposed to the criticisms. The parent (whether consciously or not) wants the children to share the same negative opinion of the target.
TAKE ACTION
If the children overhear bad comments about you, don’t assume that your ex is deliberately poisoning them. Tell the bad-mouthing parent that you thought he or she would want to know what the children have heard and repeated. Say this in a noncritical tone. If your ex will be unreceptive to anything you have to say, ask someone else in the family to bring up the subject. Parents sometimes need reminders to take care in what they say around their children. This is particularly true in the early stages of separation, when anger and distress are at a peak. Parents who have inadvertently allowed the children to overhear destructive criticisms of their other parent may be willing to alter their behavior with feedback about it if they do not feel attacked for their mistakes.
When a recently divorced man goes on his first date and spends most of the time complaining about his ex-wife, his date knows that this man is not yet emotionally ready for a new relationship. He is preoccupied with thoughts and feelings about his marriage and divorce. And this reveals that he is still—in some way—connected to his ex.
This is not surprising. Two people meet, fall in love, marry, conceive and raise children together, vacation together, and share life’s joys and tragedies, ups and downs. Through years of shared experiences they form strong emotional ties. When the marriage fails, a judge’s signature on a divorce decree may sever their legal tie. But we should not expect their emotional connection to evaporate immediately or completely.
In time most people put the marriage and divorce behind them. They gradually withdraw their emotional investment in the former spouse. They form new relationships. They think about their ex-spouse less often and with less intense emotion. They find better things to do with their time than obsess about the faults of their former partner. And they neither seek nor want extensive contact.
Some people, though, are unwilling to let go, and they are not necessarily the rejected spouses. It is surprising and ironic that often the ones who initiated the divorce have more difficulty accepting the end of the relationship. They become determined to maintain a passionate relationship any way they can. When they are unable to arouse romantic passion, they will settle for rage. Like children starved for attention who misbehave to get it, they prefer highly charged negative involvement to none at all.
A relentless, virulent campaign of denigration guarantees ongoing contact. The goal is not to end the children’s relationship with the other parent, it is to remain entangled with the ex. As long as they attack and accuse, they can look forward to some response. It is as if they are saying “I refuse to give you up. If I cannot have your love, I’ll hold on with hate. I will keep you involved whether you like it or not. We will continue to dominate each other’s thoughts. We will continue to stir strong feelings in each other.”
These parents act as if their main goal in life is to make their ex miserable. Often they succeed. They may be so successful that they drive the alienated parent away: The target parent gives up trying to foster a relationship with the children. But the denigrating parent does not stop pursuing a relationship with the target. He or she merely finds another way to assure contact. A favorite forum is the courtroom.
Litigation provides ample opportunities to provoke hostile engagement. Most of these actually occur before trial, in the form of discovery, interrogatories, and depositions. These legal tactics give bashing and brainwashing parents a front-row center seat from which to observe intimate details of their ex-spouse’s life.
Requests for discovery are formal demands that require a person involved in a lawsuit to turn over to the other side specified documents. These can include highly personal material such as diaries and bank statements. Interrogatories are pretrial questions put by one side to the other which, by law, require written responses. The requests can be quite intrusive. These often include, for example, questions about the frequency of sexual intercourse with a boyfriend. Depositions are pretrial examinations of a witness conducted by an attorney with no judge present. The witness is sworn to tell the truth, just as in a courtroom, and a court reporter records the proceedings. Although the opposing attorney can raise objections, because no judge is present to rule on the objections, the witness may be asked irrelevant, provocative, and intrusive questions. In a Connecticut deposition I recently attended as a trial consultant, a man was asked about his masturbation practices. Despite his embarrassment (of the eight people in the room, three were women), he answered the question. If the case goes to trial, and the judge sustains the objection, the answer will not be part of the official testimony. But by this point the damage is often done.
One survivor of brutal litigation felt as if she had been run through “a psychological meat grinder.” Most people feel the same. They experience it as a vicious crisis which dominates their life for months, sometimes years. But the crisis is welcome to ex-spouses who refuse to let go. It allows the relationship with the ex-spouse to take center stage. One man harassed his ex-wife by filing repeated suits to modify custody. Even when the judge ordered a two-year moratorium on any such suits, the man violated the court ruling within six months. He simply could not resist embroiling his ex in the turmoil of a lawsuit.
Friends and relatives of such parents eventually withdraw their support and admonish them, in effect, to get a life. This is precisely what may help the situation. When I suspect that the wish to hold on is behind a campaign of hate, I will usually tell alienated parents that their best hope for relief is for their former spouse to find a new love. Only then will they be willing to close the book on their marriage.
IS YOUR EX-SPOUSE HOLDING ON WITH HATE?
The distinguishing feature of an ex who holds on is the high frequency of contact with you. By contrast, the brainwashing parent who truly wants to end the relationship minimizes contact; all his actions are consistent with the goal of erasing you from his life and the lives of your children.
If you think you are the target of bashing and brainwashing by an ex who refuses to let go, look for the following behaviors:
Constantly pumps neighbors and friends for information about you and your activities
Frequently initiates contact with you: This may take the form of stalking, calling often, leaving long voice-mail messages, or threatening lawsuits.
Tries to draw you into arguments that rehash old marital grievances
Is preoccupied with expressing hatred for you even when you are not around
Constantly shows up at places where you are sure to be
Makes no attempt to inhibit hostile exchanges in public; provokes embarrassing scenes at children’s school and athletic events
Seems to take pleasure in the hostile encounters: for example, when talking about the turmoil he creates, is unable to suppress a gleeful smile
Though denouncing you as evil and worthless, periodically raises the possibility of reconciliation. Or, gives you the distinct impression that he wants to reconcile.
People who suffer from paranoia have a pervasive tendency to categorize others as either “for” them or “against” them. Any life stress heightens this tendency. When going through divorce, parents with this trait worry about the allegiance of relatives, friends, and even their own children. No one they know can be neutral. Those who are not unconditionally with them are against them. As a result, their children feel pressured into joining in a campaign of denigration against the other parent.
Paranoid people are exquisitely sensitive to slights. It takes very little to arouse their suspicions. One father panicked and thought that his phone contact with his daughter was being permanently cut off simply because one scheduled call was missed. As it turned out, his daughter did try to call, but his line was busy and she went to sleep early. If the children are belligerent, whiny, or disobedient, such parents leap to the conclusion that the children are becoming alienated, and they blame the other parent. Of course all children act this way at times. Children are especially likely to be negativistic and oppositional when they have been exposed to marital turmoil. Such considerations will be overlooked by paranoid parents. They will generally dismiss the most probable and benign explanations for behavior in favor of far-fetched and malevolent interpretations. To defend against imagined alienation, these parents may engage in preemptive strikes: They try to turn the children against the parent they falsely accuse of brainwashing.
