Parent Alienation

   Angel Femia

Parent Alienation is when children are lied to regarding one or both parents and taught to fear, mistrust and sometimes even hate the other parent. I know of cases where the children were actually told the parents were deceased when they were and still are very much alive.

There are many reasons this is being done but none of them are caring or humane. Parent Alienation hurts the child, any other siblings, the parents and all others close to the situation for generations to come.

Of course to justify this horrid emotional treatment human’s use this alienation they believe or convince themselves that they are looking out for the best interest of the child.

Many cases it is one parent, angry or hurt by their x-partner and wants to get back at them so they use the children to do so. They tell the children that the other parent is mean, hateful, lives a dangerous life, or has bad friends, making up lies and horrid stories in gossip that are rarely ever true. Almost any excuse is workable to them to turn the children’s minds away from the other parent and make the children totally mistrust the other parent without even truly understand why. They proceed to down grad the parent any chance they get and even go so far as to set up the other parent to look bad in the children’s eyes.

Others are grandparents who were asked to care for a child for a period of time and they get attached and scared of loosing that child.

Then we have Child Protective Services who listen to one side of the story and don’t want to hear the other. Sometimes I can even see the reality of why they would do this but if we listen we can find ways of helping or we may even be wrong about believing the other side. When we listening to only one side we can make grave mistakes and is one of the reasons this type of abuse can keep growing.

Parent Alienation is Emotional, Verbal and Physic Abuse.

Below are a few examples of cases I have been involved with without names so as to harm no one:

It is a total misunderstanding of emotional and mental illness but the parent or caregiver fears the sickness of the other parent. In mental or emotional illness case this fear is almost is wide spread. Due to humanities fear of the unknown and the fact that we are just now beginning to see these illnesses, we do not largely understand these illnesses and the stigma attached is so severe that the lack of understanding causes one parent or care giver to make a villain out of the other and so on.

1)        I know one woman who was emotionally ill due to horrid abuse issues from when she was a child and further abuse from her husband. She could not raise her children so the grandmother and grandfather took over the job. This woman was sick with Emotional Illnesses, Post Traumatic Stress disorder and severe depression. In 1981 these illnesses were feared and totally misunderstood, they still are today but our Medics are at least trying to figure them out today. This mother was working on getting healthy, counseling, therapy and educating herself. The grandmother saw that this mother was beginning to heal in some ways through therapy and counseling. She became afraid that this mother would come back and take the granddaughter away so she began to tell the daughter that her mother was crazy, drunk and not trustworthy. None of which was true but the daughter, trusted the grandmother and was horrified any time her mother came to visit. This mother tried for many years to reach her daughter but to no avail. The grandmother had totally brainwashed the child against the mother. This mother had no idea that her mother had lied to her daughter in such a way and trusted the grandmother.  This went on for many years. Every time this mother went to visit her daughter, she was rejected by her daughter. When she asked her daughter why she just shrugged her shoulders and turned away.

Another use commonly known is when the custodial parent does not like their x-partner’s new partner. The custodial parent will tell the child lies and stretched truths to brainwash the child against other parent. They will even go as far as telling Child protection Services and the courts these lies and be hysterical enough to make them believe it.  As well they actually gossip to the child as opposed to going to an adult friend. Even if the child can’t understand fully they catch that the other parent is like the Boogieman.

2)       One of my friends was raised by his grandmother. He was told at a very early age that his mother had been killed in a car accident when in actuality she left due to her husband’s abuse towards her with one child and left the other in his mother’s care as she could not handle both children. She did at first try to visit with her child but the grandmother would not let her near. One day around six year old this child was at school and the teacher came into the room and told him that his mother was waiting to see him and she was in the Principals office waiting. He blurted out that his mother could not be there as she was killed in a car accident. The teacher said not she is there, he argued but the teacher took him to the office and there she was. He had a total meltdown and the next fifteen years of his life was total hell. His anger was so raged that he was constantly in jail for assault charges. It took years and a great deal of work to get him settled down.

3)       The next example is of a mother who was unable to really care for her children. She had three children and only knew how to abuse as she was badly abused. Child Protection Services, with good reason, took the children and this mother would go to visit the children at their foster family’s home.  This mother ran on some rough times, alcohol, living on the streets and totally wrecking herself.     She was unable to visit her children with this happening in her life so one of the Child protection Workers told this child that his mother was died of a drug overdose. This was totally untrue. This child grew up believing his mother was dead and became very angry. When he ran from his foster family to the streets His anger also landed him in jail may time, on drugs of different kinds and very messed up.

A year into his living in squats, parting and raising hell he ran into some of his other relatives, who lived in the same small city, who told him his mother was very much alive and how to reach her. He did just that. Finally his mother and some friends that had helped her get off the streets, were able to make him see that he had more than enough to get up and fix his life.

These children are scared for Life, Love, People, Authority, and Themselves because of this Parent Alienation.

We are each half of both parents so when we turn any child against a parent we are also turning that child against themselves.  Being half our mother and half our father we need to love and trust them both in order to learn to trust ourselves.

If a child believes the lies they are told they will also believe they may turn out just like the parent they are being lied about and many times low self esteem, self mistrust and self hatred sets in. I will be almost impossible for that child to trust themselves and if they ever do it will take a great deal of therapy to get them there.

Parent Alienation does, can and has lead to:

Suicidal Tendencies,

Self Destructiveness,

Addiction

and more.