Using Your Kid Against Your Ex

Which does happen, says Darnall, who is also CEO of PsycCare Behavioral Health Care and Counseling Centers in Ohio and Pennsylvania. There are three levels of parental alienation, Darnall says.

1. Naïve alienators are parents who are passive about the children's relationship with the other parent but will occasionally do or say something that can alienate.            

2. Active alienators also know better than to alienate, but their intense hurt or anger causes them to impulsively lose control over their behavior or what they say. Later, they may feel very guilty about how they behaved.            

3. Obsessed alienators have a fervent cause to destroy the targeted parent. Frequently a parent can be a blend between two types of alienators, usually a combination between the naïve and active alienator. Rarely does the obsessed alienator have enough self-control or insight to blend with the other types. These three patterns of alienating behaviors are not intended to be used as a diagnosis. The types have not been validated sufficient for litigation.    

Darnall says that while it can feel grossly unfair to the parent who feels victimized, the courts don’t focus on that which can make it even more frustrating. “Often times, the client wants me to believe, ‘I am the good guy. The other guy is the bad guy and now show that I am the good guy.’ What they don’t realize is that the courts are not interested in that. They  want to see solutions to the problems. And if there is parental alienation happening, I will talk a lot about reunification to repair the damage.”   

Reunification, according to Darnall, is bringing everyone back together and work on healing the effects of parental alienation on the child. “It can be done and done successfully, but it means that the manipulation must stop.” But for people like Tiffany Doty, who worries daily about her sister but mostly about the effects all of this happening on her sister’s children, she is not so certain the manipulation will stop. She just wants to end the court battles.
 
“Will Gina win? I think not sure what winning means,” said Doty. “If the end result is that your children who you are fighting so hard for know that you stood up for what is right – and they always ask her ‘don’t stop fighting for us mom,’ – that might be the best you can get. The answer is at the end of the day she may be has to go through this. Maybe she doesn’t get everything she wants and he does. I am not sure I can tell you who wins, but I can tell you who loses. The kids.”   

“She’s right. The kids lose. Especially with protracted, exhaustive litigation that drags on and on. Their school grades reflect that, their self esteem suffers. It’s extremely stressful to children. I feel is extremely damaging,” said Darnall.  


Lenore Skomal is author of nine books and columnist of an award-winning weekly column in the Erie, Pa., Times-News, she also teaches college journalism in Pennsylvania.