You’ve got to be taught to hate and fear.
—OSCAR HAMMERSTEIN II, SOUTH PACIFIC
Isolation, psychological dependence, and fear set the stage on which psychological manipulation occurs. Within this setting, parents use specific strategies and techniques to warp the child’s mind against a loved one. Understanding these maneuvers is the key to designing an effective response to bad-mouthing, bashing, and brainwashing. This chapter exposes the most common ploys used to coerce children into rejecting parents and grandparents.
Parents will frequently manipulate names in a particular manner in order to disrupt children’s identification with the target. I have seen three different tactics used. What all three have in common is that, when successful, they change the way children relate to the target.
Pejorative Labeling
Cult leaders understand the power of language. They refer to the wider culture in pejorative terms, such as “infidels,” and thus reinforce the sense of “us” versus “them.” Racial hatred is propagated by the same method. Epithets are spoken in a derisive tone and context, conveying the message that “those people” are bad, inferior, to be avoided. Use a racial slur enough times and children will soon follow the example. The offensive word becomes part of their vocabulary. And without thinking, they absorb the hatred tied to the label. This is how we convert innocent children into racists. It is also how we turn them against formerly loved parents and their families.
Vindictive parents begin this process by letting the children overhear them refer to the target parent or grandparent only in derogatory terms. A parent may, for example, refer to the former mother-in-law, the children’s grandmother, as a “witch.” Next, the children are manipulated into using the term themselves. The parent shows approval when the children follow the example. This will result in more frequent use of the term because children strive for their parents’ acceptance. Over time the derision will come to seem natural and justified. When children hear their grandmother referred to disrespectfully, and are encouraged to do the same, or are not discouraged from speaking disrespectfully themselves, they will lose respect for her. Contemptuousness replaces love. After associating Granny with the label “witch,” their minds are tricked into thinking that somewhere along the line they decided for themselves that their grandmother was bad. The children lose sight of the origin of the derogation. They forget that it was not based on a realistic assessment of Granny but was merely their mother’s expression of her own irrational anger.
For about a year Jill, whom we met in the last chapter, was successful in undermining the strength of her children’s love for their grandmother. They became more reserved and less affectionate around Granny. They never actually believed she was a witch. They just thought she was greedy, difficult, and someone to be avoided.
In some cases, though, children are convinced that a formerly loved relative has become the incarnation of evil. This occurred in an American family living in the Middle East. A fanatically religious father successfully brainwashed his four children into sharing his belief that their mother was the devil. This was how the father rationalized his brutal battering of his wife. For this disturbed man it was literally the defense of “the devil made me do it.” After his wife finally fled from him, he refused to permit her any contact with the children. (Unfortunately, that country’s law was on his side in this matter.) Without her presence to counteract their father’s views, the children succumbed to the brainwashing and regarded their mother as the devil. After monumental efforts the mother succeeded in reuniting with three of her children. Over time they relinquished their belief that she was the devil, but a legacy of distrust lasted a good portion of their childhood.
TAKE ACTION
If you are the victim of pejorative labeling, let the children know right away that you disapprove of such behavior. Help them understand the name-calling, and remind them that they have always been taught to be polite to others and that this certainly applies to their parents and other relatives. One mother told her children, “Daddy is very angry with me and that is why he is calling me names. But you know, deep down in your heart, that it is wrong to call people names, even when you’re angry with them. We can’t stop Daddy from doing this, but I want you to be clear in your mind that when he does this, he is making a big mistake. Remember that Daddy and I always taught you not to call people names and to respect your elders.”
The children know that the alienating parent’s behavior is wrong. By addressing name-calling directly, you validate the children’s judgment, help them cope with it, and neutralize its destructive potential. Instead of being brainwashed by pejorative labels, the children will dismiss name-calling as wrong and possibly an attempt to manipulate their feelings.
On a First-Name Basis
Using pejorative terms is an obvious, heavy-handed way to undermine children’s respect for a parent. Many divorced parents find a more subtle way to accomplish the same result. When talking to their children they simply refer to the other parent by his or her first name. Instead of telling the children, “Your mother is on the phone,” a father says, “Gloria wants to talk to you.” Or “Is Amy coming to your basketball game?”
At first when parents use this ploy children are puzzled. In most families, children are encouraged to use some variation of “Mommy” and “Daddy.” They go through a brief period in early childhood when they become aware that others address their parents by first name and they experiment by doing so themselves, usually in a playful manner. But they quickly revert to the familiar terms reserved for parents. (I recognize that in some families children routinely refer to their parents by first name. I believe this represents a misguided attempt at egalitarianism, but obviously the following discussion does not apply to such families.)
The way we address people reflects something about the type of relationship we have with them, or at least would like to have. She is Susie to her cousins, Susan to her employees, and Ms. Rosenberg to the telephone solicitor.
So what is accomplished when a father begins referring to the mother by her first name when talking to their children? First, this practice suggests to the children that, in Dad’s mind, their mother no longer has the status of a parent. The relationship has changed in some significant manner. In essence the message is “Since my relationship with Mom has changed, so must yours.” This is directly opposite to what mental health experts usually advise: Divorcing parents are told to emphasize to the children that divorce is between the grown-ups and not between parent and child.
Second, the father is also encouraging a change in the children’s relationship with him. He is attempting to obscure the normal psychological boundaries between a parent and child. He talks to them about their mother the way he would talk to an adult friend. The implication is that they are his peers when it comes to discussing his ex-wife. Though his children might enjoy such camaraderie and the implied elevation of their status, they pay a heavy price for this promotion.
Third, addressing Mom by her first name implies that she no longer commands the respect implicit in the title “Mommy.” With this loss of respect comes a loss of authority. Somehow it is easier to talk back to Amy than to Mom. Again, though some children are eager to sign on with the new “first name” policy, they lose a lot by doing so.
Some parents are not as subtle in their attempts to manipulate the children into discarding the label “Mom” or “Dad.” Rather than merely encourage the practice, they insist on it. These parents are usually remarried. They require the children to refer to their other parent by first name because they want the more familiar title, Mom or Dad, to be reserved for the stepparent. One little girl said that her mother would not serve her dinner unless she called her stepfather Daddy and referred to her father by his first name. A boy told his mother that when he forgot to call his stepmother Mom, she simply ignored him. His father confirmed that this was the family policy. He thought this was reasonable because, he said, it was awkward for his new wife’s son to call her Mom while his own son did not do the same. While this explanation has a certain surface plausibility, millions of remarried fathers face the same issue and are able to find a solution that does not require children to repudiate their relationship with their mother.
TAKE ACTION
If your children begin addressing you by your first name, put a stop to it immediately. If you tolerate an occasional use of your first name by children who are subjected to divorce poison, the practice will become habitual. Tell them that you expect to be called Mom or Dad just as they have always done and just as every other boy and girl they know does with their parents. Reminding them about what is normal among their friends will help them appreciate the inappropriateness of calling you by your first name. Also, it may help motivate them to comply, because most children want to fit in with their peers. If your ex persists in undermining your status in this manner, try to involve your ex in joint therapy, either voluntarily or by order of the court.
Child Aliases
If it is puzzling to children to begin calling a parent by another name, imagine their confusion when they are required to begin calling themselves by a different name. This happens surprisingly often in cases of parental alienation.
Kidnapping parents often create aliases for their children in order to elude capture. But even when they are not hiding, some divorced parents change children’s names. In most of these cases, the mother wants the children to share her last name. If she is remarried, she wants them to take the name of their stepfather; if she is not remarried, she wants them to use her maiden name.
In most of the cases I have seen, the mother has never explained to the children that she is changing their name or why she is doing so. She merely begins using the name she prefers in all situations. Doctors’ receptionists are told to cross out the old name and substitute the new one. School registrations are made in the new name. Older children may learn of the change on the first day of school when the teacher calls the roll for the first time or confronts the child with the discrepancy between the name as the child wrote it and the way it appears on the teacher’s records.
Parents who engage in this practice are usually oblivious to the impact on the children. Their main intent is to eradicate traces of their own former connection to the ex-spouse. The name change also expresses a depreciation of the child’s tie to the other parent. These parents fail to consider the children’s feelings about being different from all their friends who do share their father’s last name.
Child aliases also extend to first names. Fathers as well as mothers play this version of the name game. I have seen fathers who resented the association of a child’s first name with the mother or her family. In one case the mother was a graduate of St. Anne’s Academy, an exclusive prep school. The girls at St. Anne’s were affectionately known as “Annies.” Because the father and mother first met each other at the annual “Annie” ball, when they had their first child they named her Annie. Three years later, when the marriage was over, and the father wanted nothing to do with his ex-wife, he stopped referring to his daughter as Annie and instead began using her middle name. Although under oath the father denied doing so, the mother’s attorney introduced pictures the little girl had drawn, on which the father wrote only her middle and last names. Even more conclusive were the copies of the father’s income tax returns, where he omitted his child’s legal first name.
I know of a few families in which young children suffer the confusion of having each parent refer to them with a different name. When these children leave one home and return to the other, it takes them a while to get used to the alternate name. Some parents are so caught up in their battle with their ex that they lose patience when their children fail to respond to the preferred name.
TAKE ACTION
If you object to your child using a different name, register your objections as soon as possible. Your attorney may need to write letters to your child’s school and doctors explaining the necessity of using the correct legal name. The longer an alias is used, the more likely a court is to allow it to continue. Since it is not usually a child’s idea to use a different name, it is best for the adults to handle the dispute without pressuring the child to take sides in the dispute. In most cases, the conflict over the child’s name is more destructive than any particular outcome of the conflict. The real issue is not the name but what it symbolizes to each parent. To spare your child distress, consider a compromise, such as allowing your child to use two last names.
Stephanie, an alienated Canadian teen, expressed her hatred for her father by severing all ties with him. She and her mother stripped the home of any reminders of the father. She changed her last name to her mother’s maiden name. When her mother told her that the name Stephanie was originally her father’s preference, she invented a new first name. She began calling herself Rainbow.
The girl’s therapist, who zealously championed her patient’s right to disown her father, supported this charade. She congratulated the girl for asserting her independence. She used the new first and last names in her official notes and reports. And, at the depth of offensive thoughtlessness, she insulted the father by using Stephanie’s alias in correspondence with him, knowing full well that the name change was designed to repudiate him. This is an example of how bystanders can contribute to alienation, even therapists, if they undertake treatment with an inadequate understanding of divorce poison.
In Stephanie’s case, as her therapy continued, her hold on reality slipped. She began to suffer from hallucinations directly related to her irrational alienation, and she eventually required psychiatric hospitalization. In the end, Stephanie’s alienation not only cost her mentally and emotionally, it cost her financially: When it was clear that his daughter would have nothing to do with him, her wealthy grieving father wrote the girl out of his will.
Jill’s children did not start calling their grandmother a witch the very first time their mother used this put-down. But when they heard the word used many times, it began to seem natural.
