Alienated Children Don’t Mean What They Say

Assessing Validity of the Child’s Wishes and Feelings

It is common practice to consider the feelings and wishes of minor children regarding major decisions affecting them. This is particularly applicable and important to situations in which their parents are separating or divorcing.

Divorce is one of the most difficult and uncertain situations that children will have to negotiate during childhood. How their parents handle separation and divorce will affect their children’s prognosis in life – for better or for worse.

Consideration of children’s wishes and feelings in situations of parental separation and divorce gives them a sense of control over a situation that is otherwise utterly out of their control.

It is only logical that children would have strong autonomous wishes and feelings regarding the outcomes of the divorce and custody proceedings.

Children who demonstrate emotional and cognitive maturity and autonomy commensurate with their developmental stage typically provide valid and appropriate reasons for their wishes and feelings regarding the outcome of the custody legal proceedings.

On the other hand, emotionally and cognitively immature children or children who demonstrate compromised autonomy, typically provide invalid and inappropriate justifications for their wishes and feelings.

silly girl

For example, it is common for immature children and children with compromised autonomy to express preference for the more permissive parent or for a parent who is emotionally unstable.

In normal families, however, the child’s preference for one parent is never to the utter rejection of the other parent.

What Healthy Children Do and Do Not Want When Parents Separate

Healthy children do not want to choose between parents upon their separation. Children yearn for their life to continue as close to normal as possible. This “normalcy” includes ongoing meaningful contact with each parent – just as it was when the family was living together.

Some alienating parents and professionals have made the utterly nonsensical claim that children do not want and are unable to successfully manage having two homes; having to travel between two homes in compliance with the parenting plan; having to carry backpacks with clothing and other supplies to accommodate to the parenting schedule; having to get accustomed to two beds, two desks, two computers, two toothbrushes; and having to accept double the usual number of gifts and money on birthdays and holidays.

Not a single one of the 4200 non-alienated children with whom I have worked during more than 50 years of professional practice ever expressed a preference for a bed or desk over preference for a parent!

On the other hand, in order to justify rejection of a parent, I have heard these frivolous rationalizations, and even greater absurdities, from the 800 alienated children whom I treated.

Children are adaptable – much more so than are adults. Children will easily adjust to two homes, two beds, two desks, two computers, and to two toothbrushes just as long as their parents present a united front and a consistent message that this is the way it is going to be for their best interests.

healthy family

If separated parents are initially able to participate together in family events and activities, doing so will likely ease their children’s transition to this new stage in the family’s development.

Separated parents, however, do not have to be great buddies. They do not have go on family vacations together. They do not have to celebrate holidays and birthdays together. They do not need to sit next to each other at their children’s activities.

But other parental behaviors are absolutely imperative in order to minimize children’s insecurities and sadness after parents separate. These parental behaviors include showing respect and consideration for each other in front of their children. And these parental behaviors must demonstrate parental cooperation in making major decisions for their children.

strange confused boy

Giving Voice to A Child Is Not Always in the Child’s Best Interest

If a child is alienated, especially severely alienated, then giving weight to the child’s voice is contraindicated to the child’s best interest. The expressed wishes and feelings of alienated children are not their own. What alienated children express, instead, are the wishes and feelings of their triangulating alienating parent.

My mentor, child psychiatrist, Salvador Minuchin, was known for declaring, “When the lips of the triangulated “puppet” child move, the words of the triangulating “ventriloquist” parent are expelled.”

In the phenomenon of parental alienation, the alienating parent is exerting undue influence, manipulation, and intimidation over the child to align with that parent’s wishes and goals.

programming a child

Alienating parents employ coercive mind-control and manipulative tactics to pressure the child to override the child’s powerful survival instinct to have and need a parent.

FURTHER READING: The Instinct for a Parent Violated in Parental Alienation

These coercive and manipulative tactics are known as alienating behaviors, and they meet the standard definitions of domestic violence and domestic violence by proxy.

It is not justified to automatically give weight to alienated children’s expressed wishes, feelings, and beliefs. Assessment must be undertaken to determine if the child’s expressed wishes, feelings, and beliefs are a consequence of the alienating parent’s coerced, mind-control and manipulative tactics.

