Alienated Girl Calls Dr. Laura, Dr. Laura Tells Her ‘Go See Your Dad So You Can Find out the Truth’
Background: Parental Alienation occurs in a divorce or separation when one parent, usually the custodial mother, turns the children against the other parent, usually the noncustodial father. Often this alienation takes the form of giving the children a negative impression of the father–to read one example, see the second part of my blog entry Sad Parental Alienation Case from the 1940s.
To learn more about Parental Alienation and the controversies surrounding it, see my co-authored columns Protect Children from Alienation (Providence Journal, 7/8/06) and Shockome Syndrome, or click here.
Kathy, a reader, sent me the following letter concerning a recent call to talk show host/author Dr. Laura Schlessinger:
“Today a 12-year-old girl called radio host Dr. Laura to ask whether she should contact her father, who she has not had a relationship with since she was 7. The girl told Dr. Laura that ‘my father is manipulative.’
“Dr. Laura responded: ‘Where did you hear that — your mother, your grandmother? No 12-year-old comes up with that terminology on her own.’
“Dr. Laura finally extracted the name of the culprit – the girl’s aunt. The little girl went on to say how her father had ‘forced’ her mother to buy video games and other expensive electronic devices when the family was in debt.
“The girl then mentioned that her mother left her with her aunt on the weekends so mother could go stay with her boyfriend in LA. Dr. Laura responded: ‘So your dad’s manipulative but your mom’s boyfriend is not – yeah.’ Her advice to the child was this: ‘Go stay with your dad so you can find out the truth, and maybe he’ll be around for you 7 days a week.’
“I thought the dialogue was a prime example of how parents use, and psychologically abuse, their children in order to turn them against a parent.”
I love the way Dr. Laura (pictured) immediately picked up on what was really going on, asking, “Where did you hear that — your mother, your grandmother? No 12-year-old comes up with that terminology on her own.”
Dr. Laura and I certainly do not agree on everything, but she has been generally supportive of fathers’ rights. On her radio show she supported our efforts in California to preserve the CA. Supreme Court’s LaMusga decision in 2004, and also broadcast her support for our Campaign Against ‘Boys are Stupid’ Products. In addition, she praised our campaign in her book Woman Power: Transform Your Man, Your Marriage, Your Life.
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August 16th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Well nice going Dr Laura… perhaps dad might now go to jail because he will talk to his daughter and the daughter doesnt know the mom has an order of no contact and protection…
however there is one thing that is totally clear here… the Doc has not a real clue of all the issues here and what goes on… otherwise she wouldnt have thought her simple answer would have been good…
the problem i have with those that give advice… is taht you dont hear how it turned out, and that they can freely experiment in others lives, cause profound misery, and have no repurcussions or anythnig that might impinge them from doing it again.
balancing on a razor blade burning a candle at both ends isnt exactly supportive or taking a side… its more like your career is defined by your ability to wade through the minefield, making more if you dont blow up from one gaffe or another, regardless of sides. in this case she gave out info that sounds great to all those people out there in radio land.. and the reason she did was that she had the girl there, and to say anythign else woudl sound that she was discounting the personal story of a woman… meanwhile if the mother called and talked i would also have no doubt that she would work the solution the same way… not for fathers rigths, or such… but to answer that small situation with the answer that allows her not to blow up… even if that answer will be contradictory to what she just told that girl.
too many people and such are playing around in too many other lives…
August 16th, 2007 at 10:48 am
at 33, my son “still” has to listen to his mother bad mouth me. that’s 30 years and counting. he shut her off years ago and she doesn’t get it. good parenting that! women trully get a pass on vertually ALL their abhorrent actions and men have to hope for a miracle just to get an even break. can’t stop stoopit people from being stoopit. don’t make babies and don’t get married. nuff siad.
August 16th, 2007 at 10:55 am
artflgr… so your solution is? when the girl said her dad was manipulative, did it not registar with you that it would be virtually impossible for her to know that for certain having no contact for 5 years, without the input from someone else? also, if the shrew has a restraining order or some such deal, you have got to be stoopit to believe her princess doesn’t know about it. hell, everyone with in a 100 miles knows. wise up.
August 16th, 2007 at 1:37 pm
Dr. Laura is great. She shuts down hysterical women, women who call looking for sympathy after stating they don’t “feel” like sex with hubby she has special impeachment skills for, and those who are pondering divorce lacking grounds she decimates. She sees through the gals hysteria and histrionics better than any woman and most men can see it.
In fact, I find it affirming to listen to her show as she even takes apart women callers that I’ve been sucked into sympathy over…and I’m very jaded.
When she says “ladies, get over yourselves and get under your husbands” I never fail to crack up.
