Parental Alienation

Welcome to the where parents talk podcast. We help grow better parents through science, evidence, and the lived experience of other parents. Learn how to better navigate the mental and physical health of your tween, teen, or young adult through proven, science. Expert advice. Here's your host, Lianne Castelino.

Our guest today is an award winning journalist and podcaster. Jacqueline Rourke is also a parental alienation expert and a mother of three. She joins us today from Montreal. Thank you for being here. Thanks for having me, Lianne. I appreciate it. Jacqueline, I wonder if we could start by having you take us broadly through your lived experience with parental alienation and how it has impacted you.

Yes, that's a huge question, but it's a great place to start, Lianne. So thank you. Yeah, I was, uh, what I thought was a very happy mother of three. I was a television reporter. Life was very busy. There were issues in the marriage that I don't need to get into, but there were definite, difficulties in the marriage.

And after many, many years and trying, I decided for my mental health and well being and that of my children, that unfortunately, I could not wait anymore until the kids were 18. I had to separate. And that's when things began to fall apart. really got bad. Uh, there had been behaviors that I can now say were parental alienating behaviors, prior to the separation, but when we separated, which is pretty classic, it got quite a bit worse.

What did it look like? Telling my children in front of me, mommy doesn't love you, she only loves herself. That's one of the 17 classic alienating behaviors. Telling the children and saying to me, If you divorce me, I will tell the children it's all your fault, and that you're wrecking the family, which he did.

Mommy is mean, she's destroying the family. Daddy loves her, but Mommy is mean. So, denigrating the mother. There were many things said behind my back. that I've since become aware of. So, bad mouthing the parent, questioning the parent's ability to keep you safe or provide for you. Saying, well, you know your mother, you know, you got to be careful because of this or that or the other thing.

So, bad mouthing is a pretty classic, thing that they do. Telling the child that you don't love them. Telling the child you're not safe with the other parent. Other alienating behaviors are things like, you know, threatening to withdraw Love from a child saying to a child if you go with your mother or father because it works both ways I'm, just saying mother because you asked about my experience if you agree with your mother if you do that with the father, then i'm not going to love you So these are kind of things that an alienator will do I was told by my ex that if you divorce me, I will take the children and move back to the States and my mother will raise them.

So, these were all the threats that I was under. So you're living under constant threat of harm to your children, of your children either being taken away from you. And then what starts to happen is That the children can, not always and not at all, but they can take on some of those behaviors. A child will assume that a parent is telling them the truth.

Another thing is they'll parentify the child, an alienator will. So they will share with the child things like court documents. things like why the marriage is falling apart or infidelities or supposed infidelities of the other parent so that the child feels like why is my parent telling me this it must be true so there's this sense on the child's part that I guess I didn't know all this, but wow, I'm being brought into this confidence.

I'm not safe with this other person. And then they'll also indulge the child. So all these things happen to me. Everything I've mentioned to you and much, much, much more happened. And then over the course of time, some of my children started to really believe it and align with the other parent.

Children will also often align with the parent. They either feel they are more likely to Lose, in the case of a separation, the parent who may not be around. Now, my ex was traveling six months of the year. He wasn't around a lot. He missed their birthdays all the time because he prioritized scheduling his own work.

He worked for himself. So the children will align with the parent who they feel they might lose. Um, and in this case, it was, it was the father. Um, in terms of impacts on me, it can happen very quickly. You can be shocked that first what seems like oppositional behavior on the part of your child can turn into outright swearing at you.

It could even be Manifest itself physically, where the child feels emboldened because they know not only have they got the other parent backing them, but they also have this sense that they're doing the other parent's bidding their, their aligning themselves and oftentimes because that will either be safer because they know what it's like if the other parent gets mad at you because these are personalities.

Often it's with personality disordered people. That's not me talking. That's what the research studies have found, you know, repeatedly. So they'll align with this person because they don't want the attacks on themselves. And what children will often do in this case is what they call psychological splitting, where they will be one way with one parent because they know that that's what they need to survive.

