Photo by Maria Lysenko on Unsplash

So, you’re a kid trying to figure out if your one parent is trying to alienate you from your other parent

How can you tell what is parental alienation and what is “justified rejection”?

I have too many friends who are experiencing parental alienation right now and for years. I hope their kids read this.

The very first major red flag is this:

Does one of your parents tell you things about the other parent and then try to prevent you from talking to that parent? Do they try to make you afraid of the parent—that the parent has near-magical powers of trickery? Do they tell you that it’s “inappropriate” for your other parent to talk to you about what you’ve been told, but it’s not “inappropriate” somehow for them to have told you things in the first place? Do they try to get you to want to put up the boundaries that serve *them*?

Conversely, is the parent you’ve been told to avoid willing to:

• attend group therapy with you and your other parent
• show you letters, emails, text messages you would need to see in order to know what is true about what shouldn’t have been put before you in the first place
• attend therapy with you

If one parent is comfortable with having an ongoing conversation and isn’t afraid of you telling the other parent what they have said about them, and the reverse isn’t true… what does that suggest?

Sure, the alienating parent could just be watching out for you because the targeted parent is so evil and tricky. That’s possible. So, let’s ask some other questions, then, to see what Occam’s Razor would point to as a conclusion here.

Firstly, how do good people do bad things?

They trick themselves into feeling justified. They feel like their lying and manipulation are for a higher purpose that is ultimately good. Take, for example, the show The Americans, about the Cold War between the Russians and USA. Both sides commit murder in order to carry out spy missions. The protagonists, the Russians, feel terrible about it, but they believe it’s ultimately for the betterment of the entire world. They’re in a war, and sometimes you have to take on a different morality to win a war—extreme circumstances call for extremely flexible morality.

To test this out, ask yourself if you would feel comfortable killing a person. Then ask if you’d feel comfortable killing a person who was about to kill four babies. Maybe not “comfortable” but you’d probably do it.

1. Does one of your parents believe they need to save your soul?
2. Is one of your parents a political figure, a famous person, or a high-status professional with a lot to lose?
3. Does one of your parents feel insecure about themselves, about their commonalities with you, their connection with you? Do they feel like you don’t relate to them as much as your other parent?

Psychotherapist Karen Woodall says,

The underlying drivers of this behaviour are jealousy, low self esteem, lack of self awareness and often rage. These behaviours are common in parents who separate but they can become apparent in anyone who is in a position where they are consciously or unconsciously competing with a target. The issue is that what the alienator cannot see is that their projections onto the target are distorted reflections of their own hidden issues, which is why many parents who become targets find themselves labelled with those behavioural traits which really belong to the alienator. Put simply, what the alienator cannot own in themselves, they see in the target and this enrages them to the point where they feel justified in doing harm. Discomfort with one’s own deficiencies is at the heart of many alienation scenarios. The target being an innocent recipient of the defences used by the alienator to avoid self awareness.

Did one of your parents get rejected by the other?

When someone feels rejected, it can be excruciating to cope with unless they can convince themselves that they didn’t really want that person anyway. If you can talk yourself into seeing the person as bad, you won’t feel badly anymore about a bad person not wanting to be with you because—phewf!—now you don’t want to be with them, either!

There’s usually a paper trail showing how upset someone was about being rejected. If you have been manipulated by a parent to the point where you need to know what is true, you might want to do something no child should have to do: Ask to see letters, emails, or texts to indicate who rejected whom, and how that person reacted.

Did one of your parents feel humiliated by the other?

If women are cheated on and the “other woman” is much younger, prettier, etc, they could feel humiliated. Or, if they feel like the other woman was much less attractive, they could feel humiliated.

If men are cheated on at all, this can be a way that they feel especially humiliated. We have these different narratives in our culture about men and women:

Men want sex more.

Men initiate sex.

Men cheat more.

Statistically, these seem to bear out, too. So, if man is cheated on, emotionally or sexually, he feels more humiliated than if a woman is cheated on, because when women are cheated on, they chalk it up to their partner or husband just being “a typical man,” whereas when a man is cheated on, it feels very personal. He sees it as a commentary upon him, specifically.

Maybe you don’t know the details of your parents’ relationship, but very likely there’s been a new partner who is the helper to the parent. If they can be the one to tell you all your parents’ stuff, then your parent gets to remain pristine. Of course, the new partner only knows what the parent tells them.

And so often, there’s so much more to these stories than gets communicated. But, these days, there’s often a paper trail somewhere to indicate what’s true.

Does one of your parents believe that they should be the leader and decision-maker of the family?