Repetition of desired messages is common to all forms of indoctrination. The more we hear an idea or a word, the more familiar it becomes. When children have heard their grandmother referred to as a witch for several months, it is a shorter mental leap to begin thinking of her as basically bad and undesirable. We come to assume that there must be some truth behind an idea, merely because it is repeated so often. This is a common tactic of politicians and propagandists. In fact, parental brainwashing can be thought of as propaganda in the home.
Repetition also helps embed messages in memory. This is the principle behind rote drill. Repeat the multiplication tables enough times and they become second nature. If a false impression—an unjustified denigration of a parent or grandparent—is repeated enough times, it too can become second nature. And ultimately it becomes indistinguishable from beliefs based in reality.
Recall the research discussed in chapter 3 in which Cornell University researchers demonstrated how easy it is to implant false memories in young children. What they found is that repetition is a key element in convincing children that they have experienced bad events that never actually occurred. If children can be led to believe that a parent has grossly mistreated them, alienation of affection is a predictable outcome.
TAKE ACTION
If your ex repeats false negative messages about you, take action before the negative messages take root. Help your children protect themselves against brainwashing by explicitly identifying how repetition works to create false perceptions. Repetition is a potent manipulation tactic. If your children are alerted to its use, they will be better able to resist its influence. A father told his son, “Sometimes when children hear the same bad thing about a parent over and over, they make the mistake of thinking that the bad thing is true, even though they knew from the start that it wasn’t true. I know Mommy keeps saying that I’m mean and that I don’t care about you, but just because she says it a lot doesn’t make it true. Don’t you be fooled.”
At first glance it seems a formidable task to transform a child’s love for a parent into hatred and derision. After all, what greater love is there than the love between child and parent? What is it that allows such a drastic transformation to occur? In a word: ambivalence. Parents intent on fostering alienation of affection rely on their children’s ambivalence as their most powerful ally.
All child-parent relationships are fraught with ambivalence, mixed feelings, conflict. Even the most nurturing and gratifying parents frequently disappoint their children. Consider how often we tell children that they may not have what they want or do what they want. In the eyes of our children we comfort and satisfy, but we also frustrate, deprive, and at times frighten.
Parents who promote alienation capitalize on this ambivalence. It makes their job easier. Rather than topple an idealized parent off a pedestal, they merely need to highlight the cracks in the pedestal—cracks formed by the accumulation of past disappointments. They take every opportunity to focus their child’s attention on traits and behaviors of the other parent that the child dislikes. Little if anything positive is ever said about the target. Eventually negative perceptions, feelings, and memories crowd out the positive. The child reacts to the target parent as if he or she is all, or mainly, bad. Without favorable memories and perceptions to balance the ledger, the child succumbs to alienation. The parent who formerly was ambivalently loved is now hated.
Selective attention is a potent image-shaping tool. If a child attends only to things that make a parent look bad, eventually negative perceptions, feelings, and memories will crowd out the positive.
The movie Hook provides a good example of this process. The evil pirate Captain Hook reminds the little boy that his father missed his most important baseball game because he was working at the office. Hook taps into all the child’s resentments and disillusionments to persuade the boy that his father doesn’t truly love him.
Psychologists call this technique “selective attention.” It is the stock-in-trade of skilled magicians, salesmen, politicians, and lawyers. The magician directs our attention to his left hand while he reaches in his pocket with his right hand. We see only what he wants us to see. The salesman extols the virtues of his product while overlooking its drawbacks. The politician focuses the spotlight on the opposing candidate’s worst mistakes, hoping that these low points will define the opponent’s image in the public eye.
As a participant in custody trials I have held a ringside seat watching attorneys practice the art of selective attention. They introduce only the facts that support their client’s position. They don’t pursue the “whole truth” but only that portion of the truth which will further their case. When I am being cross-examined, the lawyer wants to control my testimony so that I say only things that support the position the lawyer is arguing. To do so, she or he attempts to restrict my answers to yes or no. If I try to explain myself or elaborate an answer, the lawyer interrupts: “Objection, the witness is being nonresponsive.” In fact, trial lawyers are taught to refrain from asking any question whose answer they cannot anticipate. The reason for this practice is to avoid the possibility that testimony will be elicited that directs the court’s attention to facts that the attorney would prefer that the court overlook.
Selective attention is a potent image-shaping tool. It helps racists maintain their bigotry. They listen to the evening news, for example, and selectively attend to crimes committed by members of the hated race. They pay no attention to announcements that do not support their preconceived opinions. Significant accomplishments by members of the hated race go unnoticed, as do crimes committed by people of the same race as the racist. The result is a self-perpetuating prejudice that filters out information that might correct distortions.
Indeed, selective attention is a gatekeeper that allows only material that conforms to the program to enter consciousness. If the program is “Don’t love your other parent,” everything that makes that parent look bad is welcomed; everything that opposes the program is rejected.
TAKE ACTION
Teach your children about how selective attention is used to manipulate thoughts.
Along with the focus on negative qualities is the total absence of attention to the target’s positive attributes. Every time his child mentions something Mommy has done for her that exhibits good and loving parenting, a father changes the subject. A woman who was trying to alienate her children from their paternal grandparents had to downplay their significant contributions to the children’s welfare. When she did not actively disparage their efforts, she simply ignored them. For example, the grandparents took the initiative to inculcate a love of music in the children. They rented and bought musical instruments, located good teachers, and scheduled, paid for, and transported the children to and from their lessons. Not only did the mother fail to express any appreciation for all of this, she never asked the children about their lessons, and never even discussed the fact that they were learning how to play music. When the children played in school concerts, the mother deprived the grandparents of the joy of seeing the fruits of their efforts by neglecting to inform them about the events. Through such omissions she hoped that her children’s feelings about their grandparents would fail to reflect their numerous acts of kindness and caring. Fortunately, using some of the strategies discussed in this book, the grandparents were able to help the children understand and resist the divorce poison. In the end the children were more perceptive than their mother anticipated, and her efforts backfired.
Some parents will use selective attention in a subtle way that makes it harder for children to realize what is happening. Instead of saying negative things about the other parent, they merely ask questions that are calculated to draw attention to the other parent’s lapses. While braiding her daughter’s hair, a mother asked, “Does Daddy do this for you?” This and similar questions repeatedly drew the girl’s attention to all the things her father did not do for her. After a while she came to believe that Daddy did not care about her as much as Mommy. Of course, her mother never asked what her father did do for her or with her. Another example is the father who knew his ex-wife was struggling financially. While doling out allowance to his children this father asked, in an innocent tone, “Do you get allowance from Mom too?”
Such comparisons are constantly being made by bad-mouthing and bashing parents. It is the flip side of selective attention. The target parent is seen through a negative lens, while the children’s attention is directed to only positive aspects of the bad-mouthing parent. During interviews these children embrace a polarized view of their parents: they find it difficult to think of anything bad to say about one parent, and have equal difficulty saying anything good about the other. Lack of ambivalence is a hallmark of alienation. I often wonder how parents engaged in bashing explain the fact that they fell in love with, married, and had children with people who are so utterly lacking in any redeeming qualities. They seem unaware of the common observation that the mates we choose reveal much about our own personalities and emotional needs.
TAKE ACTION
If your children view your ex as all good and you as all bad, try to help them understand that ambivalence in relationships is normal. Explain that everyone has good and bad points, and that parents and children don’t stop loving each other just because they are not perfectly good all the time. Gently remind them of some of the negative things their other parent has done and explain that these do not wipe out all the good that parent has done. Don’t let your anger keep you from thinking of your ex’s good points; in most cases the alienating parent has done many things over the years on behalf of the children. If your children grasp the concepts that no one is perfect and that it is okay to have mixed feelings about people you love, they will be less apt to view you in an entirely negative light.
Incidentally, mental health experts, even those appointed by the courts, are not immune to selective attention. When a custody evaluator writes a report, lawyers look to see if the criticisms of each parent are balanced by a discussion of each parent’s assets. A report that fails to say anything good about a parent (other than that they love their children) is strongly suspected of being biased. Very often when I am asked to give a critique of a custody evaluation I detect more subtle signs of selective attention. For example, the examiner may cite only the psychological test results that support his or her conclusions and ignore test results that are incompatible with the conclusions.
JUDGING BEHAVIOR OUT OF CONTEXT
We can thank Sigmund Freud for helping us appreciate that things are not always as they seem. This is especially true when we judge someone’s behavior without knowing the full context in which the behavior occurred. It is easy to draw wrong conclusions. A brainwashing parent takes advantage of this to persuade the children that their other parent has acted without regard for their welfare.
A common maneuver is to put an ex on the spot by asking for money or other favors in front of the children. The parent looks bad if he or she turns down the request. The children are told, “Sorry, I can’t buy you that because Daddy wouldn’t give me the money” or “We can’t go to the circus because Mommy won’t let you stay an extra day.” If the children appreciated the full context of the request, they would understand why it was refused. The mother may be getting a sizable child support check to cover expenses. The father may have told the children he would take them to the circus on a day he knew would interfere with the mother’s plans. But, taken out of context, a parent’s behavior can appear unnecessarily neglectful or depriving.
Judy and Kent agreed that they would move their family to allow Kent to pursue his education and then relocate again to allow Judy to continue her graduate education. When Judy’s turn came she moved to the new city first to begin her studies and locate a home for the family. The understanding was that the rest of the family would soon join her. During this time Kent engaged in a series of behaviors that convinced Judy that their marriage had to end. When she filed for divorce, he filed for sole custody of their three children.
While the suit was pending, Kent began a campaign to alienate the children. He programmed the children to believe that their mother had abandoned them and that her education was more important to her than her children. He did this by discussing Judy’s behavior without giving the context or the reasons for her actions. First the setup: “Didn’t Mommy move away?” And “She didn’t take you with her, did she?” The children agreed. Then the dropping of context: “That means that Mommy cares more about going to school than she does about us. I’m sorry for you kids, but your Mom just moved away on her own and abandoned her family.” Without more information the children were unable to provide an alternative to their father’s explanation.
By the time Judy heard these accusations and tried to defend herself, the children were not receptive. It was too late. They had already been successfully programmed. They blamed her for the divorce and their anger fueled their alienation. Their refusal to consider her point of view was in part their way of punishing her for the divorce. As Dr. Gardner observed, children’s motivations often contribute to the alienation.
After a while, Kent came to believe his own misrepresentations. Like many in his position, he was surprised when his elaborate stories, which worked on his vulnerable children, failed to impress the judge. After realizing that he could not prevail in court, Kent offered to settle the custody dispute. The two younger children ended up spending enough time with their mother that she was able to use some of the ideas presented in the next chapter to reverse their alienation. Unfortunately, her older son was so identified with his father and his alienation was so entrenched that he has yet to recover affectionate feelings for his mother.
One fairly common scenario of context-dropping does often mislead courts and professional evaluators. In this situation the target parent, standing by helplessly as the breach with the children widens, and feeling powerless to stop the process, loses his or her temper in a moment of utter frustration. The target may yell at the children, or curse the other parent in front of the children, or act in some other frightening and uncharacteristic manner. The brainwashing parent then claims that this incident is representative of the target’s usual behavior and accounts for the children’s alienation. He or she ignores the fact that the alienation preceded the incident and contributed to, rather than resulted from, the target’s behavior.
