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.