If that is a part of someone’s worldview or religious view, how do you think they would feel if their spouse divorced them and then disagreed with them and tried to assert any authority?

Does one of your parents stalk the other parent?

Does one of your parents know an awful lot about the life of your other parent, though it’s been years since they’ve been together? How do they know things? Why do they keep tabs? Do they create fake accounts to leave comments on your other parents’ social media?

Karen Woodall says,

The alienator searches the life of the person they wish to alienate until they find a flaw. People who do this become obsessed with their sense of self righteousness and develop a strong (often delusional) belief that they are doing the right (righteous) thing. Alienators in this respect will often stalk and study their subject until they have found the flaw that they believe proves their belief. When they find it they will exploit it, finding ways of using it against the target to damage and discredit them in the eyes of others.

Does one parent use “proxy alienators”?

Karen Woodall says,

Whilst exploiting the flaw of the target, the alienator will then present themselves to the outside world as being an exceedingly good egg, hard working and focused and absolutely innocent of all wrong doings against the target. The alienator will work hard to keep the focus upon the target, often using third parties as proxy alienators to do their work for them so that they can remain undetected in the shadows.

For example, has one parent taken advantage of your other parent’s relationship break-up, and then triangulated your parent’s recent ex into their scheme to convince you of terrible things about your parent? That sounds strategic and alienate-y, no?

Do your step-siblings, aunts or uncles, parents’ friends, or grandparents “leak” information to you in gossip sessions, so that your parent can appear to be innocent?

Do you have an older sibling who tries to get you into alignment with their alienating?

Karen Woodall says:

Some children are resilient and avoid being forced to use the coping mechanism of psychological splitting but these are usually younger children in a sibling group where one will be strongly alienated and carrying the psychological impact for the rest of the tribe. This elder child will often, over time however, set about being an alienator by proxy, driving behaviours in the other children to come into line with the prevailing mood.

She also says, regarding “justified rejection,”

[The alienating parents] understand how the target parent is viewed by others and they make it their business to covertly use those views held by others to build up an alienation reaction in them. Skilled alienators can see the invisible lines of tension that run between the target parent and the children, they know where the target parent is vulnerable and they make use of it. These alienators are superbly skilled at hiding their real intentions which they wrap up in a blanket of absolute sympathy which seems to verge upon compassion but which is pulled back from that by the repeated phrase ‘of course we have to do what is best for the children,’ or words to that effect. Skilled alienators appear to be co-operative with anyone who interacts with the family and rely upon the effectiveness of their control over the children’s experience to maintain the illusion that it is the coldness and the failure of the other parent which has caused the problem. Unaware parents and practitioners who are confronted by the skilled alienator can be left believing the idea that the children have rejected their parent because of something she has done, rather than questioning why a child would reject a parent outright on the basis of what sound like isolated incidents of a parent being angry and not justification for complete severance of the relationship.

Is one parent unwilling to compliment or offer sympathy to the other parent?

Especially, are they rarely to blame for their bad decisions, but they jump onto every flaw and apparent bad decision of the other parent? If one parent is especially critical of the other parent without admitting their own flaws, are they also more privileged? Is one parent more disadvantaged and traumatized but never earns empathy for this beyond lip service? (That means that the empathy doesn’t show up in any way that helps the disadvantaged parent. They might offer pity to the disadvantaged parent to help you think they are caring and empathetic.)

Is there a trait or decision that is continually criticized in parent B by parent A but when the same trait or decision also exists in parent A’s family, it’s for reasons that are not their fault?

Does one parent have an extremely difficult time apologizing? Do they have a history of refusing to go to therapy with you?

If the parent apologizes, is it done hurriedly? Do they feel like talking about it once should be enough and then they get frustrated if you bring it up again?

Does one parent do something bad that you’ve experienced, then accuse the other parent of doing that thing more, though you haven’t seen it?

It’s common for people to project their own flaws out onto other people, sometimes without even realizing it. Or, if they know that they’ve harmed you in some way, like pinning you to the wall by your neck, or screaming at you suddenly, they know you’ve experienced that and the only way to erase it from your calculation of “Who is Good vs. Bad,” they need to create a story of your other parent being even more violent. Sometimes, the best we can do to defend ourselves is say, “Okay, yeah, I was bad but I was not AS bad as that person.”

If I was trying to manipulate a child to alienate their other parent, I would think of all the bad things I did that I know my child has remembered and complained to me about, and I would either think of examples or make up examples of that same behaviour from their other parent. I would dilute their feeling about me being bad by concentrating their sense of the other parent.

Has one parent won a lot of money in court from the other parent?

