FIVE WAYS PARENTS SHOULD DEAL WITH A DIVORCE OR SEPARATION

FIVE WAYS PARENTS SHOULD DEAL WITH A DIVORCE OR SEPARATION

 

  1. TELL YOUR KIDS TOGETHER: Both parents need to tell all of the children at the same time rather than separately just before the separation actually takes place.
  2. EXPLAIN WHAT THE WORDS MEAN: Tell the children as clearly as you can what the actual terms separation/divorce mean, and be prepared to repeat this information several times for younger children.
  3. DON’T ASSESS BLAME: Either on each other and definitely don’t allude to any fault lying with the kids or any situations that involve the children
  4. NOTHING CHANGES IN THE CHILD/PARENT RELATIONSHIP: Assure the children that they will always be free to love both parents and both parents will continue to love and care for them.
  5. INTRODUCE THEM TO THEIR “SECOND HOME”: Take the children to the new residence of the parent who has moved out, so the children will know where that parent is and know where they will be coming to visit.

 

All in all, use a “united front” approach, the gold standard for effective co-parenting.

About the author

Dr. Kathleen M. Reay, Ph.D., D.A.A.E.T.S., R.C.C., is the author of a new book called Toxic Divorce: a Workbook for Alienated Parents Proven strategies to help you regain control of your life and overcome parental alienation or parental alienation syndrome.

Available in a soft cover edition or Ebook at all major retailers such as Amazon as well as http://parentalalienationhelp.org/toxic-divorce-a-workbook-for-alienated-parents

She is a Diplomate of the American Academy of Experts in Traumatic Stress and is an experienced licensed psychotherapist, researcher, public speaker, child custody evaluator, and litigation-related consultant to parents, attorneys and the courts as an expert on parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome.

Additionally she is recruiting research participants for a study on the long-term effects of parental alienation on alienated parents http://parentalalienationhelp.org/participate-in-a-study/

Dr. Kathleen Reay provides Parental Alienation seminars to the public and professionals for more info: http://parentalalienationhelp.org/events/ Don’t miss the her upcoming lecture on current Parental Alienation Issues held at Simon Fraser University, Surrey, British Columbia, Canada open to the the public, alienated parents, family members, legal & mental health professionals and the media.  Click here for the lecture flyer for more information

 

ATTENTION MENTAL HEALTH PROFESSIONALS

ARE YOU TRULY UP TO SPEED & ARMED ENOUGH TO PLAY A PIVOTAL ROLE IN ALLEVIATING PAIN THAT RESULTS FROM IRRATIONAL ALIENATION?

Whether you work in private practice or work in an agency setting, it is highly likely that you will be faced with an alienated child, alienated adolescent, favored parent or a rejected parent. Are you armed enough to truly appreciate and understand the highly complex continuum of parental alienation (PA)? Are you aware that it’s a type of coerced mind control, with the victim as an innocent child or teen? Will you actually see it? Do you know what to look for? Is it possible that you might be manipulated or fooled by a favored parent and/or an innocent alienated child victim who is undergoing this horrific form of abuse? Are you aware that traditional methods of therapy don’t work for these types of cases? Are you armed to make an accurate assessment, possible diagnosis and provide the very best treatment? If you are a child protection worker, will you be able to accurately assess the differences between true allegations of child abuse and false allegations of child abuse? If you are a child custody evaluator, are you up to speed on utilizing proper evaluation procedures to determine if irrational alienation is occurring? If you answer no or maybe not to one or more questions, then consider taking Dr. Kathleen M. Reay’s 2-day advanced training workshop on this very important topic. You will be armed with a tremendous amount of empirical knowledge, understanding, real-life examples, step-by-step directions, and powerful tools to make effective decisions when working with various family members involved with difficult separation, divorce or post-divorce issues. Mental health professionals can make a profound difference by helping offset PA before a relationship is permanently severed or make a profound difference by contributing to the problem. From an ethical perspective, which do you choose?

