What is Parental Alienation?
Parental alienation is a term used to describe the deliberate or unconscious acts of a parent to thwart or alienate the child from his/her other parent. Even the best parents in happy relationships with spouses may occasionally practice an unconscious form of parental alienation. Saying unkind things about a spouse or giving examples of a spouse’s misdeeds can cause the child to feel conflicted about his love for both parents, and he might share the same resentment that the spouse feels at that moment. Usually, in solid marriages this occurs rarely, and parents should simply be careful not to involve children in the inevitable conflicts that will occur from time to time between spouses. Different types of parental alienation can occur that are deliberate and extremely abusive to the child. This is where one parent’s intent is to rupture or destroy the relationship of the child and the other parent. This may occur in difficult divorces or thereafter, but it can also occur within marriag
Parental alienation involves the mental manipulation and/or bullying of children, which can result in destroying a loving and warm relationship they once shared with a parent. Parental alienation and hostile aggressive parenting deprives children of their right to be loved by and showing love for both of their parents. Parental Alienation can occur in intact families, but is mostly seen in separated and divorced families. Parents/guardians using alienation tactics to hurt the other ‘target’ parent have been compared to cult leaders. These people put their own hatred, anger and motives before their own childs emotional and mental health. In effect, they treat their children as nothing more than possessions, and ammunition to hurt the ‘target’ parent. Professionals argue whether Parental Alienation is a Syndrome or not. But they all agree that the problem exists and it’s damaging to children, and can affect them into adulthood.
Parental alienation occurs any time that a parent, relative or friend speaks badly about another parent so that a child can hear what is being said. Alienating behavior may be mild, moderate or severe. All parents are likely to “lose it” and be inappropriate with their words around children, however, when there is a predominance of negative messages being communicated to a child, these messages can seriously erode the child s psychological well-being. In severe cases of parental alienation, children are manipulated and brainwashed (programmed) into such states of confusion that their perception of events and people around them are severely distorted. Parental alienation in its most severe form is a heinous form of child abuse and neglect. It is a dangerous manipulation of children s minds to alter their perception of reality about another parent. The purpose of marginalizing this parent is that he or she has no means to be an effective parent or to cut that parent out of a child s life
