Alienating parents are on a continuum from mild to moderate to severe. By the time an alienation case gets to Court because it did not settle, the alienating parent is almost surely in the severe category.
Assessing alienating parents for severity is determined primarily by how effective they have been in limiting and excluding the alienating parent from involvement in their children’s lives.
Mild alienating parents may not consciously engage in other alienating behaviors. But by the time a case reaches the point of contentious custody litigation, they can no longer claim ignorance of what they are doing. If it is not their intention to alienate, they will relinquish their alienating parents as soon as a professional calls their behaviors to their attention. If they persist in their alienating behaviors despite being so alerted, they have marched into the moderate category.
Moderate alienating parents know exactly what they are doing. Their goal is to selfishly keep the children mostly to themselves but are willing to allow the alienated parent some participation in their child’s life. The participation is mostly around limited contact with their children. Moderate alienators do not wish to share decision making and legal custody.
Severe alienating parents have a mission in life which is to drive the alienated parent from any involvement with their children. The seek to obtain legal orders to deny visitation, and will violate the alienated parent’s Court-ordered parenting time. They make unilateral decisions for their children and do not provide updates on their child’s developments.
Severely alienating parents’ mission is to drive the other parent from their child(ren)’s lives. The alienator employs very specific behaviors that are purposefully selected for their severity, intensity, and effectiveness. These behaviors are designed to manipulate a child to reject a loving, protective parent.
Alienating parents utilize 17 alienating behaviors that were initially identified by Baker and Fine (2007, 2013). These behaviors have been found to have an exceedingly low error rate in numerous replicated studies.
Not all 17 alienating behaviors are required to identify an alienating parent. Identifying an alienating parent is instead determined by the effectiveness of the behaviors that are utilized.
Badmouthing the Alienated Parent to the Child, the Court, and the Professionals
Alienating parents use verbal and non-verbal communications to portray the alienated parent as an unloving, unsafe, uncaring, uninvolved, and unavailable parent. These communications include body language, emotions, and facial affect in addition to verbal communications.
Alienating parents rely upon a range of exaggerations, distortions, and utter fabrications to paint the alienated parent as unloving, uncaring, uninvolved, and dangerous.
First, alienating parents exaggerate the alienated parent’s minor flaws and parenting mistakes to the point that the alienated parent appears to be nothing in proportion to nor indicative of whom she/he actually is.
Second, alienating parents distort the alienated parent’s qualities to reflect that parent as incompetent both as a human being and as a parent.
Third – at its worst – alienating parents often maliciously fabricate serious allegations of child abuse and domestic violence alleged to have been committed by the alienated parent. This is also an example of the alienating behavior known as conveying that the alienated parent is dangerous.
Any positive parenting or human qualities that the alienated parent has are blatantly overlooked, diminished, or disregarded.
Examples of Common Badmouthing Behaviors
Alienating parents will fail to apprise the alienated parent of their child’s activities and tells the child that the alienated parent did not show up because she/he does not care about the child.
Alienating parents reschedule the alienated parent’s visit, does not inform the child that the visit had been rescheduled, and tells the child that their alienated parent had cancelled the visit. Excuses for the alleged cancellations include the alienated parent had planned a really exciting activity with her/his fiancée and future stepchildren.
Alienating parents convey to the child that the alienating parent missed the child’s birth because of being passed out from drinking.
While an alienated parent attempts to encourage the child to emerge from the alienating parent’s car at a transition, alienating parents stand by and do nothing to encourage the child to cooperate.
As the alienated parent is describing exciting activities planned for the visit to encourage the child to transition, alienating parents remain silent and unsupportive and instead roll their eyes, shake their head negatively, and smirk at the alienated parent.
When alienating parents need to take their children for an emergency medical examination, they fail to alert the alienated parent and erroneously inform the emergency room doctor that she/he has sole legal custody.
Justifications for the alleged sole legal custody include that the alienated parent had voluntarily surrendered joint custody in the hopes of having child support rescinded, that there is a child abuse history, and that the alienated parent had moved far away.
Limiting Contact
Limiting the alienated parent’s contact with the child is the single most successful alienating behavior in achieving the alienating parent’s mission to drive the alienated parent from the child’s life.
Obsessed, severely alienating parents are incapable of subverting their anger and hostility for the alienated parent to their children’s best interests and have engaged in some of the most vicious, abusive tactics to withhold contact.