For more information, please go to http://parentalalienationhelp.org/events/ or The International Institute for Parental Alienation Studies: Dedicated to educating alienated families, mental health therapists, medical professionals, legal professionals and educators on the complexity of the continuum of parental alienation http://iipas.org/ Mental health professionals need to be up to speed to work with families affected by high conflict divorce including parental alienation. Dr. Kathleen M. Reay provides quality professional development training on this subject to mental health professionals.

All participants who complete the 2-day advanced training program have an option to purchase a custom-made certificate and be placed on the International Institute for Parental Alienation Studies’(IIPAS) new listings database for one full year. The fee is $20.00 total for both. There’s an option to renew your registration for the database on a yearly basis for an administrative fee of $10.00. The new IIPAS database will contain names of mental health & other helping professionals who have taken our advanced training program from all over the US and Canada.

The database lists what training or workshop the successful participant completed through the IIPAS and/or Dr. Kathleen M. Reay, Inc. The International Institute for Parental Alienation Studies & Dr. Kathleen M. Reay, Inc. acknowledge that the persons included on this list have attended a workshop held by IIPAS or Dr. Kathleen M. Reay, Inc. The IIPAS & Dr. Kathleen M. Reay, Inc. do not warrant or otherwise assume responsibility for the clinical services provided by these clinicians or their competencies to provide such services. Parental Alienation counselling services should be administered only by licensed clinicians specifically trained in Parental Alienation (or graduate students under supervision of a licensed clinician who both have attended training. It is important that you take time to interview your prospective clinician. Choose a clinician who is experienced with PA & PAS cases and has a good success rate.

18 Tips to Determine if Your Ex is Harassing and Abusing You and Your Children through the Court System

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1. Your ex self-inflicts an injury to create evidence of abuse that doesn’t exist to get you charged and into court quickly.

 

2. Your ex inflicts an injury onto one or more of the children to create evidence of abuse that doesn’t exist to get into court quickly. Your ex threatens the child to keep this a big secret or severe punishment will occur.

 

3. Your ex makes up some kind of fabricated crisis to get you into court right away.

 

4. Your ex pretends to be the abused partner when police are called.

 

5. Your ex charges assault even though you were trying to defend yourself.

 

6. Your ex coerces you to drop charges and then uses that in court to prove you are a liar.

 

7. Your ex uses the police, child protection workers and other public services to make false accusations about you including denial of access.

 

8. Your ex gives police officers or social workers out-dated court orders to gain access. All the time it will take for them to fill out the unnecessary paperwork buys time for the ex to get a new court order.

 

9. Your ex repeatedly threatens to take you to court to get custody and access of the children.

 

10. Your ex makes multiple court applications to obtain, change, and overturn court orders knowing you don’t have the financial means to fight them.

 

11. Your ex knows you don’t have an attorney and purposely makes incorrect applications or files affidavits immediately before your court date.

 

12. Your ex gets friends or family to write false affidavits about you.

 

13. Your ex prevents, isolates, or cuts you off from having any contact with attorneys, support workers or other professionals.

 

14. Your ex threatens or pressures advocates, attorneys, family members, or friends who are helping you.

 

15. Your ex humiliates you in court by providing a history of health problems against you such as depression. The depression, however, may actually be situationally-based due to all the abuse and harassment you’ve been subjected to by him/her.

 

16. Your ex shames you and perhaps your family members in court by making up lies that didn’t really happen (For e.g., engaging in infidelity, stealing from a family bank account, smoking marijuana in front of the children, and so on).

 

17. Your ex uses court delaying tactics to purposely cause you financial hardship, especially over child support payments, other financial issues, or makes multiple settlement offers to purposely add to your legal costs.

 

18. Your ex fires attorneys left, right and centre or attorneys fire your ex because he/she has been a pain in the you know what, which are other significant forms of court-delay tactics.

 

The bottom line is: court-related harassment and abuse occurs when one party in a family law action uses the legal system or repeated or ongoing legal actions to harass and abuse the other party. Don’t let your ex get away with this. In many U.S. States and Canadian Provinces, you may be financially eligible to qualify for legal representation. Check out the United States Department of Justice website at http://www.justice.gov/eoir/probono/states.htm or the Canadian Judicial Council Resource Centre website at http://www.cjc-ccm.gc.ca/english/resource_en.asp?selMenu=resource_goingtocourt_en.asp for more information.