When dealing with physical brutality directed against children, sexual abuse, or repeated acts of domestic violence, legal and mental health professionals are clear that the perpetrator owns primary responsibility for the problem. The spouse may need to learn to be more assertive and protect the children, but we would not hold the spouse equally responsible for the abuse. Similarly, we should not be too quick to blame the rejected parent for his or her ineffective reactions to divorce poison. And we should certainly not confuse these responses to alienation with the initial causes of the disturbance. This type of confusion, unfortunately, is common among legal and mental health professionals.
Johanna’s nine-year-old son and eleven-year-old daughter began acting belligerently and saying they didn’t want to be forced to see her. The children’s father enlisted their allegiance by taking a lax attitude toward homework and chores and sympathizing with their complaints about Johanna’s more structured, authoritative approach. This devoted mother now found herself the target of malicious accusations. As her relationship with her children deteriorated, Johanna became depressed. She sought advice from a therapist who did not understand parent-child alienation. The therapist assumed from the outset that there must be a rational basis for the children’s rejection. He prescribed a parenting skills class. Johanna’s ex-husband poured salt on the wound by asking the court to suspend her contact with her children pending the results of a family evaluation. He also wanted Johanna to pay child support for the children she was not allowed to see.
By the time Johanna had her first interview with the court-appointed social worker, she was desperate and distraught. Her patience taxed beyond its limit, Johanna came across as angry, hysterical, and unstable. She reviled her ex-husband and the judicial system that threatened to deprive her of her children. She did not make a good impression on the evaluator. Failing to put herself in Johanna’s shoes, the social worker thought, “No wonder these children don’t want to be with her.” The final report recommended that Johanna seek treatment to improve her parenting skills before the court allow her to spend time with the children.
Johanna’s experience is all too common. To protect yourself from a similar fate you must learn all that you can about the behavior of alienated children and about how you can best respond to it.
TAKE ACTION
Rejected parents must exercise self-restraint. When you know that your ex wants to make you look bad, don’t make it easier. Expect no mercy when you are the target of a hate campaign. When you give in to anger and frustration, your behavior will be taken out of context, and will provide ammunition for a campaign of hatred. Your ex will put a spotlight on your mistakes, claim that this is typical of your behavior, and cite this as the reason for your children’s alienation. Your ex’s contributions to alienation may then be overlooked or minimized.
To help avoid losing your temper in response to your child’s rejection, remind yourself that this would be playing into the hands of your ex. Instead, channel your anger into devising an effective response to brainwashing. If you must blow off steam, find a friend to listen, not your ex or your children. Remember, no parent ever softened a child’s heart by treating her harshly.
Sometimes a parent deliberately provokes a scene in order to produce evidence that can be used during custody litigation. The stage is set ahead of time with witnesses on hand and a video camera in place.
Dan was a victim of such a plot. His ex-wife, Marsha, moved across the country primarily to limit Dan’s contact with their two sons, ages eight and ten. The court granted Dan access to his children, making him responsible for scheduling and paying for flights and Marsha responsible for getting the boys to the airport and on the plane.
Twice Dan arranged flights and scheduled days off from work in anticipation of spending time with his sons. And both times Marsha sabotaged his plans by failing to take the boys to the airport. Rather than inform him ahead of time, she let Dan drive to the airport and wait expectantly at the gate, only to be crestfallen as the last passenger exited, with no sign of the boys. Dan worked for a company that required employees to schedule vacation time in advance with no last-minute changes allowed. So both times Dan used up vacation days without being able to spend the time with his sons. He also had to pay fees to the airlines to change the tickets.
When he called Marsha to rearrange the trip, she told him that in her opinion the boys were too young to fly unaccompanied by an adult and that if he wanted to see them he would have to come get them himself. Dan weighed his options. He could file a motion for contempt of the court orders. But this would cost a lot of money and take a lot of time. In the meantime he would not see his children. And there was no guarantee that he would prevail in court. Instead he decided that it would be easier and less expensive to comply with Marsha’s demand. With his money tight, and confident that the boys would make their flights now that he was escorting them, he purchased nonrefundable, nonexchangeable tickets.
He took off from work and traveled across the country. When he arrived at Marsha’s house she came to the door and said, “I’m sorry. The boys are not feeling well and can’t travel. You’ll have to visit them some other time.” Then she slammed the door in his face.
Dan was outraged. He pounded on the front door demanding to see his sons. In the process a small glass pane in the door cracked. Marsha began screaming, which could be heard from outside the house by way of a side window she conveniently left open.
Earlier in the day Marsha told an unsuspecting neighbor that her violent ex-husband had threatened to snatch the children that afternoon. She asked her neighbor to please be alert to any disturbances and call 911 if necessary. The neighbor did so. The police arrived and filed charges against Dan.
Marsha used this episode to convince her children that their father had become dangerous. She also used it as ammunition in a court battle to further restrict Dan’s parental rights. Dan thought the court would sympathize with his side of the story. What he did not know was that Marsha had someone videotape the incident. The tape showed a fist-clenched Dan banging on the door and yelling, “I want my children. You can’t keep them from me!” Even Dan had to admit that he looked scary.
You may have watched trials on television and heard an attorney object to a picture being entered into evidence on the grounds that it is “prejudicial.” Now you know why. The concern is that a picture does not present the full context of the event it depicts; thus it may stir up strong emotions that interfere with a more objective appraisal of the defendant.
The neighbor appeared in court on Marsha’s behalf. Knowing nothing about Dan other than the scene she had witnessed, she testified honestly that she would never leave her own children alone with a man like Dan.
Marsha also brought into the courtroom not a photograph of a cracked glass pane but a plastic bowl filled with broken pieces of glass, which she claimed resulted from Dan punching his fist through the glass. Thank God, she testified, the flying pieces of glass missed her children’s eyes.
Dan’s attempt to defend himself backfired because it made him appear to be minimizing his outburst. He explained that he was normally a patient and gentle man with no history of violence. The incident was a singular and momentary lapse of good judgment in response to overwhelming provocation. And the glass pane cracked accidentally from the vibrations caused by the banging on the door; he was not so out of control that he would have punched the glass.
Nevertheless, the tape, the neighbor’s eyewitness testimony, the pieces of shattered glass, Marsha’s testimony, and the criminal charges all combined to make a powerful case against Dan. The judge feared for the children’s welfare and preferred to err on the side of safety. In a ruling that played right into Marsha’s hands, he ordered that Dan could only see his sons under strict supervision. The supervisor’s presence was a constant message to the boys that the judge agreed with Mom that Dad was too dangerous to be entrusted with their care. Unfortunately, I don’t know the long-term outcome of this case. When I last spoke with Dan he despaired of ever repairing his relationship with his sons.
Often a target parent reacts to a campaign of vilification by indulging the children. Wanting to avoid their rejection, he tries to make their time with him as rewarding as possible. He will relax the usual limits, perhaps giving in to a child’s demand to watch an R-rated movie, stay up too late, or engage in a marginally dangerous activity. The other parent then cites the excessive permissiveness as proof of poor parenting ability. I have seen many cases in which mental health professionals failed to recognize the bind in which the target parent finds himself. When the target’s context is taken into account, often his indulgent behavior appears more understandable and less pathological.
Before rushing to the judgment that a rejected parent’s behavior is directly responsible for the children’s estrangement, we should place it in the following context. Making mistakes as a parent or grandparent (absent a pattern of gross negligence or abuse) does not normally result in children’s hatred and does not mean we are unworthy of their love or companionship. If all parents who ever lost their tempers or overindulged their children were to be judged as unfit parents, every child would become a ward of the state.
Selective attention and context dropping both involve focusing on certain aspects of reality while excluding others. Many times parents will actually depart from reality by exaggerating the target’s behavior. A shove becomes a violent attack. A parent who is three days late on a child support payment is a “deadbeat.” A father whose work schedule does not allow him to coach his son’s teams is labeled “uninvolved” despite all the other activities he shares with the boy. A mother who occasionally dates is said to be preoccupied with men.
When combined with repetition and selective attention, this strategy can be difficult to counter. Repetition increases the likelihood that the exaggerations will be accepted as true accounts. Selective attention keeps the child from recognizing positive traits that would modify the impression created through exaggeration. Because there is a kernel of truth, it is often difficult for the target to defend herself. Both parents may have experimented with marijuana. But on this basis the target is labeled a drug addict. If the exaggeration is repeated enough times, it becomes incorporated into the child’s view of the target. The child has heard so often that his mother is a drug addict, that he assumes it is true. It is used by the brainwasher regularly and casually, as in, “Well, you know, she was probably stoned again and that’s why she was late to get you.” The brainwasher speaks of it as fact, and eventually the child comes to share this distortion.
TAKE ACTION
If you are the victim of a hate campaign, expect your past deficiencies as a parent to be taken out of context, attended to selectively, and exaggerated. Though these past errors do not justify your children’s total rejection, the sensible response is to do everything possible to improve your skills as a parent. For example, you may have been relatively uninvolved, or frequently delegated responsibility for your children’s care to baby-sitters, or treated your children with little interest or patience. Correct these deficiencies. When the children are finally reunited with you, let them experience you not as you were before, but better. Why? The more your behavior differs from what the children have been programmed to expect, the easier it will be for them to recognize that they have judged you wrongly. Also, by using unfair and harsh criticism as a stimulus to self-improvement, you remove yourself from the passive victim role and are less likely to feel despondent. Your self-respect and your confidence as a parent will grow and you will find that any such improvements will make you more effective in your other relationships.
Selective attention, context dropping, and exaggeration are generally sufficient to smear a target parent or grandparent. When more is needed, the next step is a further departure from reality: outright lying. Sometimes the lies are gross distortions of actual events. Other times they are manufactured totally out of thin air. Though such behavior is common among psychotic parents who have lost touch with reality, it also occurs among less disturbed people.
Louise and Gary were recently separated. They met in a restaurant to begin negotiations on the terms of their divorce. Louise announced her intention to move with their nine-year-old son, Jeffrey, to another city. Gary objected. Jeffrey was enrolled in a superior elementary school. He had lived in the same neighborhood all his life and had many friends within a few blocks of his house. He participated in several team sports. Living in another city would drastically reduce Gary’s contact with his son. And Gary’s parents were available to baby-sit every day after school while both parents worked. Ever since he was born, Jeffrey spent at least one night a week with his grandparents, and he enjoyed these contacts. In fact, he was at their house while his parents were meeting.
Louise countered that she would either enroll Jeffrey in a day care center before and after school, or leave him home alone. Gary said he could not accept that arrangement. Louise had not expected any resistance from Gary; she was furious that he intended to thwart her plans. She stormed out of the restaurant, sped over to her in-laws’, and when she was let in the door yelled, “Come on, Jeffrey. We’re out of here!” His grandfather asked if Jeffrey could finish his dinner. Louise said she didn’t want him spending another second in the house. Jeffrey burst into tears. He was scared and quickly gathered his things. His grandfather helped him into his jacket and then gave the boy a hug and kiss. Louise jerked Jeffrey out of his grandfather’s arms and charged out of the house.