Men, especially, get very angry about this.

Lawyer, professor and academic Susan Boyd does a lot to describe and address the history and debates of child support in Canada. She points out that in 1998,

“the recent child custody law reform debates emerged largely as a result of governmental efforts to enhance and enforce child support obligations, which incited the ire of fathers’ rights advocates against not only the government but also mothers. At the Special Joint Committee, these advocates complained that fathers were suffering as a result of the new child support system, and that if they could only see their children more, they would pay more (BC Men’s Resource Centre, April 28, 1998).”

These are two separate arguments made by fathers who don’t want to pay child support: 1. “I’m suffering financially such that I’m unable to pay child support”, and 2. “I’m not suffering so much financially that I wouldn’t be able to pay more if only I could also see them more.”

It’s kinda like Schrödinger’s Child Support Evasion Defense. “Please pick whichever argument most convinces you and that’s the one I really mean.” Because they can’t both hold true. Either you don’t have the money or you do. Children need housing, food, clothes, electricity, etc, whether or not the parent gets to see them. A parent should want to meet their child’s basic needs even if they can’t see them. They should want them to be safe and cared for and for the child to know that they did everything they could to contribute.

Susan Boyd assembles accounts from father’s rights activists (and their second wives) in Demonizing Mothers: Fathers Rights Discourses in Child Custody Law Reform Process,

[…] it was suggested that mothers are greedy for money, which generates desperation in men: “I hate to say it, that there are a lot of greedy mothers out there” (Nardina Grande, President, Stepfamilies of Canada, March 31,1998). […] [M]others [were] often blamed (including, quite vociferously, by other women such as those in Stepfamilies of Canada and Second Spouses of Canada, March 31, 1998). […]

She writes elsewhere,

“Women want equality. Okay, then let’s have equality right across the board, not that men to pay this much and women don’t even have to pay an iota. (Joyce Owens, New Vocal Man Inc., May 1,1998)

Stepfamilies of Canada took an even more vengeful approach, suggesting that if mothers are going to get custody, then they should assume full financial responsibility for children:

“If you’re going to [. . .] give custody to the mother[. . .] it should be true custody. That means a complete financial obligation for the child, as well as taking care of the child’s daily needs. [. . .] If women want the kids, give them kids. They’ll have to be truly feminist and accept both financial [. . .] and emotional responsibility for the children. (Nardina Grande, March 31, 1998)”

The child support discourse illustrated that fathers’ rights arguments were not so much about the best interests of children as about regaining authority over mothers and children or, failing that, relinquishing responsibility altogether and allowing mothers to sink or swim on their own.

Both parents should have to help provide safety and a lifestyle conducive to growth and positive development for their children, according to their means. Deliberate failure to do this is child abuse. Especially if the other parent lacks enough income to meet the children’s basic needs, it’s abusive to say something to the effect of, “Well, if that parent wants the kids, they should have to care for them.” The children’s well-being should be the only thing that matters to both parents—not revenge, not resentment, not competition, not bitterness. Both parents should have to support the children no matter where they are living. If the children are at risk of being homeless or don’t have enough space to live in because the one parent can’t afford it, that should alarm their other parent into paying child support.

If a parent is angry, resentful, and feels powerless about paying child support, or owing it back to a parent for not having paid for years, they might feel justified in alienating the children from the recipient parent as “pay-back,” to show the power they do have.

Also keep in mind that once a parental alienator has done their dirty work, they have set up a situation of double binds:

If your targeted parent doesn’t defend themself, it’s “because they’re so guilty, they know they’re guilty, and they didn’t even really want to be your parent anyway. Look at how they’re not fighting for you.”

If your parent does defend themself, if they get at all emotional about the worst thing that has ever happened to them and ever will happen to them, this is what psychotherapist Karen Woodall says:

If the target reacts to the trap that has been set via the exploitation of something which is being used to ‘prove ‘ to the outside world that they are the architect of their own downfall, the alienator increases their activity against the target to drive home their advantage. This is sometimes accompanied by gentle but forceful attempts to suggest to the world that there is ‘no smoke without fire’. After all, if the target is reacting, it must mean that they have hit a nerve. […] Should the target spend time trying to rectify this split in the eyes of the outside world the alienator will make use of this to drive home the split of good and bad and demonstrate that the target is what they have said they are all along.

But what if you can say why you don’t want to talk to your other parent?

No parents are perfect. Every single person I know has complaints about their parents, has incidences of being forgotten instead of picked up from somewhere, being spanked, being yelled at… something. Even people I know who were abused by their parents often want to have a relationship with their parents. They try to. They want their parents to hear them out, want them to apologize, want to make it right. They want for things to be different.

