What is the child's part in PAS?

with Parenting and Legal Contributor Dr. Jayne Major

Gardner notes that the PAS is more than brainwashing or programming, because the child has to actually participate in the denigrating of the alienated parent. A combination of several or all eight behaviors listed below will be apparent in children experiencing PAS:

The Eight Behaviors of a Child Being Manipulated

Expletives and Bad-mouthing: The child denigrates the alienated parent with foul language and severe oppositional behavior.
Excuses without Foundation: The child offers weak, absurd or frivolous reasons for his or her anger.
Consistently Negative: The child is sure of him or herself, never swaying from a negative connotation. He/she doesn't demonstrate confused emotions (i.e. love and hate) for the alienated parent, only the negative hate.
Self-righteous: The child exhorts that he or she alone came up with ideas of denigration. The "independent-thinker" phenomenon is where the child asserts that no one told him to do this.
Protective: supports and feels a need to protect the alienating parent.
Lack of Empathy: the child does not demonstrate guilt over cruelty towards the alienated parent.
Lying & Embellishing: the child uses borrowed scenarios or vividly describes situations that he or she could not have experienced.
Anger: Animosity is spread to the friends and/or extended family of the alienated parent.

In severe cases of parent alienation, the child is utterly brainwashed against the alienated parent. The alienator can truthfully say that the child doesn't want to spend any time with this parent, regardless of court orders or the parent’s desire. The alienator typically responds, "There isn't anything that I can do about it. I'm not telling him that he can't see you. He doesn’t want to." TOP

PAS is an escalation of Parental Alienation (PA)

Dr. Douglas Darnall in his book Divorce Casualties: Protecting Your Children from Parental Alienation, describes three categories of PA:

MILD: Naïve alienators
Naïve alienators are ignorant of what they are doing and are willing to be educated and change.

MODERATE: Active alienators
When triggered, active alienators lose control of appropriate boundaries. They go ballistic. When they calm down, they don't want to admit that they were out of control.

SEVERE: Obsessed alienators
Obsessed alienators operate from a delusional system where every cell of their body is committed to destroying the other parent's relationship with the child.

In the case of the Obsessed alienator, no treatment exists other than removing the child from their influence.

Which gender is most likely to initiate PAS?

Gender doesn’t play a role in instigation. The time with the child is the critical factor. In the 20th Century, mothers are more often responsible for creating and nurturing PAS because as the primary caregiver, they have more time with the child. In male dominated societies and prior to the 20th Century, the opposite is true.

For Example: In one case the father had no control over his obsession to trash the mother. Numerous professionals told him, including the mother that he could have shared custody if he would be willing to follow the rules. He didn't have the self-control to do this. TOP

When he lost custody because of his aberrant behavior, he became a celebrity in the father's rights movement and took his campaign into national circles. No one would know from hearing him speak about his situation that there was serious pathology going on (PAS) or how hard the professionals worked to stabilize it.

In cultures where women traditionally have no tangible rights, alienation by the father can be severe. I've met divorcing women whom have been prevented from learning how to make a living to support themselves. At the time of separation all access to financial resources ceased and the children were removed from her care. These women report severe alienation of affection. TOP

Characteristics of Obsessed Alienators

Alienators will display many of the below characteristics. Anger, frustration and hurt feelings can cause even the most upstanding and stable parent to act like a psychopath during a custody battle. Occasionally in such situations he/she may temporarily resemble the warning signs. The difference is when faced with court orders, friends and pressure from their peer group or the pain of their own children, non-obsessive alienators will change their behavior and always put their children's welfare ahead of their own. Depending upon the degree, he or she may need counseling to work through the anger.

Obsessed alienators however are incapable of changing. You want to look for sustained examples of these behaviors over a period of time, not isolated instances to decide if you are dealing with an Obsessive alienator (in which case the children need to be removed from this persons custody as soon as possible for their own protection) or a rational adult with hurt feelings and unexpressed anger. TOP

Obsessed Alienators Are:

Narcissistic: The alienator presumes special entitlement to whatever he/she wants. Rules in life are for other people, not for them.

Individuate Behaviorists: the alienator is unable to see the child as a separate human being. He/she is often described as being "overly involved with the child" or "enmeshed".

Sociopaths: The alienator has no moral conscience and is unable to have empathy or compassion for others. They are unable to see a situation from another person's point of view, especially their child's point of view. They don't distinguish between telling the truth and lying in the way that others do.

Dependency Fosterers: Instead of promoting independence, the alienating parent encourages continued dependence. The parent may insist on sleeping with the child, feeding the child ("It's easier if I do it"), and taking care of these rites of passage longer than normal child development calls for. This "spoiling" may not feel right to the child, but they do not have enough ego strength to do anything about it.

If this is all sounding a little too familiar, the next page tells you how to deal with the situation, save your children.

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CONTINUE

If You are the Alienated Parent

Parental Alienation Syndrome