Limiting the alienated parent’s contact is a double whammy for the alienated parent because this allows the alienating parent disproportionate contact – if not unfettered contact – with the child so as to facilitate the brainwashing process. And the absence of contact or limited contact thereby denies the alienated parent meaningful time with the child to counteract the alienation narrative.
Contact between the child and alienated parent is the single most effective antidote to the alienation.
Alienating parents limit or deny contact between the child and alienated parent even if doing so involves violating court orders. Alienating parents appear impervious to involving their children in the violation of court orders, which thereby normalizes antisocial behaviors for the child.
Alienating parents will do what it takes to thwart the alienated parent’s contact with their children even if that means engaging in behaviors that are extreme, irrational, harmful to the child, and even behaviors that have the potential to place their child’s life in danger.
Examples of Limiting Contact
Alienating parents make the contact between the child and alienating parent particularly difficult and unpleasant with incessant protracted calls with the child.
Alienated parents have shown up unannounced at the alienated parent’s home claiming that their children sent an emergency text requesting rescue. Alienating parents do not first contact the alienated parent to ascertain the adult perspective on the alleged need for rescue.
Alienating parents will cowardly place the blame for contact refusal on the child by claiming the contact refusal was the child’s free choice and they are only respecting their child’s wishes not to enforce the parenting plan – as if the child were a free agent.
Alienating parents are essentially asserting “plausible deniability” for having withheld contact by claiming that they do everything possible to encourage their child’s contact with the alienated parent.
Alienating parents are unable to cite any actions they have taken in support their claims of encouragement for their child’s relationship with the alienated parent.
Alienating parents will unilaterally schedule sleepovers, extracurricular activities, playdates, special events, and activities on the alienated parent’s parenting time.
Alienating parents will unilaterally schedule summer camp, vacations, and other summer activities during the alienated parent’s parenting time.
Alienating parents have encouraged and sanctioned their children’s physical assaults of their alienated parent in hopes that the alienated parent will give up and walk away.
Alienating parents have withheld their children from graduations, religious ceremonies, and social activities because the alienated parent planned to be in attendance.
Alienating parents have reported false child abuse allegations by the alienated parent to the child’s school personnel, coaches, and religious leaders, etc., who have then prevented the alienated parent from attending any activities.
Alienating parents have physically removed their children from the playing field because the alienated parent arrived to watch.
Alienating parents encourage their children to runaway from the alienated parent’s home during a visit – even in the middle of the night and in adverse weather conditions.
Alienating parents have kidnapped and hidden their children from the alienated parent, who had sole legal and physical custody.
Alienating parents have manipulated their children to feign suicidal ideation to prevent their participation in a court-ordered intensive reunification program. These children were then unnecessarily placed on black box warning, SSRI medications.
Interfering With Communication
Alienating parents make indirect contact between the alienated parent and their child virtually impossible so that the alienated parent and child are deprived of the joyful experience of each sharing their activities and daily events.
Examples of Interfering With Communication
Alienating parents will surreptitiously change the child’s cell phone number and not provide the new number to the alienated parent, thereby precluding contact via calls and texting.
Alienating parents will block phone calls and messages from the alienated parent.
Alienating parents will plan activities or the daily schedule so that the child’s availability is precluded from participating in the court order for the alienated parent’s calls or FaceTime.
Interfering With Symbolic Communication
Alienating parents deny their children the opportunity to have memories or symbols of the alienated parent.
Examples of Interfering With Symbolic Communication
The child is prohibited from having photographs of the alienated parent and extended family.
Photographs are destroyed and discarded.
It is common for alienating parents to cut out the alienated parent’s head from the photograph and permit the child to keep the gruesome photograph that remains. This is truly a macabre, denigrating behavior that teaches the child to fear and disrespect the alienated parent.
Alienating parents do not allow the children to keep gifts, cards, or other memorabilia of the alienated parent. Presents are either returned unopened or discarded.
Clothing from the alienated parent is either refused, destroyed, or thrown away. Sometimes the clothes are donated to charity with the explanation that the clothes are cheap and not worthy to be worn.
Withdrawal of Love
Alienating parents program their children through words, body language, and behavior that their love is conditioned on the child’s loyalty to them. The child’s positive feelings to have and need the alienated parent is a sign of disloyalty to the alienating parent.
Examples of Withdrawal of Love
Alienating parents actively discourage their children from talking positively about the alienated parent. This is done by verbally dismissing the child’s comments, by rolling eyes, and by revealing the disapproval in facial affect.
