Parental Alienation

<p>There is hardly a day that doesn’t go by in my counseling practice where someone brings up the concept of parental alienation. The problem is that the term is frequently misused. For some, it is a catch phrase used to describe any and all poor parent/child relationships. After all, it is far easier to blame the ex-spouse for the child’s poor behavior than it is to look at one’s self. This article is an attempt to clear up some confusion and answer some basic questions about alienation.</p> <p><strong>What is parental alienation? </strong>Parental alienation occurs when one parent encourages their child to unfairly reject the other parent. The child might display signs of unwarranted fear, hostility, and/or disrespect toward one parent while displaying signs of loyalty, unconditional trust, and/or empathy towards the other. The contrast in behavior, emotional responses, and thoughts towards each parent are dichotomous. The child may or may not be able to communicate logical reasoning for the difference.</p> <p><strong>What are the variations of alienation? </strong>There are three primary ways alienation occurs from the parent’s perspective: naively, actively, and obsessively.</p> <ul> <li><strong>Naively</strong>. The naïve parent is not trying to alienate the child from the other parent. Instead, they may do so with passive-aggressive comments such as, “Your mom makes more money than me, so she can pay for that.” These statements are not meant to cause a rift between the child and the other parent, however, the child might hold onto these statements and connect them with other similar comments resulting in them naturally pulling away from the other parent.</li> <li><strong>Actively</strong>. The active parent tries to generate feelings of loyalty in the child at the expense of the other parent. “If you tell your dad about my promotion, he might try to reduce my child support.” By asking the child to maintain a secret from the other parent, there is a private bond from which the child learns to withhold parts