And as I tried to explain to my parents years ago when this was happening, I can't come in there and do the same behaviors. Or my children are literally caught in the middle and it's a tug of war on their arms. So, you're trying to always be the peacekeeper. And that's partly what got me into that problem.

You know, being a bit of a peacekeeper, a people pleaser. I got groomed early on by someone who was a manipulator. And so when I decided that I wasn't enjoying This lack of balance in our marriage and lack of everything else, and that I wanted out, that's when I got attacked and that's when they just upped the manipulation.

Impacts on me, I mean, you know, so from one day to the next almost, I pretty much lost contact with one of my children and then another one started waffling and weeks turned into months. What will happen often in this case is that the alienating parent, who again, often has a personality disorder, like a narcissistic personality disorder, they'll get to everybody else first.

So they'll go to the school and say, just so you know, this is happening. The mother did this, this, this, this, this, or the father. And so they'll get allies very quickly. They'll go to, if you go to a church, they'll go to the neighbors. They'll even go to extended family and friends and try to seed the, sense that it's really the other parent who deserves to be rejected.

so that when you're no longer seeing your child and now you're worried for the child's well being, it's absolutely traumatizing. It is so traumatizing. You know, you lose, they say losing a child is the hardest thing for an adult to go through, and of course we don't argue with that. If you lose a child to cancer or to a car accident, it's devastating, but at least you have people around you who are going to try to hold you up and support you, and you're going to grieve, and there's a process.

But hopefully you're going to make your way through a process. When you lose a child to alienation, you don't know what happened because no one talks about that term. So you don't know what it is to anticipate and go, Oh, that's that thing I heard about. You've probably never heard about this. Um, you don't have the support of the school, the family, the people around you.

Because now they're looking at you sideways. Because let's all be clear on something. Let's assume something, right? A child doesn't reject a loving parent. A child only rejects a parent who deserves it. And that also is not true. That they've found that in order to survive the same kind of psychological abuse that the parent has gone through, now the child is on the receiving end of abuses from the same individual, albeit they're going to change what they do to get the child on side, that child is now suffering psychological abuse.

So as a parent, you're massively worried for them and you're getting no help from anybody else. I lost my career over it. I couldn't continue working, the depression was just massive. So there's that, all kinds of physical ailments. When I go back and I look at it, I had a locked jaw for six months.

My stress and strain and trauma went, I consider myself lucky. It went into my joints mostly. I had hip problems. I had knee problems. I had joint problems. I had to eat with a spoon or a straw for six months. I finally had back surgery, you know, but other people. This can contribute to all kinds of other health issues, notably, depression, PTSD, complex PTSD, and the suicide rate for parents who are alienated from their children, unfortunately, is substantially higher than the general population.

And even for alienated children, it's a I believe it's a trauma that we're going to hear more and more and more about in the next five years. And I think it's going to have its own me too moment in the next five to ten years, because people in my situation are heaped with a lot of shame. Well, you must have done something wrong.

Just like women, women and others, but primarily women who might've been victims of sexual assault initially in court. Well, why did you wear that short skirt? We now know better. than that. Well, we need to do better because we can identify when this is alienation, meaning another parent influenced a child to reject the other parent, versus estrangement, which is different.

If a child has been abused or severely neglected by a parent, and they decide to put some distance between them and that parent, no one's going to argue that child's right to do that. And that's called estrangement. That's when the child decides for their wellbeing. That's what they want to do.

Alienation is not a child's decision. It is under the influence and coercion and manipulation of somebody else. Jacqueline, thank you for sharing that story. For people listening to and watching this video interview, what would you say that you wish that you knew back then that you know now that would have maybe Saved some of the distress that you encountered, maybe helped to sort of come to a resolution of some kind sooner.

Was there anything that you wished you'd known back then? Oh boy, Lianne, so much. Yes. And I think two things that jumped to mind, first of all, are just that this exists, that it's a thing. So when you know that it's a thing and you know the term and you go look it up and you read, for example, that there are 17 classic behaviors.

that are in alienation. Things like I said, the, the bad mouthing, asking the child to keep secrets from the other parent, asking the child to spy on the other parent, resisting contact. You know, the other parent's supposed to have their access, but if, if, you know, the alienating parent says, well, they don't want to go with you, or they're not available, or you're late, so you can't go.

