Navigating Parental Alienation
In our experience, alienatign bahaviours go hand in hand with allegations of abuse made by one or sometimes both parents. Sadly, this behaviour is often encouraged or even coached by some family law professionals, and as reluctant as I am to say that I do so because I have witnessed it first hand. Alienation is enormously damaging, not only to the children but also to the target parent, and longer term often to the alienating parent. Sadly the courts and Cafcass/Social Services are notoriously poor at recognising parental alienation and where they do they rarely take effective action to tackle it.
Thankfully not all our clients experience this, but when they do it is hugely damaging to them and can greatly influence their behaviour and even cause retaliation, both in engaging in alienating behaviours themselves (i.e. involving the children in their dispute, or bad mouthing the other parent to the children or in front of them) or damaging communication with the other parent (and even their family members) who they consider to be at fault. Our support will include identifying the dynamic and dealing with it in a way that continuation of that behaviour will be noticed, so that hopefully the person/s responsible will at least dial down their propensity for involving the children in the dispute.
Thankfully the courts are slowly becoming more alive to this problem, but it must be addressed in a sensitive manner to avoid escalation of the conflict. Parents experiencing alienation should engage with support groups and educate themselves, we recommend purchasing the following reading material so that you can fully understand how parental alienation manifests and the harm that it can cause to children.