Shortly after his ex-wife remarried, Gene became increasingly worried that she might try to reduce his time with their four-year-old son. The more he worried about it, the more he convinced himself that she was in fact planning a lawsuit against him. His anxiety heightened when his son spoke positively about his new stepfather. Gene channeled his anxiety into what eventually became a brainwashing campaign. He began to inspect his son for bruises upon every return from the mother’s home. The boy got the message that his father did not think the mother’s home was safe for a child. Everyday childhood bumps and scrapes became evidence, in Gene’s mind, of abuse. The boy tried to explain the innocuous source of the injuries, like falling off a bike or tripping over a shoelace. But Gene dismissed the explanations as cover-ups, excuses made by a child who was too scared to reveal that his stepfather hurt him. In fact, the more the child defended his stepfather, the more Gene became convinced that the boy was afraid of the man. Over time, much of the boy’s behavior became signs to Gene of abuse. When the boy had a couple of nightmares, rather than accept these as normal for children this age, Gene assumed that these were traumatic symptoms.
Gene made numerous complaints to child welfare. Each complaint was dutifully investigated. The outcome was always the same. There was no rational basis to suspect abuse in the mother’s home. Eventually, Gene’s alienating behavior became too much for his ex to ignore and she did just what he originally feared. She filed a lawsuit to modify their custody agreement in order to protect her son from his father’s paranoid behavior.
As Gene’s case illustrates, when paranoid people act on their suspicions, they often bring about the very situation they feared in the first place. It is crucial that courts realize that the parent who first raises an accusation of divorce poison may well be the perpetrator rather than the victim. Otherwise the court might deprive the healthier parent of custody. In this manner, the paranoid parent’s efforts are sometimes successful.
More often than not, however, their efforts backfire. They confuse and scare the children and ultimately alienate them. When this occurs the parents almost never recognize their own contributions to the problem. Instead they feel vindicated in their initial paranoid beliefs. They tell themselves, and anyone who will listen, “I knew they were against me all the time.”
Paranoid parents gravitate to the courts to seek justice. So you may have no choice but to use legal remedies to respond to their destructive behavior. This is unfortunate. Courtroom battles are inevitably embarrassing and frustrating. They exacerbate rather than relieve a paranoid person’s concerns about persecution. Some therapists have reported success when courts have ordered paranoid parents to participate in treatment with groups of families.
TAKE ACTION
If paranoia is fueling divorce poison, you must exercise great care in how you treat the perpetrator. Paranoid people become more anxious when they sense that important information is being withheld, or when things are uncertain. Their anxiety leads to indignation and rage. Like scared dogs, paranoid people can become dangerous when they feel threatened. The less uncertainty they face, the less they will fill in the gaps of their knowledge with suspicions and distortions.
- Try to keep a paranoid ex informed of relevant matters.
- Communicate clearly in a calm and respectful tone of voice. Avoid any appearance of concealing things.
- Give the paranoid parent time to think about any proposals before expecting a response.
- Set clear and reasonable limits and then stick to them.
- As much as possible, follow through on your agreements and act in a predictable manner.
A few years ago I made a discovery. In reviewing the backgrounds of parents who foster alienation, I noticed that a very high percentage had a poor or absent relationship with at least one of their own parents. I think there is a connection.
Sigmund Freud wrote about our “compulsion to repeat” past unpleasant experiences and modern psychological research has confirmed this tendency. Sometimes the replay occurs in our minds, as in the case of “flashbacks” or dreams, and sometimes in reality, as in the case of child abuse victims who inflict similar abuse on their own children.
The psychological purpose of reenactment is not clear. One theory suggests that a sense of mastery is gained by inflicting the trauma on someone else so that the formerly helpless victim becomes the powerful perpetrator. This may explain why some parents mistreat their children in the same way the parents were mistreated in childhood, and why some divorced parents who have suffered the absence of a parent will try to inflict the same deprivation on their children rather than protect them from a similar fate. If we recognize when this dynamic lies behind brainwashing, we can use this information to help persuade a parent to stop the destructive behavior.
One woman in San Francisco had not talked to her own father for the nine years prior to his death. She had been programmed to believe that he was a criminal unworthy of her love. Somehow she managed to marry a man whose moral character was above reproach. He was an involved, devoted father, with a patient, good-hearted, optimistic nature. One afternoon this woman came home after having had a few drinks with lunch. She became volatile and enraged over an imagined slight on his part. Despite her sons’ presence in the house, she began screaming vile epithets at her husband and clawing at his face. Then she bashed him over the head with a metal garbage can, which left a nine-inch dent (in the can, not his head). After she ripped his shirt and began choking him, he tried to restrain her by grabbing her upper arms. When she still would not stop, he called the police. They came and calmed things down.
A few days later the husband was shocked to be served with papers indicating that his wife had filed criminal charges against him. She told her sons (and everyone else who would listen) that their father was a violent man. She started calling herself a battered wife, and made it her mission to have her husband declared a felon and thrown in jail. Unlike most truly battered women, she showed no fear of her husband. Quite the opposite: She repeatedly harassed him with taunting and threatening phone calls. None of the domestic violence experts she consulted (all women) agreed that she was a battered woman. Instead they thought that she had trouble controlling her own violent impulses. The woman went from one therapist to another until she finally found one, selected by her lawyer, who responded to her persuasive presentation, believed her tales of victimhood, and was willing to testify on her behalf.
The mother filed for divorce and tried to keep the father from having any access to his sons. When the court did not agree, she began programming the boys to fear their father. She told them that she hoped they did not grow up to be like their father because he was evil. She tried to get the boys to regard him as a criminal and reject him, just as she rejected her own father. The court warned her that if she continued her attempts at brainwashing she would lose custody. But the impulse to re-create in her children the alienation she suffered toward her own father was strong and she continued to give in to it. Eventually she lost custody.
It is well known that some children who are abused by their parents grow up to be abusing parents themselves. Custody evaluators see a related phenomenon. Divorced parents who were victims of child abuse, eager to protect their own children from such a fate, and angry and distrustful toward their ex-spouse, may be too quick to conclude that the ex has abused the children. Normal childhood events, such as nightmares, minor bruises, touching the crotch, all become the basis for suspicions of abuse. Parents on the lookout for abuse dismiss the more probable benign explanations for such events. When these parents convince themselves that their ex has abused the children, they have less incentive to inhibit bad-mouthing and bashing because they believe their children should hate their other parent. The added danger is that, through repeated questioning, the children may eventually develop false beliefs that they have been abused. As discussed in chapter 3, such false beliefs create serious psychological problems in addition to the alienation from the alleged abuser.
