angiEmedia

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The article to which this post links was written by Shari Schrieber, a child of parental alienation who is now a therapist. She loved her father very much, and felt intense pain as her mother cut him out of her life starting at age five. Her mother falsely accused her father of molestation and succeeded at mostly driving her father out of her life.

In retrospect, she wishes the courts had assigned custody of her to her father rather than to her mentally ill mother. She believes that her mother’s inability to emotionally provide for her as a child caused many problems in her life that took years for her to overcome. These problems could have been avoided if the courts would have had her live with her mentally healthier father. He wanted to be involved in her life, but the courts and her mother refused to permit it. Instead, they insisted she should live with her mother even though her mother was mentally ill and caused enormous damage because of it.

In the article, Schreiber mentions how personality disordered parents are often unable to emotionally provide for their children. Such parents may be able to meet basic physical needs of the children such as shelter and food. But their children develop low self-esteem, inability to trust, inability to have healthy relationships, and a variety of mental health problems themselves as a direct result of their primary parental relationship being with an emotionally chaotic or unavailable mentally ill person.

Click below to read the article:

THROWAWAY DADS; Children’s struggle for wholeness in the wake of divorce.

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New York Firefighter Richard Smulczewski has two teenage daughters. His ex, Susan Smulczewski, committed parental alienation against their two daughters, brainwashing them into hating their father, and blocking access to the kids. She was found to be committing parental alienation by the courts and deemed an unfit mother. The court remanded custody of the daughters to their father. Yet the mother has refused to comply with court orders, continued to alienate their daughters against him, and continues to have custody.
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Here’s an interview with Jayne Major, Ph.D., a Los Angeles psychologist and educator advocating means to stop parental alienation behaviors and heal the damage they cause. In the interview, she answers common questions about parental alienation. She describes the range from mild bad-mouthing to sociopathic intent to brainwash children to hate the other parent. She notes that in severe alienation cases, the target parents (those who are alienated against) must learn to stand up for the truth if they are to have hope of not losing their children permanently to the brainwashing of the alienating parent. She notes that the most dangerous alienating parents often have one or more personality disorders:

Few lawyers, judges, nor laypersons are able to recognize seriously disturbed people who look and often act “normal.” Yet, their numbers are large and the damage they do to other parents, their children, and society is staggering. Sociopaths are cruel—without moral conscience, empathy, sympathy, or compassion. Their purpose is to win by domination. Harvard psychologist Martha Stout, in her book The Sociopath Next Door, states that one in twenty-five people is a sociopath. Furthermore, there is an estimated 20% of the general population with personality disorders. Those individuals who are the most dangerous are described in the DSM IV, Axis II Cluster B. The descriptive labels of these disorders are borderline, narcissistic, histrionic, and anti-social.

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RationShed is a Christian group in New Zealand promoting the concept of “equal parenting” involving the whole biological family, including both parents and all four grandparents. Its website at http://rationshed.wordpress.com hosts a mix of original content and repostings from other news and opinion sources, including angiemedia .

RationShed is also sponsoring an “equal parenting petition” to show support for shared 50/50 parenting as presumed default. Click here to view and sign it.
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Actor (“30 Rock”) and author (“A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce“) Alec Baldwin speaks September 22, 2008, to The Commonwealth Club of California about parents turning their children against a former spouse.

Our Review of Baldwin’s Book

Book Review: A Promise To Ourselves, by Alec Baldwin

Sheena Berg’s Review of Baldwin’s Book

Blended-Families.com‘s Sheena Berg briefly reviews Alec Baldwin’s book A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce.

Other Reviews of A Promise to Ourselves

Book Review: Alec Baldwin’s “A Promise to Ourselves“

Alec Baldwin: A Promise to Ourselves

Alec Baldwin’s A Promise to Ourselves Captures the Brutality of Divorce Wars

Divorce American Style (review by New York Times)

Recommended Books on Parental Alienation

The October 3, 2008, episode of Dr. Phil covered the topic of parental alienation. Here’s a link to information and video excerpts from the episode.

Dr. Phil: “Brainwashed by My Parents”

Also, here’s a video on Parental Alienation for our readers in United Kingdom where there is no formal legal recognition of parental alienation:

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Psychologists Dr. Amy J. L. Baker and Dr. Katherine Andre have written a new book entitled “I Don’t Want to Choose: How Middle School Kids Can Avoid Choosing One Parent Over the Other”. This work is targeted for an audience of middle school children who want to keep both parents involved in their lives. It teaches children to use their critical thinking skills to avoid being duped or pressured into picking one parent over another.

What is Parental Alienation?

Parental alienation involves the systematic and frequently repeated denigration of one parent by the other and blocking of access to the parent who is the target of denigration. This is not just a simple and occasional comment such as “mommy can be so annoying sometimes” or “it is frustrating that daddy doesn’t keep his schedule”. While those comments are inappropriate in front of children as they tend to make children anxious and feel like they might have to take sides, infrequent comments like these probably do not constitute parental alienation.
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Massachusetts family law courts routinely violate the state’s laws requiring the state to pay for Guardian Ad Litem (GAL) representation for children. The position of GAL is much like so-called “minor’s counsel” in many other states. Parties filling these roles are to look out for the interest of minor children by such actions as investigating abuse claims, working with psychotherapists to ensure that parents and children will receive treatment necessary for the well-being of the children, and other such tasks.
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Parental alienation involves the persistent behavior of an alienating parent making a strong effort to cause the children to hate the target parent. Bad-mouthing the target parent in the presence of the children is nearly always involved. But it is not just occasional — it is a consistent pattern. Often the alienating parent will recruit other people to join in bad-mouthing the target parent. What these people likely fail to realize is that they are committing emotional child abuse.

Parental alienation is a huge problem, especially in divorce cases involving personality disorders such as Borderline Personality Disorder and Narcissistic Personality Disorder. When parental alienation is involved in personality disordered divorce cases, it can often include the alienating parent fabricating child abuse allegations and training the children to repeat them. Even if it doesn’t succeed at making the children hate the target parent, such tactics can literally land the target parent in jail and bankrupt him or her with legal fees mounting a defense against false allegations.

We stumbled across the web site mentioned below in this posting that offers literally dozens of links to very good information on parental alienation (also known as “Hostile Aggressive Parenting”) and PAS (Parental Alienation Synrome). If you’re interesting in learning more about these topics, the reading could keep you busy learning for hours.

Click this link for more information:
F.A.C.T. Information: Parental Alienation

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The Fourth Annual Parental Alienation and Hostile Aggressive Parenting Awareness Day is coming up on April 25, 2009. Visit the Parental Alienation Awareness Day web site for more information.

Spreading Awareness of Parental Alienation

We think it’s really important to the well-being of our children and future generations to spread awareness of parental alienation and its destructive effects. Below is a brief explanation of what parental alienation involves, the harm it can cause, and steps that may be taken to help recover from it. We’ve also included links to books that may help you understand and deal with the problems it causes.
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