Children do not suddenly cut one of their parents out of their life without something severe happening, like recent abuse.

Unless there’s manipulation involved.

See what Karen Woodall says,

Other ways that skilled alienators convince others that this is justified rejection and not parental alienation is to ensure that the child is able to articulate their rejection in ways that justify it. This can mean taking something that a parent has actually done and expanding it in the child’s mind so that the child believes that it is sufficient evidence. This taking of a nugget of reality and expanding it is extremely problematic for the child because it distorts both the original action and the child’s emotional and psychological reaction to it. A child who goes back repeatedly to a seemingly innocuous event and describes it as if it is evidence of the evil that a parent has done to them, is demonstrating that they have been coached to believe that something which actually happened is much worse and much more dangerous to them than it actually was in reality. The difference between a child who is justifiably rejecting a parent and one who has been told that their rejection is justifiable is that the child who has really been damaged will rarely reject a parent outright but will seek to go back and try again, sometimes to be hurt again, sometimes to the degree where they have to be persuaded to think differently. The reality is that a child who is being harmed by a parent will usually blame themselves first before they are able to blame the other parent and can often not understand what a parent is doing that is harmful.

Why are you alienating your parent?

Because you’re vulnerable. You’re a child or a young adult who needs support. If you’ve been made to feel like one of your parents is incapable of caring for you, and maybe you’ve even experienced that momentarily, it’s very easy for an alienating parent to pounce upon that, use it to their advantage, and blow it up in your mind so that you have no choice but to align with the alienating parent so that you can feel secure. If this happened to you at a time where anything else was shaking your sense of security, like the pandemic, like world trauma, you could be especially prone to fear and anxiety.

A “selfish” parent, by definition, can’t care for you.

An “alcoholic” parent, by definition, can’t care for you.

A “crazy” parent, by definition, can’t care for you.

A “narcissist” parent, by definition, can’t even love you much less care for you.

And if one of your parents can convince you that any of these are so true that you won’t be cared for with that parent, they can gain control over you, control how they appear to their broader community, and save a lot of money in child support. They might even tell you that they’d rather give money directly to you, and you could think that makes sense because you’ve been manipulated into thinking child support for your parent is a second income for them because you don’t understand how expensive you are to care for. You could think you’re getting a sweet deal when you’re actually legally entitled to a lot more, including your university and graduate school education paid for. That’s masterful manipulation, not love.

Our friend Karen says,

When a skilled alienator is at work and the target is a naive recipient of that behaviour, the child is going to have to be strongly resilient in order to avoid the descent into alienation and many children living in separated family situations are not that. When an alienating parent sets out to portray the other parent as being deficient and when part of that strategy is to pick a flaw and exploit it, the child becomes confused and uncertain. If the child is then continually reminded of the flaw of the target parent they become unable to determine the truth of their own experience and are then, in turn, alienated against their own internal sense of the target parent. Add to that the fact that a child is dependent upon parents for everything under the sun — food, clothing, warmth, safety, all those basic needs and so much more. It is simply not possible, when one contemplates life from the perspective of a child, for a child not to be vulnerable in this situation. If a parent sets out to alienate and that means consciously or otherwise and the target parent reacts, the child experiences the splitting of their internalised AND externalised world into one parent good and one parent bad. For after all, the target parent is behaving just how the alienating parent says they will. Should the child then be mostly dependent upon the parent using alienating strategies, then that is the parent the child is going to align with. To not do that is counter to biological survival as well as emotional and psychological safety.

Your targeted parent knows that one day you will see everything clearly. But they also know that your beliefs and feelings that you have as an alienated child can lead you to make big life decisions, that can lead to other big life decisions that can even be irreversible. You could end up suffering in ways you don’t even understand in your 20s, 30s, and beyond, because of your beliefs about your reality, your family, your origins, your identity. They would not be a good parent if they did not try to do something to intervene.

An alienated child is an abused child. And sometimes, that child was a scapegoated child at other times, too. Think: Have you only felt loved by one parent when you were rejecting the other parent? Are you only cared for by Parent A when you live with Parent A? Are you neglected when you live with parent B? Meanwhile, is Parent B desperate to see and talk to you no matter what?

There are other solutions besides remaining in an alienated, manipulated life. There are always better solutions, better people to be with, ways your needs can be met.

If you are a child who suspects they’re being manipulated and who wants someone to help them find solutions, I am happy to help you for free. I am a strategic, creative problem solver. natashacoulis@gmail.com.