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From ‘Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome’: Reuniting with the Targeted Parent (Part I)

2007-10-17
By

One area of keen interest for divorced fathers is how alienated children reunite with the parent who was the target of the Parental Alienation campaign. Sadly, sometimes this reunification never occurs. Many times it does, but only years later.

A few years ago I did a His Side with Glenn Sacks show called Hope for the Holidays: Spontaneous Reunification, in which I discussed this issue. One of my guests was Allen Green, author of  Blind Baseball: A Father’s War. Green has experienced PAS and reunification firsthand, and he had some interesting advice. I don’t have the exact quote, but he basically said, “Don’t destroy yourself. It’s very, very hard, but if you’re the target parent of Parental Alienation, play for the long haul. Remember you still have the kids as adults, plus you have grandchildren. Fight the best you can, but always keep the long-term in mind–sooner or later, the children usually come back.”

In Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Breaking the Ties that Bind, Amy J.L. Baker details many of the reunions between children and their alienated parents, and delineates some common scenarios under which this occurs.

One of Baker’s reunification scenarios is not a happy one–the adult child reunites with the alienated parent because they now themselves have experienced Parental Alienation as a parent, and see through the lies they were fed as a child. I’ve previously discussed the case of David, one of the adult children of Parental Alienation who Baker interviewed–David’s parents divorced when he was six, and he who was caught in his mother’s long-term alienation campaign against his father. (To learn more about David’s case, click here and here).

David only began to gain insight into the way he had been misled when, in his 20s, he himself divorced and his ex-wife turned his daughter against him. Of his divorce, David explains:

“Initially there was some problems with the parenting time but then I was always able to get things worked out. I started keeping pretty good notes so that if I had to go back to court I would be prepared. When we did go back to court they would slap my wife’s hand and I would see my daughter for a while until the next time. I noticed this from an adult perspective and I started to remember things that had happened to me and there started to become a number of similarities. For example, little instances would happen (between he and his daughter) and they would be blown up way out of proportion and out of context and then I wouldn’t be able to see my daughter. I started to see too many similarities. And actually my current wife started to say that I should get back in touch with my dad and then I called him up and made arrangements to get together.” David had seen his mother employ the same tactics when he was a kid, and began to see that his negative feelings about his dad had largely been created by his mom. He contacted his father, for the first time in decades. He explains:

“It went pretty well actually. I called him up and introduced myself and he said, ‘Fine. Great.’ We talked for a while and made arrangements to meet for lunch and we went there and we sat and talked and ate lunch and really things couldn’t have gone smoother. We talked a little bit about that (the alienation) but never really in detail like maybe we could have because I never really felt like we had to.”

Sadly, to date David has been unable to reunite with his own daughter, who is now 25, and who he has not seen in over 10 years. He says: (more…)

Are You the Target of Parental Alienation?
Parental alienation expert J. Michael Bone, Ph.D. can help you get back into your children’s lives. His services are available throughout the U.S.–call (407) 645-0662 or write to jmbone@jmbconsulting.org. jmbconsulting.org  
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  • http://mnd Lulli

    How do you get through the days missing your children so much and theier is nothing you can do about it. Ive been treated unfair due to my husband has money,18 thou a month for per capita from a casino. I have not been able to even have a phone call with my kids for over a year now. I still file papers with the courts and will never give up fighting but it is so tiring and sadning. I dont care about spousal support, I havent even asked for it, even though we were and still are legally married 4 ten years now, all I want is to hold my babies agian……..

  • gary weatherford

    I didn’t notice the box on the bottom beneath submit comment when I hit submit. I would like to be notified if there are any follow up comments via e-mail. Little could make me happier than to know that my words would be of comfort to someone else who has been suffering from such a horrifying wrong done to them.

