Heartbreak & Hope with Pat Barbarito
Heartbreak & Hope with Pat Barbarito
Surviving Parental Alienation with Dr. Amy Baker
Parental alienation has a devastating effect on both children and the targeted parent – but is it always malicious? What does an alienator tell themselves to justify the aggressive separation of child and parent? At what age are children most susceptible to the manipulation of one parent against another? Can alienated parents and children ever re-establish a healthy connection?
Host Pat Barbarito and featured guest Dr. Amy Baker explore these questions and more, as they delve into fear, sadness, financial loss, and court frustration associated with parental alienation during divorce/custody proceedings.
Conversation highlights also include:
- Defining parental alienation, how experts use the term, and why it matters;
- Why avoiding labelling the person and focusing on behavior is key when discussing parental alienation tactics and rebuttals;
- Navigating the confusing idea that the alienated child feels rejected by the very parent they are rejecting;
- The courts’ role in assessing alienation and requiring reunification efforts;
- How a manipulative parent’s behavior can actually help the other side move forward in a custody battle;
- The four mental hurdles that must be overcome to build and win a parental alienation case; and
- Finding hope amongst the variety of paths to reunification.
BONUS: Dr. Baker offers a sneak peek into her as-yet-untitled new book designed to help parents engage with their hurt, angry, rejected, distant child, including 30 sample texts to send to encourage real time communication.
ADDITIONAL RECOMMENDATION: If you are experiencing parental alienation, please watch the Erasing Family documentary for confirmation that you are not alone and there is hope.
Be sure to follow Heartbreak & Hope with Pat Barbarito on Apple, Spotify, Amazon Music, or YouTube, or bookmark the official podcast webpage to keep the entire library at your fingertips.
Welcome to Heartbreak and Hope with Pack or Burrito, the show that explorers how to build up or break down any relationship with confidence, clarity, and compassion.
Speaker 2:Did you know that during the Christmas season, at least 80 million people watch part of or all of a Hallmark movie? And if you've ever watched one, okay, I admit I have. You know, that family wins. Everybody reconciles. Everybody lives happily ever after. Listen to some of the names of these movies. Long Lost Christmas Family, I did see that one pretty good. The Gift of Peace Time to Come home for the holidays. These titles, the songs we hear, the images we see, they evoke visions of presents being unwrapped under a tree, hot mugs of cocoa, lots of love matching pajamas. It got me thinking about some of my clients families that aren't together. I'm not talking about the families that are separated by geography. I'm not talking about tragic losses that don't allow people to get together or people who weren't together during Covid . I'm talking about what happens when children and parents are alienated from one another. That's heartbreaking. Here today to talk to us about this heartbreaking situation and to give us hope is Dr. Amy Baker. Dr. Baker is a nationally recognized expert in parent-child relationships, particularly focusing on children of divorce and parental alienation syndrome. She's authored many books on related topics. She's a researcher, she's an expert, she's a coach. Some of her books are restoring family connections, surviving parental alienation, just to name a few. So Dr. Baker, welcome to the show.
Speaker 3:Happy to be here.
Speaker 2:So Dr. Baker, let me start out. What is parental alienation? Is it a syndrome? Is it a just a term? Can you explain that? Sure.
Speaker 3:And it's a great place to start because there is some confusion. We reserve the term parental alienation for a very specific type of family conflict in which one parent has engaged in behaviors that foster the child's unjustified rejection of the other parent. So when we say a parent is engaging in parental alienation, we mean that they're engaging in the 17 primary parental alienation strategies, and that parent might be able to turn a child against the other parent. When we say a child is a victim of parental alienation or the child is alienated, we mean that child has been manipulated to unjustifiably reject the other parent. In terms of the syndrome issue, just to sort of round out my response to your question, people generally don't use that term anymore syndrome. It's sort of a lightning rod for unnecessary controversy. Everybody agrees pretty much that parents can manipulate children to reject another parent. There is disagreement about whether to be considered a disorder or a syndrome, et cetera. All of that's still being worked out. So in the meantime, most of us experts just refer to it as parental alienation.
Speaker 2:So in the late world, or even in the divorce world or the divorce uh , field, I think that there's this common thought that when there is parental alienation or when a parent alienates a child, that they must really hate the other parent more than they love their children. But I understand you see it differently.
Speaker 3:Well, I think that's a term that phrase, you know, parents, you have to love your kids more than you hate the other parent. You know, I understand it has sort of a catchy, you know, sound to it, but we don't really always know exactly why parents who engage in
Speaker 2:Alienation are
Speaker 3:Doing it. Most of them aren't saying, I hate my ex and I'm gonna punish them. That does happen sometimes. But more often than not, the parent engaging in that behavior is not doing it with conscious intent. They're justifying it. They're saying, I need to protect that child, or my child should be able to choose. Or sometimes it's coming from an unconscious need to be preferred to sort of make them feel better about themselves, to feel like their kids always wanna be with them. Sometimes they're, they're lonely, they just don't wanna live without their kids. They would just want their kids around them all the time. It's sort of a selfishness. It's not always so clear cut that they're doing something because they hate the other parent.
