Children Rejecting Parent

(This commodity expands on information provided in How to Answer to Parental Alienation and is meant for parents and professionals.)

Parental alienation tin can be hard to recognize for anyone non experiencing it first-hand. It'due south like a riptide: hidden and forceful. Rejected parents tin find themselves struggling against a powerful force as it pulls them farther and further from the human relationship they once had with their children. They feel the resistance and fight against it. Just the more than they fight, the more wearied they become. Information technology seems as if at that place's no one to capeesh how difficult it is to stay buoyant in these deceptively calm waters. They search for someone—anyone—to throw them a lifeline.

The feel of existence targeted past your co-parent is upsetting. Simply to exist rejected and hated by your own kid, feeling and watching them slip abroad, and fearing that you'll never run across them again, is like witnessing that child die a slow death. While they remain physically alive, they become increasingly emotionally expressionless to y'all. The radiant love in their eyes turns night and vacuous and the joyous sound of their voice turns blue and hateful.

In my work with rejected parents, I've often witnessed them be tragically seduced into making mistakes while they are in the throes of the painful, intractable, and insidious drama of parental alienation. This isn't considering they're hopelessly flawed human being beings, just because they're in unknown and turbulent waters.  Rejected parents flounder and their mistakes can become fatal and sink their chances of reconciliation with their children.

By highlighting the five most frequent or mutual mistakes made by rejected/targeted parents, it'south my intent that they, the members of their "hamlet," and the professionals they encounter, will ameliorate understand and, subsequently, overcome the subversive force of parental alienation.

1: The Rejected/Targeted Parents Misunderstand their Children and Personalize the Rejection

Alienated children are ofttimes defenseless in a torrent of multiple post-separation family dynamics. Although most children tin can endure a high-conflict divorce with resilience, very few are able to avoid the powerful force of parental breach where 1 parent actively—or sometimes unwittingly—seeks to separate the other parent from their children. The powerful breach process, in issue, severs the human relationship with the targeted parent and serves to align the children's loyalty to the alienating parent.

Let that sink in:  When the children show any honey, interest, or affection to the targeted parent, they fundamentally feel equally though they're being disloyal and unloving to the alienating parent. Too, when the children display an attitude of hate and disrespect while resisting and refusing contact with the targeted parent, they feel loyal and loving to the alienating parent. Most children simply tin can't withstand nor extricate themselves from this deep and powerful attachment dynamic without intervention.

A way to understand what's happening to such children is to think of parental breach as a blazon of psychological tumor that impacts the cerebral function in their brains and the emotional wiring to their hearts. It's invasive and at gamble of growing and metastasizing if ignored and left untreated.  While multiple postal service-separation dynamics tin contribute to its inception, the toxic zipper procedure that requires the children to maintain a loyalty contract to the alienating parent feeds information technology. And, every bit it grows, this tumor begins to negatively impact functions in the children's heads and hearts.

The Loyalty Contract

Alienated children become desperate to maintain their loyalty contract with the alienating parent. They develop a narrative to fit the contract that requires a polarized view of the alienating parent equally all good and the targeted parent as all bad. Because most relationships don't fit these polarized black and white characteristics, the children are required to distort and curve reality in lodge to fit each parent into rigid cerebral constructs. Although children can have an affinity toward one parent over the other, it's markedly atypical—outside of parental alienation—for children to idealize 1 parent as perfect while denigrating the other equally dispensable.

This polarization merely grows over time. The growing psychological tumor potentiates the growth of an encapsulated delusional thought organisation: a belief in the targeted parent's farthermost dangerousness, woeful ineptitude, and irredeemable incapacity to love, despite any bear witness of a good base-charge per unit human relationship prior to parental alienation setting in or of substantiated corruption and neglect claims. The developing narrative is not based in objective reality but is an inter-subjective narrative between the alienating parent and the children that solidifies the loyalty contract between them.