About the writer: Dr. Reay is the author of Toxic Divorce: a Workbook for Alienated Parents. She is also the Founder and Director of the International Institute for Parental Alienation Studies (IIPAS), an exceptional research institute and online learning program for alienated parents, extended family members, and professionals. See http:www.iipas.org for more information.  She also receives many inquiries regarding her availability as a consultant, evaluator, trial consultant and expert witness in matters relating to child custody, trauma, estrangement, parental alienation and parental alienation syndrome.

Does Your Ex and Child Engage in any of These Behaviours?

by Dr. Kathleen M. Reay

Do any of these behaviors sound familiar?

  • Your child aligns with your ex in a campaign of denigration and hatred against you.
  • Your child is actively saying negative things to you or acting negatively towards you.
  • Your ex’s and/or child’s rationalizations for denigrating you are often weak, frivolous, cruel or completely absurd.
  • There seems to be no ambivalence in your child’s feelings toward you. You or others notice that your child’s animosity toward you is demonstrably severe
  • Your child states that the decisions to reject you are his/her own and are not influenced by your ex
  • Your child seems to be very supportive of your ex and not you in any manner.
  • Your child could care less about your own feelings. They appear to show no guilt or remorse for how they treat you so badly
  • Your child seems to mimic various words, phrases or sayings that your ex tends to use
  • Your child tends to know a lot about your business (for e.g., how much money you make, what’s going on with your divorce proceedings, and so on) that you have not discussed with him or her and that seems too adult-oriented for their particular age. Your child may have told you that your ex told them this information or it seems quite obvious that your ex must have shared this information with your child
  • Your child’s denigration of you has a distinct rehearsed quality.
  • Your child’s animosity towards you also extends to your extended family and friends.

If so, then you might be suffering from “parental alienation” or “parental alienation syndrome”.

Ten Healthy Steps to Emotional and Mental Self-Care for Alienated Parents

By Dr. Kathleen M. Reay  

#1 Build a Strong Network

Build a strong network of supportive friends and family members to act as a buffer against the stressors in your life. Do your very best not to isolate yourself and feel lonely. The greater the loneliness and isolation you experience, the greater you will be vulnerable to more stress.

#2 Plan Play-Dates

Pick up the phone or send an email to someone who is nurturing and supportive. Engage in various activities with your supportive friends and family members. For example, go shopping, go see a new movie at the theatre, go enjoy a great meal, or go play a game of tennis or pool together.

#3 Include Challenging Mental Activities

Engage in a wide variety of challenging mental activities alone and with other individuals on a regular basis. Some examples are playing cards, chess, scrabble, solitaire, and backgammon. Perhaps you are more into other challenging mental activities like doing crosswords and other brainteasers such as Sudoku. Also, engage in stimulating conversation online or in-person. Or, learn some new and exciting things about a different country and its culture. Perhaps you may want to travel there someday. Learning a new language might be a challenging activity, too!

#4 Increase Your Sense of Control

Given that alienated parents are highly vulnerable to stress, it’s not uncommon to feel like things are out of control. At a time like this, it’s important that you have confidence in yourself and your ability to be able to influence certain situations or events. Have enough self-confidence to recognize that you can and will persevere through the obstacles and challenges in your life. Believe in yourself!

 

#5 Do Regular Check-ins on Your Emotions            

Alienated parents are extremely vulnerable to stress when they don’t know how to deal with their feelings. Suppressing your feelings isn’t healthy, nor is getting extremely agitated, angry, and doing something you regret. Learn how to calm and soothe yourself whenever you’re feeling sad, mad, frustrated, betrayed, afraid, or angry. Make healthy choices and bring your emotions into balance. It will help you bounce back from adversity. Ask yourself, “Am I in control of my stress or is my stress in control of me?”