These are all alienating behaviors. I wish I had known those. Because I could have lined up all 17. So I would have known what I'm dealing with. And there would be a lot less mystery. The other thing I wish I had known is that the only way to deal with this is in a case of a tug of war. Only thing you can do as the other parent is rock the boat.

Don't engage. Don't engage with the other parent. If you often get a mental health professional, first of all, and You asked me if I wish I know. They often don't know about alienation and that will 100 percent make matters worse. So you have to find someone who knows what they're dealing with. I have consulted with many mental health people.

Professionals now who said, I didn't know that now that you've explained it to me. I realize now there are so many clients in my past who were probably dealing with that. And I didn't know that. So things like recommending family therapy for a family in this dynamic is actually not a good idea because what's going to end up happening is you've got the alienating parent and the child who's aligned with them on one side, right?

And then you've got the so called targeted parent, or the victim parent, let's say. So you've got two against one. So now the therapist who doesn't know what they're dealing with is going to say, Okay, well, what can you do to be nicer to that child? What can you do? So the onus is going to be on and you're like, I don't know what I've done.

Oh, well, she's not acknowledging her problems. And the child is kind of caught in the middle and doesn't really know what to think. So it's really important that you get therapy from someone who knows what they're talking about. And when I say dropping the rope, it means don't get triggered by those alienating behaviors, because they're going to do them.

And the whole point is, to make you crazy, to make you look crazy. And then they can stand back and go, I told you this is a little crazy, now you know I am divorcing her. But when all these lies are being told around, about you, you go to see someone in the community to try and get them, their help, or someone who you thought was a friend, and now they're parroting the accusations they heard from the other parent.

Yeah, it's pretty crazy making. It is very, you feel really alone. So I said, having been a journalist, I said, when this started happening and I started figuring out what's going on, like this stuff, alienation perpetuates because of ignorance, our collective ignorance. We have to change that for the sake of children, for the sake of these parents.

It's, you know, so I, I, I lost my career, lost a good income, lost the joy of parenting. I have other children I need to parent, and I'm, at the mercy of all kinds of social institutions that also don't know what I'm talking about. You're left dangling in the wind. It's really dangerous, and many parents, don't manage to recover.

I had other supports. I had a supportive family. I had friends who know me and didn't fall for all of this. But if you don't, you are really in a very, very difficult place and the whole time you're missing your child and you're worried about your child. And your child is suffering. They're missing, what in most cases, the one healthy parent they had.

Scientific studies say that about 10 percent of the population has a, either a personality disorder, a narcissistic personality disorder, or the other personality disorder is about 10%. And that's also roughly the percentage of divorce cases that are considered high conflict. The ones where they're always going back to court, where they're always, clogging up the court system, where they're always accusing.

There's a parallel thing going on there. So another advantage of identifying these cases early, is I think we should get them out of the family court system that is clogging the courts. 10 percent of cases taking up 95 percent of resources to get nothing in the end. I want a full custody of all my children.

That didn't change anything, and I'm not alone. Because then you go back and the judge says, well, what do you want me to do? They're 14. They can decide what they want. Okay. So why am I here? So judges are getting better. I went through this in the early two thousands. Judges are starting to hear about it more and more lawyers.

We've got a lot of work to do there. There's a real financial incentive with some, not all, but with some to keep cases rolling. And these cases will happily, keep rolling for one of the parents who just wants to be very antagonistic. So, yeah, I would say to parents who might be going through this, inform yourself and then drop the rope.

Don't get triggered by them because this is their modus operandi, this is what they want you to do. Don't fall into the potholes that they're putting all in front of you and go get some informed help. And when we calm down as parents, when we're not triggered, when we're not panicked. And when we're relaxed and we know what's going on, then we can start approaching our children and trying to communicate with them, understanding that they, too, are victims.