Most untrained professionals—therapists, attorneys, mediators, and judges—don't understand this dynamic and will either ignore its presence or prescribe contraindicating treatments and parenting time arrangements. For example, they observe the children experiencing symptoms of dysfunction—disobedience, verbal abuse, emotional withdrawal, anxiety, irritability—when in the presence of the rejected parent, while observing these same children functioning in an optimal and sometimes exceptional way elsewhere. They can't fathom that the interim-out behavior is encapsulated and dormant when the children are in the presence of the alienating parent simply becomes enlivened and agile when they're exposed to the rejected parent.

When Children's Lying is Misinterpreted

Rejected parents mistakenly believe, and report, that their children are lying almost events and situations. This causes them to await bad every bit a parent and exist perceived as unfit and dangerous. From my experience working with alienated children, I know very well that they're at risk of sharing stories full of distortions, exaggerations, and manufactured incidents. On the face up of it, these stories distort facts and reality and, in other situations, could exist perceived and treated equally outright lies. Simply I don't believe alienated children are intentionally lying. I believe the process of parental breach causes them to slowly lose their orientation to reality.

Rather than naming the distortions and exaggerations as lies, information technology's more than accurate to call them "confabulations"—a memory error oftentimes found in patients suffering from cognitive decline due to brain diseases such every bit Dementia or Alzheimer's. In such patients, it'due south believed that the individual confabulates to fill gaps in memory or to keep their cocky-identity intact. Similar cognitive impairments present in parental breach, simply with psychological underpinnings rather than emanating from a neurological disease process. Whereas lies are selfish manipulations to empower the liar, confabulations serve to reduce the suffering and, in the case of parental alienation, enable children to cope.

Alienated children will make upwardly stories, distort, and exaggerate facts to manage the "lost" retentivity of a loving connectedness with the rejected parent. It'due south lost, because to hang onto information technology, or find it again, will exist, in effect, an active violation of the loyalty contract with the alienating parent. The confabulations are feeble, all the same desperate, attempts to knit together a cohesive narrative to justify the hate and rejection for the rejected parent while nourishing and strengthening the loyalty contract with the alienating parent.

This process doesn't empower or enhance a child's mental health; it's a means of survival. While they may effectively confabulate stories to honor the loyalty contract with the alienating parent and to maintain their polarized black and white globe, information technology comes at an enormous cost to their mental, emotional, and relational well-being. The psychological tumor quickens the deterioration of any loving and caring memory tracts of the past and impedes the cultivation of any current loving and caring experiences. Their demand to confabulate stories follows them into other relationships that have to neatly fit into their polarized tribal globe including with extended family, friends, and professionals associated with either Dad or Mom.

The Desire to Connect Implodes

It's painful to picket your children's memory fade—erasing whatever cherished memories or revising them into tragic disappointments—while simultaneously cementing memories of all your mistakes. The rejected parent is forbidden to take any sentimental journeying with their children at the risk of existence accused of not "getting it," not listening to them, and only wanting to minimize all the bad stuff. The parent is basically deemed manipulative and "clueless." Their ache is compounded when they're blocked from creating any new loving experiences since all those efforts are labeled every bit either simulated, sick-timed, not plenty, as well much, selfish, or just not quite right.

The children live with debilitating anxiety and must exist hyper-vigilant to their loyalty contract with the alienating parent. Even the civility of normative salutations afforded to strangers or remote acquaintances is ignored and traded in for blatant rudeness. Normal, successful, or loving experiences aren't immune because to accept any can finer shrink the psychological tumor and that'southward forbidden.

Unfortunately, the path of least resistance, the i that will cause the minimal amount of suffering for the children, is the path to sever the relationship with the rejected parent. The children will somewhen terminate upwards providing simply ane way for the rejected parent to express their dearest: stop fighting for them and let them get.

More than fearing the rejected parent, what the children actually fearfulness is rejection and disapproval from the alienating parent. They're in pain. The hope is that the rejected parent will sympathise, non personalize it, and honey them, nonetheless. Although they see the rejected parent fighting for them, the children intuitively know that the odds are not in that parent's favor. They know the power of the alienating parent because they see that parent's tribe growing, with more professionals willing to support the false narrative and unwittingly contribute to the psychological tumor's growth.

