Why Kids Usually Side with the Custodial Parent Especially If They’re Emotionally Abusive
Do your children refuse to see you since you and your ex separated? When you actually get to see your kid(s), do they lash out at you? Do they know things about your break up or divorce that they shouldn’t know? Do they “diagnose” or berate you by using adult terms and expressions that are beyond their years?
If so, you’re probably experiencing the effects of parental alienation or hostile aggressive parenting. It’s normal to have hard feelings at the end of a significant relationship, however, you have a choice about how you handle it.
Most cases of parental alienation occur in dissolved marriages/relationships, break ups, and divorces in which there’s a high degree of conflict, emotional abuse, and/or mental illness or personality disorders.
If you were emotionally abused by your ex while you were still together, then your kid(s) learned some powerful lessons about relationships, especially if you had a “no talk” policy about the rages, yelling, and verbal attacks. Children are adversely affected by witnessing constant conflict and emotional abuse, no matter their age.
Emotionally abusive women and men are scary when on the attack, which probably makes it all the more confusing to see your ex turn your child(ren) against you. Don’t your kids see how out of whack their mom or dad is being? Don’t they know that you love them and how much you want to be in their lives? Don’t they realize they need you now more than ever? Yes and no.
On some level, they do know this. Nonetheless, they’re lashing out at you like mini-versions of your ex. Why?
It’s not that confusing if you think about it from a child’s perspective. Children depend utterly upon their custodial parent. Seeing mom or dad lose it and out of control is anxiety provoking, if not downright terrifying. The following are possible reasons why your ex’s campaign of parental alienation may be successful.
1) You left them alone with the crazy person. You got out and they didn’t. They’re mad that you’re not there anymore to intervene, buffer, protect, or take the brunt of it.
2) Self-preservation. They see how your ex is treating you because she or he is angry with you. Your kid(s) don’t want your ex’s wrath directed at them. It’s like siding with the bully at school so they don’t beat the crap out of you.
3) Fear of loss. If they make your ex mad they worry that they’ll be emotionally and/or physically banished, too. This is especially true if your ex used to shut you out, give you the cold shoulder, and/or ignore you when she or he was upset with you. Your kids probably fear your ex will do this to them if they don’t go along with him or her.
4) They’re mad at you. You’re no longer physically present at home, which they experience as psychological loss. Many kids experience this as betrayal and/or abandonment. Even if they can recognize that you didn’t have a happy marriage, they still want mom and dad to be together.
Loss, whether it’s physical (death) or psychological (divorce), requires a mourning period. Children aren’t psychologically equipped to handle grief and mourning. Pending other developmental milestones, kids don’t have the psychological capacity to successfully navigate loss until mid-adolescence. If you’d died, they could idealize your memory. However, you’re alive and chose to leave (or your ex chose for you). How do you mourn the loss of someone who’s not dead? It takes a level of intellectual sophistication children don’t possess not to vilify the physically absent parent—especially when your ex isn’t capable of it as an adult.
5) Rewards and punishment. Your ex “rewards” the kids (material goods, praise, trips and fun activities—probably with your support money—oh the irony) for siding with her or him, being cruel to you, or cutting you off. If your kid(s) stand up for you or challenge your ex’s smear campaign, they’re chastised, lose privileges, or have affection withheld from them. Remember how your ex used to treat you when she or he was displeased? It’s way scarier when you’re a kid. You have options as an adult that your children don’t.
6) The good son or daughter. They see how upset and out of control your ex is and want to take care of and make her or him “better.” They try to do this by doing what your ex wants, which is being hostile toward you and/or excluding you from their lives. This creates what psychologists refer to as the parentified child. Parentification forces a child to shoulder emotions and responsibilities for which she or he isn’t developmentally prepared.
Emotional parentification is particularly destructive for children and frequently occurs in parental alienation cases. The custodial parent implicitly or explicitly dumps their emotional needs on the child. The child becomes the parent’s confidante, champion/hero and surrogate for an adult partner. This is extremely unhealthy as it robs these kids of their childhood and leads to difficulty in having normal adult relationships later in life.
7) Power and control. They see the power your ex wields by behaving in an abusive and hurtful way toward you. They can wield the same power by acting out and hurting you, too. A child or teenager’s first taste of power can be thrilling for them. Of course, what they’re learning from you ex is how to gain control by being an emotionally abusive bully.