Alienating parents openly express anger for and frustration with the child’s positive talk about the alienated parent.
Alienating parents will withdraw emotionally and physically from the child’s positive expressions about the alienated paernt. The child interprets this withdrawal as withdrawal of love.
Conveying that the Alienated Parent Is Dangerous
Alienating parents engage in a number of alienating behaviors or strategies to convey to the child, the court, and the professionals in the case that the alienated parent is dangerous and that the child is in harm’s way when in the care of the alienated parent.
This alienating behavior is a particularly malicious form of badmouthing because it almost surely will result in the alienated parent’s contact being greatly restricted and supervised if not outright rescinded while the CPS investigation is undertaken. This alienating behavior is therefore very commonly used due to its effectiveness.
What is particularly heinous about false sex abuse allegations is that the alienating parent distorts a normal, affectionate interaction between the alienated parent and child to make the child believe it is inappropriate. The child becomes utterly confused about healthy and unhealthy touching.
Examples of Conveying that the Alienated Parent Is Dangerous
Alienating parents make reports of their suddenly “recovered” memories of having been a victim of DV by the alienated parent multiple times throughout the marriage and even during pregnancy.
Alienating parents report having suddenly “recovered” memories of witnessing the alienated parent having physically, emotionally, and sexually abused their children throughout the marriage.
Despite this alleged DV and child abuse history, the alienating parent had not filed contemporaneous reports of the DV incidents to the police nor to the district attorney; made no reports to CPS; filed no contemporaneous motions for a protective order.
The alienating parent did not seek therapy for the alleged abuse; DV incidents were not a basis for seeking divorce; the alienating parent had consented to the alienated parent’s unsupervised parenting time a part of the divorce settlement.
Despite this history of uncorroborated child abuse and DV allegations, alienating parents abuse the CPS and judicial systems by availing themselves of this highly effective alienating behavior to unjustifiably restrict, if not eliminate, the alienated parents’ parenting time.
Of even greater abuse of the system and of their children, alienating parents involve their children in perpetrating this horrific fallacy.
Alienating parents buttress their false abuse allegations to the point of suddenly signing their children up for therapy, coaching their children how to report the false abuse allegations, and having their children unnecessarily diagnosed with a mental health disorder.
It takes merely three occurrences of the child verbalizing the false abuse allegations of having been physically or sexually abused by the alienated parent for the allegation (s) to become the child’s truth.
Should a child come to accept the false belief of having been sexually abused by a parent, the child will suffer the exact same risk potential for serious psychiatric disturbances as if the abuse had actually occurred.
Forcing the Child to Choose
Alienating parents know exactly how to use their authority to get their child to do exactly what they want them to do.
It is a canard when alienating parents claim that, short of physical force, they are unable to gain their child’s cooperation for contact with their alienated parent.
Alienating parents seduce their children away from the alienated parent with exceedingly desirable enticements that had often been previously denied due to inappropriateness.
Examples of Forcing the Child to Choose
To the contrary of their feigned ineptitude, alienating parents effortlessly and effectively use their powers of persuasion to get their children to reject contact with their alienated parent.
Alienating parents are able to force the child to reject by secretly offering the child unjustified benefits, adult privileges, unearned compensation, and special treats well beyond what their alienated parent had planned for the visit.
In order to get their children to refuse contact with their alienated parent, alienating parents seduce their children away with thrilling competing activities, highly coveted toys and electronics, extraordinary privileges beyond their child’s ability to safely handle, a once-in-a lifetime event, and other experiences that had far exceeded the child’s expectations of receiving prior to the alienated parent’s scheduled court mandated visit.
Alienating parents will schedule sleepovers and playdates during the alienated parent’s visiting time so that the visit either does not occur or is terminated early.
Alienating parents promise gifts/rewards if child provokes an argument, threatens to run away, act miserably if the child returns home early from the visit.
Alienating parents reward children with gifts, electronics, and privileges if the child maltreats and physically abuses the alienated parent thereby making future visits unpleasant and even dangerous for both child and alienated parent.
Telling the Child the Alienated Parent Does Not Love Him or Her
Another particularly malicious form of badmouthing is brainwashing the child to believe that the alienated parent does not love her/him.
Examples of Telling the Child the Alienated Parent Does Not Love Him or Her
As previously discussed, alienating parents fail to inform the alienated parent about their children’s activities and events and then tells the child that their alienated parent did not show upon because he or she does not love them.