I've witnessed children badly plea for the targeted parent to just permit them go and cease fighting for parenting fourth dimension. These children can't describe or name what's happening considering the words are unspeakable and a violation of the loyalty contract with the alienating parent. Instead, they appeal to the unconditional love of the rejected parent, stating, "Our life is but easier without yous, less stressful. Please understand, this is so stressful for us. Please merely end fighting and leave us lonely." I've seen tormented, targeted parents, faced with these words cease fighting, release their children, and say "goodbye" in an expression of beloved.

How could this beliefs feel anything simply personal?  It'south terrorizing to hear such pleadings from your own children and to be told through words and/or behavior, "Go out of our lives!"  Information technology hurts and scares the rejected parent more than than anything always has. But, as much as it hurts, they accept to recognize that it's not about them. The more than they call up information technology is, and the more they recall their children are rejecting them from self-agency, the more than hurt and acrimony it will cause. And that can lead to the second mistake.

ii: The Rejected/Targeted Parents Believe that Increased Punishment and Discipline will Put an End to Misunderstood Mental attitude and Behavior

While alienated children notoriously office quite corrigible and respectfully to almost all other adults in their lives—teachers, coaches, the alienating parent'southward extended family unit—they're remarkably disrespectful and defiant to the targeted parent and ofttimes any adult connected to them. I've seen children ignore their parent, not even offering a civil acknowledgment of their presence—not a look, a touch, nod, or a give-and-take. I've heard children both deny all positive memories and offer no vision of promise in restoring the human relationship with the rejected parent. I've worked with alienated children who take destroyed parental property, abused stride-siblings, and ignored and defied step-parents. They hole up in their room for whole weekends, refuse to eat or socialize, even endanger themselves past running away from court-ordered parenting time. And, I have seen targeted parents' desperate attempts to use subject to adjourn this disturbing progression of mental attitude and behavior.

The temptation to think this will work is understandable since disciplining disobedient and defiant children is considered normative and reasonable. However, to accost the source of the problem merely equally willful defiance and resistance reinforces to the child that the parent doesn't "go them" and volition likely intensify their anger. Although they may await, audio, and act like naughty and rebellious children in need of lectures and discipline, they're not.  To the contrary, alienated children are very troubled and in need of proper understanding, compassion, intervention, and treatment.  If the rejected parent approaches them simply with increasing levels of discipline, that parent eventually plays into the children's false narrative that they're bad, mean, and unreasonable.

I've counseled and evaluated many targeted/rejected parents who've been seduced into this line of thinking and accept unwittingly fallen into an authoritarian style of parenting:

  • The parent who eventually forced his thirteen-twelvemonth-old daughter to take a shower after she refused for the 6th 24-hour interval in a row during a hot summer calendar week of daily soccer practices;
  • The parent who took the door off the 15-year-sometime boyish's room later on several weekends of his isolating and refusing to come out for whatsoever family time including meals;
  • The exasperated parent recorded in a tirade that foster care is where his children belong until they can learn to follow the court orders;
  • The parent who dropped his chronically-antagonistic xiv-year-old off at the burn station to wait for the alienated parent to choice her up because, once over again, she would non terminate screaming in front of the younger siblings in the car;
  • The parent who prohibited his star adolescent athlete from going to football game practise during parenting-time which caused his son to be ineligible for an of import game.

With proper context, 1 could debate the appropriateness of these parental actions. But, all of these get decontextualized and inserted into the inter-subjective narrative betwixt the alienating parent and the children—oft a child therapist is eventually co-opted as well—and downloaded equally "data" to prove the targeted parent is bad, poor, and unfit. In some cases, child protective services (CPS) is contacted and targeted parents accept been investigated and sometimes fifty-fifty substantiated for fail or abuse. The agency has marching orders to substantiate abuse and neglect, not contextualize it.