Later the grandparents were shocked to hear Louise’s account of the incident. According to her, the grandfather had forcibly detained Jeffrey and was not going to let him leave the house. She repeated her version of the incident so many times on the return home that she actually had Jeffrey believing that this is what happened. The episode was then used as the kernel of a campaign to program Jeffrey to believe that his grandparents were volatile and could not be trusted. Though Jeffrey had always experienced them as more patient than either of his parents, he also learned that the way to please his mother and ward off her anger was to tell her that he didn’t want to see his grandparents anymore.
One father distorted an actual event when he successfully convinced his children that their mother kidnapped them. In reality she had been granted temporary custody and took the children on a vacation. At the time the children loved their vacation at the seashore. But afterward their father programmed them to regard the experience as a frightening ordeal in which they were kept incommunicado from him. Periodically he reinforced the program with reminders such as, “Remember the time when Mommy kidnapped you and you didn’t know if you would ever see me again?” The children not only “remembered,” they embellished the incident with their own details. This is a dramatic example of how a parent can alter children’s perceptions and memories.
When parents cannot find enough incidents that lend themselves to distortion, they are not deterred. They simply make things up. Dr. Gardner wrote about a mother who answered the father’s telephone call while her son was nearby. She greeted the father’s innocuous statements with a long, stony silence, after which she said, “That’s your opinion. In my opinion he’s a very fine boy.” In this manner she created the impression that the father was attacking the boy’s character and that she was defending her son. These types of maneuvers can be so effective that the child believes that he actually heard the offensive conversation. If so, the innocent parent’s subsequent denials fall on deaf ears.
TAKE ACTION
Lies should be challenged as soon as possible because the repetition of lies creates false memories in children that are difficult to erase. When your children have been told lies about you, invite them to think for themselves. Are the allegations consistent with what they know about how you behave? It may be best to have another trusted person correct the distortions rather than attempt to do it yourself. The children are apt to dismiss your denials. Another person may have more success in convincing the children that they are mistaken.
In addition to allegations of bad behavior, lies take the form of denying and concealing the rejected parent’s good behavior. Birthday cards and gifts intended for the children are intercepted by the alienating parent and returned unopened without the children’s knowledge. The children never learn that their rejected parent provides ongoing financial support. They are kept in the dark about the rejected parent’s numerous efforts to contact them. Phone calls are screened. Voice mail is deleted. The alienating parent may even tell the children that the other parent has lost interest in them. The net result is that the children receive no signs of the other parent’s love and caring. They feel abandoned. This makes it even more difficult for them to approach the rejected parent in the future.
One woman waited until she was in her thirties and her mother died before seeking out her estranged father. Eventually they developed a close relationship. She told her father that she could understand that he was blocked from seeing her. “But why,” she asked, “wouldn’t you support me to attend college? Mom said we didn’t have enough money for tuition. I’ll always regret not going to college and I can’t get over the fact that you didn’t come through for me.” The father was flabbergasted. For four years he sent the mother large checks that were specifically designated for college tuition.
Who controls the past controls the future.
—GEORGE ORWELL
Communist rulers in the Soviet Union were masters at propaganda. When it came time to convince the populace that a formerly revered leader was really a scoundrel, they knew the job required more than implanting false beliefs about the target. Their corruption of reality had to reach back in time. They had to erase benevolent memories of the person—memories that conflicted with the new party line. They had to silence potential critics who would object: “How could this person [Stalin, for example] be so bad when for years we were told that he was great and worthy of adulation?”
So they simply rewrote history. One strategy was to say, in effect, “Our previous judgment was mistaken.” The other tactic was an outright denial that the leader was ever held in high esteem. Textbooks were revised to conform to the new doctrine. Institutions and places named in the person’s honor were renamed. Portraits were removed from public areas. Heads were airbrushed out of official group photographs.
Brainwashing parents follow the same principle: They revise history to obliterate positive memories of the target. A father tells his children that their mother was always more interested in her work than in them, even though she only began working outside the home after the divorce. A mother transforms a past vacation planned and enjoyed by both parents into the time that “Daddy insisted that he and I leave you for a week.” The target’s former involvement with the children is minimized or denied; photographic evidence to the contrary is destroyed or hidden. A husband wrote numerous notes to his wife during their marriage that praised her patience and attention to the children; he seized and destroyed these notes in the midst of a custody battle in which he claimed that she neglected her children. The basic message is that nothing about the target is any good, or ever has been.
It is not unusual for spouses to devalue each other as they go through a divorce. It is easier to tolerate the break-up when you focus on negative aspects of the relationship that you will be escaping, rather than positive aspects that you will be losing. Parents intent on divorce poison, though, carry this process to an extreme, and they encourage or manipulate their children to do the same. According to Dr. Stanley Clawar and Dr. Brynne Rivlin, “It is fairly easy to confuse children into doubting their own perception of reality due to the high regard and awesome power most parents hold in their children’s eyes.”
When I interview child victims of divorce poison, they usually give me a revised history of their relationship with the rejected parent. Children who were close to a parent now insist that they never enjoyed being with that parent. When I ask about photographs and videotapes of family holidays and vacations that show them being very loving toward the alienated parent, they dismiss these with a variety of excuses. The most popular excuses are: “I was just pretending to have a good time,” “She made me act like that, but I didn’t really feel it,” “I was only happy because [the favored parent] was there,” “What do you expect, everybody is happy on a vacation, but it doesn’t mean I enjoyed being with her,” or “The times in those videos were the only times I ever enjoyed being with her. All the rest of my life was miserable.”
Alienated children similarly dismiss the significance of cards and gifts they gave the target parent in the past. Often they insist that their other parent made them give the card and write on it, “To the best daddy in the world. I love you very much.” One boy claimed that the only reason he gave his mother a gift on Mother’s Day was that the entire class made something and he didn’t want to be different from his classmates. This did not explain why he signed the accompanying handmade card, “Love and kisses.”
In one of the worst cases of divorce poison I have seen, a girl named Mindy claimed to have total amnesia for a music box that her mother had used to wake her up every morning of her life. The mother brought the music box to a meeting with her alienated daughter. “Remember this?” asked the mother. She wound it up and lifted the lid to release the tune, “You Are the Sunshine of My Life.” The mother choked back tears evoked by memories of better times, but Mindy sat stone-faced. “Sure,” she said, “I’ve heard that song. But I’ve never seen that music box before.” Her mother was astounded. How could her daughter not remember the morning ritual that had been a fixture in their lives for eight years? Mindy could have been lying. Or she could have blocked out these memories in the service of maintaining her cold rejection of her mom.
Mindy’s mother expected to correct her daughter’s misperception of their past relationship by presenting clear evidence to the contrary. She did not count on the tenacity of a brainwashed child’s corrupted view of reality. In a clash between reality and an alienating parent’s distortions, the distortions usually win out, unless groundwork has been carefully laid. One cannot reason with an alienated child until the child’s mind is open to reason.
TAKE ACTION
Don’t squander valuable opportunities by naively assuming that brainwashing will be reversed by the simple presentation of reality. When you have strong evidence that a child’s view of the past is distorted, withhold the evidence until there is a good chance that your child will be open to considering it, rather than reject it out of hand. It is best to use a therapist’s assistance with this process. With correct timing, the evidence can be a potent antidote to divorce poison. With poor timing, you will encounter the brick-wall resistance of a mind closed to reality and reason, and you will have wasted an important weapon in the battle against alienation.
Sometimes a child’s past relationship to the target parent was so positive, so filled with gratification and memorable moments, that any attempt to obliterate the good memories would be futile. In that case, what is revised is not the past assessment but the current one.
A woman adamantly refuses to encourage her daughter to maintain ties with her dad. This mother admits to the therapist that her ex used to be a very kind and loving father. But, she claims, since the divorce he has totally changed. He is no longer the same man. His change is so complete that he no longer has anything positive to contribute to his daughter’s life.
Alienating parents often support this maneuver by emphasizing their ex’s superficial changes, the type that are common in the recently divorced. The ex-husband begins to wear his hair longer. He changes his wardrobe, listens to different music, drives a sports car. He compensates for the loss of his marriage by trying to recapture a sense of his youth and of his opportunities for a new beginning. Nevertheless, his commitment to his children remains intact, and his underlying character is unchanged.
As with most forms of divorce poison, children are most susceptible when they have no meaningful contact with the target and thus little chance to test the reality of what they have been taught.
TAKE ACTION
If your ex is complaining to your children that you have changed, tell the children:
Parents can communicate negative messages about the target without telling a single lie, even without lodging a single criticism. Consider the following very common scenario. The children are at their father’s home, watching cartoons or playing, and their mother calls and asks to speak with them.
In one home the father says, “Mommy is on the phone. Come and talk to her. Who wants to go first?” If the children respond, “Not now. We’re busy,” he says, “I know you’re busy, but now it’s time to talk to Mom. Let’s go.” The father essentially handles the call the way he would have before the divorce. His attitude conveys his belief that talking to Mom is a priority and is nonnegotiable. The underlying message is that their mother deserves their respect.
In another home the father announces, in a disdainful tone, “Your mother is on the phone. Do you want to speak with her?” His attitude suggests that he does not welcome her call and they don’t have to either. The underlying message, communicated solely by implication but not lost on the children, is that their mother is not worthy of respect. They sense that it would be perfectly fine with Dad if they snubbed Mom. In fact, even though he has not explicitly said so, he would probably be pleased with them if they did reject their mother’s call.
Often the most potent divorce poison takes this form. It relies on suggestion, innuendo, and implication. It is more difficult to expose because it is sneakier and more subtle than outright lies and misrepresentations.
A mother phoned her children while they were with their paternal grandparents. Her daughter enthusiastically described a variation of tag that she and her brother invented and were playing. The mother’s only response was to express concern: “I hope you’re not getting hurt.” This conveyed the impression that the grandparents could not be trusted to prevent the children from playing a dangerous game. The other hidden message was that the mother was not interested in hearing that her daughter was having a good time with her grandparents. When her son got on the phone, also sharing his excitement about the game, his mother asked, “Are you having fun or is it kind of silly?” Her inflection made clear what answer she wanted to hear. Although her son had been having a great time, he muted his expression of enjoyment and instead said, “It’s okay.”
This boy was very troubled by his mother’s negative attitude about his dad and his dad’s family. He tried to cope by pleasing her. He would rather tell his mom what she wanted to hear than forthrightly state his own opinion. But in the process of doing so, his own feelings changed. His mother’s small dose of divorce poison, administered in her brief suggestion that he was not having fun with his grandparents, achieved its purpose. Following the phone call, the boy had mixed feelings about what had been a very gratifying activity.
An example of the power of suggestion to alter a child’s view of reality occurred in my own home while I was writing this book. My grandsons were spending the night and the youngest boy, Shaun, talked us into ordering pizzas from a certain heavily advertised franchise rather than from our favorite local pizzeria. The pizza arrived burnt on top, with a crust that was too soft, and with too little of a bland sauce that had lived in a can too long.