When CPS suspends the alienated parent’s contact while investigating the falsely-reported child abuse allegation, alienating parents tell their children that their alienated parent has abandoned them because she/he does not love them.
Should the alienated parent remarry, alienating parents tell their children that their alienated parent no longer loves them because they now have a new family and stepchildren who replaced them.
Confiding in the Child
Alienating parents make their children allies in their battles with the alienated parent by confiding in them about adult issues and particularly about the custody and legal proceedings.
Confiding in the child has a two-fold contradictory effect on the child: one effect is to make the child uncomfortable and anxious to be triangulated into parental conflicts; the other, contradictory makes alienated children feel special, honored, grown up, appreciated, and loved.
In the end, it becomes clear to alienated children that their alienating parent is dependent upon them for their emotional support. This further harmfully empowers alienated children over their alienating parent in addition to having been empowered by the alienation process over their alienated parent.
As child psychiatrist Salvador Minuchin characterized the dysfunctional phenomenon of the triangulating parent to coopt the child as an ally against the child’s other “target” parent, “the child is standing on the shoulders of the triangulating parent.” Consider this imagery.
Alienated children are clueless about how abusive and exploitative of them that their alienating is being. The most mature minor child is unable to adequately cope with these issues, which the adults cannot handle adequately.
Confiding in the child is a particularly abusive alienating behavior. It inflicts unnecessary stress and worry as a result of being trapped in the middle between their parents. It distracts children from the childhood tasks upon which they should be focusing their time and attention.
Examples of Confiding in the Child
Alienating parents portray themselves as a victim of the alienated parent thereby gaining the child’s pity and empathy and fostering the child to assume a protective role with the alienating parent – which is absolute role reversal and a reversal of healthy family hierarchy.
Alienating parents share with the child the contempt order filed by their alienated parent and tell their children that their alienated parent wants to send them [the alienating parent] to jail for respecting their children’s choice not to visit with the alienated parent.
How cruel, cowardly, and cynical are alienating parents for inflicting this guilt trip upon their children, especially knowing that their children were responding to their [alienating parent’s] wishes and not the other way around.
Confiding in the child is the initiation of the pathologically enmeshed relationship between an alienating parent and severely alienated child.
Pathological enmeshment is a severe psychiatric condition for alienated children because it robs the child of autonomy. In this emotionally and mentally violent attack upon the child, the alienating parent employs coercive control tactics to strip the child of the child’s feelings, wishes, and need for the alienated parent and compels the child to embrace the alienating parent’s feelings about the alienated parent.
Forcing the Child to Reject the Alienated Parent
Forcing the child to reject the alienated parent is a sinister, craven alienating behavior. Alienating parents manipulate their children to do their dirty work of eradicating the alienated parent from the child’s life.
Examples of Forcing the Child to Reject the Alienated Parent
Alienating parents manipulate their children to be the messenger of bad news delivered to their alienated parent. These messages typically uninvite alienated parents to their children’s special events, medical appointments, school events, and social activities. These messages also cancel parenting time.
Being human, alienated parents sometimes respond inappropriately to the bad messages delivered by their manipulated, messenger children. As a result, alienated parents may strike out at their children with anger and frustration upon receiving these messages.
What a double hoorah for the alienating parent to the great detriment of their children, who now have the additional guilt to manage for being a the bad-news “messenger.” There is no better an example than this of visiting the sins of the parent upon the child.
Asking the Child to Spy on the Alienated Parent
Asking the child to spy on the alienated parent is a craven alienating behavior which literally means what it states. The alienating parent manipulates the child, when visiting the alienated parent, to covertly obtain information that will assist the alienating parent in gaining an advantage in custody, financial, and other divorce issues.
This abusive alienating behavior involves the child in a disrespectful and an antisocial behavior, undermines the child’s learning about how to rely upon conflict resolution to solve interpersonal problems, and will afflict the child with unresolved guilt for having deceived a parent. All of this portends the child’s poor prognosis in life.
Examples of Asking the Child to Spy on the Alienated Parent
Alienating parents manipulate their children to “forget” to bring their school computer to the visit with their alienated parent so that they must use their alienated parent’s computer for homework. Alienated children then use this opportunity to take screen shots of information requested by their alienating parents, such as their alienated parent’s financial statements and legal documents.
Alienating mothers, for example, successfully manipulate their children to spy on their father by making statements such as, “If we knew how much daddy’s pay increase was, we can get more money so I can buy you that new iPhone you want.”