Field of study and Negative Campaigning

While structure and subject tin't be cast aside, they can't unilaterally be the solution for the incorrigibility. This plays into the imitation narrative and the negative interchange in the attachment procedure between parent and child. Not only is there a loyalty contract being constructed in the inter-subjective narrative between the alienating parent and the children, in that location's an aggressive campaign to prove the targeted parent lacking. If politicians can effectively use negative propaganda and messaging to win elections, then can parents to win custody.

The alienating parent operates stealthily behind the drape, hoping for the targeted parent to human activity out on middle stage, and so they can shine a spotlight on them as the glaring trouble in the family psychodrama. This entrada is strengthened when the targeted parent provides any information that can be used stripped of context, intent, and history. Yes, the targeted parent may feel under assault, unfairly scrutinized, and held to unreasonable standards, but such is the nature of negative campaigns and their seductive impact on others. Although the targeted parent can't control the entrada, if they understand what's happening, they can work to not provide whatever fodder.

The other reason to avoid thinking that strict or rigid discipline will gear up incorrigibility is the importance of reducing the negative interchange between the targeted parent and their children. It can play into the parent's anger toward the children and cause increased feelings of guilt and shame in them. The parenting brain says the anger is righteous and that it'south normal to dislike the children's attitude and behavior. The parenting brain thinks the children should experience guilty for bad behavior, —feeling bad for ruining the birthday party—and a little healthy shame—"shame on you for calling your stepmom a bitch." Yet, this negative interchange only foments the parent's anger and increases the children's sense of being bad.

The loving and caring bond wanes, the parent'due south exasperation and the children's defensiveness waxes. This becomes a vicious and escalating cycle, oft leading to the 3rd error: enlisting the help of extended family members.

3: The Rejected/Targeted Parent Enlists or Allows Extended Family and Friends to Lecture and Advise the Children

The parental breach dynamic may function in children equally a malignant psychological tumor. But, in the "village" that is involved in raising your children—grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, footstep-siblings, footstep-parents, coaches, teachers, and friends of the family—it spreads like a contagious virus.

This frequently happens at the same time alienating parents are securing negative allies in their village—family, friends, and professionals—to support the children's wishes and to testify to an alienating parent's love and fitness equally a parent. Targeted parents sense this trend and either enlist help from their village or merely support the effort individuals make to advise and correct the escalating behaviors and attitudes of alienated children.

Alienated children are hypersensitive and hyper-vigilant to the tribal communities developing in a climate where the alienation virus spreads. They view the supportive people in the targeted parent's village as a threat seeking to "social distance," while seeing supportive others in the alienating parent's hamlet as safe with whom to "quarantine." The targeted parent'south village grows wary and frustrated with the feel of social-distancing and may begin to angrily confront the children.

The children—similarly to how they feel and answer to the rejected parent'due south confrontations—end upwards feeling attacked and shamed by these social encounters. They begin to doubtable that the rejected parent put them up to information technology, or they just feel intruded upon, invaded, or contaminated. The children begin to see the rejected parent'south village equally increasingly more unsafe and wish to increase their social-distancing, quarantine, and seek refuge in the alienating parent's social bubble. This, of course, increases the tension between them and the rejected parent—for example, "how dare yous treat your grandparents like that."

Children's Resist and Refuse Response

Although rude children who reject a whole village of loving and caring people need to be challenged, information technology tin backlash when the alienation virus is not eradicated through effective intervention and treatment.

Children don't experience confrontation every bit loving and caring; simply equally shaming and critical. The alienating parent uses these conflictual encounters to reinforce the narrative of how "those" people are bad, hateful, and infected past the targeted parent'south influence. It reinforces that social distancing is needed for the children to be "safe" and not stressed out. The alienating parent's allies apply those negative encounters to point out how upsetting and disruptive they are to the children'south emotional state. In so doing, they commit a fundamental attribution error: Because the children are upset and feel shamed past the social encounters in the targeted parent's hamlet, that village is unsafe and unhealthy for them. They erroneously conclude that increased social distancing is warranted to secure the children'southward safety and all-time interests.