TAKE ACTION
If your ex seems to be reenacting a childhood deprivation or trauma, ask one of his or her close relatives, such as a sibling, to speak with your ex about the situation. They should help your ex recall the unpleasant feelings associated with the deprivation, and encourage him or her to spare the children a similar fate. People who reenact earlier traumas may not be fully aware of what drives their behavior. They will be more receptive to hearing this type of analysis from a trusted relative than from the target of their divorce poison. It is likely that your ex will be angry if he or she learns that you spoke to the relatives. This is a risk you will need to consider before taking this action.
Parents with weak psychological boundaries are not fully aware of the damage they are doing to their children. If they were, presumably they would stop acting so destructively. But some brainwashing parents actually harbor substantial hostility toward their children. In some cases they are jealous of the attention the children receive from the ex. To cover up such feelings, they point to their exaggerated efforts to “protect” the children from the other parent as evidence of how much they love the children. Under the guise of protection, these parents induce unnecessary anxiety while attempting to drive a wedge between the children and the target parent. Loving parents promote their children’s emotional security. Cruel and emotionally abusive parents intensify their children’s fears and insecurities.
I participated in one case in which a mother with custody protested the father’s desire to spend longer weekends with his daughter, even though the four-year-old pleaded for more time with her father. The mother claimed that spending an extra night would be more than the child could handle. And she found two psychologists to support her claim. (Incidentally, it is a sad commentary on the state of forensic psychology that parents can usually locate a mental health “expert” who is willing to offer, in testimony under oath, biased opinions or opinions with no scientific foundation. Chapter 8, “Getting Professional Help,” provides guidelines for evaluating those from whom you seek help.)
My review of the case revealed that this woman had a harsh and rigid approach to child-rearing. She admitting to using spanking as a regular form of discipline and seemed to take pride in this. Although the father was available to care for his daughter every afternoon and wanted very much to do so, the mother insisted on leaving the child in a ten-hour day care program five days per week. On weekends she usually left her daughter with baby-sitters while she went out to bars. And her psychological test profile showed several signs of an immature and self-centered personality with severe limitations in being able to empathize with her daughter’s feelings. My conclusion: Although she presented herself as obsessively concerned with protecting her daughter, odds were that this woman had far less love for her child than she pretended.
Subsequent events confirmed my impressions. The judge decided that the girl could benefit from having more time with her father and expanded her weekend time to begin Thursday at noon and extend to Monday morning. The judge also awarded the father thirty days of contact in the summer. On my advice the father offered a plan in which the thirty days would not be taken consecutively. I thought one whole month was too long for a four-year-old child to be away from either parent. Remember, the mother originally complained that just three consecutive weekend days were too much for her daughter to be apart from her. If her complaint about three days was sincere (however misguided), she should have jumped at the chance to reduce thirty days to several shorter periods. Instead, she revealed her true colors when she rejected the father’s offer and insisted that the entire thirty days be taken consecutively.
TAKE ACTION
When your ex tries to undermine your child’s sense of security with you, invite the child to judge for himself whether the other parent’s fears are justified. For example, if the allegation is made that you do not allow the child to call his father when he is with you, point out how this allegation conflicts with the numerous times in which such calls were facilitated. Help your child understand that the other parent sometimes has fears and worries that are exaggerated, and that the child does not have to share these worries. When divorce poison masks a lot of hostility toward the children, you will have a better chance of being effective if you concentrate on helping the children rationally evaluate the alienating parent’s overprotective behavior. This should be done in a gentle manner, with sensitivity to your child’s anxiety. Consider having a third party implement this suggestion. This may help the children avoid the sense that they are being asked to take sides.
Usually several factors combine to bring about bashing and brainwashing. Two situations, though, are the most likely to provoke a parent into malicious criticism: custody disputes and remarriage. These bring out the worst in parents. I estimate that more than half of all cases of parental brainwashing occur in the context of a custody battle. And an ex-spouse’s remarriage may reignite the high degree of rage and hostility that can lead to divorce poison. Often the two situations combine. Remarriage, with its accompanying changes, triggers a renewed battle over where the children will live.
Let us examine how custody disputes and remarriage place your family at higher risk for divorce poison, and what you can do to protect yourself and your children.
When Jennifer told Karl that she wanted a divorce, he was infuriated. She added insult to injury when she said she was moving to another state and taking the kids with her. Karl was beside himself with rage. He retained an attorney known for his brutal, “take no prisoners” tactics and immediately sued for sole custody. While the suit was pending, Karl took every opportunity to tell the children what a bad, selfish mother they had. He told them secrets that she had confided to him during the early stage of their marriage, such as her confession of a brief lesbian encounter in college. Blinded by his anger, Karl was committed to destroying Jennifer’s reputation with her own children. Jennifer countered with some mild bad-mouthing of her own.
Custody litigation is a hostile process. Hostility generates the dispute in the first place. And the dispute itself—the stress, frustration, and legal maneuvering—breeds additional hostility. One way to express all this hostility is to destroy the other parent’s relationship with the children. So if you are involved in a custody dispute, and your children are being exposed to bad-mouthing, bashing and brainwashing may come next.
Divorce poison in a custody battle, however, has a more specific purpose than the mere expression of hostility. Karl’s bashing of Jennifer began as a diffuse outlet for his rage. But as the litigation heated up, he began a more systematic and focused campaign to turn the children against their mother. He began brainwashing them. Now he was not merely punishing Jennifer. He was trying to gain a strategic advantage in court. Like many parents, Karl believed that he could win the custody battle if he could successfully manipulate his children’s affections. In some cases this works.
Creating False Impressions
If your children turn against you, the burden is on you to prove your innocence. You will need to present evidence of your previous good relationship with the children. And you will need to show that you have done nothing to warrant their rejection. This will be difficult if you are unlucky enough to encounter a certain type of judge or mental health professional appointed by the judge to make custody recommendations. Such professionals understand that parents influence children’s affections. But they fail to realize how completely a child can be manipulated to turn against a good parent. They believe that “where there’s smoke, there’s fire.” They assume that if your child hates or fears you, you must have done something to deserve it. And you will lose custody.
You have a better chance of defending yourself with a judge who believes that children can be brainwashed. But even then, many times the manipulations are so subtle that they go undetected. If the judge mistakenly believes that your child’s alienation is reality based and not the result of programming, she will deprive you of custody. To hold on to your children, you will need to expose your ex’s motives and manipulations. Review the malignant motives discussed earlier and the material in the next two chapters, which explain exactly how irrational alienation is promulgated.
