The hard thing about divorce is that, as tough as the process can be, it’s usually for the best for everyone involved. But when kids are involved, it’s hard to see that, both for them and for the parents. It’s tricky water to navigate!
Even if divorce isn’t in the picture, emotions in a relationship can run high and hot, and kids can end up on the losing end. And as experts are pointing out, when parents take things out on each other, they’re not always sparing their kids.
When one parent chews out the other parent to their kids, it’s child abuse.
That’s according to experts , who are calling parental alienation an “unacknowledged form of family violence.”
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The World Health Organization is even considering adding parental alienation to a revision of the International Classification of Diseases.
Parental alienation typically doesn’t stop with one parent merely bad-mouthing the other, however.
And it’s not a one-time thing. It’s a pattern of systemic manipulation, with one parent trying to win the kids over to their side to reject the other parent.
According to the experts, that does incredible harm to the kids, causing things like anxiety, low self-esteem, and a greater risk for depression.
There’s no doubt about it, kids in these situations are suffering.
“Some of the stories are heartbreaking,” clinical-developmental psychologist Barbara Fidler told CTV News. “I actually lose sleep over these families. We are losing sleep because children are suffering.”
In one high profile case of parental alienation, a judge told Angelina Jolie to patch up her relationship with Brad Pitt.
Court documents showed that the judge told her that their kids “not having a relationship with their father is harmful to them,” so she would need to try to get along with him a bit more.
Researchers looking at parental alienation say there are a few things to look out for in kids when one parent is trying to alienate the other.
Things like repeating the favored parent’s words, rejecting extended family members and even pets, refusal to consider a parent’s explanations or views, and little regret or guilt about rejecting a parent.
The experts also say that there are many ways an alienating parent might act.
When one parent tries to alienate the other, it can certainly include bad-mouthing, but also encouraging the kids to bad-mouth the other parent as well, arranging for activities to happen at conflicting times, making kids feel guilty about visiting the other parent, getting kids to spy on the other parent, and not displaying photos with the other parent.
Parental alienation is also on the rise.
“This is clearly a big problem,” law professor Nick Bala told CTV News. “I get emails from people coast, to coast, to coast and internationally raising concerns about being cut off from their children, being cut off from grandchildren.”
The long term effects of parental alienation aren’t fully known.
But in addition to anxiety, low self-esteem, and a greater risk of depression, experts say that kids in a parental alienation situation can also develop substance abuse issues and have trouble developing and sustaining healthy relationships themselves.
h/t CTV News