On occasion, considering of court orders and the fright of appearing in contempt of court, the alienating parent volition disallow the children'south asking to avert parenting time—essentially to quarantine with the alienating parent'due south social circle.  They transport the children to parenting fourth dimension sometimes forcibly. This prove of strength is oftentimes used as proof that information technology is not the alienating parent'southward fault for the resist and pass up dynamics. It is the children's "independent" choice. The false narrative is that the children brand the determination to isolate or exit later contemplating what is best, healthy, and safest for them. The children office as if to avoid contamination from the rejected parent and that parent's hamlet. This is accomplished past remaining physically distant, and emotionally and verbally disengaged.

These children volition isolate in bedrooms, bury themselves in homework, read books, or play video games; annihilation to avert interacting with the rejected parent's village. They will resist and turn down picnics with family or birthday parties with friends and family, and if forced to go, volition socially distance. If their efforts to avoid and disengage are confronted, there's a gamble of escalating conflict. Unfortunately, what children bring back to the alienating parent or the negative allies are stories of reactive invasion, criticism, and disrespect by the rejected parent's village while they leave out their own social distancing actions or overall discourtesy. The children'due south behavior can escalate even to the point of physical assaults, holding destruction, or running away from the rejected parent's village.

Impairment Done by the Untrained and Uninformed

The roughshod cycle of toggling in and out of what are now tribal communities creates a disarming narrative to the uninformed. They intuit: the targeted parent'due south hamlet must be abusive, neglectful, and dangerous otherwise the children wouldn't be behaving like this. They don't acquit like this in the alienating parent's village, at school, or on the sport's team. Again, untrained ears and eyes brand fundamental attribution errors.

Consequently, allied therapists will write unethical letters and erroneously evidence in court for reduced parenting time with the targeted parent, citing the hostile environment and the children'south destabilization. Judges volition exist deceived into signing an ex parte order afterwards an attempt to run abroad past the alienated child following a climactic, combative social encounter. The alienated children somewhen go what they think will make them safety and healthy again:  quarantining with the alienating parent.

What they actually get from naïve and colluding professionals is greater exposure to the virus—the alienating parent and his/her hamlet. Consequently, the psychological tumor inside the child metastasizes and the rejected parent'southward anger grows. The temptation to seek revenge against the alienating parent tin atomic number 82 to another mistake.

4: The Rejected/Targeted Parent Retaliates Toward the Alienating Parent

I'm certain it's become increasingly articulate that a skillful offense (intervention, judicial oversight, engaging trained professionals, etc.) is one of the best defenses to combat alienation dynamics. This crime is weakened by the fault of succumbing to the temptation to seek revenge on the alienating parent. Why? Because the acts of retaliation can be used by sly alienators to buttress their narrative of the targeted parent being abusive and unfit. Also, alienated children volition utilize whatsoever retaliatory actions to justify their brotherhood to alienating parents while pointing out how mean and dangerous the rejected parent is.

Rejected parents grow frustrated. They can't empathise how the alienating parent'southward behaviors go unnoticed and that they're ofttimes not held accountable. This growing frustration and impatience hatches into the idea of taking matters into their own hands rather than waiting for the hands of justice or mental health professionals to exercise something to help. It seems that the professionals and courtroom accept had plenty of time and they've just had plenty of information technology all.

Acting-out is a Barrier to Reunification

Feeling frustrated and ignored, rejected parents brainstorm to compose snarky electronic mail responses, make sarcastic comments during parenting time exchanges, or blow up in a reunification counseling session about how the alienating parent is poisoning the children against them. They'll make idle threats to the alienating parent or vent on social media attempting to expose the alienating parent's truthful motivation. They may seek out their own counselor to advocate for them outside ethical roles and standards: Someone who will write critical assessments of the alienating parent's behavior, despite not having met nor professionally assessed the situation.  The targeted parent may fifty-fifty withhold the alienating parent's court-ordered parenting time to "make upwardly" for lost parenting fourth dimension, or extend a vacation they feel entitled to.