My wife and I could not restrain our disappointment with the product. As we openly expressed our opinion, hoping to instill better taste in a nine-year-old, we unwittingly programmed Shaun to dislike the pizza. He went from loving it to passing up seconds. All he could say, in his defense, was that this franchise outlet did a worse job than the one in his neighborhood. His father later verified that the pizza we had was perfectly consistent with what they usually get and with what his son loves. We had inadvertently changed our grandson’s normal taste preference merely by repetitively expressing our very negative opinion of the food.
One of the most common complaints of divorced parents is shabby treatment during the transfer of the children. A mother arrives a few minutes early to pick up her son. It is raining outside. She rings the doorbell, but there is no response. The boy has his coat on and is ready to leave. He watches his mother from the window. But his stepmother makes him stay in the house until the very last second. After repeated experiences like this the mother learns that she will be kept waiting, regardless of the weather, until the exact time that her official period of possession begins.
What is the effect on children of witnessing such treatment? The boy in the above example received two messages through his stepmother’s behavior. First, his mother’s wish to be with him is seen as an unwelcome nuisance. She is excluded as long as possible, as though spending time with her has no value. Second, she is not worthy of being treated with compassion or common decency. She is given less consideration than a door-to-door salesman.
Children will usually feel very uncomfortable when a parent is treated so disrespectfully. This is especially true when the mistreatment is at the hands of someone else they love. To relieve themselves of loyalty conflicts, they may join in devaluing the parent. By convincing themselves that the parent deserves poor treatment, they avoid conscious feelings of guilt.
Younger children are most susceptible to suggestion. Treat them as though you expect them to be scared of the target, and they will respond with fear. Shortly after the marital separation a mother tells her daughter: “Daddy is coming to take you for a visit, but you don’t have to be afraid.” Prior to this the girl had no reason to fear being with her father. She generally was excited to see him. But now her mother has introduced the idea of fear as an expected response to her father. A small seed of insecurity has been planted. When the father arrives, the programming continues. In front of the girl the mother says, “She seems to be a little uneasy about going with you.” The mother then turns to the child and says, “Now remember. I told you there is nothing to be afraid of. Don’t be scared.” With this repetition the seed has taken root. The girl is reluctant to leave her mother’s side. The mother feels triumphant. The father feels bewildered.
Suggestions can be just as powerful when conveyed without words. Behavior and gestures do the job. A father and his new wife constantly roll their eyes and smirk when the children speak about their activities with their mother. The disapproval is obvious. Over time, the children either adopt the same critical attitude toward their mother or learn to avoid speaking about her in their father’s home.
Infants and toddlers can learn to fear someone merely by seeing how their parents act in the person’s presence. When a mother begins to cry and cling tightly to her daughter as the paternal grandmother reaches out to take the child for a visit, she “infects” her daughter with her anxiety. Predictably, the little girl will respond with her own tears and clinging behavior.
Older children are generally less suggestible but not immune. A father cautions his twelve-year-old daughter, “Don’t get too close to your stepfather in the swimming pool.” After a few such warnings it is difficult for the girl not to look at her stepfather in a different light. A fleeting physical contact becomes a possible cause for concern. The girl has succumbed to her father’s suggestion that the stepfather could be a sexual predator.
TAKE ACTION
Identify the unstated implications of suggestions and innuendos, and clarify reality, to help neutralize the harmful impact of this form of divorce poison. For example, “Mommy worries that you won’t have a good time with me, but we know that we have a good time together, don’t we?” Or “I’ve seen how Daddy frowns when you tell him what we did together. That must make you very uncomfortable. I guess he disapproves of almost everything that goes on here. Even when we were married, your daddy and I had different ideas about how to do things. In fact, that’s one of the reasons we got a divorce. But you know in your heart that there is absolutely nothing wrong with how we live in this house.” As with most discussions of divorce poison, it is best to choose a time when you and the children are relating well. With younger children, simply identify the underlying message conveyed by the suggestion and clarify reality. Suggestions and innuendos lose their potency when they are openly confronted.
It is bad enough when a parent acts as though the other parent’s participation in the child’s life is unwelcome. Even worse is when a parent suggests to the child that it is permissible, even desirable, to exploit the other parent.
It is very common for parents to support their children’s rejection of the other parent while encouraging the children to ask for money and favors from the hated parent. The children are taught to feel entitled to money and services from the parent they otherwise shun.
At times the sense of entitlement stretches credulity. A teenager expected her father to buy her a new car even though she admitted that she would never allow him even to sit in the car with her. A college student expected his father to send extra money to cover additional expenses, but the father was not welcome at the graduation exercises. A high school senior demanded that his mother select, pay for, and deliver to him a corsage for his prom date. This mother was unwelcome at her son’s basketball games and was excluded from every other aspect of her son’s life. She was not even to have the pleasure of getting a photograph of her son and his date in their prom clothes. Perhaps the height of audacity was a young lady’s expectation that her father would contribute substantially to her wedding expenses, even though she refused to invite him or any of his family to the wedding.
For the child, exploitation is another expression of alienation. For the parent who encourages or sanctions this behavior, it is a form of divorce poison, another means of corrupting the child’s view of the formerly loved target. By not expressing disapproval of the exploitation, the alienating parent contributes to the notion that the target parent is so worthy of contempt that the usual rules of civility and decency do not apply.
This tactic is especially pernicious. The sense of entitlement corrupts not only a child’s relationship with a parent but the child’s character. Alienating parents teach their children to suspend the usual rules of morality when dealing with the target. What these parents may not appreciate is that a child can become accustomed to treating others as objects to be used. Exploitation can become a permanent mode of dealing with people and handicap the child’s ability to form and maintain emotionally gratifying relationships. When this occurs, the alienating parent is guilty of contributing not only to the loss of love but to the perversion of the child’s soul.
When a person makes several accusations about another person that have no basis in reality, very often the accusations turn out to be self-descriptive. This was true of Louise, who accused her father-in-law of being volatile when she herself was prone to fits of rage.
The practice of falsely attributing to others one’s own unacknowledged feelings, impulses, or thoughts is known as “projection.” It happens so much in custody disputes that I often advise parents to begin keeping a list of possible projections. It is uncanny how often a parent will be guilty of the very things he or she accuses the ex-spouse of doing.
Sometimes projections provide clues to behaviors and intentions that the parent attempts to conceal. I remember one woman who told me that her ex-husband repeatedly accused her of tape-recording their phone conversations. I advised her that it was a good bet that he was taping. This proved to be true. As I discussed in chapter 4, very often the first parent to raise an accusation of brainwashing is the one who has already begun such a campaign.
To detect the possibility of projection, follow this procedure. First you must be sure that you are not guilty of whatever is being attributed to you. Then ask yourself: Why would he be saying that? Where did that idea come from? Since it isn’t true for me, perhaps it is on his mind because it is something he thought, felt, or did, or is contemplating doing. Is there any evidence for this?
Not every false accusation is the result of projection. It is only one possible explanation. But when projection is present, you need to know about it. It alerts you to potential and actual destructive behavior on the part of your accuser. It helps you explain the situation to your children when appropriate. And it is essential in defending against allegations in court.
PROJECTION: NOT I, YOU!
Following are some examples of the use of projection in custody litigation. In each case, the person attributes his or her own thoughts, feelings, or behavior to another.
People are usually unaware that they are projecting. Projections are not only self-descriptive, they are self-deceptive. In fact, psychologists regard projection as a defense that people use to protect themselves from facing their own unpleasant thoughts or feelings.
The woman in the last example who accused her husband of being cruel was not just trying to win a custody battle. She actually convinced herself that her husband was a monster. This corruption of reality was the price she paid to avoid the disturbing truth that the cruelty she sensed was her own. Because of its protective function, confronting the woman with her projection was futile. When the court-appointed psychologist suggested that she was trying to brainwash her children, she was indignant. She was convinced that she was a victim of a terrible injustice. In her mind all she was doing was trying to protect her children from their cruel father.
While working on this chapter I came upon a news item that illustrated, in another context, a form of reality corruption favored by bad-mouthing and bashing parents. In an entire Alabama school system of 2,600 students, the only Jewish high school student complained of ongoing harassment. Some examples he cited were the assistant principal ordering him to write an essay on “Why Jesus loves me,” and a teacher ordering him to remove a Star of David lapel pin. The superintendent confirmed the allegations but explained that the teacher thought the Jewish Star was a gang symbol.
This sort of excuse is known as a rationalization. It is a lie that is intended to seem plausible. In this case the school superintendent apparently thought it sounded reasonable enough to repeat to the national media.
Men who beat and intimidate their wives rationalize their disgraceful behavior. A man testified that he did not verbally abuse his wife. During his cross-examination he admitted that he frequently called her a whore, a liar, a slut, a horrible mother, and worse epithets, usually modified with curse words. When asked how he reconciled such behavior with his prior testimony that he did not verbally abuse her, he said that his insulting and name-calling was not abusive because it was true. The judge was not convinced by such twisted logic.
A woman told her husband that if he didn’t agree to all her demands in the divorce, she would call his employer and get him fired. During her deposition, she denied making such threats. On further questioning she admitted that she “may have alluded to getting him fired,” but she did not regard this as a threat. Quibbling about the exact meaning of words is a common form of rationalization used even by presidents of the United States.
When confronted with evidence of wrongdoing, a popular rationalization is to dismiss the behavior as a joke. The woman who ignored her stepson unless he addressed her as Mom told the court that she was only kidding. The judge dismissed this rationalization because the behavior occurred over a long period of time and was consistent with other versions of the name game played by this woman: She referred to the boy’s mother by her first name in conversation with him and she required her own son to call his stepfather Dad.
Parents dispensing divorce poison use rationalizations in two ways. Most frequently they rationalize in order to defend their behavior, as did the Alabama schoolteacher. They attempt to convince themselves and others that they are doing nothing wrong. The rationalization is a cover-up to hide their real motives. Second, rationalizations can be used to make the target’s behavior look bad.
A noncustodial mother complained that despite repeated requests she was never shown anything her six-year-old daughter brought home from school, including report cards. The father and stepmother responded that they were not deliberately withholding the material. They were merely respecting the girl’s own choice. If the girl wanted her mother to see her schoolwork, she would have taken it with her when she saw her mother every other weekend.
This explanation sounded reasonable to them. But of course it was a rationalization to justify their lack of support for the girl’s relationship with her mother. We don’t ordinarily expect a six-year-old to be responsible for keeping track of her school papers. And we don’t ordinarily assume that if the child neglected to pack her schoolwork then she did not want her mom to see it. Finally, we would not leave such a decision to the child. Everything else that went with her on weekends spent with her mother was packed by her stepmother. If the father and stepmother wanted the mother to see the schoolwork, it would have happened.
This couple used the rationalization about the girl’s failure to show her mother her work not only to excuse their own behavior. They also cited it as evidence that the girl must not feel close to her mom.