Pathological enmeshment is a severe psychiatric condition for the child in which the alienating parent violates the child’s boundaries, compromises the child’s autonomy, undermines the child’s critical reasoning skills, and robs the child of psychological stability.

Alienation Has Much in Common With A Cult

Psychologist Stanley Clawar, and Clinical Social Worker, Brynne Rivlin, followed 1000 children of contentious parental conflict in which one parent had engaged in a “programming/brainwashing” process to turn the child against the other [target] parent.

700 children were of parents who had been engaging in exceedingly contentious custody proceedings.

Definition of the Programming/Brainwashing Process by Clawar & Rivlin

“Programming and brainwashing is a process (intentional or unintentional) whereby a parent or parental surrogate attempts to limit, damage, and interfere with the love, contact, and image of the target [other] parent.” (p. 9)

Clawar and Rivlin discussed their findings about these 1000 children in their 2013 book published by the American Bar Association entitled, Children Held Hostage: Identifying Brainwashed Children, Presenting a Case and Crafting Solutions.

A summary of Clawar & Rivlin’s alarming findings is that 86% or 860 of these 1000 children had experienced some degree of programming/brainwashing as follows:

  • 23% or 230 children experienced programming/brainwashing more than once per day
  • 22% 0r 220 children experienced programming/brainwashing about once per day
  • 12% or 120 children children experienced programming/brainwashing more than once per week
  • 8% or 8 children experienced programming/brainwashing once per week
  • 21% or 210 children experienced programming/brainwashing occasionally
  • Only 14% or 140 of the 1000 children did not experience programming/brainwashing (table 17, p. 420)
dependent teen

Similarities of the Brainwashing in Alienation to the Indoctrination in Cults – According to Clawar & Rivlin

“Most of these studies emphasize the necessity of physical and social isolation; the stripping process (modification of hairstyle, speech content, style of clothing, and other features that connected the individual to mainstream society or past social identities); the definition of all outsiders as bad, evil, uninformed, or on the wrong path to truth; the use of repetition… and the reinforcing of inferior status. (p. 5)

Certainly, the issue of isolation is relevant to the programming and brainwashing of children, because parents often try to isolate the the child from others, especially the other (target parent) or any other source of contradictory information or beliefs, such as a counselor or other relatives. The stripping process, which can be physical (the taking away of material goods and other types of related restrictions/punishments) as well as social/physical tools (the removal of love and affection), is often observed in domestic-relations case and other circumstances in which adult wishes to control the thoughts/behavior of the child.” (pp 5-6)

Other Similarities Between Brainwashing in Alienation and Indoctrination in Cults – According to Clawar & Rivlin

  • Repetition of badmouthing, denigrations, negative attributions of the target parent
  • Use of inferior status descriptions of the child to make the child feel bad and dependent
  • Use of inferior status descriptions of the target parent to denigrate that parent
  • Rituals or ceremonies to exclude the target parent. (pp. 5-7)
inferior girl

Motives of the Brainwashing/Programming Parent – According to Clawar & Rivlin

“Effective programming often causes the child (victim) to operate against the other, target parent. The intent of the programmer is to control the child’s thoughts and/or behavior. The programmer often contains themes designed to damage the child’s image of the target parent in terms of the target parent’s moral, physical, intellectual, social, vocational, emotional, and educational qualities (as well as his or her parenting abilities.” (pp. 12-13)

“If the intent of the programmer is to control the flow of information (as to a judge in child abuse or sexual assault cases), then the child may feel compelled to lie or distort his or her (real) perceptions/beliefs.” (p. 13)

Research on The Suggestibility of Children

Our accumulated knowledge about child development informs that children are highly suggestible – even by unfamiliar researchers.

Children are that much more suggestible by an obsessed alienating parent upon whom the child is dependent for survival and with whom there is unfettered access. Children are unable to resist a determined, coercive, and manipulative parent who is committed to the mission of driving the other parent from their child’s life.

Frequently the alienating parent’s access to the child is nearly 100%, if not 100%, because of the common alienating strategy to make knowingly false child abuse and child sexual abuse allegations against the alienated parent.

programming a child

Even one false child abuse allegation almost surely results in the restriction, if not suspension, of the alienated parent’s access to the child during the CPS investigation of the false allegations. If the CPS report includes sex abuse allegations, suspension of access is a virtual certainty.