Speaker 2:What I hear you saying is that the parent who , uh, causes the alienation, who alienates many times thinks that they are doing the right thing and they're not militia . Because to me, it seems so obviously malicious to turn a child against another parent unless there's extreme circumstances. I , I get the extreme circumstances, severe alcoholism , uh, abuse, et cetera, but that's not the general , uh, place or situation that we see. I see alienation and it does seem vicious and malicious. And, and what is interesting in your writing and in your work, you don't seem to be accusatory because you try to understand that the parent who does it is justified in their own mind. Talk to me about that.
Speaker 3:Where I feel justifiably harsh towards the parents who are engaging in this behavior is their imperiousness to feedback. In my experience, you can have people telling that parent, you know, what you're doing is wrong. That other parent didn't really do anything that bad, or it's not that good to let kids choose. You're saying you just want your kids to choose, but actually you're sort of subtly conveying to them that they should choose you. That's where I hold the alienator accountable, is that there is many times a commitment to their behavior regardless of the feedback from the courts, from the parenting coordinator, from the custody evaluator, from the GAL , et cetera. And when they sabotage the treatment, that's where they need to be held accountable.
Speaker 2:At what age are children most susceptible to a parent who is the alienator to the manipulation?
Speaker 3:We used to think, or some people used to think that once kids got to be a teenager, they were onto things. They knew who was who and what was what. And a teenager was too savvy to be manipulated. And that is absolutely not true. And in fact, there are some families in which the alienation really kicks into high gear once the kids get to be teenagers because the courts are less and less likely to intervene because the , even the courts have this idea that teenagers should be able to choose and that they're smart enough and wise enough to know which parent's gonna take good care of them . Um , so teenagers are just as likely to be alienated as younger kids. And in fact, I would argue now, this is not scientifically based , this is based on my clinical observations that teenagers are more susceptible because there's sort of more things they want, cars, a horse, you know, whatever it is, they can be sort of bought off. They can be wooed and the courts are not gonna really do much about it once they get to be older teenagers. I think the hardest group to alienate is very young kids. Like a lot of parents whose kids are, let's say three years old, will say, my kid forgets that they're supposed to hate me . You know, they're a little tentative when they come back to me. But then very quickly we just fall into a routine because they live more in the moment. They're , it's harder for them to hold onto or remember, you're supposed to be afraid of that parent kind of message, but that doesn't mean that they're impervious to manipulation. There are plenty of cases where even very young kids can be manipulated, so there's no protection from this developmentally.
Speaker 2:So in those cases where there's just unbelievable manipulation and the targeted parent is helpless in some ways, do you see, or have you seen children when they grow up in their twenties and thirties turn, for lack of a better word, on the parent who manipulated them? I have in 42 years of my practice seen kids grow up and reconcile with the targeted parent because they realized they were manipulated. What is your experience in that regard, Dr. Baker?
Speaker 3:Oh , absolutely. Kids do figure this out and come around. And I've seen more often that the child still wants to have a relationship with the parent. So they might have this whole sort of, well maybe mom and I'm just gonna say mom's the alienator. Yeah . But we all can either way, gee, maybe mom wasn't right. Maybe that wasn't fair what she did to me. She kept me away from dad and that was sort of crappy for me and dad. And you know, now I'm wanna have a relationship with dad again, I don't see those kids often saying, and I'm really mad at my mom for doing this. To me, what I see is that the favored parent, the alienator gets mad at the kid and cuts the kid off. And it's sort of like, how dare you challenge our reality? We've been operating under this system where I'm the good one and that's the bad one. And now you wanna change that up and now you wanna have a relationship with them. Well, you are not the person I thought you were. And they will sometimes reject that kid at that point.
Speaker 2:And that's when you have drama at a wedding. When that child grows up and is getting married or graduation or grandchildren. The drama that I see is extraordinary. And I have seen the alienating parent just say, I'm done. If you're having that person back in your life, I'm not gonna do it. Which is unbelievably hurtful and malicious.
Speaker 3:If the underlying motivation for the alienation was an inability to share your child, then you know it makes sense. If you need to be the preferred parent, you need to have your kids worship you and you're threatened by them having a relationship with the other parent. Then when that child has a little more freedom, maybe they go off to college or they have a, you know, significant other who sort of says, wait a minute, maybe you should rethink things. Yeah. That parent is gonna say they're not gonna be able to tolerate their kid having a relationship with, with the other parent.