  • gary weatherford

    I too was alienated from my only child (a daughter) for fourteen years. Fortunately for me my mother was allowed to have contact with my daughter during those years.
    When my daughter was sixteen my mother (unbeknowenst to my ex) arranged for me to be reunited with my daughter. My ex-wife had no reason to suspect that this trip would be any different or that I might be in town as well. She thought she was still firmly in control of the situation, and of everyone involved.
    Well that first reunion was a little awkward; not the way I would have had it at all. Although it wasn’t as warm as I would have had it, I realized I would just have to be patient. I needed time to earn her trust.
    My ex-wife later discovered our reunion when she found pictures of me my daughter was hiding between her mattress and boxspring. Predictably, she hit the ceiling! She told my daughter just horribly untrue things about me. My daughter began to rebel against her mother.
    My daughter kept in contact with me by email, and by occasional phone calls. However, aside from her contact with me, I did not encourage her to rebel against her mother. Upon my daughters eighteenth birthday my ex kicked her out of the house by throwing her clothes into the snow!
    My daughter called me and asked if she could come live with me. I was overjoyed! She came to live with me and finished high school on time; although I am a man of very limited means.
    I am proud to say that today (seven years later) my daughter and I have the relationship that for years I didn’t dare dream of. She tells me that she has lost alot of respect for her mother, but I encourage her to forgive her. I have always taken the high road with my ex. I never responded to her viciousness, and only said nice things about her (which I never thought I would be capable of doing) in front of my daughter.
    I hope that my story will encourage other fathers and mothers who are suffering to never give up. The only problem that my daughter has with me is that she thinks I gave up on her too easily. I wasn’t wealthy enough to travel to different states, hire attorneys, and battle it out with a vindictive ex in court. In fact, I couldn’t even afford the flight.
    My daughter just called as I was typing out that last paragraph, and as the call was ending told me she loves me. That’s music to any parents ears…especially to a formerly hopelessly alienated father! My advice is to never give up, and place your faith in God. The true nature of the vindictive ex will be their eventual undoing! No matter how bleak the circumstances may appear, you should never give up your hope of a reunion….it’s just too sweet!
    God Bless….hang in there!

  • Robert Gartner

    My daughter and I too fell victim to this insidious thing. We were among those who were being discussed by the namer of this disease, the late Richard Gardner. We were among those who the Justice For Children, Houston, Texas now with offices in Phoenix, D.C., and somewhere in Michigan first destroyed. This group believes PAS is nothing more than something a father will use to get custody, a child sexually abusing father at that. Funny how Randy Burton, a former attorney for the Texas Department of Protective and Regulatory Services, (CPS) formed his own organization just becsue he wanted to save kids he thought CPS was failing, then goes out with his group and lynches innocent parents and thier kids in the name of saving them! In my case among other things he did not even see to it that I had an attorney to balance the field, nor did he check in on the subsequent destruction of my daughter at the hands of her mother, (out committing three najor felonies while getting the free help from JFC) or her perverted step father.

    I too wait for a return to vitality and life for my daughter, who dropped out of high school and then made a baby herself, now living apart from the child’s daddy.

  • rastus

    In my case, the hook I had back into my daughter’s life was a trust fund left her by my late aunt, of which I was administrator. When it came time for her to go to college, a large share of the funding was to come from that trust fund, so my daughter had to at least sustain communication with me, even if strained.

    Interestingly, it was when she actually started college that things opened back up between us, largely because we were able to use email as our primary means of communication. The detachment email provided actually helped, because it allowed us to say what we needed to say to each other, but without all the emotional baggage. Once she got to know me again, she realized how little of what she’d been fed by her mother was actually true. By the time she graduated, whatever damage had been done had largely been repaired.

    Today, now that she’s in her 30′s and has had the benefit of much of what I’d taught her about dealing effectively with people in the workplace, we’re closer than ever, and most importantly, she respects the male role and its difficulties far more, I dare say, than most women her age.

    So I guess the lesson here is that PAS can be overcome, but you need a “hook” to initiate the conversation and to find a way of conducting it that, at least at first, takes emotions out of it. Kids who’ve been subjected to the alienating influence of a parent need time to see the other parent as something other than a monster before all the feelings and emotional baggage can be dealt with.

  • ebjjs

    One sure way to get reunited with both of them is to hit the mega-lottery. Then it will be “Oh Daddy, I’ve seen the light, let’s get to know your bank account” and the ex will show up under some pretense to claim her share. The sad fact is that the courts would probably award them the lion’s share.

  • amfortas

    I have been waiting patiently for my daughter. Waiting, waiting. She is now into her late twenties. One day she might see and understand her mother’s alienatiing techniques, but she carries the ‘gene’. Her mother cut her own father out of her life under her mother’s diabolical tutelage and she has done the same to me. It can carry down the generations.

    I fear that my daughter will never get the personal strength to take that step to reconciliation. Her mother didn’t. We lived in England and my wife’s parents were in Australia. Her mother fell ill and after quickly and expensivley gathering the finances, we were able to send my wife back home to visit. Her mother, it transpired, had a cold! She stayed with her mother for several weeks, while her father, divorced, lived just thirty miles away. One day she gathered what little moral strength she had and went to see him. Years of ostracism could have ended right there and then. She stood at the fence of his smallholding chicken farm for an hour, watching him in the field. She watched. She watched. He didn’t even know she was there. She never even approached him. She didn’t call out across the hundred yards. She didn’t drive up the track. She hid and watched. 12,000 miles, but that one step was a step too far for her.

    My son wrested his freedom from his mother’s sick embrace and he and I get along so well now that hope for my daughter stays alive and strong. He is a good man, and my best friend. I should count myself fortunate that I have one of my two children’s love and understanding. But my daughter was the light of my life, ‘my little petal’, my joy. My heart grieves. She may be as crippled as her mother, by her mother, who was crippled by her mother in turn.







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