Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is defined as the programming or brainwashing of a child by one parent to denigrate or verbally belittle the other parent (the targeted parent). The child may also contribute self-created hostility and accusations. In severe cases, the child may refuse to spend any time with the targeted parent, resisting visits of any kind, even if there is no basis for the accusations. If the child does visit the targeted parent, he or she may denigrate the parent with foul language and severe oppositional behavior. The animosity may spread to the extended family of the alienated parent as well. Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Richard A. Gardner first identified this syndrome in the 1980’s, and has frequently asserted that Parent Alienation Syndrome, despite some misuse of the term, does not refer to situations where there is real abuse or neglect by a parent that prompts the child’s anger or refusal to spend time with that parent.
Hostile divorces, ongoing court battles over custody and visitation, and overloaded emotional exchanges between divorced parents have become all too common in the twenty-first century. While parents suffer, the children are hardest hit, as they absorb and model the emotions and actions they witness in their parents, with fewer outside resources. Unfortunately, as Parental Alienation Syndrome has become more common, courts and therapists are presented with complicated scenarios where sometimes the truth is elusive, and the children’s emotional tangles are difficult to unravel. Courts have generally taken the approach that where the custodial parent can be shown to exhibit mild to moderate or intermittent parental alienation toward the other parent, he or she should at most receive counseling, or fines, or lose child support. In severe cases, however, courts are more inclined to change custody to the parent who has been the target of parental alienation. The difficulty the courts and therapists face is establishing the truth where there is a possibility of real physical, sexual, or emotional abuse.
Counselors, psychiatrists, and others have most often discovered Parental Alienation Syndrome occurring in children where the custodial parents use denigrating tactics through denied visits, negative talk, or even contemptuous nonverbal behaviors towards the other parent in order to diminish the other parent’s contact time and influence over the children. While custodial parents of younger children are most often women, Parental Alienation Syndrome occurs with parents of either gender. In situations less frequently examined, PAS can also occur with non-custodial parents seeking to influence a child so that the non-custodial parent can gain custody and/or stop child support payments. In any of these situations, the children are the inevitable victims, facing long-lasting emotional confusion, as well as the possible loss of contact with one of their parents, and lower parental income. Additional court hearings cause emotional stress and financial loss for the entire family. It is therefore critically important to prevent Parental Alienation Syndrome, and where it has already gained a foothold, to diminish it as quickly as possible before it enters the level of adversarial courtroom battles.
What You Can Do
1) Do Remember. As a parent, remember that your children are the genetic and social product of both parents, and will identify with both you and the other parent not only during childhood, but throughout their lives. For example, if one parent accuses the other of being bipolar, in essence the parent is sentencing the child to lifetime concerns about inheriting this illness (whether the other parent is really ill or not) because it has a genetic component. While other traits and habits derived from a parent may be socially rather than genetically inherited, parents should always remember that teaching a child, directly or indirectly, to hate or denigrate the other parent is in essence teaching the child to hate or denigrate half of him or herself. With this thought firmly in mind, it is easier to judge whether each action or comment is helpful or harmful to the child.
2) Do Not Retaliate. When the other parent behaves badly, or encourages hostility toward you, do not retaliate with equally unethical and harmful behavior. While you may have to exert great patience to rectify the situation through ethical behavior, and if necessary, legal channels, your children need at least one positive role model, and at some point in their lives will appreciate your peacekeeping role, no matter how badly they may be behaving in the present. Seek parenting classes and informal emotional support from friends to stay balanced, and to find appropriate ways to respond.
3) Do Keep Records. If you are the targeted parent, keep a journal of key events, and document the alienation with evidence admissible in court. For example, even repeated phone messages to the child from the other parent saying, “I just wanted to make sure you were safe” indicate that the alienating parent is hinting to the child that the targeted parent cannot keep them safe or care for them adequately.
4) Do Not Violate Court Orders. Judges and others charged with keeping the peace must operate through legal means, and do not appreciate parents who take the law into their own hands. Children also find it a confusing double standard when parents insist that the children obey the law, but are themselves violating court orders. Remember that you are setting behavior standards for your children.
5) Do Treat the Other Parent Well. Ethical codes of behavior from all over the world hold as the highest good when we can treat others well or at least as well as we would like to be treated. When we model this behavior for our children, we are doing them a great favor in life. When we treat the other parent well, we reassure the child indirectly that we love the whole child. On the other hand, children who witnessed one parent hurting the other parent during or after the marriage through physical, emotional, or economic abuse will experience justifiable anger and alienation toward the abusing parent. The court system should, but does not always, take domestic abuse into account in such situations.
6) Do Care for the Whole Child. In cases where it is possible that a child is refusing visitation, balking, or behaving angrily toward the other parent because of abuse or neglect, seek counseling for the child rather than trying to elicit information yourself. Your child will need help seeing the problem as separate from the person who is his or her parent. Your role as parent is to reach that highest level of altruism where you can do what is in the best interests of your child, even when those interests may not coincide with your own wishes.
For more information, see the FamilyIQ courses:
Divorce: Communicating with Your Children
Surviving Divorce
Divorce: Co-Parent Communication
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References and Resources
www.breakthroughparenting.com/PAS.htm
an excellent introduction to PAS and its legal ramifications, with counseling resources
www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/ref/10.111/j
a legal website with references to specific cases
www.informaworld.com/smpp/content~content=a713829529~db=all
a good overall review of PAS and its psychological and legal complications, including differentiating between PAS and true abuse or neglect.
Author Catherine Knott, Ph.D., teaches Anthropology and Sociology for the University of Alaska on the Kenai Peninsula. She has a Ph.D. in Anthropology, Natural Resources, and Education from Cornell University and a B.A. from Yale University. Catherine has worked in International Development overseas and in the United States for many years. She and her three children enjoy the wilderness, as well as gardening, art, and writing, from their rural home in Alaska.