Alienated parents must not only prove that their children have been manipulated, they must convince the judge that the manipulation caused the alienation. Judges are often unclear about exactly what caused the alienation. All parents occasionally act in irrational ways that frighten and anger children. This is particularly true around the time of the breakup, when parents are most stressed. A parent intent on poisoning his children’s affections will use such behavior as the foundation for an alienation campaign. A few incidents, which were not at all typical of a parent’s usual behavior, are cited as justification for the children’s rejection of a formerly loved parent.
I was called in to one case by a distraught mother. Her son had convinced the court-appointed counselor that he should have no more than brief contacts with his mother. The boy complained that his mother expected him to spend too much time with her and not enough with his friends. He also accused her of losing her temper and spanking him. He said he was afraid to be alone with her. And when it came time to be with her, he did act frightened.
The mother admitted to the counselor that she had spanked her son on three separate occasions. She also said that she probably restricted his freedom more than most mothers and that she could stand to improve in this regard. Nevertheless, she maintained that her son’s current attitude was not a realistic response to her parenting: It was the result of his father’s programming.
The counselor agreed that the father was actively trying to turn the boy against his mother. Nevertheless, he concluded that the mother was equally responsible for her son’s alienation. For this reason he recommended that the boy’s wish to avoid his mother be honored by the court. Although the phrase is overused, I thought this clearly was a case of “blaming the victim.”
I also thought this counselor’s conclusion showed poor common sense. He failed to appreciate that every parent has faults. We all do or say things to our children that we regret. There will usually be some elements of truth to an alienated child’s complaints about the target’s behavior. Without systematic programming, however, this behavior would never result in the child’s alienation from the parent. And it would never justify depriving a mother of access to her child.
This counselor did not fully comprehend the power of mental coercion, so he found it hard to believe that the boy’s alienation lacked any firm basis in reality. His sympathies rested with the scared child. His first priority was to shield the boy from what appeared to be a frightening situation—spending time with his own mother!
What should you do if you are in a custody dispute and are blamed for your child’s estrangement from you? Two things: You must expose the nature of the programming, a topic we take up in chapters 5 and 6; and you must present evidence of the good relationship you enjoyed with your child prior to the bashing and brainwashing.
TAKE ACTION
To show that you have previously enjoyed a good relationship with your children, provide the court-appointed evaluator with objective evidence. Offer to bring in videos, photos, gifts, and greeting cards that demonstrate your children’s affection toward you. Keep a journal documenting your ex’s alienating behavior and your children’s behavior that reveals their struggles with pressure to reject you. Give the evaluator a list of names and phone numbers of adults who have observed you and your children together. Make sure the list includes people who would not be expected to be biased in your favor. Your mother may give you a glowing endorsement as a parent, but the court is not likely to view her as an impartial reporter. The list should include teachers, coaches, and parents who have seen you at extracurricular activities. Ask the evaluator to contact these people. Why? The evaluator will hear vastly conflicting accounts of reality. If your children are alienated, their fears and complaints may appear very convincing. You will have a better chance of proving that their negative attitudes are a response to divorce poison if you can provide the evaluator and the court with evidence that your past involvement with the children was generally positive.
One father had his former mother-in-law describe the close relationship that used to exist between him and his son. This was most convincing because, if anything, the court would have expected her to be biased in favor of her own daughter. One mother, whose children claimed that she was never any fun to be with, brought in videotapes of her and the children playing happily together throughout their earlier years. This showed the court-appointed evaluator that her children’s complaints were the product of recent attitude changes and were not characteristic of their relationship.
Before you convince a judge to force your child to face the object of his fear—you—the judge will need to be convinced that the fear is not a realistic response to any mistreatment on your part. Your attorney’s job, with your help, will be to educate the court about the specific means by which your child has been turned against you. Sometimes a child’s fear is so great, and the child so emphatic, that clear evidence of brainwashing is not enough to erase a measure of doubt about the target’s parenting abilities. Particularly when allegations are raised of gross mistreatment or abuse, the judge may decide it is better to err on the side of caution and restrict the child’s contact with the estranged parent. The problem with this approach is that it further entrenches alienation. In the interests of protecting the child from harm, the court inadvertently joins in emotional abuse by depriving the child of a loving relationship with the target.
You can lose custody of your children if the judge fails to recognize that their denigration and discomfort with you are signs of bashing and brainwashing. This can occur for three reasons:
- The judge may not believe that children can be programmed to turn against a parent.
- The signs of manipulation may be subtle and elude detection.
- In spite of detecting manipulation, the judge may hold your behavior accountable for your children’s rejection.
The Child Preference Factor
We have discussed how divorce poison can cost you custody if the judge believes that your behavior is responsible for your children’s rejection. In some cases, however, a manipulative parent can gain the upper hand in custody litigation merely by convincing the child to express a preference to live with him or her. A majority of states allow the judge to give weight to your child’s preference, depending on the age of the child. In Texas, for example, a child twelve years of age or older used to be able to designate the custodial parent. The child’s choice is not followed automatically; it is subject to the judge’s approval. But the law was enacted because the legislature wanted judges to give strong consideration to the wishes of children who had reached their twelfth birthday.
When a child’s custody preference is decisive, parents have a strong incentive to mold that preference. Some will resort to brainwashing to accomplish this goal. If the child can be coerced into choosing one parent over the other, it could spare a parent the necessity of a costly custody trial. Moreover, since courts generally prefer to keep siblings together, the parent who persuades the oldest child to take sides may win custody of all the children.
Here is the general scenario. The parent engages in a campaign to turn the child against the other parent. Once the child has been successfully programmed, the parent takes the child to an attorney. After hearing the child’s litany of complaints against the target, the attorney draws up an affidavit, which the child signs. The child may then sheepishly avoid telling the nonpreferred parent about the trip to the lawyer’s office or about the affidavit. That parent may first learn about the affidavit only upon being served with legal papers.
TAKE ACTION
If you have reason to believe that your ex is bad-mouthing you to the children, and he or she threatens to pressure the children to express a custody preference, you must take steps to protect yourself. Find out what the laws are in your state regarding children’s custody preferences. Ask a family lawyer or a legal aid society. You may also locate this information on the Internet. If your children are old enough to sign a statement of preference, you will need to prepare them for the possibility that their other parent will ask them to do so. Tell the children that you know they love both their parents and that they do not have to take sides in the dispute. If anyone asks them to do so, they can simply say that they don’t want to be put in the middle. If you wait until your children have expressed a preference, it may be too late to reverse the damage. The very act of publicly declaring their allegiance to one parent can further entrench their alienation from the other.