Like many rationalizations, this one was easy to expose, especially because it was part of a wider campaign to exclude the mother from her daughter’s life. This couple also played the name game by requiring the girl to call her stepmother Mommy and her mother by her first name.
The “respect for the child’s choice” shown by this couple is another popular rationalization used by most parents in the latter stages of brainwashing. Once a child has been successfully alienated from the target, the programming parent sits back and disavows any role in the conflict. When the child protests seeing her mother, the father says, “That is her choice.” As an enlightened parent he “respects her autonomy”; he fails to facilitate the contact.
But curiously his permissiveness seems to operate only in this sphere. He sends his daughter to school even when she feels like staying home. He would never allow her to avoid a checkup because she was afraid of the doctor. And before the divorce, when she protested going somewhere with her mother, he insisted she do as she was told. But now, after months of programming, when his daughter resists spending a weekend with her mother, her choice is elevated to the status of a sacred precept not, under any circumstance, to be violated.
Parents who use the “I respect my child’s autonomy” defense pour salt on the wound by blaming the target for the child’s alienation. This is always some variant of “My child does not want to see you because you mistreat her.” The perpetrator never acknowledges responsibility for masterminding the schism between the child and the target.
Norma testified that, despite her best efforts, she was unable to overcome her five-year-old daughter Megan’s refusal to go to her father’s home. She claimed that Megan was afraid of her father and her paternal grandparents. Norma blamed this on the father’s yelling and not keeping all his promises to Megan and the grandparents’ ignoring and teasing her. The court-appointed psychiatrist found no evidence to suggest that Megan feared her father, but did conclude that she avoided her father because of subtle pressure from her mother, combined with a wish to please her mother and avoid her anger. Like many alienated children, Megan insisted that it was her own choice to avoid her father and that her mother had nothing to do with it. In fact, her mother wanted her to see her dad. The following conversation exposed the flimsy rationalization:
Doctor: What does Mommy do when you don’t want to take your bath?
Megan: She makes me.
Doctor: What does Mommy do when you don’t want to go to bed?
Megan: She makes me.
Doctor: What does Mommy do when you don’t want to see your Daddy?
Megan: She says I don’t have to if I don’t want to and Daddy should respect my feelings.
During cross-examination, the lawyer accused Norma of actively inducing the alienation. She was indignant. Here she had been doing everything possible to persuade Megan to visit her scary father, and instead of being commended for her valiant efforts she was portrayed as the villain. Norma failed to consider that she was asking the judge to give her custody of a child whom she admitted she was unable to control. If the judge were to believe her testimony, he could conclude that Norma was a weak parent who lacked appropriate authority over a five-year-old girl.
TAKE ACTION
To show your children how their rejection of you fulfills the desires of their other parent, despite your ex’s rationalizations, initiate a conversation similar to the one that took place between the psychiatrist and Megan. Most children know that if one parent really wanted them to see the other parent, they would insist on it and back it up with the threat of punishment. Exposing this rationalization provides a relatively strong demonstration of how a parent can indirectly influence a child, and it paves the way for other efforts to reverse alienation.
Indignance, such as Norma’s, is common among brainwashers. In her case it was a reaction to being accused of brainwashing. Beyond its defensive use, self-righteousness helps foster indoctrination. By combining moral outrage with certainty of conviction, the aim is to ward off careful scrutiny of the programmer’s reality distortions. The strident tone is the argument.
Trial attorneys favor this tactic. In deliberations before the judge, who is not likely to be taken in by such maneuvers, lawyers show emotional restraint while advocating their position. But let the jury enter the courtroom, and the emoting begins. Haughty, reproachful, disdainful, lawyers attempt to bypass the jurors’ critical faculties. They want the jury to believe, in effect, “The lawyer feels so strongly about his position: It must be justified.”
Jurors may not always be swayed by such tactics, especially since they get it from both sides. But children are much more suggestible. The tone of their parent’s voice carries weight, even more that the words being spoken. And the self-righteous tone of a bad-mouthing parent communicates that the target deserves contempt.
The particulars of the condemnation are limitless. A man accuses his ex-spouse of neglecting her children because she cares passionately about her career and relies on baby-sitters too much. A wife accuses her husband of being a lousy father because he lets them do things she views as dangerous. A man tells his children that their mother and her new husband are “liars and morally bankrupt” because they began dating before the divorce was final. The “holier than thou” attitude is expressed with comments such as “That’s just what I would expect from her” or “I can’t believe he did that!” Whatever “that” is, the child gets the idea that it is very bad.
TAKE ACTION
If your breakup is accompanied by your ex using self-righteous tones to denounce you to your children, take this as an early warning signal that your children may be pressured to turn against you. Children are easily impressed by self-righteousness. Therefore, as soon as possible arm your children with a defense by teaching them that a strident tone is no index of the reasonableness of an idea. Children should learn to judge ideas by their merit and not by the emotion surrounding their delivery. They need to learn to recognize a parent’s strong denunciations of the other parent as expressions of hostility, not representations of truth.
Self-righteousness is most powerful when paired with religiosity. “Your mother,” decries Dad, “is not just a bad parent. She’s a sinner.” Why? Usually one of three reasons. Most often because she slept with another man. In some cases just because she initiated the divorce. And in other cases merely because she has not embraced the father’s new religious beliefs.
Children hear a bitter refrain that their mother is evil and worthy of contempt because she has violated God’s law. She has Satan in her heart. She will be destroyed at Armageddon for her lack of love for God.
This strategy is particularly effective because it capitalizes on years of religious training. From the beginning children are taught to accept religious doctrines on faith. The Ten Commandments are—just that. Commandments. Not proposals to be carefully evaluated before accepting. Religion enjoys a mantle of legitimacy and absolute authority. So, when a father’s denunciation of a mother is cloaked in religious dogma, the children are primed to accept it without question, as they would any other religious teaching. Even if it clashes with common sense.
When a wife—before, during, or after divorce—sleeps with another man, her ex-husband’s religious indignation is almost always a cover-up for more personal feelings. The real issue is not her fall from grace. It is his hurt, anger, jealousy, and humiliation. Certainly we can understand how he would feel this way. But if he acted on these feelings by lobbying his children to reject their mother, it would be obvious that he was sacrificing his children to pursue personal revenge. Instead the children get the message that Dad wants them to condemn Mom, not because she offended him, but because she offended God. The children are pressed into alienation as a demonstration of their faith. Many times the father is not fully aware that his pious stance is a front.
But make no mistake about it. The father is not simply expressing his religious beliefs. Nor is he sincerely attempting to give his children a moral education. This he could accomplish without mentioning the mother’s behavior. The father is clearly trying to turn the children against their mother. And he is using selective attention and context dropping to do it. No matter how he rationalizes his behavior, he is brainwashing.
The strategy is to equate the mother’s value as a person and as a parent with one moral transgression, and then to persuade the children to do the same. Ask these children to describe their mother and they say, “She’s a sinner,” as though this were all one needed to know about her. It overshadows the entire history of their relationship with her. It obliterates everything she has done for them. They have been programmed to believe that their mother’s sin defines her character and renders her unworthy of love.
Children are particularly vulnerable to thinking in global terms about a person’s character. People are either good or bad. It requires a certain level of psychological maturity to maintain a balanced image of others, to feel positive about them while simultaneously recognizing their flaws. Some adults never reach this level of maturity. When a father encourages his children to hate their mother because she has done something wrong, he is fostering an attitude that will limit their capacity for healthy, rewarding interpersonal relations. By extension, he is also implying that he is free from any wrongdoing. Selective attention operates to magnify the mother’s flaws while overlooking those of the father.
TAKE ACTION
Under the sway of guilt, a spouse who has had an affair may passively accept her children’s total condemnation as punishment for her wrongdoing. To avoid this mistake, keep in mind that our souls are not defined merely by our worst sins. It is unfair for your ex and your children to select one aspect of you and respond to you as if that were all there is. Allowing your children to lose their relationship with you multiplies the harmful impact of your behavior on your children. A far better way to atone is to take whatever steps are necessary to heal the relationship.
Some fathers label the mother a sinner merely because she chose to divorce him. He maintains, and persuades the children, that the divorce is all her fault. In failing to take responsibility for his contributions to the failure of the marriage, he ignores the full context of the divorce. In almost every case the husband shares culpability for the marital problems. Indeed, what type of man rigidly espouses extreme religious views that require the children’s total repudiation of their mother? Most likely one who has character traits that made him hard to live with in the first place.
The third category of “sinful” mothers are those who do not share the father’s religious affiliation. In this situation either the father has converted to a religion or sect that preaches intolerance of outsiders. Or, less often, both spouses had observed this faith until the mother decided to leave the fold.
When a father embraces new religious practices after the breakup, his children are less likely to ally with him. In these cases the father is usually preoccupied with his new beliefs. In a heavy-handed way he tries to convert the children, but his proselytizing backfires. The pressure to adopt unfamiliar beliefs meets with contempt on the part of older children and confusion and fear on the part of their younger siblings. Their father is different, and they do not like the change.
When the father undergoes a religious conversion before the breakup, which is often the case, the children are usually more susceptible to his influence. In a typical scenario, the father joins a fanatic sect or cult that devalues outsiders. He feels that he has finally found meaning in life and wants to share this with his family. His wife resists indoctrination; his children may not.
The father zealously devotes himself to the new cause, learning its teachings and becoming, himself, brainwashed. Then the father-brain-wash-victim becomes the father-brainwash-perpetrator. He begins taking his children to services and they are gradually brought into the fold. They get a weekly dose of doctrine that is antagonistic toward established churches and synagogues, including the one their mother still attends.
By the time the mother realizes the seriousness of this, the children may be beyond her reach. They have been taught that nonbelievers are their “spiritual enemies.” That people who try to dissuade them from “the truth” are pawns of the devil. They may also have been taught that the father is the spiritual head of the household; such a belief reinforces the pressure to accept his pronouncements. If the mother had once shared the same religious affiliation, but then defected, she is regarded as a heretic who merits scorn.
When divorce occurs in these families, religious conflict is very often the trigger. The wife cannot tolerate the personality change in her husband. He becomes emotionally withdrawn from her. And in some cases, bolstered by a newfound sense of self-righteousness, he becomes abusive. Certainly she does not want her children influenced by his beliefs.
Under these circumstances it is easy to see how a custody battle would erupt. In fact, it is so predictable that cults develop well-organized approaches to help their members prevail in custody litigation. They produce and distribute booklets that instruct followers on how to respond to questions from psychologists and lawyers. Parents are taught to coach their children to give misleading testimony in court. When the children are asked about their religion, they give answers that conceal the radical and intolerant nature of the cult.
You may have noticed that I have repeatedly referred to the behavior of men in my discussion of religious-based attacks. Women also use this maneuver, but in my consultations and studies I have encountered far more men who justify their brainwashing on religious grounds. Brainwashing mothers, in my experience, are more likely to express moral indignation without religious rhetoric. For example, a mother may rationalize her attempt to keep the children from their father by objecting to their exposure to his girlfriend. But she does not label the father and his girlfriend “pawns of Satan.” Instead she expresses concern over the impact of the father-girlfriend relationship on the children’s moral or emotional development.