Speaker 2:So, so the motivation of the parent alienating could be anything from, I think this is best for you to, I can't live without you and your all mine. Right,
Speaker 3:Fair enough . And again, that's not what they're necessarily saying to themselves. Generally what the alienator says, there's really only two things in terms of like going to court and having to justify their obstruction. There's really only two things they can say. One is, I don't want my kids to have a relationship with that parent because they're abusive, or I want them to have a relationship, but I can't or don't wanna have to force them to. That person isn't really that good a parents , I try to get my kids to go, I encourage them to go, but it's their life. They're old enough to choose and they just don't like that person. And that's that person's fault. It's not my job to fix that.
Speaker 2:But the truth is, it is that person's job to try to fix it if that's in their child's best interest, particularly if you're the primary custodial parent. And that's where the frustration happens. But you can't court order or direct people's behavior despite people trying to do it. That I think that's where the frustration comes in.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. And I actually think a lot of times lawyers will tell me, oh, that alienator, they're so clever. They say they're encouraging the child. And I'm like, I think you just won your case. Let me tell you why. If they're telling you, they're telling the court that they're encouraging the kids to go, they have completely taken off the table abuse because nobody encourages their child to spend time with an abuser. Okay? So now what we're doing, that parent is saying they encourage the child. So let's look at that. If there's a court order, they're not supposed to encourage the child. They're supposed to make the child. So when they use the word encourage, they're admitting that they're not following the court order. 'cause the court order doesn't say, each parent shall encourage the child to spend time with the other parent. It is , you deliver the kids to this parent every other Monday or whatever,
Speaker 2:But that parent, the alienator hides behind the kid. You know, I've seen situations where a parent will say, my five-year-old doesn't wanna go, are you kidding me? You dress that kid, put them outside and wait. So they hide behind the child many times, which is so inappropriate as, as a parenting tool
Speaker 3:Me that's revealing that they're allowing their child to choose. They're basically admitting that they are ab advocating their parental responsibility to follow a judicial court order. And on the stand, what the attorney, a good PA savvy attorney can do is say, do you encourage your child to do things that they have to do? Or do you make them do it? Do you encourage your child to wear seat belts? Oh no, I make my child to wear seat belts. Do you encourage your child to get their vaccinations? No, I make my child do it , my child . So basically what it comes down to with a good cross-examination is basically you are a liar and you're not really encouraging them to do it, or you're an ineffective parent and you can't get your kids to do what you're supposed to do, in which case you shouldn't have parenting time.
Speaker 2:And , and the court system is another discussion, which I'm going to get into because unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, there is an expectation that courts could fix something that is broken in a family. And quite frankly, that's not always what happens. But we're gonna get there. I, I wanted to speak with you about, and I'm gonna change some of the facts. We've had one case in the office , which is probably the worst case of parental alienation that I've ever seen in 42 years. A divorce that was started about three, three and a half years ago when the children were maybe 11 and 13. So now they're whatever, 16, 17, 18. The father, no psychiatric diagnosis, not an alcoholic, hardworking, successful guy by objective standards, decent guy involved in his children's life. I know that, you know, assessing blame maybe doesn't accomplish the goal of getting the child to be with the targeted parent. But I , I asked this client and I I've asked several clients, what does it feel like when your child is alienated from you, who see you? And I, I wanna read to you some of his responses and get your reaction to it, if I may. Okay. When I speak with this client, his pain is so, so deep, it's palpable. What, what he said to me is, he said, it feels that your child's died. You wake up grieving every day and there's no end to the grieving. Let me give you a few other things that he said. He said that every time somebody asks you about your children, you don't even know how to answer it because you feel embarrassed or misunderstood, and there's a general feeling like you must have caused this. He said that every time you go into your child's room, you grieve the sadness is overwhelming, that you try to remain calm and you have to act a certain way. 'cause you're constantly scrutinized, you're fearful that every action is going to be questioned. The level and intensity of this parent, the targeted parent and others that I've seen is extraordinary. It's like a nightmare that doesn't end. And as he has said, if there's a, if there was a death, tragically, there is a process. There is no process to grieve a child that's alienated. So I'm wondering what your reaction to that is and and how do we even address that?