#6 Journal Daily      

Write out your thoughts and feelings in a diary or journal. Keep in mind that journals are very important to help keep track of various situations or events that take place between you, your former spouse, your children, the criminal justice system, and so on. If deemed appropriate, share your journal entries with your attorney for legal purposes. More than anything, keep track of patterns you notice about your thoughts and feelings.

#7 Blog

Blogging is a popular method to post online journals and diaries. Consider blogging your parental alienation story online. One benefit of blogging is finding out that you’re not in an isolated situation. Additionally, blogging offers the ability for you to meet other individuals who will offer you support just as you may to them. Many alienated parents have described that it’s validating to blog because there are so many other parents out there who comment on understanding the profound pain of losing a child through parental alienation. In some instances, alienated children do reconnect with their alienated parents from reading their parents’ blogs.

#8 Join a PAS Online Support Group

Join an in-person support group if one is available in your locale or join a PAS online support group. All you need to do is a Google search and you’ll find plenty of opportunities online. If you cannot find an existing support group in your region, why not consider starting one? This can be easily accomplished through Meetup, http://www.meetup.com or other social-media outlets like LinkedIn.

#9  Engage in Regular Exercise

Studies show that individuals who participate in regular aerobic or anaerobic exercise often experience less stress and anxiety than those who choose not to. Plan a variety of physical activities and recreational activities that you enjoy or will at least tolerate! You will notice the physical and psychological benefits of engaging in regular exercise quite quickly.

#10 If All Else Fails  

Please seek counseling from a well-qualified mental health professional who is experienced in working with alienated parents. A professional can help provide additional tools and strategies to help you balance your emotional and mental self. Never be afraid to ask for help. “To get through the hardest journey we need take only one step at a time, but we must keep on stepping” Chinese Proverb.

The Twelve Most Common Mistakes Alienated Parents Tend To Make With Their Children

There are at least twelve common mistakes that alienated parents tend to make when feeling angry and in contact via phone, letterwriting, social networking, or in person with their alienated children.

 

Here are some suggestions to help offset this from occurring in your family. They are:

1. When in contact with your children don’t trash, bash, berate, put down, or persecute their other parent. Doing so, you are modeling abusive behavior to your children. This will ultimately backfire on you. Your children will likely feel very uncomfortable and have less respect for you. Additionally, this kind of behavior on your part will likely push them further away from you.

2. Don’t challenge or dispute your children’s loyalty to the alienating parent. Choosing to do so will only create more resistance. Remember, the greater you challenge your children’s loyalty to the other parent, the more your children will resist. Be encouraging and focus on the positive aspects of their relationship. For example, stated in a warm and sincere manner, “It’s wonderful that you and your father have such a fun time together.”

3. Don’t discuss any legal information. It’s important that your children do not hear any references to court actions or any other legal information. This includes not showing them any legal or court documents. Don’t be surprised if your older children or teens insist that you share legal information with them to help sort out what is true and what is not. Keep in mind that legal information including the difficult language, what court orders actually mean, and so on can be difficult for most adults to comprehend, never mind children and teens. Confusing court documents may encourage children to take sides; redirect them instead.

… Don’t challenge or dispute your children’s loyalty to the alienating parent. Choosing to do so will only create more resistance …

 4. In spite of sounding counter-intuitive, don’t make demands.For example, “What you should do is treat me with respect instead of treating me with such disrespect. I’m your parent so don’t talk to me that way.” Even though your likely intention is to attempt to control the situation with your alienated child and provide some prompt remedy, what it really says to your alienated child is this: “You don’t have the right to decide how to deal with your issues and feelings.” Remember, your child is a victim, as well. Your child has not intentionally created PAS;your child has been drawn into it by his/her other parent.

5. Don’t interrogate. For example, “What did your mom say to you to make you say that to me?” Although you may have good intentions to get to the bottom of the issue and find out what was said or done to make your child react the way he/she has to you, it will backfire. What it really says to your alienated child is, “Not only your mother but you must have messed up here.” This will only make your children feel worse and they will likely reject you more. Please note: It is perfectly okay to clarify any misconceptions that your alienated children may have about you or your situation. For example, if your child says, “Daddy says you never loved him or us,” you can say, for instance, “Sorry sweetie, the moment we met, I fell in love with your father. You and your brother were loved from the moment we knew you were going to be born. I will never stop loving you no matter what.” Whenever the need arises to clarify any misconceptions that your alienated children may have about you or your situation, remind them of specific memories you have about them or of other people, places, times, or things  related to their misconceptions. This would be a great time to share any photographs or videos you may have of those times.