It is possible that the differences I have observed between men and women in this regard are not representative of brainwashing parents in general. Perhaps religiosity is equally prevalent among brainwashing mothers. If so, I hope readers will set me straight.
Parents of many different faiths draw on religion to foster alienation. But regardless of their sex or their particular religion, every parent who resorts to this tactic to promote parental alienation is caught in a curious contradiction. While ostensibly upholding religious ideals, they are supporting their children’s violation of one of the most sacred religious tenets, the Fifth Commandment: “Honor thy father and thy mother.”
TAKE ACTION
Meet with your minister, rabbi, or priest, explain your situation, and ask about your religion’s position on the sanctity of parent-child relationships. If he supports the importance of your children’s contact with you, ask him to intervene with your ex and with your children. This can be especially helpful if you choose a religious leader with training in family therapy. Despite moral transgressions of parents, noncult religions usually encourage children to honor their parents. If your ex is using religion to turn the children against you, the children are more likely to accept contrary advice from a respected religious leader than from you.
Members of religious cults always feel that they possess the truth. The truth, of course, is defined as their particular set of beliefs. Dr. Gardner discovered that, for pathologically alienated children, the phrase the truth takes on special significance.
During indoctrination, programmers repeatedly label their distorted version of reality as “the truth.” Over time, “the truth” becomes associated with the programmer’s implanted scenarios. “The truth,” instructs the father, “is that Mamma’s boyfriend showed you his pee-pee, right? That’s the truth.” After several repetitions, “the truth” becomes a shorthand code term for the father’s program. When he wants his daughter to repeat the false allegations, he merely needs to ask her to tell the truth.
This pays dividends during subsequent investigations by courts and mental health professionals. When asked if she has been coached by her parent to say anything in particular, the child responds that she was only told to tell the truth. In her mind the truth has come to mean “all the bad things I have been told about the target.” But the unwary examiner may believe the child is giving an accurate account of the target’s behavior.
TAKE ACTION
Make sure that your attorney and any mental health professionals involved with your children understand that “the truth” has become associated with your ex’s programming. When questioning your children, professionals will want to ask, “How did you come to learn that this was the truth?” Or “Is that what really happened?” When examiners probe for the meaning of “the truth,” they may learn that it stands for the misrepresentations of the alienating parent, not for reality.
Alienating parents also use “the truth” as an excuse for divorce poison. They defend their bad-mouthing and bashing with the claim that they are only being honest with the child and that it is always better to be honest. Of course, their commitment to honesty does not extend to letting the child know about their own flaws or about your virtues.
Jerome insisted that he was right to tell his son the truth about his mother and stepfather. Jerome suspected that they began their affair prior to the divorce, and he repeatedly told his son that his mother and stepfather were morally bankrupt because they lied about their relationship. When the boy asked his stepfather if he thought his daddy was a good father, the stepfather said, “Yes, and he loves you very much.” Jerome then accused the stepfather of lying to the boy. The stepfather didn’t really like the father, therefore he was obviously showing what a pathological liar he was. According to Jerome, a person who was committed to the truth would have told the boy honestly that he thought he had a bad father. Jerome failed to understand how a commitment to a child’s emotional welfare and need to hold a positive image of his parent could take precedence over an opportunity to express negative feelings. Parents who bad-mouth often assume that everyone else operates as they do. If they freely vent destructive criticism without regard for the impact on their child, they believe their ex does the same.
TAKE ACTION
Never get in a battle with your children about what “really” happened. Accusing your children of lying will only drive them further away. Instead, when an impasse is reached, bypass the controversy by “agreeing to disagree.” Your children’s agreement that their rejection of you is irrational is not a precondition of healing your relationship. It is more effective to focus on creating a rewarding, affectionate relationship in the present.
Earlier I discussed the target parent’s indulgence of the children as a means of avoiding their rejection and counteracting the malevolent associations built up by the programmer. Alienating parents also indulge children. Their goal is to cement the children’s alliance to them while furthering their alienation from the target.
One form of indulgence is to seduce the children with age-inappropriate privileges and material things. A parent allows her adolescent to have parties in the home without supervision. By comparison the other parent appears overly restrictive. Another parent offers extravagant gifts, such as a new sports car and season tickets to pro-football games, if his teenage son will move in with him. The parent with fewer resources is unable to compete. To her children she appears less generous and less gratifying.
Indulgence can take the form of having lower expectations for responsible behavior. A lax attitude is taken toward chores, homework, and junk-food snacks. When a homework assignment is challenging, or requires a lot of time and effort, the parent does it for the child. If your ex caters to your children’s wishes for immediate gratification and avoidance of frustration, the children may regard your demands for more mature behavior and frustration tolerance as overly strict and odious. You make them brush their teeth and do their homework; their other parent lets them avoid these chores. Your ex may exploit the situation by being very receptive to your children’s complaints about you. Instead of reinforcing the need for good nutrition, for example, your ex sides with the children and agrees that you are being unfair to insist that they eat their vegetables. By suspending ordinary expectations of the children, your ex panders to their immaturity and encourages them to reject you as unreasonably demanding.
Children who have reached a certain level of development will sense that the permissive parent is shirking the responsibility to provide more structure and authoritative guidance. But their wish for freedom and possessions can undermine their better judgment. The pleasure of immediate gratification can seduce them into an unhealthy alliance with the programming parent.
Overindulgence can backfire. When children learn that their allegiance is being bought, the price may rise. They may threaten to defect to the enemy (i.e., move in with the other parent) if their increasing demands are not met. In this way the victims of manipulation become the manipulators. The exploited become the exploiters.
TAKE ACTION
Confront overindulgence directly by reminding your children that a parent’s job is to set and enforce limits, and that this is one way to show love and caring. Explain that even though you and your ex do things differently, you both love the children and they need to have a good relationship with both of you. Children understand that responsible adults set limits. It is relatively easy for them to understand that it is unfair to reject you merely because you do not indulge them as much as their other parent.
Look for ways in which you could “lighten up” or compromise with the children without excessively indulging them. Alienated children need to have enjoyable times with the rejected parent to rebuild bonds of affection and respect and offset divorce poison. Parental authority is best exercised when it is grounded in a loving relationship. You may have to temporarily relax some of your expectations while you concentrate on reestablishing affectionate bonds.
Overindulgence works as an alienating tactic only if the child is kept from enjoying time with the target. When efforts to eliminate contact between the target and child are unsuccessful, one option remains. The parent tries to sabotage the child’s enjoyment of the contact. There are many ways to accomplish this goal. All involve some form of encroachment on the child’s time with the target or on their relationship.
A common ploy is to involve the child in frequent and lengthy telephone calls while the child is in the target parent’s home. This serves several purposes. It reduces the time the target parent and child can interact; it keeps the child focused on the brainwashing parent; and it provides an opportunity to reinforce the programming.
When parents call they will ask, regardless of how happy the children sound, “What’s wrong? Are you okay?” This reminds the children that the parent fostering the alienation expects them to have problems when in the company of the enemy. Children who have not fully succumbed to the brainwashing may regard such inquiries as a nuisance; they will answer in an annoyed tone, “Nothing.” Often, however, the children will oblige the parent by thinking of some complaint about the target. “Mommy is making me eat food I don’t like.” “Daddy won’t let me watch TV.” This is music to the brainwasher’s ears. He or she is very receptive to such complaints and commiserates with the children’s terrible fate of having to be with the target. When the children get off the phone, their mood has soured. The brainwashing parent has successfully diminished their enjoyment of the target.
Often the call generates homesickness or guilt. The children hear about all the fun things they are missing while away from their other home. A father heard his daughter say during a phone call, “No Mommy, we’re not having too much fun to miss you.” Often a parent tells the child how much she misses him. She cannot wait until he returns home. One mother carried this to extremes. She told her son, Ward, not only that she missed him, but his dog, guinea pig, plants, teddy bear, goldfish, grandparents, the house, and the swing set missed him. At the end of the conversation Ward felt that somehow it was wrong for him to be enjoying himself with his father. His proper place was with his mother. Like many parents who promote alienation, Ward’s mother worried when her son was out of her orbit of influence for very long. Her frequent calls carried the underlying messages, “You must think about me at all times. If you spend time away from me you might forget me. I can’t bear the thought of being without you.”
Some parents interfere with the child’s enjoyment of the target by promising rewards for returning home soon. One father told his son that there was a great surprise waiting for him when he returned. Naturally, the boy could not wait. What parent could compete with such enticement?
Even without phone calls parents can intrude into the time children spend with the target. One mother devised a creative strategy for monopolizing her son’s attention during his one-week vacation with his father. She sent seven gift-wrapped packages in his suitcase. The boy was instructed to open one package a day. Each package contained one module of a toy; when the modules were joined they formed a whole. The catch was that each module took hours to assemble. And the one condition of the gift was that the boy assemble it himself without any outside help. Thus the mother gave her son a vehicle for avoiding meaningful contact with his father throughout the week. I have seen several variations of this maneuver. All serve the purpose of keeping the child focused on the brainwashing parent while encroaching on the relationship with the target.
A common strategy for undercutting children’s pleasure with a parent is to refuse to let the children take important possessions with them when they spend time with their other parent. A father would not allow his son to take his baseball glove with him when he returned to his mother’s home. This was a problem for the mother because sometimes she had to take her son to his practices. For those readers who never played baseball, let me tell you what a problem this is for the boy. Over time, with proper preparation and care, a baseball glove conforms to its owner’s hand. It becomes indispensable to the enjoyment of the game. To a child who loves baseball, his own glove is as important as the teddy bear was in earlier years.
What does it mean when a child cannot bring his glove, or other important possessions, with him to the other parent’s home? If he is allowed to bring it anywhere else, such as friends’ homes and to school, the message conveyed is that either the object will become tainted at Mom’s home, or not returned, or that Dad is so angry with Mom that he does not want her to benefit from anything he bought his son. As with all such vindictive behavior, the child suffers.
The other message to the child is that he does not really own the glove. Ownership means the right to use and dispose of the possession. If he can’t decide where he takes it, is it really his? Or is it Dad’s? Of course parents place restrictions on children’s use of their toys. Sometimes children are not permitted to bring a toy in the car. But the only reason for not allowing the boy to take his baseball glove to Mom’s is to gratify Dad’s own wish to hurt his ex. Many parents who apply such restrictions rationalize their behavior by expressing concern that the object would not be returned. The child is old enough, though, to take responsibility for his possessions. And if he forgets it, his mother can always return it for him. Without divorce poison in operation, the situation could be handled the same way it would if the child left the glove at school or on the baseball field.
One of the ways children experience a bond with a parent or other relative is by sharing special interests and activities. Parents who wish to break such a tie, or prevent its development, must find a way to dilute the significance of the shared pursuits. They can do so by duplicating the activities in their own home. In this way they undermine the child’s association of the pleasurable activity exclusively with the target.