Speaker 3:Sounds like most of my clients, I mean, basically I, I sort of transition from primarily doing research on parental alienation to mostly doing parent coaching. I did a lot of expert witness work too. But right now, and for the last several years, all I do around parental alienation, I do other, I have another job <laugh> , other than my PA work. But when I'm doing PA work, all I'm doing is talking to targeted parents. I actually try not to ask them what to tell me about their pain because I think there's a place for that. But I'm not their therapist, I'm their coach. I'm fairly goal directed and solution focus . Like what's in front of you? What are the choices? What do you need to do now? What are you gonna do when your kids show up? How are you gonna talk to them on the phone? I try to help my parents navigate all the landmines that being a targeted parent involves. But it's a profound, profound sadness in, I'm trying to remember which of my books , uh, I think it's surviving parental alienation. The middle part of the book is about the pain of losing your child. You know, there's loss involved. You don't have the pleasure of raising your child and you miss them. You're hardwired as a parent to wanna be with your child, to touch them, to smell them, et cetera. You know, just to have that intimate parenting relationship. There's the fear that's involved in seeing your child's moral compass be warped. The kids are sort of being taught to be arrogant and, you know, disrespectful and unpleasant in certain ways. And that's very disconcerting. There's fear that the parents experience when they see their kids' life opportunities being taken from them. Often the alienator puts the kid on a lower, less successful track, more failing scores, lower SAT scores, less prestigious. Maybe they're going to a community college and that's no slice of community college. I got it, but that might not have been the track the kid was on. And then there's the humiliation component of how do you tell other people what's happening, which opens you up as a targeted parent, a feeling that people are judging you, you know, you must have done something to contribute. I think moms have that maybe a little bit more than dads because there's this presumption in our society that kids don't reject their moms and that kids belong with their moms. So there's fear, there's sadness, there's humiliation, there's financial loss, there's court frustration of not being able to get on the books or having your, the mediator sort of turn on you or the GAL side with the other parent or the custody evaluator be too middle of the road, too safe and not really calling it what it is to the reunification therapist allowing, you know, this to drag on and on and on. Like every person that the targeted parent comes in contact with has a potential to make things worse.
Speaker 2:So . So I wanna revisit one of the things you said about many times the parent who is alienating the alienating parent will have lesser expectations for that child. And it sounds like to me that that's because they want that child to have a certain dependency on them. That sounds to me like unbelievably narcissistic. So question, does a , an alienator, a parental alienation have their own set of issues? Because it sounds so self-centered as a parent isn't our job and our desire for our children to fly away. You know, I'm a parent. I have one child in Virginia, one in New York. Would I like it if they were half a mile down the street? Sure. Do I think I would've done a good job with my particular children if I did that? No, I think they're where they need to be. So as a parent, aren't we wired to want our children to launch? It sounds like the alienator does the opposite, and that sounds to me very self-centered. Narcissistic.
Speaker 3:I don't disagree with anything you said. I agree that it's selfish to clip your child's wings so that you don't have to deal with the loss and separation. I try to stay away from labels like narcissistic. I'm not a licensed clinician. My PhD is in developmental psychology, so I don't diagnose anybody ever. But even if I were a licensed clinician, you're not allowed to diagnose people without sort of knowing them, et cetera. So I think that most of my male clients think their ex-wives are borderlines. Most of my female clients think their ex-husbands are narcissists, you know, and everybody thinks everybody's toxic and abusive and gaslighting. And there's definitely a lot of that going on. What I generally think is more helpful is to talk about somebody's behavior. So I train my targeted parents to talk to, whether it's a reunification therapist, an individual therapist, the GAL , the custody evaluator, anybody that they're gonna talk with to just focus on the other parent's behavior. He hangs up the phone when I call, he tells the kids I'm all poor , not he's a sociopath, he's a malignant narcissist, et cetera .
Speaker 2:But the truth is that something's going on. When you're alienating a child from somebody who isn't objectively dangerous, there's something going on in that dynamic. As a , uh, family lawyer, one of the frustrations I see is that courts don't order those parents acting however they're acting into treatment. Because my feeling is if you get to the treatment, maybe the behavior will change. So that's a very frustrating thing. I think that clients who are targets will say to me, why can't they go see a psychiatrist? There's something wrong with them. Well, they might be right if they were diagnosed and got treatment, the alienation might stop. But it just isn't an option in our court system for the most part. There's always exceptions. So the behavior continues. Do you ever say to a targeted parent, you just have to accept it, you're not gonna see your kid?
Speaker 3:I think that there are times when it makes sense to not pursue legal action. You know, this is sort of what I say to my clients, if your kids are two and you're a millionaire, you're gonna go to court. If your kids are 17 and you're broke, you're not gonna go to court. Most people are in the middle. And I like to think about three reasons to go to court and three reasons not to go to court. So I try to help my clients walk through the pros and cons, but even for the people who we come to the decision, I'm not gonna go to court. Court is not where I'm gonna find any satisfaction. That doesn't ever mean that you have to give up on your kids or walk away. You can be texting them every day . You can be showing up at their band practice or their soccer game or whatever. Unless there's a restraining order. Unless the kid says, I'm gonna kill myself. If you show up, of course you stop showing up. But I don't believe in the goodbye letter . I don't think there's ever a need to do that. It just makes no sense to me. Most targeted parents don't understand is that their child feels rejected by them . So for a targeted parent, their experience is, I'm chasing my kid and they're rejecting me. I wanna see my kid. And they're saying, drop dead, screw you. I don't wanna see you. So the targeted parent's experience is chasing, chasing, chasing, being rejected. But inside the alienated child, that child feels rejected by the parent. They are rejected .