Lynn did a good job of helping her sons prepare for the possibility that their father might ask them to sign an affidavit of preference. She explained, “Dad wants you to live with him during the school week. I want you to live with me. If we don’t agree on a solution, then we will go to court and ask a judge to decide what is best. But the decision is made by grown-ups. You don’t have to choose. I know you love me and you love Dad. That’s why I’m not going to ask you to decide and I hope Dad won’t either. Children don’t like having to choose which parent to live with.
“I know Dad has been saying bad things about me,” Lynn added. “And, just in case he asks you to sign something saying you want to live with him, I’m letting you know that you don’t have to do that if you don’t want to. Just tell Dad that you love both of us and you don’t want to get in the middle of this. Tell him to work it out with me or with a judge, but to leave you out of it. Do you think you can do that?”
I cannot emphasize enough the importance of taking action as soon as you suspect that your child might be pressured to express a preference to live apart from you. If you wait until your child makes this decision, it could be too late. Many parents are shocked to learn that their child’s preference influenced the outcome of the custody battle even when the court agreed that the preference was solely the result of programming. This occurred in a Missouri case. An eleven-year-old girl, Marsha, said she no longer wanted to see her father. Despite years of a good relationship, she claimed that she hated him. Her mother supported her and refused the father any access to his daughter. She also filed a motion in court to take away the father’s right to see Marsha.
When the judge ordered the mother to let Marsha spend time with her father, Marsha and her mother responded by telling authorities that the father sexually abused his daughter. The accusation was determined to be completely unfounded and the judge again ordered the mother to facilitate Marsha’s contact with her father. Also, because Marsha was exposed to so much turmoil, the judge appointed an attorney to act on Marsha’s behalf in the litigation. This attorney is known as a G.A.L., which stands for guardian ad litem.
The G.A.L. has the authority to initiate investigations, and in this case she did so. She learned that Marsha’s negative attitude toward her father was entirely the result of her mother’s insistent programming, combined with Marsha’s wish to be her mother’s ally. The father was relieved. He expected that this nightmare would soon be over.
At the next court hearing, the G.A.L. told the judge that she was convinced that Marsha would be perfectly safe with her father. But her next statement devastated the father. Because of the intensity of Marsha’s fears, the G.A.L. did not think the court should “force the issue.” Instead, she recommended that Marsha be required to see her father only under strict supervision and for brief periods of time. Thus Marsha’s preference determined the outcome of this custody dispute, even though the G.A.L. and the judge both knew that this preference reflected nothing more than her mother’s indoctrination. What the court needed to know is that sometimes forcing the issue is a child’s only hope for normalizing relations with the target parent. Chapter 8, “Getting Professional Help,” explains how courts can take a more active role in helping children like Marsha.
Wearing Down the Opposition
Marsha’s father eventually gave up. He could no longer afford the toll this ordeal was taking on his physical and emotional health or on his pocketbook. Too many custody cases end up this way. Manipulation is successful not because the court is convinced that the target is a bad parent, and not because the court automatically accepts an older child’s custodial preference. The manipulation is successful in helping a parent win custody merely by wearing down the opposition.
Parents who are the target of an effective campaign of bashing and brainwashing often feel powerless to reverse the process. Their initial attempts to reason with their children fail. They don’t know how else to defend themselves. They see their resources dwindling. Rather than continue the battle, they decide that it is best for them and their children to accept the inevitable, cut their losses, and avoid the ordeal of a trial.
This may mean giving up hope of seeing the children, at least for a while. The estrangement, though, is not always permanent. Particularly when the chief aim of the parent doing the brainwashing is to win custody, the target’s resignation may have a paradoxical effect. Once the threat of losing custody is eliminated, the brainwashing parent may reduce the intensity of the programming. The children may be allowed to resurrect positive feelings for the parent they were taught to hate.
No one can tell you when you have reached your limit, or when to call it quits. If this is what you decide, nothing will erase the heartache of losing your child. But I suggest you read chapter 9, “Letting Go,” carefully for tips on how to announce your decision to the children, how to cope with the loss, and how to prepare for a future reconciliation.
Hoisted with Their Own Petards
Parents who try to poison their children’s affections in order to win custody expect the courts to sympathize with their position. Some of these parents are relatively unaware that they are guilty of fostering alienation. Others know exactly what they are doing and are counting on the court’s naïveté about such matters. They think they can pull the wool over the judge’s eyes.
In the past, this may have been a safe assumption. But I hope books such as this will turn the tide. As mental health professionals and family courts become more familiar with the phenomena of bad-mouthing, bashing, and brainwashing, and their harmful impact on children, parents who engage in such practices should beware: You run a greater chance of losing custody.
First, experts and judges will discount children’s attitudes and preferences when these are understood as the result of programming. So no advantage will be gained. But there will be a further disadvantage incurred by parents engaged in destructive criticism. They are apt to be judged more negatively because they are jeopardizing their child’s emotional welfare. Courts do not look kindly on parents who try to deprive their children of a loving relationship with the other parent. So what is intended to bolster a case for custody will not only fail to help, it will backfire. Rather than accept a child’s alienation as proof of the target’s deficiency, the court will view the alienation as evidence of the manipulative parent’s inadequacy.
But a wise parent does not rely on faith in the court’s ability to detect manipulation. You must help the court. You must learn all you can about how your children are being programmed. You must convey this information to any mental health professionals involved in your case. And your attorney must convey this information effectively to the judge.
PREVENTING ALIENATION DURING
CUSTODY LITIGATION
There are several things you can do to reduce the incidence of bashing and brainwashing in a custody battle. The most important would be to remove the incentive: Use every means to avoid custody litigation in the first place. When the custody outcome is not hanging in the balance, parents have less need to sway their children’s affections, and thus you face less risk of divorce poison.
First, examine your reasons for seeking custody. If they are inadequate, you may be able to prevent or reverse an alienation campaign by dropping the threat to seek custody. Custody should not be a means to punish your spouse, avoid child support, alleviate guilt, or prove your worth to the world. I discuss these and other wrong reasons for seeking custody in greater detail in The Custody Revolution.
If you and your spouse have a genuine disagreement about what custody arrangement would be best for your children, before taking it to court, take it to a custody consultant for an independent opinion. A custody consultant is a mental health professional with expertise in child development and custody matters. When I serve in this capacity, I help parents understand their children’s needs and the extent to which different custody plans meet these needs. Once both parents grasp the relevant issues, the optimal custody arrangement may become self-evident. Or I may think of a reasonable alternative that did not occur to either parent. I also try to impress upon parents how their custody dispute, and related efforts to poison the children’s affections, will hurt the children. With such professional input, many parents are able to reduce their hostility, drop their adversarial stance, and reach an agreement. Also, the consultant’s findings and recommendations can play a role in mediating or negotiating a solution that minimizes either parent’s feelings of having lost the battle.
