"Parents Get Stuck,Too"

A recent article in the Globe and Mail (Friday May 16, 2008) reminded me of the futility of parents who force their children to take sides in a marital dispute. In this particular case, a young boy has been referred to a special U.S clinic where he will be "deprogrammed" using a "private remedy" to deal with "the disease of parental alienation".

In 2005, the father, during acrimonious divorce proceedings, pursued an assault charge against the mother. As a result, the boy, then ten years old, had to testify in criminal court against his mother. The father gained custody of the child and refused him access to his mother. The child's relationship to his father became so intertwined that the father's beliefs about the mother were transmitted to the child. Over a period of time the father convinced his son that he would be harmed by continuing any relationship with his mother.

The distraught mother recently resumed court action requesting sole custody. The judge noted that "the age of a child is no reason to justify a lost opportunity to know and benefit from both of the child's parents". He assumed that the child would need treatment and that professionals with specialized credentials must be called in to rectify the situation.

The financial cost of court, lawyers, psychologists and a clinic which works with "alienated children" is enormous. The power of the parents to anchor their child has been overlooked. This child is further burdened with undergoing intensive psychotherapy in order to bring his thinking in line with the judge's while his parents sit unaware that it was their defended vulnerability that created the problem in the first place. The parents are asking their child to do their work. Children should never be asked to the something which is an adult's responsibility.

Divorcing parents do not intentionally hurt their children with their foul frustration over the losses incurred from an unsatisfactory union. The futility of what hasn't worked often doesn't sink in and the grief required to see the future clearly gets clouded with the automatic response of the brain. When the pain of loss (in this case sharing a child with a perceived enemy) becomes so unbearable that it threatens to overwhelm the capacity to function, there is an unconscious mechanism that is automatically put into gear. This numbing out, tuning out, backing out mechanism exists in the brain so that humans can endure trauma that would otherwise be catastrophic. The consequence of this numbing out mechanism is that there is a dulling of emotional awareness and a lost capacity to feel emotional pain or to sense another's emotional turmoil. Parents can get stuck in their vulnerability and end up trying to cope with life's static in the same way that fragile, sensitive children do by numbing out, tuning out and backing out of relationships.

This numbing which blocks or distorts incoming information into the frontal cortex leaves a by-product of free floating frustration which can turn foul and erupt in very alarming behaviour as we see with this particular father. For children, the eruption of foul frustration is often referred to as "bullying". Bullies are the most fragile among all human-beings.

Working with the parents, helping them to understand the damage they are imposing on their young son is the best bet. This child needs to hear from both his parents that it is okay to have a relationship with the other. The parents have the power to anchor this boy.

The use of parental power is very evident. The father brought the boy into relationship with him and then abused his parental authority in the hierarchy. Instead of allowing the womb of the relationship to be a place in which he could transmit culture, teach values and foster development, the father turned the child against his own mother to support his position against her and to gain esteem in his son's eyes.

Parents get stuck in their own issues and unintentionally create great angst for their children. My work as a Parent Consultant is often heart-wrenching. Seeing parents who insist that their childrens' behaviour must change before they will enter a relationship with them stands at the top of the list of parental sins. Children can't make changes just because we tell them too. As soon as a child sniffs out a disconnect with us or sees that s/he is in charge of contact, the child will experience this as too much of a burden and turn to a teddy bear, a blanket, a pet or peers. They will seek out someone or something else with whom or with which to feel emotionally safe. We have gone too far with our expectations for children. We have forgotten that it is we the parents who shield our children from the chaos of society. Children must be able to depend on the responsible adults in their lives.

In North American society there is a prevailing fear of dependence and coddling. The result is that parents are forcing independence. As in the case of parent alienation which I spoke about earlier, the father abused his power and successfully attempted to inculcate his ideas into the child. He encouraged the child to speak as an independent thinker at age 10 in a court case against his mother. The father pushed for this independence and the original judge accepted that these were the child's feelings and beliefs. Parents cannot alone create independence.

Nature has a huge part in the unfolding of a child's developmental destiny. Children become their own person spontaneously. The wiring for the process is in place but independence can only happen when a child's dependency needs are met. Dependency and independence co-exist in maturity. Like dependence on food, we remain dependent on contact and closeness from those with whom we feel emotionally safe throughout life. For all children, including this boy about whom I have written, parents must believe in the developmental process and assist in moving impediments out of the way of their child reaching his/her full human potential. In this case of child alienation, both the parents and the court system are stuck in their own fragility. This has led to unintentional blindness.

May 18, 2008

Copyright, 2010 by Susan Dafoe-Abbey. Permission to use this material, either in English or in translation, for educational purposes is hereby granted.