Speaker 2:How is that possible?
Speaker 3:Here's how it's possible. All parents are imperfect, all parents hurt, frustrate, and disappoint their children.
Speaker 2:Yes, I suppose we all do <laugh>.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Sometimes you do it intentionally. Like, no, you need, you know, you can't have X that wouldn't be good for you. And sometimes it's, gee, I wish I had X, but I don't. I yeah , I have to disappoint you on that one . Alienation works when the favored parent takes things that the other parent really did and manipulates the child into thinking that those are unforgivable sins, right? Alienation works when the child is led to believe that the other parent is unsafe, unloving and unavailable.
Speaker 2:So the refusal to see the parent stems from self-protection and a genuine belief that that person isn't acting in their best interest. But that is in such direct contradiction to the targeted parents' actions. I see targeted parents in this one case I'm thinking of, write letters, text, do everything possible to show a loving connection. But the child cannot get over that which they believe or have been told.
Speaker 3:Absolutely. Because the favorite parent is able to say, oh, he comes 10 minutes early. Look at how he's stalking you. Oh, he comes 10 minutes late. He, if he really cared, he'd be on time. Everything can be, almost everything can be interpreted in a negative. He gave you another Lego set. If he really cared, he would've known you weren't into Lego anymore. Oh , oh, he's just trying to buy you off. It doesn't matter that, you know, if the alienator wants to turn something into a negative, they'll turn it into a negative. And kids are highly susceptible, especially if the favorite parent is believable. And you know, they're convincing, they're charming, they're able to connect with the kid . You and me, you we're the only ones who understand I'm the only one who really gets you. I'd never give you broccoli three days in a row. And the kid gets caught up in it because there's some grain of truth to the complaint. Yeah. They didn't really want broccoli three days in a row or whatever.
Speaker 2:Does the child who stays away from the targeted parent when alienation is successful, I don't know if that's the right word, do they ever stay away from the targeted parent to protect their primary parent ? So for example, mom had an affair and she hurt dad, so we're gonna protect dad and judge mom as bad. Do they ever do it not because of the treatment of them or that they've been told because they feel that the other parent has done bad things to their primary parent?
Speaker 3:Yeah, but I think that the kids somehow get encouraged to think of it as, oh, mom had an affair. She doesn't care about the family. Right ? She doesn't care about us. The alienating parent is able to sort of spread the bed so that it hurts the kid's feeling as well. You know , which ,
Speaker 2:Right , because it's very hard for a child, right? To understand the complexities of human behavior, human desire. A a parent's not gonna say, well, you know, your father didn't talk to me or touch me for 15 years and somebody was nice to me. So kids can't understand that. Yeah . So therefore they make it about the family. When really parents are human beings and they're just trying to live their life. It's, it's, it's very complex and there's a lot of nuances to the decision to stay away from a parent as I see it.
Speaker 3:Yeah. And you know, the, the best example of this is if the alienator gets remarried first, then the kids are like, you know, look at how great mom is. Everybody loves her. Now we're in the real family now. This is finally the good family mom . Mom is providing us with this new parent. This is so great. If, again, keeping mom as the alienator, which we in the , just this little discussion, if mom stays single and dad gets remarried first, right? If the Alienator stays single, the targeted parent gets remarried first, then it's , um, mom only needs us where she would never get remarried. She wouldn't wanna throw in us into that. Look at dad, he's moved on. You know, he's so disgusting. The point is, it doesn't matter what the alienator's doing and what the targeted parent's doing. 'cause the alienator can turn anything. If the Alienator gets a puppy, it's, oh, she's so great, or he's so great. He got us a puppy. If it's the other parent , oh, that's so pathetic. They got a puppy. What? You know, who needs a puppy? It doesn't really matter.
Speaker 2:Well , the irony is, in that client I was referring to earlier, he says, I'm in such pain in such a frozen state in my life. The idea of dating somebody and bringing them into this is unimaginable. That's the irony of the targeted parent getting involved. But I wanna move on with some other thoughts. So it , it's estimated that over 25 million parents are erased or being erased from their children's lives after divorce and separation. There's a great 2020 documentary, the Erasing Family, and it gives a really painful and enlightening window into this epidemic. And in that, that that documentary, they follow young adults fighting to reunite their broken families. And it looks at , uh, how children could benefit from shared parenting and family court action. In many ways, this documentary is an indictment of the legal system. You know , maybe rightfully, but the truth is, being part of the system is the resources just aren't there. I do think that most judges try to do the right thing, but the resources aren't there. The finances it costs to litigate something aren't, aren't there. The court doesn't have the time to do it. So in watching this documentary and listening to these people being interviewed as they learn the true circumstances as adult of what happened in their younger lives, it's fascinating to watch their desire to really understand the truth.