If your spouse refuses to seek custody consultation, or the effort fails, try other means to limit and reduce the hostility of your divorce. If you have wronged your spouse, recognize the damage you have caused, take responsibility for it and offer a genuine apology, and make amends when possible. If you have been unfair about the financial settlement, for example, reconsider your stance. Anything you can do to reduce anger lessens the motive for bad-mouthing.
If you must dispute custody, retain attorneys who are committed to amicable resolutions. Some lawyers subscribe to a model of practice known as “collaborative family law.” These lawyers pledge to do everything possible to reach a settlement without going to court. In fact, they agree beforehand to withdraw from the case if their efforts are unsuccessful. They believe that when both attorneys make this agreement, a structure is created from the outset that encourages more constructive and creative negotiations.
Some lawyers who do not work formally in the collaborative law model nevertheless are known for their practice of encouraging and supporting efforts to settle out of court and reduce animosity. Try to find a lawyer with this reputation. When negotiations between such attorneys are unsuccessful, they will recommend mediation. Other lawyers oppose mediation. Particularly avoid attorneys who have reputations for “demolishing the opposition.” Such attorneys may win you some battles, but their tactics invite retaliation, which means a greater risk of bad-mouthing. One prominent New York attorney told his clients that the way to win custody battles is to outspend the opposition. His cases were known for the huge expenses generated by a maddening flood of paperwork and multiple court hearings that eventually drove the opposition into submission. This left his clients facing a postdivorce atmosphere riddled with hostility.
TAKE ACTION
To prevent alienation in custody disputes:
- Consider dropping the threat to sue for custody. Don’t seek custody for the wrong reasons.
- Take responsibility for your contributions to your spouse’s anger and do what you can to reduce hostility.
- Seek an independent opinion from a custody consultant.
- Choose an attorney with a reputation for amicable resolutions out of court.
- Avoid attorneys who generate unnecessary conflict and hostility.
After custody litigation, you are most at risk for bad-mouthing, bashing, and brainwashing when either you or your ex-spouse remarries. Even former spouses who got along reasonably well face new tension in their relationship when one of them finds love again.
Jealousy
People are often surprised at the intensity of their reaction to the news that an ex-spouse plans to remarry. They may not have expected to be affected by such an event. But instead they find themselves reexperiencing much of the hurt and anger that accompanied the divorce. Those who are least aware of lingering feelings for their ex, or least in touch with fantasies of reconciliation, are most susceptible to destructive reactions. They have the most difficulty coping with the jealousy and blow to their pride triggered by the remarriage. Rather than acknowledge the true source of feelings that they regard as unwanted or inappropriate, they hide behind a variety of defenses.
A common maneuver is to deny being personally bothered by the remarriage while expressing great concern about its impact on the children. Psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich called this a “pretended” motive. Upon learning of his ex-wife’s engagement a man said, “I don’t care what you want to do with your life. But the children are very upset about it.” At the time he said this, the children were showing no signs of distress.
Another rationalization is to claim that one is not upset by the idea of remarriage itself, but by the specific character of the stepparent, or the new partner’s manner of relating to the children. Divorce poison comes into play when your ex channels unwanted and unpleasant feelings triggered by your remarriage into unwarranted denigration of you and your new partner.
TAKE ACTION
To respond to an ex who is jealous of your remarriage:
- Reaffirm the connection that will always exist between the two of you as a result of having children together.
- Emphasize that your remarriage does not diminish the importance of cooperation in raising the children.
- Acknowledge that the remarriage is an adjustment for everyone; the children deserve both parents’ support in coping with this transition, just as they would expect with other transitions in their lives, such as a change of schools.
- Ask your ex to put himself in your place and imagine how he or she would like you to handle it with the children if he or she announced plans to remarry.
Jealousy on the part of the parent who learns of his ex’s plans to remarry is not the only motive for divorce poison in this situation. Destructive criticism is just as likely, maybe more likely, to come from the remarried spouse and the new partner. In my work with remarried families I have identified three key factors that often trigger attempts to alienate children: (1) the wish to erase the ex from the child’s life in order to “make room” for the stepparent; (2) competitive feelings between the ex-spouse and stepparent; and (3) the new couple’s attempt to unite around a common enemy.
I Wish He Would Just Disappear
Parents who remarry often believe that they now have the perfect family setting in which to raise their children. But one thing mars this image: the former spouse. Many remarried couples harbor the fantasy, “If only the ex would disappear from the scene…” One way to fulfill this fantasy is by driving a wedge between the children and the other parent.
A parent is most likely to regard the other parent as dispensable when the child was very young at the time of the divorce, or the parents were never married, and the new marriage occurs soon after. In these cases, each parent has had little opportunity to observe the child around the other parent. A mother may believe, in the abstract, that children deserve to know their real father. But she has not seen, with her own eyes, how her child benefits from spending time with the man. Certainly a one-year-old child cannot tell her how much he looks forward to seeing his dad.
Without a history of family interaction involving mother, father, and child, it is harder for the mother to appreciate the father’s role in the child’s life. When she remarries, she would rather such family history be centered around her and her current husband. The father is seen as an interloper. His involvement complicates the picture. Essentially, the mother would like to pretend that her relationship with the child’s father never happened. When he won’t bow out gracefully, he is seen as thwarting her second chance for a happy family. As one remarried woman told her ex-husband, “My daughter has a mother and a father in her home. She doesn’t need you.” (Brainwashing parents tend to refer to the children as “mine” rather than “ours.”) The wish to erase the ex is more likely to come from a remarried mother than father. Perhaps this is because it was not too long ago that society assumed that children should be cared for by their mothers after divorce and have only occasional contact with Dad. Despite years of research documenting a father’s importance to his children, and changing custody laws that reflect this understanding, many people continue to regard fathers as marginally significant parents.
Some people believe that the less time the child has been with the father, the less is lost if the stepfather replaces the father. To a certain extent this is correct. Generally speaking, younger children find it easier to develop a relationship with a stepparent that approximates a parent-child bond, and to benefit from that relationship. However, there is no reason why children should have to choose. They are capable of having strong ties both to their father and stepfather.
Even when her child is so young that the stepfather could adequately replace the father, a mother still has reasons to promote the father’s involvement. When the child is older, he or she may want to know the father. Many children suffer intense feelings of rejection when a divorced parent has not remained involved. In The Custody Revolution I discuss the impact of the absent parent on boys and girls. I show how children who have lost contact with a parent following divorce are more likely to have problems with interpersonal relationships and lower self-esteem. The children’s problems may, in turn, diminish the quality of their relationship with the remarried parent and the stepparent.