Alienating fathers, for example, successfully manipulate their children to spy on their mother by telling them, “If you found out how much mom’s live-in fiancée is contributing to her support, I could reduce my alimony payment. I would then use some of the savings to buy you a car.”
Asking the Child to Keep Secrets From the Alienated Parent
Asking the child to keep secrets from the alienated parent is another alienating behavior that normalizes deception for the child and makes the child complicit.
Examples of Asking the Child to Keep Secrets From the Alienated Parent
An alienating father, who planned to abscond with his child to live permanently out of the country, told his child, “If mommy finds out that we are taking this great vacation to Italy to see grandma and grandpa, she will go to court and stop us.”
An alienating mother told her child, “If daddy knew I returned to work, he would cut your child support, and I won’t be able to continue to pay for your phone and car insurance.”
An alienating mother told her child, “If your father knew we are planning to move to another state before we actually moved, he would get the court to prevent it. Then you will not be able to see your boyfriend who already moved there. But if your father learns after we have moved, the judge is unlikely to order us to move back.”
Referring to the Alienated Parent by First Name
The alienating behavior of encouraging and permitting the child to call their alienated parent by first name reflects the alienating parent’s attempt to diminish the importance of the alienated parent-child relationship.
Alienating parents claim they have not encouraged their children to call their alienated parent by first name. Alienating parents alternatively achieve this goal by simply referring to the alienated parent by their first names to and in front of their children.
Encouraging Child to Call a Step-Parent as “Mom” or “Dad”
Alienating parents entrench the alienation narrative, in front of and to the child, by referring to the stepparent in parental terms or names that convey parental status.
The dependent alienated child, needing to belong to and to go along with the new family, is subtly manipulated to accede to the alienating parent’s orchestrated plan for the child to anoint the stepparent with parental status. This further entrenches the stepparent to substitute for the alienated parent.
Alienating parents introduce the stepparent to the child’s school, coaches, medical providers, parents’ friends as the child’s biological parent with the expectation that all will accord the stepparent legal parental status and authority.
Withholding Medical, Academic, and Other Important Information From the Alienated Parent
By using both deceptive and unlawful measures of providing false or misleading custody documents to the child’s providers, alienating parents endeavor to exclude the alienated parent from:
- official medical, academic, and other relevant records
- being contacted for emergencies
- report cards
- being notified about special events
- activities
- parent-teacher conferences
- visiting their child’s classroom
- father-daughter dance
- mother-son activities
Alienating parents are notorious for engaging in behaviors to keep the alienated parent from involvement in all important – and even unimportant – aspects of the child’s life. Clearly the areas of health, education, social and sport activities, and religious observance are the most important.
Alienating parents do whatever they can to keep alienating parents in the dark about their child’s developments in all areas whenever possible.
We can see how effectively and skillfully alienating parents employ this alienating behavior when we observe the many examples of the manifestation of denigration that alienated children exhibit to exclude their alienated parent from involvement in all aspects of their lives.
FURTHER READING: Manifestations of Alienated Children – As Seen by an Expert
Changing the Child’s Name to Remove Association with the Alienated Parent
A behavior sine qua non of alienating parents is to change any part of the child’s name that has a special emotional or legal connection to the alienated parent.
If the alienating parent is the mother, she attempts to divest the child of the father’s last name by either changing her child’s last name to her birth name or to the name of her new husband. Alienating mothers change their children’s last name likewise on any special uniforms or clothing.
Alienating mother’s attempt to register their children in school with their maiden name or that of with their new husband’s last name.
If the father is the alienating parent, he changes the child’s first name to a nick-name if the child’s first name has special meaning for and connection to the mother.
Cultivating Dependency/Undermining the Authority of the Alienated Parents
The alienating behavior of cultivating dependency has the two-fold effect of making the child perceive the alienating parent as sole supporter and provider of survival needs while simultaneously undermining the authority of the alienated parent.
As previously discussed, the alienating behavior of confiding in the child is a precursor to the development of a pathologically enmeshed relationship between the alienating parent and child. The alienating behavior of cultivating dependency does likewise.
In cultivating dependency, alienating parents fail to encourage their child’s appropriate separation/individuation and thereby makes themselves indispensable to the child. Alienated children fail to develop critical thinking skills and self-confidence to develop her/his own opinions and be in touch with his genuine love and need for the alienated parent.
Conclusion
Gardner’s 8 manifestations and Baker and Fine’s 17 alienating behaviors are widely relied upon in the scientific community to assess a case for alienation to a high degree of clinical certainty.