Speaker 3:You know, when these kids come around, and this is really, I've done, I've definitely done some research in this area. Some of them wanna have a full sort of airing of what happened and some not. You know, when I did this, my first study was with 40 adults who had the realization, you know, realized that they had been manipulated by one parent to unjustifiably reject the other parent. And I asked them, so tell me about the conversation. And what I meant was when you reconnected with the targeted parent and you sort of had that moment where you said like, yeah, I know that other parent did this and that, and I hurt you in this and that way I remember you wanted to show up at my soccer games. And I said, no. And that was so hurtful. Some of the people I interviewed had had that experience. But many said, you know, we never really talked about it. And I think that the best advice I have for parents whose kids come back to them is to take the lead from the kid. Some of them just are too anxious or too depressed or too shame , you know, ashamed of what they did or they're still not ready for whatever reason to have the full. Now I see everything from your point of view. Dad and I see how you got screwed over mom, depending on which parent. I think the best thing you can do for your kid, if your kid comes back to you, is to take the lead from them about whether they wanna talk about it or not. They might just wanna move on.
Speaker 2:I know Dr. Baker, that you have some very clear thoughts as to how to address a situation where the alienation is severe and that requires court intervention. And I know that you have written about and spoken about, there's really a number of steps necessary. Can you speak with us about that?
Speaker 3:Well, when we say severe, let's be clear that we're talking about when the child is severely alienated. Yes . Because you can have a severe alienate or parents engaging in each and every of the 70 primary parental alienation strategies, but for whatever reason, the kid's sort of impervious. So the severity has it . When we talk about mild, moderate, severe, we're really talking about the impact on the child .
Speaker 2:So when the child is impacted severely in that there's no connection or no desire to see the other parent, you have some very clear thoughts as to what a court needs to do to address that. Can you share that with our audience?
Speaker 3:Yeah. And basically where the field is at is saying that if routine outpatient reunification has been tried and hasn't worked, and that's the case most of the time, then what needs to happen is a court order to allow the targeted parent to take the child to one of two parental alienation immersion programs that have data that demonstrate that they're safe and effective. And these programs are like wildly successful. Like 95% of the time, they are able to turn the case around even hardcore cases where the kid's like, I hate that parent. They should drop dead. I never wanna see them again. Even with 17 year olds, like , you can't get into those programs without a court order and you can't get a court order without a certain process.
Speaker 2:And that process would be, the court has to acknowledge that parental alienation in theory is real. Right?
Speaker 3:So there's four things. There's four mental hurdles that , uh, you need to anticipate if you're a lawyer putting together a parental alienation case. Because if you don't get the judge past each of these four hurdles, you will lose each and every time. So the first one, as you said, is that parental alienation in theory is real. It's not junk science. It's not been discredited. The premise that a parent can manipulate a child to unjustifiably, reject the other parent. That premise has to be endorsed by a judge. If the judge believes every time a child rejects a parent, there's a good reason you will lose the case. The next hurdle is the judge has to understand that alienation is happening in this case. 'cause the judge could say, yes, it's real in theory, I just don't think it's happening here. That means you need to have some expert, whether it's the custody evaluator or a reunification therapist or somebody who the judge will believe, say, I've considered the alternatives and I've concluded that alienation is occurring. It could happen through a very well-designed, direct of the targeted parent and cross-examination of the alienator. But that has, the judge has to believe it's happening in this case. The third hurdle is to get the judge to wanna do something about it. Because a judge could say, yes, it's real . In theory, yes, it's happening in this case, but, and now there's two things a judge could say which would shut everything down. The first is, but the kids are doing well, so how bad can it be? Or, but the kids aren't doing well, we can't rock the boat. So when I was an expert witness, I would actually go through 11 reasons why the court should intervene. I would talk about brain development for, even for teenagers, why they don't have the capacity to weigh all of the pros and cons. They shouldn't be allowed to reject a parent. We don't allow them to reject a school. But
Speaker 2:You say that the court, you know, could direct this. The court could in fact order this. My question is, doesn't a court, and, and perhaps this is implicit what you're saying, have to find that the alienation is caused by the other parent. How about the situation where the alienation might be caused by something else? Is it caused ?
