How common is Parental Alienation and PAS?

How Common is PA and PAS?

When parents first separate there is often parent alienation. For example, due to the anxiety of the mother, she is likely to implicitly impart to a child that he or she is not safe with the father. She might say "Call me as soon as you get there to let me know you are okay." "If you get scared, you call me right away. Okay?" "I’ll come get you if you want to come home." Usually this level of alienation dies down after the separating couple get used to changes brought on by the separation and move on with their lives.

However, in rare cases, the anxiety doesn’t calm down, it escalates. PAS parents are psychologically fragile. When things are going their way, they can hold themselves together. However, when they are threatened, they can become fiercely entrenched in preserving what they see as rightfully theirs. Only a small percentage end up in this level of conflict.

Why Do PAS Parents Act Like They Do?

I believe that PAS parents have become stuck in the first stage of child development, where survival skills are learned. To them, having total control over their child is a life and death matter. Because they don’t understand how to please other people, any effort to do so always has strings attached. They don’t give; they only know how to take. They don’t play by the rules and are not likely to obey a court order.

Descriptions that are commonly used to describe severe cases of PAS are that the alienating parent is unable to "individuate" (a psychological term used when the person is unable to see the child as a separate human being from him or herself). The parent is narcissistic (self-centered) and enmeshed with the child (overly involved). Furthermore, these parents presume that they have a special entitlement to whatever they want. They think that there are rules in life, but only for other people, not for them.

A person with these characteristics, they may be called a sociopath, a person who has no moral conscience. This means that they are unable to have empathy or compassion for others. Sociopaths are unable to see a situation from another person’s point of view, especially their child’s point-of-view. They don’t distinguish the way others do between telling the truth and lying.

In spite of admonitions from judges and mental health professionals to stop alienating, they can’t. The prognosis for severely alienating parents is poor. It is unlikely that they will ever "get it." It is also unlikely that they will ever stop trying to perpetuate the alienation. It is a gut-wrenching survival issue to them.

How Does the Child Get Involved in PAS?

At birth, children are totally reliant on a parent, usually the mother, for having all of their needs met. It is part of normal child development to be enmeshed with their primary caregiver, and very young children do not have a separate identity from this caregiver. One of the mother’s roles is to help the child develop as a separate person. Therefore, infancy and childhood become a series of tasks of learning how to become independent. Such as, learning to put oneself back to sleep, eat, toilet train and care for one’s hygiene. Instead of promoting this 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 he or she does not have enough ego strength to do anything about it.

A PAS mother can’t imagine that the father is capable of planning the child’s time while in his care. Therefore, she arranges several things for the child to do while at the father’s house. One of the most common ways of doing this is to sign the child up for on-going lessons without permission from the father. The parent may even decree whom the child can and cannot see, particularly specific members of the child’s extended family on the father’s side. The mother desperately wants control over the time when the child isn’t with her. One of the most unusual situations that I ran into was the father who picked up his sons at 9:00 a.m. on a Saturday for the weekend. He discovered that his very excited boys had their hearts set on going to Disneyland for the day, when this idea had never crossed his mind.

One theory about why a mother will act this way is that when a father takes his share of joint custody is that it is like asking her to give away part of her body. One mother said, "He is going to remove my right arm and take it for the weekend." It feels like the mother has lost a profound part of who she is as a person. She feels fractured, pulled apart.

Why is PAS a Double Bind for the Child?

When children spend time with the father, and enjoy it, they are put into a double bind. Clearly, they cannot tell the mother that dad treats them well or that they had fun together. They want to bond with the father, but don’t dare. They figure out on which side the bread is buttered (who has the power), and their survival needs tug at them. Therefore, children will tell the mother about everything they didn’t enjoy about time spent with the father, which will add to her belief that they don’t like to be with him. These children feel that they must protect the mother. The same is true when the alienator is the father. The child will avoid expressing their affectionate feelings for the mother to him.

Family Volatility

Families with PAS are volatile families. The father may have indeed spanked a child, or lashed out at the mother physically or emotionally. An isolated incidence can turn into a holocaust. One father spanked his rebellious child and ended up in jail on child abuse charges, followed by a six-week trial to determine his guilt. The jury returned with a not guilty verdict in 20 minutes. The verdict didn’t end it as far as the mother was concerned, however.

The alienating parent’s hatred can have no bounds. The severest form will bring out every horrible allegation known, including claims of domestic violence, stalking and the sexual molestation of the child. Many fathers say that there have been repeated calls to the Department of Family and Child Services alleging child abuse and neglect. In most cases the investigators report that they found nothing wrong. However, the PAS parent feels that these reports are not fabrications, but are very, very real. She can describe the horror of what happened in great detail. Regardless of the actual truth, in her mind, it did happen. Most of the alienated fathers I work with are continually befuddled by the mother’s lying. "How can she lie like that?" They don’t realize that these lies are not based on rational thinking. Alienating parents are incapable of understanding the difference between what is true and what they want to be true. A vital part of fighting PAS is to understand the severity of the psychological disturbance that is the source of it.