The suspension of the alienated parent’s contact with the child affords alienating parents increased opportunity to brainwash their children with abandon; and the suspension of the alienated parent’s access to the child denies alienated parents of the treasured opportunity to counter the alienation programming – especially via experiences with the child.

Denial of contact between the alienated parent and child due to false child abuse allegations facilitates the vicious progression and escalation of the alienation narrative that thereby feeds on itself.

dancing fa and day

Effects of Lie Repetition

Research confirms that the repetition of a lie merely three times enables the lie to become truth for the reporter of the lie.

Because alienated children repeat the false sex abuse allegations multiple times – to CPS, to the police, to their therapists, to the district attorney – the false belief of having been sexually abused by their alienated parent becomes the child’s truth.

This, in part, explains why alienated children appear so credible and believable – even when reporting the most egregiously outrageous lies about their alienated parent.

Alienated children can pass a lie detector test with flying colors!

lie girl

Sexual Abuse Allegations Must be Properly Investigated for Merit

Child abuse and child sexual abuse allegations must be taken seriously. That is exactly why all allegations must be properly investigated for merit by the scientific method to make clinical findings.

All indicated/substantiated allegations of abuse must be treated with swift and appropriate penalties.

Proper treatment for a clinical condition is dependent upon accurate diagnosis.

The sooner child abuse allegations are determined for merit, or for lack of merit, the sooner the child can be safely and properly treated.

The proper treatments are diametrically opposite for a child who had been sexually abused by a parent as opposed to a child who had been programmed by one parent to falsely believe having been sexually abused by the other parent.

It is particularly catastrophic for children when they accept as their truth the false belief of having been sexually abused by a parent. These children then become subject to the same risk factors for severe psychiatric disturbances as if the sexual abuse had actually occurred.

very sad girl

Findings by Child Psychiatrist, George E. Davis, Regarding Sex Abuse Allegations in Contested Custody Cases

Dr. Davis of the Children’s Law Institute summarized the research from the all-inclusive studies about the frequency of child sexual abuse incidents and the frequency of knowingly made false sexual abuse allegations in highly contested custody cases.

Dr. Davis found that the rate of false sex abuse allegations in contested custody cases can be as high as 35% while actual incidents of sex abuse a child by a parent is less than 2%. Davis described the conditions under which the false sex abuse allegations are made:

“The perfect storm of incentives for false sex abuse allegations: Conflicted caretakers, adversarial legal proceedings, positive and negative consequences—coaching. (p. 29)

False allegations are rare except in certain limited circumstances with high incentives, coaching, and intense conflict. Suggestibility is more common and is almost always the fault of adult motivations or behaviors. Children are easy to confuse and intimidate. The characteristics of child memory require special consideration.” (p. 29)

Before giving weight to a child’s reports of sex abuse by a parent in a highly contentious custody battle, the programming by the other parent must be ruled out by the scientific method. The scientific method requires, among other criteria, to verify the child’s reporting with neutral quality evidence.

Caution by the Experts on Suggestibility of Children

From Lawyer, Jaime Rosen

Ms. Rosen published a 2013 article entitled “The Child’s Attorney and the Alienated Child: Approaches to Resolving the Ethical Dilemma of Diminished Capacity,” published in Family Court Review.

Ms. Rosen’s intent of her article was to educate the child’s attorney about substituting judgment for the wishes of an alienated child because of the programming of the child by the alienating parent.

Ms. Rosen advocated for the necessity to override the “client centered model” of representation in favor of the “best interests of the child model” in cases of undue parental influence over the child. 

Ms. Rosen argues that the lawyer for the child may substitute judgment if the child client exhibits diminished cognitive capacity as a result of a brainwashing by a parent, whom Rosen refers to as the “alienating parent.” In recognition of the brainwashing parent’s influence over the child, Rosen asserts:

“The ABA [American Bar Association] Standards also recognize that children are susceptible to intimidation and manipulation and the child’s decisions may not reflect the child’s actual position…The attorney also has a duty to prevent the child client from pursuing decisions that would not be made but for the brainwashing techniques employed by the alienating parent.”