Speaker 3:Well , alienation means that the alienator caused it. That's the de that's the technical term. If a child is disaffected from a parent or behavior that that parent GA engaged in, that's not alienation. That's called estrangement. Yeah . So when I say the court has to find that alienation is occurring, that means that technically the favored parent has induced the child to unjustifiably, reject the other parent.
Speaker 2:So these programs take the child away from both parents, from one parent. How does that work generally?
Speaker 3:So let me just finish the four things , right ?
Speaker 2:I apologize. So
Speaker 3:The third is convincing the court to want to do something because the courts could say, yes, it's alienation, but I don't care. It's too late or it's not that bad. Or the kid got an A in chemistry and is the captain of cheerleading. So it can't really be hurting them . So the judge has to understand the likely long-term , negative impact of the court not doing anything. 'cause in my opinion, judges are highly risk averse. They love the status quo. And if the status quo is the kids with the alienator, we need to convince the judge to modify the status quo. And that's a very big ask. And in my opinion, if a , if an attorney for the targeted parent does not understand this, they're gonna lose the case. The final hurdle is getting the judge to make an order for an immersion program. Because even judges who say alienation is real, yes, it's happening here. Yep , I'm gonna do something. What they will want to do is the wrong thing. Because an hour a week in a reunification therapist's office, while the kid's living full-time with the alienator is not enough. It's the wrong dose of treatment. It's like a drop of chemotherapy instead of a bag. It's like a bandaid on a heart attack. I mean, we could come up with many medical analogies, but it's highly likely to not work, especially usually by the time they've gotten to a full trial, there's already been a round or two of outpatient reunification therapy that has failed. So what you want is for the judge to say, alienation is real. It's happening here. I'm gonna do something. And I'm making an order for one of those two programs that work. Now, what is the program? Both of the two programs that I recommend are the only two in the country that have safety and effectiveness data. No child has run away from the program, no child has been taken to the hospital with a psychiatric emergency. No child has hurt themselves before or during the program. The programs, each of them, and I don't rep for them. I don't know everything that happens in the program. Um, I don't get referral fees or anything like that. Just to be clear, each of them are basically a four day intensive experience just between the targeted parent and the kids. And then at the end of that four day period, there's 90 days where the kids live full time with the formerly rejected parent because after four days, those kids are not rejecting that parent anymore. There's 90 days where the kids get to re-experience life with that formerly rejected parent, allowing that parent to be an authority figure, oh, it's bedtime kids, it's time to put your cell phones down, whatever. All the things they hadn't been able to do for a year while they were a targeted parent and they had no parental authority. And then during that 90 days, at least in one of the programs I know a little bit better than the other, there's aftercare, the, so there's ongoing therapy. The alienating parent is brought into the mix, into the therapy, and eventually the kids have a relationship with both parents. So the goal is never to , uh, sort of reverse things permanently. Like, oh, kids, you think dad's so great. Well actually he's an evil alienator and mom's the good one. And now you're gonna be a hundred percent with mom. The goal of the program is to help kids have healthy relationships with both parents.
Speaker 2:So I'm , I'm listening to you and that sounds like an ideal solution. Two issues that I see is that I have, I don't wanna say never, but I would be hard pressed to think of a court that has the confidence to make that hard decision. And that's sad because hard decisions have to be made. The other thing that I think about is there's an economic hurdle to a program like that in that you requires a certain amount of financial ability to hire lawyers to get to a trial, to get to a program. It's a pay a program. And, and , and it's a sad, sad situation because I agree with you in severe cases of alienation, unless there is something significant done along these lines, that's not gonna change the relationship. It's quite tragic.
Speaker 3:I couldn't agree more. And I do think that the successful cases that I know that have gotten to that program, one of them, I'm just thinking about, it took at least a year. And that the mom was the alienated, the targeted parent in that case, she had an attorney, but she also hired two parental alienation, top tier experts to guide her attorney to a successful resolution. So that mom now basically paid for her attorney to be fully capable of managing a complex PA case. And I now refer in that state, that's the state of Massachusetts. I refer a lot of people to that attorney.
Speaker 2:So you say these programs require a court order. So let's talk about that process because one of the frustrations that I've seen is because parental alienation syndrome is not an American psych is not in the American Psychiatric Association , uh, as AD dsm , uh, five diagnosis as I understand it. And because that's not there, it's my experience that courts have a hard time recognizing it as a syndrome, which requires intervention. So there's no real, even though there's no real disagreement that some children , uh, aligned with ano a parent and , uh, certainly are in conflict with the other parent, without that DSM five diagnosis, what I've seen is courts having a hard time calling it something that requires intervention. Can you comment on
Speaker 3:That? I , I hear that that's a concern, but that's really not necessary when a , when a custody evaluator is appointed to understand what's happening in the family and what's a recommended treatment, they can recommend any treatment they want. I don't know why somebody would think they'd need a diagnosis for a four day program, but they don't need a diagnosis to refer somebody to reunification therapy, which is done all the time. No judge says, oh, it's not in the DSMI can't refer them to reunification therapy. I don't really see any difference. It's reunification therapy. It's just instead of spreading it out an hour a week over a year, you get all those hours in four days. It's
Speaker 2:No , but I've seen judges who aren't familiar and don't understand that the parental alienation is a dynamic, not a diagnosis. And, and what happens is the reluctance to send them to these programs is based upon how do I know that this child's estranged from the other parent because of alienation? They don't seem to be making that connection. But
Speaker 3:That's the second hurdle, right?