Intergenerational Patterns

What makes this problem very complicated is that PAS is often intergenerational in dysfunctional families. Almost always the alienator has people within the family who support the alienation. It might be the mother, father or grandparent who encourages fighting. These supporters are likely to assist the alienating parent financially and actually provide massive amounts of money to fund litigation. This is further proof to the PAS parent that he or she is justified in what he or she is doing.

When the Child is Placed in the Role of the Parent’s Therapist

Alienation advances when the alienating parent uses the child as a personal therapist. The child is told about every miserable experience and negative feeling about the alienated parent with great specificity. The child, who is already enmeshed with the parent because his or her identity is still undefined, easily absorbs the parent’s negativity. They become aligned with this parent and feel that they need to be the protector of the alienating parent.

What Happens to the Child When it is Impossible to Stop PAS?

Obviously, without anyone to stop the alienation from progressing, the child will become estranged from the alienated parent. The relationship with this parent will eventually be severed. It is doubtful that, without psychological intervention as the child grows, he or she will ever understand what happened. The child’s primary role model will be the maladaptive, dysfunctional parent. He or she will not have the benefit of growing up with the most well-adjusted parent and all that this parent could contribute to enrich the child’s life. Many of these children experience serious psychiatric problems.

Will they ever grow up and realize what happened to them? Without someone who can recognize the syndrome and counsel them about it, it isn’t likely that these children will ever figure it out. However, there have been exceptions where the child and the alienated parent have been successfully reunited later in life.

How Can Good Intentions Backfire?

Those people who are typically called upon to handle such difficult situations, such as the police, social workers, attorneys or psychologists assume that what the frightened mother is saying is true. These things DO happen. There are men who are seriously disturbed, violent, out of control sexually, and who stalk. There are men who are rightfully feared. The mother is very convincing in her desperation and vivid in her descriptions. The clincher is that the alienated child collaborates with the mother by saying, "Yes, I am afraid of my father." "Yes, my father did touch me down there." "Yes, he does beat me." What would you do if you were faced with having to decide how to protect a child in such a situation?

Therapists

Therapists with master’s degrees are unlikely to realize the severity and depth of the problem, because they are not trained in this level of pathology. In fact, they may unwittingly side with the alienating parent and even testify or produce evidence in court that the child is afraid of the father. This can be a serious stumbling block in getting an accurate diagnosis. Indeed, it can tip the scale into the alienating parent’s agenda and do real damage.

Our courts, social services and mental health workers are all committed to stopping child abuse and neglect when they see it occurring. However, in PAS the most dramatic and the loudest complaint ends up being acted upon before there is an investigation as to the accuracy of the allegation. This allows the alienating parent considerable time to proceed with the alienation. By the time all of the evaluations are in place and the case is heard by the court, considerable damage has been done to the child. It is an irony that the very people we turn to for help in such a difficult situation can often be those who most contribute to allowing the on-going abuse and neglect of the child to continue.

What Can Be Done about the Problem?

First, it takes a sophisticated mental health professional to be able to identify that PAS is occurring. Most forensic evaluators such as psychiatrists and clinical psychologists at the Ph.D. level have studied the disorder and are able to recognize it. Forensic evaluators diagnose PAS by having the parents take a battery of psychological tests, doing a detailed case history and by observation. They make recommendations as to what to do. Once the evaluator has written a report of the family and made recommendations, nothing will happen to resolve the crisis without court intervention.

The alienated parent has to take the report to a judge who must then be convinced that the child is being alienated and that it is not in the child’s best interest to stay in that environment. It is rare that judges have any degree of mental health training. They most often learn about PAS from the bench. It usually takes several trips to court to point out how badly a child is being treated before a judge is willing to act.

How Are PAS Cases Resolved Legally?

Judges are inevitably conservative in their orders. Even when the evidence is overwhelming that the alienation is occurring, the court order may still end up saying, "the parents are to make joint decisions about the child’s welfare," when this may be impossible to do. This is further evidence that the judge doesn’t understand the magnitude of the problem. The judge in one of the most severe PAS cases I worked on was from the old school. He was tired of having the litigants continue to appear before him. One day he said, "Why don’t the two of you go out in the hallway and kiss and make up." This is an example of how frustrating these cases are for judges. Indeed, these are the hardest cases to decide.

It usually takes a dramatic situation where court orders are broken to force the court to change primary custody. Often it is only a matter of time before alienating parents become desperate and their unstable mental health gets the better of them. People in an official position start to recognize the alienating parent as being out of line, and become supportive of the targeted parent.

