Parental Alienation is an unjustified alienation of a parent by a child, which is brought on by the other parent’s manipulative techniques. The goal is always the same – to make the child NOT want to spend time with the other parent. The more parenting time the offender gets, the higher the child support order usually is. This is a perfect example of why joint 50/50 legal AND physical custody should ALWAYS be the standard, whether the parents were ever married or not. This is not the standard as of yet.
Often labeled as a “syndrome”, which is not always accepted, the result is still the same. One parent is ousted by the child while the other parent usually acts as if they have nothing to do with it. The techniques used by the alienating parent are more often than not very subtle, but always used to undermine the parental rights and authority of the other parent, thus guaranteeing the first parent’s standing with the child as the superior parent.
Some examples of this could be; one parent discussing child support (or other adult issues) in front of the child putting the parent in a bad light, one parent constantly scheduling the child for events and activities which overlap the other parent’s parenting time – they offender ALWAYS has a way to justify this by using excuses such as “that was the only time the activity was available” or even worse, PROMISING the activity to the child, forcing the other parent to go along with it or else the other parent is made out to be the bad guy. The sickest dynamic of that example is that by overlapping schedules, it forces the parents to be together at these activities, which very much reduces the bonding between the other parent and the child. The offending parent almost NEVER discusses this prearrangement with the other parent – they feel as if they don’t have to since they usually have the custody upper hand. Courts are now becoming very wise to this scheduling manipulation and I am well aware of NUMEROUS Judges who will actually remove or reduce parenting time for the offender because this is such a harmful thing to do to a child.
Last update: August 15th, 2010
