Tag Archives: parental alienation

Powerful example of how to talk to your child about visitation with your ex-spouse

The following is a clip from the Dennis Prager Radio Show. Dennis talks about parental alienation, and plays for his views a powerful exchange between a woman and her daughter (from the TV show Desperate Housewives).

The daughter doesn’t want to see her Dad as she’s being dropped off. However, her mother gets composed and gives an excellent example of how to talk to your child about an ex-spouse– even one she is angry at.

Dennis Prager says after the clip:

Unfortunately, tragically, sadly, it is not what a lot of Moms say to their sons or daughters if they’re angry about a divorce.”

(He does mention that fathers alienate children as well, but that he’s referring to this specific dialogue in the film)

The most gripping part of the exchange occurs after the car door closes. The daughter runs towards her Dad…

This is a testament to the power of a parent’s words to their children. If a parent expresses encouragement about seeing the other parent, children naturally follow this lead (even if there has been some badmouthing up to that point).

If every parent acted this way at exchanges, there would be a whole lot less abused children in the country.

 

Dennis Prager quotes on Parental Alienation

  • “There are subtle ways and overt ways of alienating a child from a parent, but either way it’s evil”
  • “I do think that the badmouthing and alienating of a child from a parent is one of the few unforgivable sins. I do think those people will have to answer to God who will say, “You allowed your anger to destroy the relationship of your child to the other parent? Isn’t that why I gave you a conscience?”
  • “Badmouthing your ex-spouse rips the child apart”
  • “Changing a child last name (away from the father’s) is an act of venom”
  • “Alienators think they’re a victim, and when you think you’re a victim, moral rules don’t apply to you”
  • “I can’t think of a greater single vehicle to goodness and a better world than if everyone battled their own natures”
  • “I don’t understand how any person could humiliate a spouse”
  • “A lot of women do a lot of harm because they don’t control their emotions. But in terms of violence, men seem to have a monopoly”
  • “Nothing is as contagious as unhappiness”
  • “The badmouthing of the other spouse does not come to be good for the badmouther in the long run”
  • “If what this woman (view clip) said was said by all Moms and Dads to their children with regard to the other parent, there would be so much more harmony in this country”
  • “For many people, there is an additional battle they have to wage– with their natural tendency to be angry. One prevalent example is the angry mother or father who poisons his/her children against the other parent after a divorce, thereby often irreparably damaging both the children and the other parent”

Teaching a child to hate

A child in the midst of a brainwashing campaign is learning more than just to despise and think negatively of a parent. He or she is being taught how to hate in general.

If a child is taught to hate or have contempt for his or her own parent, they will start paying attention to the negative aspects rather than the positive. The child won’t notice the good traits or actions of the other parent, but focusses instead on anything that can be framed in a bad light. This is fueled and encouraged by the alienating parent because they do not want to hear the child talk about anything positive about the ex.

Teaching a child to hate is also teaching them how to be a negative person in general. And this takes years of therapy to eventually overcome, if it can be overcome at all.

If a child is taught to despise a parent over perceived personality or parenting “flaws” due to a hostile ex’s brainwashing, this outward hostility doesn’t just stop there. It also moves towards other people the brainwashing parent can’t stand (due mostly to jealousy or fear).

The best example is the targeted parent’s extended family. Not only is the targeted parent badmouthed and maligned, but in most cases so are his or her relatives (and thus the child’s, too). Enlisted in the demonization of the ex and the ex’s family also are any other children the brainwasher might have from another marriage or relationship. The lies never get hoisted only onto the ex’s child or children, they get spread like a manure spreader to every other member of the family tree.

But it doesn’t stop there.

Since most brainwashing parents are very insecure people, they dish out their feelings of disgust towards a lot of people in their lives. And who picks up on these feelings? The child who has to listen to it (the only children who can rise above the badmouthing are teenagers who who are harder to convince, especially over people they have known their entire life).

Over many months and years, a child can’t help but share the brainwashing parent’s beliefs and contempt. It’s hatred that’s been taught to the child, and instilled in their very core (and this isn’t severe child abuse?). You can think of this indoctrination as a hate bootcamp.

What happens next, over time, is these children see other people– not just the parent they’ve been taught is bad– through the abusive parent’s eyes. Labels are quickly thrown on people, and if the parent is a narcissist (view this post on narcissistic parents), watch out. Their kids will also absorb many of their toxic traits.

Don’t underestimate how closely our actions as parents are watched, and eventually mimicked, by our kids. If you tend to yell, they yell. If you beat them with a belt, they’ll lash out physically at others as well. If you lie a lot, don’t expect them to be amazing little truth tellers. So it doesn’t take much effort for a parent who’s hating an ex-wife or ex-husband to get his or her young child to join in fully on the hatred bandwagon.

Kids develop into adults through a combination of their own inherent nature (DNA) and nurture (parenting), but when they’ve been marinating in false feelings of hatred for a decade or more, it’s extremely difficult to reverse even for an experienced therapist. The damage to their psyche is tremendous, and the perpetrators of this abuse are committing an evil act.

Teaching a kid to hate is child abuse, and the only remedy for these young and innocent victims is to remove them from that abusive home. Unfortunately, this is a major uphill battle to undertake, as family courts, CPS, and child therapists today simply don’t understand this form of abuse.

Mental child abuse is the most common form of child abuse in America, and the most difficult to stop” – BrainwashingChildren.com