What is Parental Alienation?

What is Parental Alienation? I define Parental Alienation as any time someone communicates in a derogatory way about a child’s parent in a manner that creates a conflict within the child’s mind as to whether to love or like that parent. “Parental Alienation creates a conflict within the child and thus removes the child’s choice to like or love a parent.” Parental Alienation or “PA” is most Alienated Parent when one parent or family members say something negative about the other parent in a way that the child or the children can hear it. 

Parental Alienation can also occur when one parent intentionally communicates or exhibits images that negatively portray the other parent. Parental Alienation can also occur any time that a relative or friend of a parent communicates badly about a parent so that a child can hear, read or see what is being communicated. Alienating behavior may be mild, moderate or severe. All parents are likely to “lose it” and be inappropriate with their words around children, however, when there is a predominance of negative messages being communicated to a child, these messages can seriously erode the child’s psychological well being. 

In severe cases of Parental Alienation, children are manipulated and brainwashed (programmed) into such states of confusion that their perception of events and people around them are severely distorted. Parental Alienation in its most severe form is a heinous form of child abuse and neglect. It is a dangerous manipulation of children’s minds to alter their perception of reality about another parent. 

The purpose of marginalizing this parent is that he or she has no means to be an effective parent or to cut that parent out of a child’s life entirely. Although Parental Alienation is most obvious in divorce situations, PARENT ALIENATION can occur in families where both parents still live together. This type of is more difficult to detect, but its results can be just as devastating.