8) It’s good to be the victim. The more your ex plays the professional victim to friends, family and the legal system, the more benefits she or he gains—deferential treatment, sympathy, power, and money. The kids pick up on this victim mentality and behaviors and use it to net their own gains.
A combination of the above reasons probably applies to your child(ren) siding with your ex, particularly when you’ve been a good and loving parent. It’s demoralizing to have your kid(s) slap or push you away each time you reach out to them. It’s maddening that family court, in many cases, is blind to the abuses of parental alienation. Try to keep in mind that most children aren’t consciously aware that the above phenomena are occurring. Of course, that doesn’t make it any easier to be the emotional and financial punching bag for your ex and children.
By: Dr T
A Shrink for Men
Photo credit:
How do you reach a child who has been brainwashed? by halgil on flickr.
[…] Also available on WashingtonSharedParenting.com […]
March 6th, 2009 at 9:46 pm[…] http://washingtonsharedparenting.com/?p=411 06 Mar […]
March 11th, 2009 at 4:14 pmWe are fortunate to have Dr. T writing on our web site. With the wealth of knowledge being given to us, we can use it to educate ourselves, understand our former spouses, and the situation our children find themselves in post divorce.
We hope to add more professionals to this blog site in the hopes of helping to educate non-custodial parents and grandparents in areas that can help to foster a better relationship with their children.
If you know someone that would be beneficial to this community, please let us know.
Please take a moment to express your ideas to Dr. T, it will help to give some ideas for future articles. We can all make a difference in the life of a child, and working together we can help create better outcomes for their lives.
March 12th, 2009 at 7:35 pmThanks for the kind words, Joel. I appreciate it. Just in case there are any readers wondering about my background and credentials, here are the basics, which you can also find on my site, A Shrink for Men:
I have a Psy.D. in Clinical Psychology and M.Sc. in Counseling Psychology. I worked for over a decade in direct clinical services in a variety of settings until switching careers in 2005. Now, I work as a multimedia editor, writer and consultant, however, my psychological training and experiences still inform the work I do.
I’ve only just begun reading and writing about Hostile Aggressive Parenting and PAS. I understand these phenomena as another form of emotional abuse and bullying, except that the offending parent uses their kids as leverage to abuse their ex by proxy.
I chose to focus on men who are emotionally abused by their partners on my blog because I believe, much like HAP and PAS, the incidences of emotionally and physically abused men are minimized, not taken seriously, scoffed at and/or completely ignored by the mainstream.
There should be no double standard when it comes to abusive behaviors, no matter the gender or age of the targets and perpetrators. Abuse is abuse whether it’s a man or a woman who’s committing it. No excuses.
Oh, and just in case you’re also wondering, I’m a woman.
Kind Regards,
March 12th, 2009 at 8:39 pmDr T
This is interesting and appreciate all of your comments. Does anyone have information on Dr. Stuart Greenberg’s open cases. I know it has been a while but I would like to pursue some type of closure. His actions were so wrong. My children and I were at his mercy.
March 14th, 2009 at 4:14 pmThanks and good luck to us all.
My grandchildren are in the temp. custody of their father. The man is turning them against their mother. What can we do?
March 21st, 2009 at 10:07 amI know I am not an expert and only speak out of experience but I say get HELP NOW. Do not give-up and keep reaching out. I have learned that we as the TP are possibly helping the AP by allowing our emotions to rule over us. I signed up for an 8 week parenting course. I am not proud. If there are techniques out there to help bring peace to my son creative or not I want my son to know that I love him and that i will not give up. He tries to goad me and push me in the verbal sence and with this parenting class I have regained composure and do not show any negative towards the correction 1 yr of damage only takes 1 month of action to overcome so I am working on 5 months. And let me tell you that 1 month into it and I am seeing a release from my son. Just a thought.
April 25th, 2009 at 6:42 pmI would say get a custody order in place and let the court know by action that you will not be “bullied” and that you expect the court to hold him responsible for every negative thing he says.
My grandson is in a 1/2 - 1/2 custody situation.
May 27th, 2009 at 9:42 amHis mother is a borderline personality- (diagnosed bi-polar)she refuses to take meds.
She causes my grandson mental trauma on a regular basis, my son dosent want to rock the boat and make it harder for his child by trying to get full custody. I keep telling him it isn’t going to get better and he should be removed from her home before any more trauma is imposed on him.
We live in CO. I’m not sure about laws regarding emotional abuse.
I could use alot of answers.