 …It is perfectly okay to clarify any misconceptions that your alienated children may have about you or your situation …

6. Don’t moralize. For example, “The right thing to say to me is…..”, “You really should .…”, “It’s wrong to ….”. Although the likely intention is to show your child the proper way to deal with the issue, the meaning of the message is, “I’ll choose your values for you.” This will backfire too.

7. Don’t pretend to act like a psychologist. For example, “Do you know why you said that to me? You’re just copying your mother. That’s what she always says, you know.” Even though your likely intention is to help prevent future issues by analyzing your child’s behavior and explaining his/her motives, what it really says to your child is, “I know more about you than you know about yourself. And, that makes me superior to you.” It’ll backfire because your alienated child will not feel like a social equal which will likely push him/her even further away from you.

8. Don’t yell, scream, nag, coax, lecture, or give ultimatums. All children don’t like to be yelled or screamed at. Nor do they like to be nagged, coaxed, lectured, or given ultimatums by their parents. They feel disrespected and tend to counter it by disrespecting the parent back. The same holds true for alienated children but generally to a greater degree. For example, “How dare you speak to me in that tone of voice. If you do that again, then I don’t want you to come around here anymore.” This kind of behavior on your part will likely induce fear in your alienated child. The child may interpret these types of messages as truth, whether you mean it or not. Your children may actually use this as a way to avoid seeing you again. It’ll make it much more difficult for you and your alienated child to repair the relationship.

 … Don’t yell, scream, nag, coax, lecture, or give ultimatums. All children don’t like to be yelled ors creamed at. Nor do they like to be nagged, coaxed, lectured, or givenultimatums by their parents…

9. Don’t use guilt trips. For example, “You wouldn’t really treat me the way you do now if I earned as much money as your father does.” Although your likely intention is to help your child see the wrong in his/her thoughts, feelings, and actions, what it really says to your child is, “I am imposing a penance for your past mistakes because you and your other parent are at fault.” Imposing guilt on the rampage also backfires.

10. Don’t deny your children’s feelings and only justify yours. For example, “Oh, that’s not true. You don’t really feel upset. If anybody should feel upset, it should be me.” Alienated childrenneed to have their feelings validated just as much as anybody else does. Although it’s quite unlikely that your children will validate your feelings due to the level of PAS that is occurring, please don’t let that stop you from role-modeling it to them. It will be of help in repairing your broken relationship.

11. Don’t be stubborn and child-like. Apologize for mistakes you have made now and in the past. As you’re aware, alienated parents undergo a vast array of negative emotions including anger. Although it may be very difficult to do, it’s not impossible to apologize to your alienated children when you have intentionally, unintentionally, or unknowingly done something wrong now or in the past. We want to teach our children to be responsible, caring, and accountable people when they grow up. What is stopping us from role-modeling that to them? It’s okay to say, for instance, “I realize that therewere many times when I had to work evenings and weekends and I wasn’t able to go to your school concerts and soccer games. I apologize for not being there.”

..Don’t be stubborn and child-like. Apologize for mistakes you have made now and in the past. As you’re aware, alienated parents undergo a vast array of negative emotions including anger …

12. Don’t react or over-react when your children treat you with criticism, contempt, defensiveness, or stonewalling. It’s very important to learn to be proactive and active rather than reactive and over-reactive with them. As difficult as it will be, it is so very important for you to do your very best and develop a hard shell like a tortoise! If you were to react or over-react,then your alienated children will likely feel no need to ever want to repair the fragmented relationship.

Sometimes an alienated parent will unleash anger on his or her children and forget that they are victims, too.

 

… Don’t react or over-react when your children treat you with criticism, contempt, defensiveness, or stonewalling …