Divorce: The Silent Price: 3 Easy Tips to Prevent Parental Alienation
Let’s face it: Divorce is hard. For parents, for children, for families, even for the family pet… divorce is difficult. Turn on any TV show, however, and you’ll see divorced parents happily raising their successful children, shows where all problems can be solved in 30 to 60 minutes, shows where the child moves smoothly between two homes and where parents are still the best. friends and communicate openly while sharing parenting responsibilities.
Communication and cooperation are supposed to be two-way streets, but things don’t always go as they should. Unfortunately, most marriages end acrimonious, and it takes many years for both spouses to accept the breakup of the marriage and stop punishing each other. Many times, however, those years of broken communication take a profound toll on children.
It is common in single parent homes for the custodial parent to develop a deep bond with the child. In households where there are still unresolved issues between the divorced adults, the connection between the custodial parent and the child could directly or indirectly create conflict with the non-custodial parent.
Let’s meet Sam and Amanda
Sam is eight years old. He has an older sister, Amanda, who is twelve years old. Although Sam and Amanda’s parents have just formally divorced, they have been separated for two years.
During the period of separation, things seemed to run smoothly. The parents shared parenting responsibilities, and Dad was lucky enough to rent a house a block from the children’s, so they spent a lot of time voluntarily going back and forth between the two homes. Both parents made an effort to communicate as everyone got used to the fact that Dad now slept in a different house.
When the divorce was finalized, things changed. A month after the divorce, Sam began refusing to visit her father. His sister, Amanda, would walk him home from school and then walk to his father’s house to spend the night with him. Three to four nights a week, he dined with his father, just as they had during their separation.
Amanda didn’t understand why her brother didn’t want to go with her, but she was happy to have dad all to herself, and her feelings made her feel guilty when she saw Sam at school the next day.
Sam’s behavior began to deteriorate. His schoolwork began to slip and he displayed increasingly aggressive behavior on the schoolyard and towards his sister.
On nights that Amanda was home with Sam and her mother, she would try to talk to Sam to see if she could convince him to visit his father. Day after day, Sam refused. The pattern continued for a month before Amanda approached her mother with her concerns. Her mother refused to validate Amanda’s concerns, even stating that it really is better if Sam “stays away from that man, and you should too. I don’t know why you go there all the time. Aren’t we good enough to you?”. ?”
Amanda ran out of the house in tears and ran straight to her father. He listened to her as she expressed her sadness at the breakup of the marriage and the loss of her best friend, her little brother. Dad listened to all of her concerns and then they talked about giving Sam a little more time to adjust to the change. “Even though we’ve been apart for quite some time, divorce makes it final. There’s no going back now. I know we all wish things would go back to the way they were, but divorce ends all those wishes…for all of us. He’s angry and disappointed that all the wishing and hoping he’s been doing for the last two years didn’t fix this.” Dad said. “But it’s not his job to fix this,” was Amanda’s reply. “I know and you know…but you have to remember that Sam was little when Mommy and I broke up…and he’s still a little kid. So take it easy. Just be there to listen to him if he wants to.” talk and don’t pressure him to visit you. He will come when he is ready.”
After six months, Sam still refused to visit his father, and Amanda, under pressure from both her brother and mother, reduced her visiting hours. Since the father lived in the same neighborhood as his children, he often saw them around the neighborhood. Sam pretended he hadn’t seen it and ran home with his mother. If they did talk, Sam was incredibly rude and belligerent and Amanda was incredibly sad. Sam clearly had little respect for his father and Amanda was clearly conflicted about his continued love for his father when others in her household seemed to have stopped loving him.
Dad expressed his concern to Mom, who replied, “Who cares, what have you done to deserve respect? You have abandoned us!” so he turned to outside support. Dad arranged for the school to refer Sam for counseling. His aggressive behavior had traveled from the playground to the classroom and was disturbing the other children, so the school arranged for him to meet with a counselor. The school also arranged for Amanda to meet with the counselor, as she was still very confused about the behavior of her brother and her mother and was struggling with mixed feelings for both parents.
Through active discussion with Sam during these sessions, it was discovered that Mom often shares her anger and bitterness towards Dad with Sam, makes derogatory comments about her father, and has even started making comments about Amanda on nights spent with her father. father.
Mom was involved in possible alienating parental behavior with the goal of breaking the relationship between her children and their father. Her anger and disappointment at the breakup of the marriage were unresolved issues in her life that prevented her from being able to close this chapter of her life and move on. And Mom may not even have been aware of the outcome of her arguments.
Together with the counselor, Dad and Sam bridged the gap with open and honest communication and began to work through some of the negative feelings Sam had inherited from Mom. Amanda was given some coping mechanisms to deal with her mother’s aggressive behavior and the children resumed a healthy relationship with her father.
Here are some tips divorced parents can use to ensure they don’t engage in parental alienation behavior.
1) Solve: your own feelings about divorce and life changes.
2) Allow your children to have a safe space with both parents to communicate their feelings.
3) Never: that your children pay the price of your feelings.