“Under the influence of an alienating parent, the child may not be cognitively or psychologically able to make a judgment that is in his or her best interests.

The child’s attorney must determine whether the child’s wishes and statements are an authentic reflection of the child’s attachment with each parent or instead, a result of one parent’s efforts to contaminate the child’s feelings toward the other parent as a result of programming or scripting. 

In cases of parental alienation, the parental brainwashing of the child is the true culprit. The child’s opinion is replaced with the desires and objectives of the parent who exercises the most influence over him or her. Further, as more weight is accorded to the child’s stated preferences, the risk of manipulation or pressure by a parent increases.” (Pp. 333-334, 336.)

teen with hands over ears

From Psychologists Shaw and Loftus

Research psychologists Julia Shaw and Elizabeth Loftus determined that false memories can be implanted with ease in children, as well as in adults, of all ages by the third weekly interview. 

Julia Shaw’s replicated research found that false memories of having committed a crime can be implanted in more than 70% of the participants in the study.

Elizabeth Loftus’ replicated studies inform that it is exceedingly easy to corrupt human memory with very little effort.

From Psychologists Maggie Bruck and Stephen Ceci on the Ease With Which Children’s Memories Can Be Altered and Influenced

Psychologists Bruck and Cecil write about their extensive research on the suggestibility of children as follows:

“When children are repeatedly and suggestively interviewed about false events, assent rates rise for each interview. For example, children are more likely to assent to a false event in a third interview than in a second interview. Subtle suggestions can influence children’s inaccurate reporting of nonevents that, if pushed in follow-up questioning by an interviewer who suspected something sexual had occurred, could lead to a sexual interpretation.”(P. 432.)

Bruck and Ceci further emphasize that children can sound quite “credible” in their reporting of nonevents but which had been suggested by the interviewer.   

From Psychologist and Lawyer, Christopher Barden

Dr. Barden cautioned that professionals who intervene in adversarial custody proceedings have a “critical obligation to carefully review the influence of parents, therapists or other adults on the attitudes, beliefs and memories of children.” (p. 420)  

From Psychologist Richard Warshak, Ph.D.

In his 2003 peer-reviewed article entitled, “Payoff and Pitfalls of Listening to Children,” Dr. Warshak cautioned about the vulnerability of children to adverse parental influence over the child’s feelings and wishes. Dr. Warshak declares:

“Through a variety of tactics such as selective attention, repetition, intimidation, overindulgence, and suggestion, a parent can corrupt a child’s view of the other parent.  Once a child forms a predominantly negative opinion of a parent, and particularly once this opinion is expressed publicly, it is liable to become deeply entrenched and highly resistant to modification even in the face of information that directly contradicts misconceptions.” (P. 375.)

Dr. Warshak further cautions professionals in a high conflict custody case not to:

delude themselves into thinking that they are hearing a child’s voice when, in fact, they may be receiving a distorted broadcast laced with the static of a charged emotional atmosphere; or the voice may be delivering a script written by another; or it may reflect the desire to placate, take care of, or pledge loyalty to a parent.  (P. 382.)

Warshak expresses concern with the “enlightenment rationale” approach to child custody by empowering the child with decision-making status in the legal proceedings:

“The basic pitfall with the enlightenment rationale is that we will confuse what children tell us with what is in their best interest. Some evaluators, advocacy groups, and parents (particularly those whose children support their position in the custody dispute) assume that children’s words always express their genuine thoughts and feelings, and they equate children’s thoughts and feelings with expressions of their true best interests. 

That is, children know and are accurate reporters of what is best for them. Proponents off this position believe that a child’s strong preference for or aversion to a parent should weigh heavily in custody decisions. In this view, any child’s rejection of a parent is prima facie evidence of severe maltreatment by the rejected parent.”  (P. 374.) 

Children are Instinctively Storytellers

Lying and deception are part of our instinctual survival kit – holdovers from Cave Person days. In fact, there are research studies that have found that lying occurs within 10 minutes in 40% of all conversations!

What parent has not had to teach their children not to lie?!

playful father and daug

From Seth Slater, M. F. A.

Mr. Slater, writes in Psychology Today on 9/22/2013 and 1/31/2018 about the role lying plays as a:

“valuable tool in the survival kit of any social species” and that “lying is a tool we all inherit as a result of the social pressures of evolutionary biology.”