[…] The original article can be found here: http://washingtonsharedparenting.com/?p=411 […]
June 7th, 2009 at 1:01 pmКто нить может подскажет!!!!!
July 13th, 2009 at 3:44 amСпасибо!
September 9th, 2009 at 5:10 amОтличная информация!
Dr. T,
January 3rd, 2010 at 11:32 pmI really found this information valuable. My niece’s kindergarten teacher recommended counseling because my niece has been having emotional outbursts at school. I have been telling my sister for months that she needed to take my niece to counseling. My sister is seriously, the nicest person in the world. She still can’t hardly bring herself to be critical of her ex-husband in a any way. She is very kind, laid back, and hates conflict. I always wished I could be more like that but now I see that those qualities can also turn you into a doormat if you meet the wrong person. My sister’s divorce was final last May. Her ex is narcissistic, controlling, and emotionally abusive. For years he was a chronic substance abuser. He also kept my sister and my niece very isolated and even told her she should “emancipate” herself from her family. Even though she lived with this abuse for years it was not until she had a child and saw her husband starting to control and emotionally abuse their daughter that she realized something was wrong. Of course my sister blamed herself for everything and thought if she could just be a better wife and mother everything would be OK. I of course could write a novel but just to give you an example, my niece started saying at three and four years old that she didn’t like my parents and was afraid to come to my house. Last year at four and a half she was telling people she only had one grandma (his mother) and even told my other sister’s husband that our mother was not her grandma and then said,”She is just my mom’s mom.” What four year old says that? She is constantly blaming my sister for the divorce. She is five now and is in kindergarten and they have 50/50 custody by the way. About six weeks ago my niece got in trouble for something and my sister put her on time out. My niece freaked out and was worried that my sister was going to tell her teacher. When my sister asked her why, she said that when she had gotten in trouble at her dad’s and he asked her, “What would Mrs. Smith think about that?” My niece took that as a threat that he was going to tell her teacher that she had been naughty. When confronted about it he denied it at first, but then said he did not mean it that way and just wanted her to think in her mind about what she had done. My sister explained to him that a five year old can’t reason that out but he just kept denying that he did anything wrong. He also controls her with fear and tells her everything is dangerous and scary. A month ago my sister and niece were playing a game where you say I love you more than the sky, and I love you more than a rainbow etc. all of a sudden,my niece said that she and her dad play the” mean mommy game” where they say “mommy is so mean if we didn’t have any food she would let us starve.” One of the ones that really upset my niece was when her dad said that “Mommy is so mean that if I lost my house and had no place to live your mommy would make us live in the street.” My sister assured her that she would never let that happen and later that day when her dad called, my niece made my sister tell him that she would not ever let them be homeless. My sister’s ex is very manipulative and just as you said, relies on my niece for emotional support. But I think the sickest thing of all is his overwhelming need to be the best. From all the things that he has said and done I don’t think he wants my niece to hate her mom and all of us, but I think he wants her to love him more than my sister, and he wants her to love his parents more than ours and he wants her to love his half sisters more than me. It is so sick and emotionally damaging for my niece. And of course the court system is broken. She finally ended up in mediation and the mediator told her because she made more money she would be treated like the man and 50/50 was the best deal she could get. Ironically her ex tells her every week he wants to get back together even though he said every rotten thing imaginable about her in court. I told her,” who would really want to be with someone who was all the things that he accused you of being?” Her counselor told her the same thing. She had seen them both for a few sessions and then he refused to go anymore so my sister continued to go. My sister has made so much progress since she moved out almost two years ago and finally this year my niece loves to come over to my house again and is finally saying she wants to visit my parents. My sister’s self esteem that was so low has improved a lot but she still has a long way to go. I worry for my niece’s emotional well being, and I worry that my ex-brother in law will turn my niece (and my sister’s only child) against her someday. I am saddened that my sister ended up in this position not because of malice or meanness, but because she was too nice. But failure to set boundries and failure to settle and not stand up for yourself are flaws that can have severe consequences. Her kindness and gentleness were used against her like weapons. When my youngest daughter ( she is 15 now) was little I recognized she was so much like my sister and I thought I was so lucky to have such a sweet and mellow little girl. Then when she started to get bullied in school and my sister was having her issues I realized it was not such a great thing. My daughter observed first hand as well what her Aunt has gone through. My daughter now stands up for herself and is not a push over. I hope what she has seen and learned will help prevent her from falling into an abusive relationship and then at least something good can come out of this terrible situation.