Speaker 2:Is
Speaker 3:Alienation happening in this case? And sometimes you need an expert. So if you think about the four hurdles, sometimes you need an expert for all four. Sometimes you need it just for a couple of them. So when I used to be an expert witness, I would do hurdle one, right? What's the science underlying alienation hurdle? Two , sometimes I was brought in to do that. I would do a full case file review and look for all the indicators of alienation. I can educate the court about why the court should intervene, how damaging alienation is, and I can explain why the reunification therapy should be intensive rather than spread out and there's no diagnosis needed.
Speaker 2:I , um, understand Dr. Baker that you are coming out with a new book. Yes.
Speaker 3:It's
Speaker 2:Can you tell's called ? Can you tell us about that and how that ties into the work you do?
Speaker 3:Yes . So I do mostly coaching for parents who are having some contact with their kids. So it's sort of like mild, moderate cases. And these kids are really hard for the parents to deal with. They're uncooperative, they're unpleasant because
Speaker 2:Of alienation, because of their own issues. Yeah,
Speaker 3:Because of the alienation. They're suspicious. They don't trust the targeted parent to do right by them. Um, they've been encouraged to not treat that parent's authority as legitimate. So it's like, Hey dad, can I have pizza for dinner? Oh , son , sorry. No, we're not gonna have pizza. Hey mom, will you send a pizza over? And then they , and the , the alienator sends pizza over to the kid's house and then it's like, well, what does that targeted parent do? Right? So there's like a million situations like that. My new book, I don't actually know the title yet, I'm still sort of playing around with ideas with the publisher. My title, which was a little boring, was something like How to communicate with your Hurt, angry, rejecting distant child. And I picked , hurt , angry, rejecting, distant, because the acronym is hard. And these kids are hard to deal with. They're hardened in their heart and they're gonna have a harder life if they're allowed to , uh, continue, you know, to have this kind of relationship with the targeted parent. So the first third of the book is really about how to enhance the attachment to protect the relationship and how to not take the bait when your child is provocative. How do you manage without reinforcing the idea that you're unsafe and loving and unavailable? The middle of the book is how to communicate by text, the do's and don'ts, 30 different types of text messages. You can send your kid with examples and considerations for each type. And the final third of the book is how to write a letter to your adult alienated child who you are pretty much a hundred percent cutoff from.
Speaker 2:I'm so impressed Dr. Baker, that despite this heartbreaking situation, you are hopeful and positive about the possibility. Because when I think about a family that has been impacted by alienation, my heartbreaks, not just for the targeted parent, but for the children and even the alienator, because well, there's something wrong on many, many levels. Uh , so it's a sad situation. But I thank you for speaking with us today and giving us some hopeful ideas about the possibility of reunification or reconciliation. Thank you.
Speaker 3:You're welcome. And you know, the good news is there's a lot the targeted parent can do. We don't really have any control over the behavior of the alienating parent, but when my clients come to me, usually I feel that, and they seem to feel that there's some value in improving their parenting.
Speaker 2:It is frustrating though, as the targeting parent, and I've seen it that has to sort of act as if they're under a , a magnifying glass. And I respect you for not labeling the alienating parent as an advocate. Boy is that hard for me to do because I find it so unbelievable that somebody would do that to their child. Not to protect their child. We all are to protect our children from extreme circumstances, but to almost intentionally manipulate a child , uh, you know, that's not a good thing.
Speaker 3:Totally agree. And what you can do as an attorney is try to hold that other parent accountable. I , yeah .
Speaker 2:So
Speaker 3:That's what I'm saying. I'm not that inter interested in a label, but that doesn't mean they get a free pass. I think what they're doing is a form of abuse. I I wanna be clear about that. It's about constraining their behavior.
Speaker 2:Thank you. Lots to think about. Lots to process. Thank you, Dr. Baker.
Speaker 3:You are welcome. Take care.
Speaker 1:Thank you so much for joining us today. Don't forget to follow us on your favorite podcast platform. Please give us a five star rating and leave a review so more people can listen in to Heartbreak and Hope with Pat or Burrito .