From Richard Friedman, MD

In an 8/5/2003 NY Times article entitled, “Behavior: Truth About Lies,” Dr. Friedman states:

“By the time most children are 4, they have acquired the ability to deceive others, a skill critical to survival. In fact, few human behaviors are viewed as paradoxically as lying. We teach our children that it is wrong, yet we lie every day in the name of civility.”

From Theodore Schaarschmidt

In a 7/11/2018 article by entitled, “The Art of Lying, published in the Scientific American, Mr. Schaarschmidt states:

“Lying is among the most sophisticated and demanding accomplishments of the human brain…. Lying is a major component of the human behavioral repertoire; without it, we would have a hard time coping. Small children love to make up stories, but we generally tell the first purposeful lies about age 4.” 

Humans Are Poor Lie Detectors

Complicating our ability to determine the validity and accuracy of a child’s reporting is that humans are exceedingly poor lie detectors.

lie girl

From Harvard Social Psychologists, Bella DePaulo and Charlie Bond

Dr. DePaulo and Charlie Bond summarized all the studies conducted to determine the human ability to detect lies. 24,000 participants were involved in their aggregate study. Dr. Paulo opined about the results:

“People are pretty lousy lie detectors. In ordinary social interactions, when all we have to go by is what the other persons are saying and how they are saying it, our judgments of whether someone is lying or telling the truth are correct only a little more often than chance. By chance, accuracy would have been 50 percent; the average accuracy across all of the studies was 54%”.

Mistakes Clinicians Make in Assessing Validity of Self-Report

The failure of mental health clinicians to make findings informed by science is regrettably rampart in the field.

A 2009 research study about clinicians’ rejection of science to inform findings was summarized in a 2009 article written by Newsday science writer, Sharon Begley, entitled, “Ignoring the Evidence: Why do Psychologists Reject Science.” 

The study which Begley discussed is entitled, “Current Status and Future Prospects of Clinical Psychology: Toward a Scientifically Principled Approach to Mental and Behavioral Health Care by Professors Timothy Baker, Richard McFall, and Varda Shoham, published in Psychological Science in The Public Interest. They state the following:

“Clinical psychologists’ failure to achieve a more significant impact on clinical and public health may be traced to their deep ambivalence about the role of science and their lack of adequate science training, which leads them to value personal clinical experience over research evidence….Clinical psychology resembles medicine at a point in its history when practitioners were operating in a largely prescientific manner.”

Clinical psychology resembles medicine at a point in its history when practitioners were operating in a largely prescientific manner.” (p. 67)

Begley further cited Professor Walter Mischel of Columbia University, who expressed to her:

“The disconnect between what clinicians do and what science has discovered is an unconscionable embarrassment” and that “there is a widening gap between clinical practice and science.” 

It has been my experience that the rejection of science to inform findings afflicts many professionals in all the mental health disciplines. One exception appears to be psychiatrists, who have been comprehensively educated during their medical training in the scientific method.

Other Factors Contributing to the Unreliability of Human Reporting in General and the Reporting of Alienated Children Specifically

  • Corruption of human memory over time
  • Leading questions by the researcher or investigator
  • Suggestibility by the researcher or investigator
  • Repetition of falsehoods or distortions
  • Emotional reasoning
  • Cognitive immaturity
  • Emotional immaturity
  • Subjectivity
  • Deja Vu experiences
  • Contradictory reporting by others involved
  • Influence from friends, family, the news media, social media
  • Brainwashing by another for self-serving purposes

Conclusion

Severely alienated children are not expressing their own genuine wishes, feelings, and opinions. They are, instead, expressing the wishes, feelings, and opinions of the alienating parent as a result of the alienating parent’s use of coercive mind-control tactics.

Giving weight to the wishes of an alienated child perpetuates child abuse and delays or prevents effective remedy.

Linda Gottlieb LMFT, LCSW-R
Linda Gottlieb LMFT, LCSW-R

Linda is internationally recognized as a parental alienation specialist. With more than 50 years of professional experience as a family therapist, Linda has helped and protected thousands of children.

Linda has testified in more than 500 adversarial custody cases and is highly regarded as an accomplished expert witness & author.