It is worth considering, too, what would happen if the mother’s second marriage failed (not an unlikely event since second marriages have a higher divorce rate than first marriages). In most such cases children lose all contact with their former stepfather even when he has been a central figure in their development. Maintaining a close tie to the father is good insurance against such a loss. Much less likely, but also possible, is the death or incapacitation of the mother. In these cases, custody is usually transferred to the father. A good strong relationship with their father can help children through such hard times. A history of alienation from the father would compound the tragedy.
TAKE ACTION
To respond to a mother who wants you out of your child’s life:
- Reassure the mother that your involvement will not interfere with her new husband’s forming a close relationship with the children. In fact, you intend to actively promote the children’s love and respect of their stepfather.
- Point out that as the biological (or adoptive) and legal father, your commitment is a lifelong one. Few stepfathers could offer the same assurance.
- Help the mother understand what she would be destroying if she succeeded in alienating the child from you. Describe your life with the child: your routines, play, mutual expressions of affection, serious talks, and your dreams for your child’s future.
- If your child is still an infant, allow the mother to observe you with the baby several times to help her become comfortable with the idea that you can provide good care.
- Set a firm limit. Insist that you will never abandon your child. That is not an option. You do not want your child ever to question whether or not he was loved by his father.
Competition
The stepparent often instigates, or at least actively supports, destructive criticism of the other parent. Competitive feelings toward one’s predecessor in love, sex, and marriage are natural. In mild form such feelings do not become a problem. They may, in fact, benefit the children by motivating a stepparent to do the very best job possible in raising the stepchildren. The children then gain an additional adult who protects and advances their interests.
When competitive feelings are very strong, the stepparent may resent having to share the children’s affection with their other parent. He or she may have low self-esteem and be excessively competitive in most situations. Or the stepparent may feel especially deficient as a parent and feel a need to prove superiority over the other parent. The two leading authorities on stepfamilies, Dr. Emily Visher and Dr. John Visher, described how a man who feels that he failed as a father in his first marriage may regard the second marriage as a chance to compensate for his earlier shortcomings. The sense of failure may be particularly acute if the stepfather has not maintained regular and meaningful involvement with his biological children. Some stepparents deal with this sense of failure by trying to replace the other parent in the children’s heart. They do so through bad-mouthing, bashing, and brainwashing.
Some stepfathers act as if they are rescuing their new family from the father. Particularly when this is the first marriage for the stepfather, he will usually have different expectations about how a family should work and may be excessively critical of his predecessor.
Competitive feelings are likely to occur when stepparents have no children of their own and, for reasons of choice or infertility, do not expect to have their own children. This situation is seen with stepmothers as well as stepfathers.
Nelda and Ophelia were best friends. Then Nelda had an affair with Ophelia’s husband and married him soon after his divorce. Nelda had no children from her previous marriage, was unable to become pregnant, and did not want to adopt any children. Ophelia’s daughter was Nelda’s one chance to be a mother.
Feeling intense rivalry with her now “ex–best friend,” Nelda pressured her husband to move to a new town four hours away by car with no airport nearby. At the same time, through a variety of tactics (discussed in chapter 6, “The Corruption of Reality”), including overindulgence, extravagant promises, and excessive bad-mouthing of the mother, along with the father’s cooperation, Nelda manipulated her stepdaughter to ask to move with them. Ophelia initially resisted. But her daughter insisted that she really wanted to move and was angry that her mother was making it difficult. Against her better judgment, and without legal counsel, Ophelia caved in to pressure and agreed to the move.
Shortly before Christmas vacation, Ophelia received a letter from her daughter. The girl wrote that she did not want to be forced to see her mother during the Christmas vacation. Her dad and Nelda had scheduled a trip to Disneyland, and she would have to miss it if she spent the vacation with her mother. The vocabulary and sentence structure of the letter made it clear that, although it was in her daughter’s handwriting, it was composed by adults. A note from Nelda accompanied the letter. In her note, Nelda self-righteously exhorted Ophelia to place her daughter’s interest before her own. Nelda pleaded with Ophelia to allow them to establish themselves as a family before pressing for contact with her daughter. Ophelia took what she thought was the high road, and allowed her daughter to go on the trip to Disneyland instead of seeing her.
When Ophelia was next scheduled to see her daughter, on the girl’s birthday, she received another letter. In this letter, her daughter expressed her resentment of what was now being called “forced visitation” and added that, instead of seeing her mother, she wanted to spend her birthday with her family. Nelda and her husband had succeeded in twisting this girl’s mind so that she no longer thought of her own mother as part of her family! When I first became acquainted with Ophelia, she had been waiting two years and had still not seen her daughter.
Ophelia’s error, as I have emphasized repeatedly, was to wait too long before taking action. Passivity is common among parents who are the target of divorce poison, but it is costly. For reasons that will become clearer in the next chapter, it is crucial to maintain contact with your children when they are exposed to divorce poison.
TAKE ACTION
To deal with a competitive stepparent:
- When you learn of new things that your children have done with their stepparent, or new places where they have gone, let some of these activities be ones that you do not share with the children. The more stepparents feel they have a special place in the lives of the children, the less they feel the need to compete with you.
- Express your appreciation for the stepparent’s contributions to your children’s welfare and your hope that you can mutually support each other’s role with the children.
- If problems persist, suggest that all three parents consult a therapist to help them work together better. In sessions with the remarried couple, the therapist can address some of the underlying factors that fuel the excessive competition.
Competition works both ways. After the remarriage, your ex can support the children’s relationship with their stepparent. Or he or she may try to drive a wedge between the children and your new spouse. Ex-spouses who are still single may fear that the children will prefer the two-parent household because it more closely approximates the intact family that was lost with the divorce. Driven by such fear, your ex may attempt to compete by undermining the children’s sense of love and security in the remarried household.
Often the ex fears that the children will come to love their stepparent more. This fear is exacerbated if the children begin using terms similar to Mom or Dad when referring to their stepparent. Because younger children are more apt to seek and accept a quasi parent-child relationship with the stepparent, they are particularly at risk for exposure to bashing and brainwashing of the stepparent by your ex. Also, they are more likely to be influenced by your ex’s negative programming, because young children are generally more suggestible. Recall the little girl whose father told her that her stepfather was sent by the devil. Even if she did not fully believe this, she did begin to feel uneasy in her stepfather’s presence.
Older children may feel more initial reserve and resentment toward a stepparent. Instead of helping the children adjust to the transition, competitive ex-spouses sometimes welcome their children’s nascent negative feelings about the stepparent and use these transitional feelings as a foundation for a campaign of alienation. When confronted about their manipulations, such parents will usually reply with some variant of “I can’t help the way my child feels about her stepparent, but I’m not going to stop her from expressing her true feelings.”