In one case, the 9 and 4-year-old daughters were abducted and presumed to be on their way to Australia through an underground group that hides women who are victims of domestic violence, often of a sexual nature and where the father is stalking. The girls were missing for 3 months and found in another county where they were waiting for final arrangements to be made before their departure. When the police broke into the house at 3:00 a.m., they found the girls sleeping with their mother. They had been given boy’s names, clothes, haircuts and their hair was dyed. They were not allowed contact with anyone outside of their hiding place, not even to go to school. The oldest had strep throat and the youngest was seriously withdrawn.

In another case, the mother could no longer convince the social workers, the police or the Court about her allegations. She was known to be unstable because she had cried wolf too many times. She abducted her daughter to Utah. She told officials there that the courts where she lived were protecting a proven child molester. The press was called. After she was interviewed; there was a virtual feeding frenzy as the father’s photograph and the story was on all the local news networks. A big part of the problem was that the seven-year-old girl, said "Yes" when asked if her father had molested her. Even though this had already been disproven by forensic evaluators, she was still confused.

Can the Alienation Be Reversed?

As children get older, the alienation can be reversed with proper psychological care. However, it won’t work if the alienating parent is not contained. In the last case described above the mother was given severely limited visiting rights. She had remarried and had a new child, however, she still regularly calls the police to report the father for abuse. Presently, the daughter resides with her father, receives weekly therapy and hates the police. She gradually understands how disturbed her mother is.

In the former case, where the mother was kidnapping the children to Australia she now sees them two hours a month at the Department of Children’s Services with a social worker present to monitor everything she says and does. The girls have also been in extensive therapy and are doing well.

Since this is among the most severe kinds of abuse of a child’s emotions, there will be scars and lost opportunities for normal development. The child is at risk of growing up and being an alienator also, since the alienating parent has been the primary role model.

What is the Best Way to Deal with PAS?

The parents who were successful in getting primary custody of their children in a PAS situation were those who:

Completed a comprehensive parenting course, such as Breakthrough Parenting, and who stuck around until they rated excellent in the knowledge, skills and methods taught there. Thus, their parenting skills became superior.
Were even tempered, logical and kept their emotions under control. They never retaliated. A person who reacts in anger is proving the alienator’s point that he or she is unstable.
Thought of giving up, but never did. No matter how awful the harassment got, they worried about leaving their children in that environment. They were driven to continue trying to get the court to understand the seriousness of the issues and to change primary custody to them.
Were willing and able to go to the financial expense of seeing it through.
Got legal representation from a skilled family lawyer who had experience with parent alienation syndrome. The parent became good at understanding how the courts work and understood the law as it applied to their case. They often ended up as pro-per (representing themselves) because of excessive expenses.
Had a case where a forensic evaluator made a strong statement about the alienation and recommended changing legal and primary custody to the alienated parent. Some parents had to go back to the evaluator to demonstrate that his or her earlier recommendations were not working.
Persevered in demonstrating that they were rational, reasonable, and had the best interest of the child at heart. They provided the court with an appropriate parenting plan that showed that the child would be well taken care of in their care.
Even though they and their children were being victimized, they understood the nature of the problem and focused more on what to do about it. Alienated parents who got caught up in how terrible it all is and spent time judging the situation, went under emotionally. Thus, the successful ones didn’t live a victim’s life. They were proactive in seeking constructive action. They avoided adding to the problem.
One father expressed it like this: "I don’t know how to make it better with the mother, but I do know how to make it worse." He was one of the more successful parents I met in fighting the PAS problem because he stayed in the role of the peacekeeper.
Kept a diary or journal of key events, describing what happened and when. They documented the alienation with evidence that was admissible in court.
Always called or showed up to pick up their children, even if they knew that the children wouldn’t be there. This was often very painful, but then they could document that they had tried, when the alienator alleged that this parent had no interest in the child.
Focused on enjoying their children’s company and never talked to their children about their case. They always took the high road and never talked badly about the other parent to their children. They absolutely never showed a child any court orders or other sensitive documents. They didn’t let the children overhear inappropriate conversations on the telephone.
Didn’t violate court orders. They paid their child support on time and proved that they could live within the letter of the law.
Were truly decent, principled people. It was obvious that they loved their children.
PAS cases are the most difficult to figure out, even for professionals in the field of divorce. Once the syndrome is discovered, it is even harder to figure out what to do about it. It is important to be connected and supported by compassionate people while going through such a difficult time.

What happens to the child when you can't stop PAS?

Obviously, without anyone to stop the alienation from progressing, the child will become estranged from the alienated parent. The relationship with this parent will eventually be severed. It is doubtful that, without psychological intervention as the child grows, he or she will ever understand what happened.


The child's primary role model will be the maladaptive, dysfunctional parent. He or she will not have the benefit of growing up with the most well-adjusted parent and all that this parent can contribute to enrich the child's life. Many of these children come to experience serious psychiatric problems.

Will they ever grow up and realize what happened to them? Without someone who can recognize the syndrome and counsel them about it, it isn't likely that they will ever figure it out. However, there have been exceptions where the child and the alienated parent have been successfully reunified later in life.