Something To Post On The Fridge…

Dear Mom and Dad, I am just a kid, so  please…

1. Do not talk badly about my other parent. (This makes me feel torn apart!  It also makes me feel bad about myself!)
2. Do not talk badly about my other parent’s friends or relatives.  (Let me care for someone, even if you don’t.)
3. Do not talk about the divorce or other grown-up stuff.  (This makes me feel sik.  Please leave me out of it!)
4. Do not talk about money or child support.  (This makes me feel guilty or like I am a possession instead of your kid.)
5. Do not make me feel bad when I enjoy my time with my other parent.  (This makes me afraid to tell you things.)
6. Do not block my visits or prevent me from speaking to my other parent.  (This makes me upset.)
7. Do not interrupt my time with my other parent by calling too much or by planning my activities during our time together.
8. Do not argue in front of me or on the phone when I can hear you!  (This just turns my stomach inside out!)
9. Do not ask me to spy for you when I am at my other parent’s home.  (This makes me feel disloyal and dishonest.)
10. Do not ask me to keep secrets from my other parent.  (Secrets make me feel anxious.)
11. Do not ask me questions about my other parent’s life or about our time together.  (This makes me uncomfortable.)
12. Do not give me verbal messages to deliver to my other parent.  (I end up feeling anxious about their reaction.  So please just call them, leave a message, or e-mail.)
13. Do not send written messages with me or place them in my bag.  (This also makes me uncomfortable.)
14. Do not blame any other parent for the divorce or for things that go wrong in your life.  (This really feels terrible!  I end up wanting to defend them from your attack.  Sometimes it makes me feel sorry for youand that makes me want to protect you.  I just want to be a kid, so please, please stop putting me into the middle!)
15. Do not treat me like an adult, it causes way too much stress for me.  (Please find a friend or therapist to talk with.)
16. Do not ignore my other parent or sit on opposite sides of the room during my school or sports activities.  (This makes me very sad and embarrassed.  Please act like parents and be friendly, even if it is just for me.)
17. Do let me take items to my other home as long as I can carry them back and forth.  (Otherwise it feels like you are treating me like a possession.)
18. Do not use guilt or pressure me to love you more, and do not ask me where I want to live.
19. Do realize that I have two homes, not just one.  (It doesn’t matter how much time I spend there.)
20. Do let me love both of you and see each of you as much as possible!  Be flexible even when it is not part of your regular schedule.

Thanks, Your Loving Child

An example of Parent Alienation is…

I just started to add an archival category, which nt will eventually amount to a collection of examples which are considered “Parent Alienation”. I will also entertain any examples you might want to share and include those.

Remember – Parent Alienation is any type of behavior, whether verbal or non-verbal, which mentally manipulates a child into believing that a loving parent is the cause of all their and the hostile parent’s problems, and that the same parent is the enemy which needs to be feared, hated, disrespected and/or avoided.

So, an example of Parent Alienation is… THE RESTRICTION OF COMMUNICATION !!

• If you find yourself calling your children on multiple occasions per day during pre-arranged times and the phone rarely if ever gets answered – THAT IS PARENT ALIENTATION!


• If you are the only one trying to call your children and the other parent never calls you on the children’s behalf – THAT IS PARENT ALIENTATION!


• If you try to call your children and the other parent is giving them verbal assistance on how to get rid of you or allowing them to simply hang up without calling you back – THAT IS PARENT ALIENTATION!


• If the children are discouraged to reveal any information to you about their daily lives with the other parent – THAT IS PARENT ALIENTATION!


• If the children are allowed or encouraged to lie about their daily activities with the other parent – THAT IS PARENT ALIENTATION!

I could go on and on, but I think you get the drift. Please feel free to add your experiences and comments to this post.

Some tools for target parents…

As target parents we find ourselves often in difficult emotional states.  It can, at times, be very hard to overcome these “dark nights of the soul” without resorting to unhealthy means and methods.  There are a set of tools which I use, that helped me tremendously to remain rational and focused on the facts and circumstances at hand. 

The first is a complete makeover in attitude.  Research has shown that a positive attitude will entice the brain to produce more endorphins, which are anabolic (constructive) to cells.  A negative attitude on the other hand will entice the brain to produce more corticosteroids, which are catabolic (destructive) to cells.  I have realized that the quality of my life strongly depends on the kind of values I attach to events that happen around me.  I (and only I) have the power to decide which perspective I take on certain events.  At first I had to train myself to keep asking: “Ok, so what’s good about it?”, or “what can I learn from that?”, whenever a negative event happened.  I was usually able to find something positive and then I just started focusing on that instead.  Eventually, this became an automatic function.  Another aspect of this attitude makeover was to start focusing on where I wanted to BE and not what I was AFRAID OF.  This essentially meant that I started to focus my energy on the results I wanted to see, rather than the potential “problems” I foreshadowed.