One mother with whom I worked demonstrated how parents can put their children’s interests above their competitive feelings. Patty worked hard to resist strong impulses to disparage her daughter Rachel’s stepmother. Through a combination of inadequate legal representation, convincing lies told by her ex-husband, and a bad court verdict, Patty’s involvement with Rachel was drastically curtailed. When her ex-husband remarried a week after the divorce became final, he delegated most of the responsibility for raising Rachel to his new wife. Patty naturally resented the fact that another woman was raising the child that she had carried in her womb for nine months and taken care of for five years. Her resentment acted as a filter when it came to evaluating the stepmother’s parenting skills. Criticisms came easily; positive thoughts about her rival took decided effort. When Rachel complained to her mother about the stepmother’s treatment, Patty felt some secret pleasure—which she kept secret. Though her rivalrous feelings were gratified, she knew that the stepmother was doing a lot for Rachel. And she knew it would not benefit Rachel to develop a bad relationship with her stepmother. So Patty listened to Rachel’s complaints but did not respond eagerly. As far as the girl was concerned, bad-mouthing her stepmother was not the way to her mother’s heart. Patty set an inspiring example of a woman whose love for her child outweighed strong impulses to engage in destructive criticism.
TAKE ACTION
If your ex is trying to undermine the children’s relationship with their stepparent:
- Reassure your ex of the deep attachment that the children feel for him or her, based on the many experiences that formed the foundation of their relationship.
- Ask mutual acquaintances who have themselves navigated the challenges of remarriage to share their experiences with your ex, particularly how the children maintained their strong love for their parents while still getting along well with the stepparent.
- Help the children use different terms of endearment for their stepparent and your ex. Don’t threaten your ex’s status as the children’s “daddy” or “mommy.”
The Common Enemy
Remarried families are fragile. Children do not choose their stepparents. And adults do not marry in order to acquire stepchildren. The children merely go along with the deal. It takes time for the new family to get used to each other. It takes time to feel like a family. It is even more of a challenge when each adult brings children from a prior marriage. Small wonder that these types of “blended” families suffer a high rate of divorce.
One way to strengthen family cohesiveness is to unite around a common goal. Unfortunately, bad-mouthing and bashing you may become that goal. It may be the glue that holds the new family together, that gives them the sense of being on the same team.
Even more significant, while everyone is trashing you, they are avoiding all the negative feelings that would inevitably arise among them. As their anger gets channeled into criticisms of the other parent, they distract themselves from problems within their newly constituted family. The underlying motive is to deny the presence of conflict in the new relationship. This protects the couple from the anxiety generated by the prospect of another divorce. In some families, the new partner joins in a campaign of hate as a means of ingratiating himself or herself to the spouse. The basic message is, “Your battles are my battles.” Particularly in the early stages of remarriage, the new spouse may find it difficult to take a different position with respect to the ex’s character and the type of treatment he or she deserves.
Hal and his second wife, Annette, spent much of their time trashing Hal’s first wife, Melinda. The more they did so, the closer they felt. Annette’s children joined the chorus of denigration. Hal’s son, Josh, couldn’t resist participating. At first he felt disloyal to his mother, but he wanted to be accepted by the family, and complaining about his mother seemed to be the price of admission.
Josh had another motive. In a contest between his father and mother, Josh sensed that his father had more power. Although he was not consciously aware of it, Josh feared that the family’s criticism could turn on him if he defended his mother. Like most people, Josh wanted to side with the winner. He wasn’t in a position to stem the tide of denunciation. So he chose to affiliate with it. Psychologists refer to this strategy as “identifying with the aggressor.” It is more popularly known as, “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
Uniting against a common enemy has one fatal weakness. When the enemy is vanquished, conflicts usually arise among the former allies. This is what happened in this family. Melinda finally gave up her efforts to counter the trashing and moved to another state. The family had virtually no contact with her. They lost their common enemy. Soon after, conflicts in their own family relationships began to surface. These had been present all along, but they were able to avoid them by making Melinda the target of all their hostility.
Josh’s behavior is a good example of a point Dr. Gardner has emphasized with respect to alienated children. When a child succumbs to divorce poison, the alienation results from a combination of the parental brainwashing and the child’s own contributions. A child in a situation like Josh may join in the campaign of hatred for several reasons. The child may be capitulating to group pressure in order to be accepted within the new family. The child may also be attempting to reduce loyalty conflicts or his discomfort with the remarriage.
TAKE ACTION
Emphasize to your children that it takes courage to withstand group pressure. Let them know that it is healthier to maintain love and respect for all their parents, rather than participate in a campaign of hatred.
A child who feels caught between two homes may feel that the solution to the conflict is to declare a clear allegiance to one household. This motive can result in alienation from either parent. A child who is anxious or angry about the remarriage may channel these feelings into unwarranted hatred of the remarried parent and stepparent. Or the child’s alienation may express the disappointment of reconciliation wishes that have been dashed by the remarriage. Regardless of the child’s underlying motivation, if the favored parent welcomes the child’s allegiance and fails to actively promote the child’s affection for the other parent, the child may cling to this maladaptive solution.
CHECKLIST OF MALIGNANT MOTIVES
Just as a proper diagnosis must precede the treatment of an illness, correctly determining motives is the first step in coping with bashing and brainwashing. If you have been the target of vilification, you should be able to identify the perpetrator’s motives from the following list. If none of the circumstances, feelings, and personality traits below apply to your situation, then you are probably dealing with something other than bashing and brainwashing. Also, if you have been falsely accused of brainwashing, proving the absence of these motives should improve your chances of establishing your innocence.
- Poor boundaries—failure to recognize the distinction between the parent’s thoughts and feelings and the children’s needs
- Desire for revenge
- Narcissism—the drive to magnify one’s own importance while diminishing the value of the other parent
- Guilt—the attempt to deflect attention from one’s own failings as a parent by denigrating the other parent
- Insecurity—the fear that the children will prefer the other parent
- Desire to vent anger about the ex-spouse and have feelings validated by friends without taking steps to protect children from exposure to criticisms of the other parent
- Unwillingness to accept the end of the marital relationship
- Paranoia—unwarranted belief that the other parent is fostering alienation
- History of a poor or absent relationship with at least one parent
- Hostility toward the children—exaggerated efforts to protect the children cover deep-seated antagonism
- Involvement in custody litigation
- Remarriage of one or both ex-spouses
When a prosecutor tries to establish a defendant’s guilt, she must show that the accused had the motive and the means to commit the crime. We have finished uncovering the various motives behind the crimes we call bad-mouthing, bashing, and brainwashing. Next we expose the means by which parents manipulate their children’s psyches.