Topic : 12/26 "Brainwashed by My Parents"

I could not agree with you more.  I have spent the last 9 years trying to overcome the campaign of hatred by my ex.  She has sabotaged my relationship with my two children (18 & 16) to the point where I have no contact with them at all.  My son just sent me a contract to sign threatening me with emancipation and changing his name to remove me from his life.  The courts haven't helped either.  My ex was found guilty of contempt on two different occasions and yet nothing has changed.  No one will hold her accountable for her actions in a way that makes a difference.  Now the children are at an age where they declare their independence - they profess their rejection towards me is their own decision and their mom has exercised no influence.  If that is true, then why do the children despise their grandparents, their aunt and uncle, and their cousins...despite having relationships with them before.  Hatred by association

My husband's ex-wife tried to do this to her children, but fortunately it didn't work.  We just kept showing them that we loved them (more importantly that HE loved them), he called them regularly, sent cards and gifts and did all he could over the years to make sure they knew.  He could have easily told them horrible things about their mother that they still don't know to this day - and it doesn't matter - because it was all in the past.  However, the older they got, the more she tried to allienate them from their father, telling them some things that he did do and some things he never did.

Today they are young adults and they realize a lot about the situation.  Two of the three have a very good relationship wtih their father now and their mother as well.  I think she has finally given up!

twilkins

My children are almost all grown now but my ex husband has always made it impossible to be a part of my childrens lives.  One of the times that I had custody of them he told them to destroy my house and stress me out.  They obeyed his wishes and caused over $6000.00.  worth of damage to a house I was renting.  I am still trying to pay this off.  I believe this mans family has molested my children and he allows them to hang out with a known child molester who they refer to as there uncle.  My 17 year old daughter sits on this mans lap.  My story is so long and so unbelievable.  How can this ever be made right when do I get justice.  Nobody can give me my time back with my children.  I have so much to say.  Everyday this ways on my mind.  Even though my children are 21, 20, 18, and 17.  This man and his wife continue to talk bad about me to my children and tell them lies about me.

It seems that many of the posts have missed the point and are not familiar with or have never encountered true parental alienation.

Deadbeat parents are real, abusive spouses are real, parents with a money agenda are real, addicted parents and mentally ill parents exist…

AND aside from those examples, Parental Alienation is real.

My husband and I experienced his son’s mother completely alienate his son from him to be replaced by her new husband 10 years ago.  She was angry and hurt over the failed relationship with my husband and was not the most mentally healthy (she showed signs of some OCD and she was quite a “germofobe”) but we didn’t suspect that she was abusive and we were sure she and the step-father weren’t physically abusive.  In the end my husband’s 7-year-old son was so frightened of his dad/my husband that he once wet his pants while talking to my husband on the phone.  At the time we had never heard of parental alienation and my husband ended up giving up his parental rights to his son because he felt that his presence in his son’s life was causing his son too much stress and that if he was out of the picture his son would be able to live peacefully with his mom and “new” dad.  When my husband signed the papers to give up his rights, his ex’s attorney told him it was the most loving and self-sacrificing thing that he could do because the attorney knew their client was not going to stop her campaign to get my husband (and me I suppose) out of their son’s life – and do it at all costs and apparently with complete disregard to what she was doing to her son in the process.

Had we known then what we have learned now…

I have been learning about parental alienation more recently because my nephew is going through it now.  That is how I recognize what happened 10 years ago with poor Max.

I believe PA in its extreme form is fairly rare – but it is such a sick form of child abuse –– and it’s effects on children (even grown ones) is oh so real and devastating.

Children will eventually figure out a bad, abusive, alcoholic or unloving parent but it is not so easy for them to sort out what happens when one parent claims a need to “save” them from another parent that really isn’t doing anything but being a loving parent.  I think the “brain washing” is a breakdown of the child’s rational thinking and it becomes easier to go along with the obsessed alienating parent than stand up for the gentle loving parent.  But then, to complicate matters, the child may start to resent the alienated (loving) parent for not rescuing them from the alienating (sick) parent who is disrupting their lives with police, child protective services, attorneys, not allowing them to have both parents involved in school and sports (their lives), feeling the hatred, hearing the lies (kids know their parents are lying) and most of all enduring the methods those alienating parents use to manipulate kids’ alienation from the other parent.

In cases of mild alienation, it is hurtful, but kids can survive to figure it out.  In cases of moderate alienation kids suffer and may or may not go on to have normal lives but in those rare but real cases of severe parental alienation the kids are truly in danger of having their lives destroyed.

Parents need to remember that they go through a divorce but parents (both of them) ARE the kids lives.

If you are a parent engaging in mild or moderate PA please stop yourself.  If you know a parent that is using any form of alienation against the other parent please educate them and help them stop.  If you ever see a real case of severe Parental Alienation please do everything in your power to save the child(ren) – they truly need help.