Secondly, I started living a life of compassion and forgiveness.  Resentments and anger cost a lot of energy to maintain and produce more corticosteroids in the brain, which in turn means that they compromise overall health.  Forgiveness was the key for me to loose all of my resentments and anger(now, mind you that in my world forgiveness does not mean I simply let people “off the hook” for whatever distress they might have caused me – it simply means that I detach myself completely from the event, so that it does not bother me anymore).  Now, compassion is a skill that often needs to be learned.  As Jayne A. Major, Ph.D., founder and owner of the Breakthrough Parenting Organization, always said, “Compassion is the highest form of intelligence”.  What helped me to become more compassionate is the following rationale:  “Any kind of response you get out of a human being is either a loving response or a cry for help”.  That’s it! If it is not a loving response you get from a person, he or she is silently crying out for help.  More often than not, whenever I offered my help to someone who was negative towards me, I saw a complete reversal in attitude.  It really works! 

Thirdly, I adopted a transformational vocabulary if you will.  For instance, there are no such things as failures in my life – only “results”.  There are also no problems in my life – just “challenges” or better yet “opportunities” and so on.  This might seem like a benign point, but it does help maintaining a positive attitude.

The last and most important tool I would like to share is the accumulation of knowledge in this arena.  Unfortunately, there is very little education about PA/PAS/HAP out there.  It is of vital importance never to blame the children for their behavior.  The aggression and sometimes violent behavior they display against you as the target parent is really just a protective veil they are wearing.  This behavior is not their doing and is certainly not their fault; it is a natural response to the programming that is being done by the other parent (assuming that you are not physically abusing the children, of course). 

It sometimes helps to look upon this as a disease (well, it is in fact a syndrome), which needs compassion and understanding from your end.  Most importantly though – never ever give up believing in the purity of your children’s spirit and never to give up the effort to abolish or at least minimize the impact of the HAP tactics of the other parent, because this kind of parenting will eventually cause severe damage to the children.  It helps to remember that children are not genetically programmed to hate another parent, they are programmed to love BOTH parents.  What overwhelms me often is that the very same parent that uses every credible information source out there to substantiate the decisions made for their children’s health, completely fails to do the same when it comes to researching the harmful effects their Hostile Aggressive Parenting can have on the child’s future psychological health.  So the more we educate ourselves and others, the more we can protect our children’s future psychological health.

As always, comments are welcome!

Parent Alienation, Parent Alientation Syndrome, HAP – What are they?

Hi everyone!

This is my first posting on this Blog on Parent Alienation (PA), Parent Alienation Syndrome (PAS) and Hostile Aggressive Parenting (HAP).  I decided to start this blog for two reasons: The first one is that my own children have been affected by it and the second one is that there is very little education out there – even in the legal profession.  My hope is therefore that this Blog evolves into a platform for sharing information and resources, for learning and education and for emotional support.

Before I start writing, however I feel that it is necessary to define the above referenced terms, so that you can get a better appreciation of what I am writing about.

Parent Alienation (PA) – is a general term that covers ANY situation in which one or more children can be alienated from a parent.  It can be caused by parental physical abuse, verbal abuse, emotional abuse, mental abuse, sexual abuse, abandonment and neglect.  A child can also be programmed by one parent to be alienated from another.  In relation to custody disputes, it can be defined as a group of behaviors that are damaging to children’s mental and emotional well-being, and can interfere with a relationship of a child and either parent.

Parent Alienation Syndrome (PAS) – is referred to a specific disorder in the child, which is caused by Parent Alienation activities.  A syndrome by definition is a cluster of symptoms appearing together.  These symptoms, although seemingly disparate, warrant being grouped together because of a common etiology or basic underlying cause.  In the case of Parent Alienation Syndrome, this cluster of symptoms usually includes:

·         A continued campaign of denigration against the target parent

·         Weak, frivolous or absurd rationalizations for the rejection of the target parent

·         Lack of ambivalence

·         The independent thinker phenomenon

·         Reflexive support of the alienating parent in the parental conflict

·         Absence of guilt (towards any wrong doing against the target parent)

·         Use of “borrowed scenarios” (usually an adult scenario)

·         Spread of animosity to the extended family and friends of the target parent

These symptoms (usually as a cluster) may be classified as mild, moderate or severe.

Hostile Aggressive Parenting (HAP) – is the more modern and descriptive definition of the elements of Parent Alienation.  It is a very serious form of child abuse and is usually encountered in most high conflict child-custody disputes and is often used as a tool to align the child with one parent during litigation.  HAP is usually expressed by behaviors such as:

·         Criticizing a parent in front of the children and at every opportunity

·         Not answer the phone when the other parent calls

·         Convincing the child that they should change their surname or just changing it without the   child’s knowledge

·         Playing on the children’s feelings of guilt and sympathy

·         Using the child as a weapon against the other parent and family members

·         Ordering or manipulating the child to not answer the phone when it rings

·         Saying that the child does not want to speak to the other parent

·         Undermining the other parent by encouraging the child to defy the other parent

These are just a few examples, but very common ones.  It is always important to remember that children do not posess the genetics to hate or dislike another parent, unless they are being physically abused by that parent on a continuing basis or they are being programmed to do so by the opposing parent.

I hope I was able to stimulate you a little to participate in the discussions.  I will continue to post topics on this blog and I invite everyone to comment on any of the posts.

Robert Gougaloff

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