August 20th, 2007 at 1:05 pm
to donnieboy,
“artflgr… so your solution is?”
well it sure isnt to tell her to call him without knowing the facts…
it did register with me, since it was explained in the article and you didnt need ability in insight to ‘get it’… however my point wasnt explained and a person needs some of their own thought to understand it…
I think its you that needs to go back and read the article.. you have a CHILDS view (not because your a child, duh… but because the view is provided by a child)..
a child may know that she is being lied to by her father, but its also pretty good to assume that a young girl isnt told everything about a situation.
even more so, this is true when one parent is trying to make another parent look bad. if she or the other guardian is willing to lie as to the other parents qualities, it sure stands to reason that they would lie about theirs first and more when it comes to makeing an image of the alternative parent.
your analysis is short sighted, as is dr lauras, because she didnt warn the girl to find out if there are OTHER games being played that are common to custody battles.
for instance.. did it not dawn on you that five years is a long time? and that it could be for many reasons? that one of those reasons may be a no contact order of protection against him?
while dr laura picked up on a little something… a good catch, that little somethig does NOTHING to help towards a solution.
you may be 33 donnie, but you write like a 10 year old.. “nuff” for enough, stoopit for stupid, etc..
perhaps i see a link there too…
we also dont know if the manipulative person is actually telling the truth and is being manipulative for a reason… (since being that way is actually more acceptable to many than explaining the truth about it)
we know nothing about the situation other than the clever little hook of paying attention to freudian slips and things and to actually think about what people are saying and the context and their abiliteis… not just accept what they say.
there is no clear cut answer here because your talking abotu a minor… its less clear becasue you dont know if the bad mouthing was because he is a bad person, or because the bad mouther is a bad person. you dont know whether tehre are any extenuating circumstances (orders of protection, STDs, etc)…
i will say that perhaps you have had a problem because you didnt follow your own advice!!
can’t stop stoopit people from being stoopit. don’t make babies and don’t get married. nuff siad.
September 3rd, 2007 at 6:10 am
Regarding Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS): Read the article at http://www.sociopat hicstyle. com/articles. htm,
thanks to author Ms. Marion Trent, who herself, in another part of the same web site, explains how she arrived to the understandings she has today coming out of a marriage herself when a doctor told her she was suffering from a kind of PTSD because she had been living with a sociopath.
An awful lot has been tossed back and forth about the existence, credibility, and usefulness of Parental Alienation Syndrome, especially by those who feel it diminishes thier cause to accept that PAS exists as a form of insidious child and parent abuse. May I suggest that that particular cause has been myopic with a basis for disagreement in misandry. They base thier rejections on Richard Gardner’s, http://www.rgardner.com, groundbreaking work, where he at an earlier time in his discoveries suggested that ‘women’ are far more often the perpetrators of PAS. These rejectors fail to acknowledge that he later redacted the emphasis on gender postulations and attachments.
Marion Trent demonstrates that behaviors attributable to PAS are among the well defined and classical behavoirs of sociopaths, psychopaths, Narsissists, and folks with Borderline Personality Disorders. It is also then unimportant and useless to devote time to making some determination whether PAS, Parental Alienation (PA), or Hostile Agressive Parenting (HAP) or whatever you want to call it, is gender specific.
And before I leave this I would be remiss not to say more about the misandry that has worked itself into the corridors of government at all levels over the past thrty years, misandry that is confusing issues and becoming a form of abuse itself because of the effects of the intrusions into and involvements with custody issues for parents. As of May 11, 2007, certain so-called advocacy groups like Stop Family Violence, Courageous Kids, and dare I leave out the one which destroyed me and my daughter, Justice for Children, (Houston, Texas; Phoenix, Az; Michigan, and Washington, D.C.), submitted a lawsuit to the Interamerican Commission on Human Rights in commemoration of Mothers Day 2007 of all things, making exactly these sorts of gender-based claims, that men are sexual predators and women always speak the truth especially when there are children between them and the man, the man, the man, the man! claims Parental Alienation (to them the ‘junk science’ concept), as a method of retaliation! Watch the movie “Breaking Silence: Children’s Stories” pulled from the PBS programming last year, because of its sexist basis, for more information about these groups and also the Mary Kaye Foundation (of the Mary Kaye Cosmetics Company), which funded the making of the movie.
May I also direct you to http://www.parental-alienation-awareness.com, http://www.paskids.com, http://www.solutions4pas.com, and http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ParentsAgainstParentalAlienation
I dedicate this offering to my beautiful daughter with whom I have yet to reunite after being severed from me almost fourteen years ago. I wait for that wonderful day.