What is Parental Alienation?

Parental Alienation is a form of brainwashing usually done by an ex-spouse to make children hate and reject a parent for no rational reason. It's considered irrational rejection of the parent by the child because the reasons for the rejection are usually weak, frivolous, and absurd. Parental alienation is often permanent, is severely damaging to children, is very misunderstood, and usually only happens to good parents. It gets confused with custody and divorce but it's not that.

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Parental alienation is a group of behaviors that interfere with a relationship of a child and either parent. Most often accompanying high conflict marriages, separation or divorce. These behaviors whether verbal or non-verbal, cause a child to be mentally manipulated or bullied into believing a loving parent is the cause of all their problems, and/or the enemy, to be feared, hated, disrespected and/or avoided. Parental alienation and hostile aggressive parenting deprives children of their right to be loved by and show love for both of their parents. These selfish, vindictive and malicious actions by the alienating parent (the parent who is responsible for the manipulations and bullying) is considered a form of child abuse - as the alienating tactics used on the children are disturbing, confusing and often frightening, and rob children of their sense of security and safety. Most people do not know about Parental Alienation and Hostile Aggressive Parenting until they experience it. Parental Alienation Awareness is put forth to help raise awareness about this growing problem of mental and emotional child abuse seen mostly in cases of divorce or separation.

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Parental Alienation is the systematic effort to damage, destroy, or eliminate a child's relationship with the other parent; and it's HIGHLY abusive to children.

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Parental Alienation is defined as the deliberate attempt by one parent to distance his/her children from the other parent. An example would be the mother who shares too much information about the father's affair with the children in a covert attempt to cause the children to harbor ill will toward the father.

A mother or father may wish to alienate the children to pay back for the pain experienced due to an unwanted divorce. They may attempt to alienate the children due to mental illness that keeps the parent from putting her/his children's best interest before their own. The reasons parents participate in Parental Alienation are numerous and costly.

On the other hand, estrangement follows multiple conflicts and blowouts between parent and child, says relationship expert Irina Firstein. "There are extremely hurt feelings," she says. "There are feelings of betrayal and of disappointment."

- From http://goo.gl/rszhsh

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The following paragraphs from Divorce Casualties by Douglas Darnall capture well the "when and how" of first discovering we are being targeted by an alienating parent:

Many parents search the Internet for answers and begin questioning if their child has been brainwashed by the other parent or that parent’s significant other. The inquisitive parent reads about parental alienation (PA) and parental alienation syndrome (PAS), relieved to learn there is a name for what they are experiencing. The sense of relief, however, only leaves them wondering about what to do to prevent or repair the damage, especially when the alienating parent rebuffs and sabotages all attempts to talk and help solve the parenting problem.

The alienating parent may feel unjustly accused by the targeted parent of alienating behavior. The accused is now defensive and frustrated because his or her denials are not believed. This is one of the risks that come with a parent wanting to diagnose. Another risk is that it is possible to be wrong, causing unnecessary hurt and anger. The terms PA and PAS help with understanding behavior, and perhaps provide some insight about how to respond, but using the terms to strengthen accusations will make hostilities worse. Some of both parents’ confusion is in the failure to understand the differences between estrangement, parental alienation, and parental alienation syndrome. Some parents also too quickly attach themselves to a label and use the words to attack the other parent, without fully understanding all that is involved making the distinction.

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