Why Everyone Should Care About Parental Alienation

WHY YOU SHOULD CARE

I spent the last two weeks on a luxury cruise travelling around New Zealand. I ate too much food and drank too much wine. The daily gym and sauna sweat sessions helped keep some of the weight off.

It's amazing the people you meet on cruise ships. In conversation with two pairs of grandparents, I learned how they were suffering from the pain of being alienated from their grandchildren.

In my early days of dealing with an ex who would not let me see our children, I would find myself lost in conversation with anyone who’d listen. I could see the glazed looks as they tried to empathise, sympathise and perhaps in some way relate with what I was going through. They had their loving families and perhaps all was well between them and their children.

When I meet someone who does not see parental alienation as their problem, I explain to them as follows. “It IS your problem. It is only a matter of time until you, a sibling, a relative, or a close friend is caught up in some sort of alienation from a child or grandchild you or they love.”

When I reflect on my situation, what bothers me most, is not that I cannot spend the time with my children that I wish to spend, what troubles me, is how much my children have lost and continue to lose because they are prevented from access to what I can offer them.

One grandparent couple told me about how they run ‘Granny Camp.’ They've got a magnificent property, a swimming pool and a boat. Once a year, all the grandchildren come to spend a week hanging out with the grandparents and having a marvellous time. Yet not all the grandchildren can come. A few of them have a mother who chooses not to send them.

It makes me cry. Thousands of children wish they could have a relationship with a parent or grandparent, yet this is not a possibility. At the same time, thousands of loving parents, grandparents, uncles, and cousins are dying for the opportunity to shower love, affection and time on a child, but that child is being alienated by a so-called loving parent.

I have worked with over a hundred parents from around the world who have been subjected to parental alienation some things we have tried have worked enabling them to break through the alienating barriers. I don't have all the answers. However, one thing I know does not work, and it is the one thing that I see most alienated parents/families do. This is to sit back, do nothing and hope that one day the alienated child will come looking for them. To me, this is like playing the lottery. It may work but the odds are far too low.

If you are being alienated from a child you love, what are you doing to progress through this?

I hear parents say, “I don't want to do anything because I'm afraid it will push them further away and make the situation worse.”

I once thought like this too. It may make things worse, but the odds are very small compared to the odds of doing nothing.