These actions tin all be understood because the targeted parent'south frustrations, but near frequently, they will be used against them equally further evidence of their unfitness every bit a co-parent. While retaliatory actions may feel good, they do non practise good. The feelings of acrimony and frustration need to exist expressed and managed. If not, they tin hands exist acted out in a fashion that ultimately dis-empowers the targeted parent and impedes their mission to gain greater admission to their children and to end the alienation. If not managed well, this tin can pb to the next fault.

5: Rejected/Targeted Parents Present equally Angry, Argumentative, and Obstinate to Professionals

Growing frustration and fears can lead the targeted parent to present to mental health and legal professionals in angry, argumentative, and obstinate means. This can prevent them from getting proper aid, since most professionals discover parental breach dynamics counter-intuitive. In other words, they intuitively get that children volition decline and fear bad parents, simply they don't empathise how children will refuse and fearfulness good parents.

Accordingly, these professionals are often scrutinizing the rejected parent'southward attitude and behavior to confirm their bias of believing that resist and refuse dynamics are caused by a parent's abuse, neglect, or unfitness. And guess what? The rejected parent's angry, argumentative, and obstinate attitude and behavior plays right into the professionals' biases and the parent is misunderstood and seen as the problem.

Uninformed professionals fail to see the attitude and behavior as a direct effect of unaddressed, unabated breach. They erroneously conclude that the targeted parent'due south attitude and behavior are the cause of the resist and refuse dynamics rather than the unfortunate consequence. And once the estrangement/abuse/neglect construct gets supported; it becomes very difficult for targeted parents to extricate themselves from the box they're put in. Understandably, this tin farther exacerbate their acrimony, fright, and oppositionality.

The professionals, in turn, become advocates for the estrangement theory and volition cite specific behaviors the targeted parent has exhibited to back up their conclusions. They'll transcribe the roughshod voice mails, the email bombs, and tirades in counseling sessions, or report any obstinance or outright opposition the targeted parent shows towards participating in various sessions. (Note: Although it's important for targeted parents to not engage in faulty treatment plans that fail to address the breach dynamics—or worsen them—this refusal needs to be done smartly and strategically.) No matter what defense mechanisms targeted parents choose, they demand to realize it will take more brains than brawn to remove themselves from the estrangement box.

The way out for targeted parents is to manage their feelings and behavior, and then that the all-time version of themselves—rather than the wounded, desperate, and angry ane—shows upward. They demand to exist grounded in the literature on parental alienation, including what type of counseling intervention helps or hinders. They demand an attorney who understands alienation and knows how to work with mental health professionals; an attorney whose goal is to brainwash professionals and advocate to retain professionals who sympathize breach dynamics, all the while presenting to professionals or the court legitimate signs their client is fit, rational, and reasonable. That they're madly in love with their children, not mad. That they wish to win their children's hearts and minds, not win a example or one-upwardly the co-parent.

When professionals are faced with targeted parents who are grounded and have these beauteous intentions, at that place'due south a amend take a chance that the professionals will advocate for justice, accountability, and healing, rather than become another manipulated agent in the alienation dynamic.

A Give-and-take to Rejected/Targeted Parents

The aggregate of these five common mistakes can be visible and palpable while the stealthy and insidious moves of the alienating parent often remain latent and hidden. The greatest chance you have of pulling back the pall on alienation dynamics is to not take centre stage with the drama acquired by these mistakes just to instead work to pull back the curtain and put the spotlight on the breach that's taking place.

You must exist methodical and strategic. Don't be afraid to ask for assistance and seek counsel. Time is your enemy and experts can assistance you lot appraise the severity of the breach and appropriate interventions, up to and including court interest. It won't hurt to have a coach/counselor, consultant, and a proficient attorney on your team.

Parental Alienation isn't only a psychological tumor that grows in your child, information technology's contagious. Its toxins can spread to you and your extended village. It's important to realize that, merely every bit in treating a tumor that's at risk of growing and metastasizing, home remedies won't piece of work to resolve alienation.

Targeted/rejected parents need help. And sometimes the first, correct, next step, is learning to assist yourself. The arduous battle to save the hearts and minds of your children oft requires expert strategy, but it can only be won when y'all are in it with an attuned mind and loving eye.