For example, Sammy’s grandparents introduced him to the hobby of collecting seashells. They kept the shells for Sammy in a shoe box in their home and the boy looked forward to handling the shells every time he visited them. Sammy’s dad, intent on promoting his son’s alienation from the grandparents, began buying bigger and better shells for Sammy and a beautiful glass case in which to store and display them.
Another time the grandparents discovered a television comedy that appealed equally to children and adults. Because the shows aired way past their grandson’s bedtime, they videotaped the shows. Each time Sammy visited, they played the episode from the previous week. Watching these shows and laughing out loud together became a highlight of the visits and a potent antidote to the father’s negative programming. When Sammy’s dad learned about this, he simply allowed Sammy to stay up late and watch the shows when they originally aired. This effectively extinguished Sammy’s excitement at viewing the programs with his grandparents.
When confronted with his obstructive behavior the father pleaded innocent: “What is wrong with supporting my son’s interests?” What’s wrong is that his selection of which particular interests to support was dictated by what he feared would foster a unique bond between Sammy and his grandparents.
A common maneuver is to arrange a very enjoyable activity for the children that encroaches on the time they are scheduled to be with the target. The target must then choose between forgoing the time with the children or interrupting their fun. The children come to associate contact with the target with disappointments such as prematurely ending a game, leaving in the middle of a movie, or missing the chance to go ice-skating. The effectiveness of this tactic is enhanced when the programming parent expresses indignation, as in “I can’t believe your mother insists that you go home right now when we are in the middle of this great video!” The self-righteous tone makes it difficult for the child to see through the father’s manipulation.
Dr. Clawar and Dr. Rivlin described a mother who upstaged a father’s birthday celebration plans for their ten-year-old son. She hosted a lavish party for the boy’s entire class and then told him that it was silly to have two parties and that the father would never provide the big celebration that he deserved. Initially the boy was unenthusiastic and withdrawn at his father’s small gathering with relatives and a few neighborhood friends. Later, though, he recognized that his mother attempted to sabotage his enjoyment of his father’s party.
A mother who sought my assistance with her custody case was excited about taking her young children to an afternoon Christmas show at Radio City Music Hall. She told her husband about the show weeks in advance in order to make sure that he would return the children in time. Her husband upstaged her by taking the children to the midmorning performance of the same show on the same day they were scheduled to see it with their mother. As if that were not spiteful enough, the children arrived at their mother’s apartment late and in inappropriately casual clothing, which meant that the father first took them home to change out of their good clothes. The mother and children were unavoidably late to the performance. Fortunately, despite the father’s attempts to ruin the mother’s good time with the children, they were excited about seeing the show again and enjoyed being able to predict what would happen next.
Although encroachment, by itself, is probably not enough to induce alienation, it does contribute to an ongoing process of estrangement by reducing the child’s enjoyment of the relationship with the target.
TAKE ACTION
If your ex attempts to sabotage your child’s enjoyment of time spent with you, and is to some extent successful, you should try to help your child understand what has happened rather than remain silent. If you remain passive in the face of encroachments, you give your child no help in resisting divorce poison. Children are more likely to resist alienation if they believe the target parent is willing to confront and expose the manipulations of the other parent. First, ask your child for his ideas. If he is unable to identify how his negative behavior was influenced by your ex, give your explanation. For example, “Mommy wanted you to think your party couldn’t be much fun if we only had eight guests.” Reminder: Most discussions of divorce poison are best conducted at a time when you and your child are relating well.
As alienation becomes more entrenched, some parents enlist their children as accomplices in clandestine operations against the enemy target. They instruct the children to keep secrets, to spy, and to report back to the other parent. Often they require the children to tell lies. An element of excitement accompanies such collusion and appeals to children of all ages.
Children are told to hide the fact that Daddy had his girlfriend spend the night at the house. They keep secret Mommy’s plans to baptize them without the father’s knowledge or attendance. They tell the other parent that they had a baby-sitter when in fact they were left in the home alone. When in the target’s home the children call the other parent and in hushed tones report on the alleged misdeeds occurring in the home. When a boy told his father, “Mommy’s being mean,” the father replied, “Don’t let Mom hear you. When you get home you can tell me all about it.” In essence the father told his son to hide his feelings from his mother, with the innuendo that she was so irrational that it would be dangerous to discuss grievances with her.
During custody battles these parents give their children assignments to steal documents from the other parent’s home. A man told his daughter to rifle through her mother’s desk and take her check register, a diary, and letters. One mother, whose divorcing husband had not yet moved out of the home, asked her adolescent daughter to intercept the mail to keep the father from seeing the mother’s exorbitant credit card bill. Some of the purchases were for the girl, and she willingly colluded with her mother. Two years later she still regarded her father as the enemy and refused to have any contact with him. She even refused to invite him to her high school graduation despite the fact that he had been the parent most involved in helping her with homework.
Parents will even coach their children to lie in court under oath. An alienated father accused his wife of fostering an unhealthy dependent relationship with their twelve-year-old son. One of his examples was that she slept regularly with the boy. To counter this accusation, the mother had her son testify on the witness stand that he had never slept with her. Eventually the truth came out during a psychological evaluation in which the younger siblings all confirmed the father’s allegations. After being confronted with this evidence the boy admitted that he lied in court. He said that his mother told him that if he did not lie he would have to go live with his father.
It is easy to see how covert operations corrupt children’s characters. The alienating parent encourages and sanctions dishonest and even cruel behavior. Also, as we see next, the more children behave in this manner, the more alienated they become. Their role as pawns for the brainwashing parent further entrenches their estrangement.
TAKE ACTION
Set a firm limit on dishonest behavior. Try to arouse your children’s underlying guilt and discomfort with covert operations by telling them that it must not feel very good being dishonest. Remind them that they were always taught not to keep secrets from their parents, and that this rule doesn’t change just because parents don’t get along with each other. Children know that dishonesty is wrong. Despite their overt behavior, they often welcome external control when their behavior is out of bounds. Particularly when an authority figure sanctions immoral behavior, children need someone to uphold proper standards and provide a moral compass.
Explain that experts on divorce tell parents not to put their children in the middle, and that you follow that advice. Help them decide how to assert themselves appropriately with your ex in order to resist colluding. For example, “Tell Mom that you love both parents and don’t want to take sides.” Or “Tell Dad that you don’t want to keep secrets from either of your parents.” Children need permission to stand up to a parent when that parent is asking them to do something wrong. If your ex persists in involving the children in covert operations, legal intervention may be necessary.
Think back to the last time you purchased a car. If you are like most people, chances are you were even more convinced that your choice was correct after the purchase than before. Psychologists explain this process as reducing “cognitive dissonance.” It is the tendency to bring our beliefs in line with our behavior. This helps reduce uncertainty, inconsistency, and conflict. Thus, if we act in a manner inconsistent with our beliefs, we may change what we believe.
This is one reason it is so important to interrupt your children’s hateful behavior toward you as soon as possible. The more they mistreat you, the more they must convince themselves that you deserve to be mistreated. The more they reject you, the more they convince themselves that you are bad and worthy of rejection. This reduces the dissonance caused by acting so hateful to a person who was loved for so long. It spares children inner turmoil about their behavior. In this manner, alienation feeds on itself and becomes entrenched.
TAKE ACTION
If your children’s alienation is not too severe, and your ex wants them to testify in a custody trial, consider asking your attorney if there is a way to prevent their participation. Why? After publicly denouncing a parent, a child may intensify negative feelings in order to reconcile his beliefs with his disloyal behavior.
Parents intent on promoting alienation often get assistance from others who serve as co-programmers. For example, a father’s extended family might join in the denigration of the mother and her family. This increases the pressure on the children to conform or else risk being rejected by grandparents, aunts, and uncles. Bad-mouthing the target becomes the family pastime, uniting them with a common enemy.
Sometimes the co-programmer is an older sibling who has already been brainwashed. This is particularly effective when the children visit the target away from the alienating parent. The older sibling carries on the brainwashing campaign by proxy, making sure that the younger ones remain loyal to the brainwashing parent.
One boy had been abducted by his father and brainwashed against his mother. The court reunited the mother and son and eventually the boy began calling her Mom again. However, when his severely alienated sister had to spend the day in the mother’s home, he reverted to calling his mother Sharon. Although he had recovered his good feelings for his mom, he felt that he could not afford to show this to his sister or he would appear disloyal to her and the father. Victims who are rescued from cults also feel such disloyalty when they turn their backs on the cult. It is as if there is an aspect of themselves that continues to think and feel as they did in the cult, although this is kept apart from their usual functioning.
TAKE ACTION
It is often best to arrange to spend time alone with each child, rather than have siblings together as a group. This “divide and conquer” approach is discussed in the next chapter. There is strength in numbers. It is easier for a child to act hateful toward a parent when his siblings are doing the same. Even a mildly alienated child may succumb to peer pressure. By contrast, it is more difficult for a child to sustain a rejecting attitude when no one is supporting him. Also, separating a child from his siblings makes him more dependent on you, and thus increases your influence over his behavior.
Brainwashing is not complete until the children are programmed to resist any attempts to undo their indoctrination. This is accomplished by implanting messages similar to posthypnotic suggestions. For example, a father teaches his children that people who ask you what Daddy has said about Mommy are themselves trying to brainwash you. He instructs the children to refuse to participate in any such discussions, even when initiated by relatives or court-appointed evaluators. Dr. Clawar and Dr. Rivlin call these “shutdown” messages because, when they are triggered, the children shut down communication.
Do you recall the couple Kent and Judy from our discussion of context dropping? Kent had convinced their three children that Judy had abandoned them, when in fact she relocated to pursue graduate education, with every intention of having the children join her. One reason that Judy’s efforts to defend herself fell on deaf ears was that Kent had anticipated Judy’s efforts to set the record straight. So he told his children that their mother would probably come up with some lame excuses for her behavior. She might tell them that she thought they were all going to move with her. Or that Daddy had done some things wrong. “If she does try to tell you this, you’ll know I’m right about things and you should just tell her that you don’t want to hear her excuses.” Of course, when their mother responded exactly as their father predicted, the children discounted her version of events and took her defense as proof of her guilt.
TAKE ACTION
Shutdown messages are effective in keeping a child’s mind closed to evidence that would assist in rebuilding bonds. It is easier to reverse alienation if tamper-resistant packaging is exposed and neutralized. If you detect the presence of shutdown messages, tell your child that you think you touched on something that she is not supposed to talk about. Ask her if she has decided she can’t talk about something or if someone has told her not to talk about it. If the answer is yes, remind her that children are not supposed to keep secrets from their parents. Explain that you think she is not supposed to talk about certain things because her other parent is afraid that when she hears your side of the story, she will start liking you again.
The presence of shutdown messages usually signals the need for professional intervention to reverse brainwashing.
CORRUPTING REALITY
To intervene effectively in a campaign of denigration, we must understand exactly how the child’s view of reality is being manipulated. Following is a summary of some of the most common strategies for distorting the child’s perceptions, beliefs, and memories of the target.