Now, one thing I never did, but I hear from a lot of parents, And this is another super important message to send to them. Do not ask or require or expect an alienated child to apologize to you for how they've been treating you. They're going to feel bad enough anyway, but they too have been abused. It is now accepted in the psychological literature and the scientific literature that this is Child abuse.

It is child psychological abuse. So to expect a child to apologize for having been abused is ridiculous. And the fact is that, and you do a parenting podcast so you know this just as well as anybody, the dynamic between a parent and the child is that the onus is on the parent to get it right, not the child.

The parent is responsible for that relationship, not the child. So it is up to you as the parent to keep reaching out with love, without expectation, without any guilt trips. And I promise you, that child is in need of a loving parent whose love is unconditional. And the other parent, it's, it could take a year, it could take a few years, and often depending on the age of the child.

But eventually they're going to see that one parent's love is very conditional. You do what I want. You obey. I'll give you whatever you want. You disobey, I'm going to explode and all the rest and threats. Versus the other parent whose love must be unconditional. And I reconnected with my kids because I, Had the benefit of parents who would love me unconditionally.

So I know what I needed to do. I had experienced it That's what i'd always given my kids. That's the attachment that they had Fortunately for us but to reach out unconditionally And just say and don't even bring everything up to this day. I have not had a conversation with them about alienation That's not a role for them, but prior to doing this work, and it's been 10 years now that we've been solidly reconnected, and I wouldn't dream of doing this until I knew our relationship was rock solid, because that's my first priority, of course.

But before doing this work, I spoke to them and I said, look, I'm feeling compelled. I need to do this. And they knowing me from the before times when I was a go getter TV reporter who was always trying to right wrongs and all this stuff. They were like, Oh, that is exactly what you need to do, mom. We're behind you a hundred percent.

But that's because I didn't require them to explain themselves, to apologize for their behavior. You need to be the parent who loves them. And unfortunately, we have to absorb a certain amount of abuse. Unfortunately, because they're being, you know, they're being manipulated to do that. So try to see the child that you knew before, you know, not the one that you're seeing now who's hurting.

Jacqueline, it strikes me that for people who may be hearing about this for the first time or maybe Even experiencing it at some level, it can be challenging, can it not, to differentiate between a child's genuine rejection of a parent, that can happen for a number of reasons, versus the effects of manipulation, by another parent that would be then defined as parental alienation.

So how does one discern what's happening? Great question, Lianne. Um, so in the, in the, the world of parental alienation, they talk about the five factor model. So there are five things to look for. The first one is that, you know, the child is refusing contact. That's a bit obvious, but that's a first step.

aspect of the five factors. The second one is that the child and the parent used to have a positive relationship. Okay, no parent is going to say that they have a, well, I'm not going to say, but you know, it doesn't have to be perfect. We all have struggles in parenting, but that we had a positive relationship before and then suddenly something changed it.

Um, there's also no indication that there was abuse or severe neglect. So look at that. Um, then you have to look at the behaviors of the alienating parents. So I went through some of them before. Are those present, those 17 alienating behaviors? And then you want to look for, are there any of the eight recognized behaviors in a child?

So a child who's been alienated, they will, there's a couple of really good hallmarks here, a couple of really good red flags. A child who has been abused, who has been found to be severely neglected, you know, for decades, it's been shown that those children tend to still want a relationship with that abusive parent.

It's, it's partly what they call the Stockholm Syndrome. They want, they, they wish they could foster, kids in foster care often wish they could go home. They try to minimize the abuse. In alienation, the child will say, point blank, there was never anything good with that parent. It's black and it's white. I don't want to see them ever again, ever.

That's a big red flag because a child who has a legitimate reason to want to put up a wall isn't so black and white. Um, so those are, those are some of the, the ways that you can, that you can tell. And another important way is a child that's been abused. Or neglected, severely neglected, and put some distance between them and that parent.

They typically do not reject that parent's extended family. So the aunts, the uncles, the grandparents. In alienation, it's classic. The parent who gets alienated, off goes the whole family. So the grandparents are gone. The aunts and uncles, the cousins, they just don't see them anymore. And that's another red flag that you can look for.

So then. What steps can a parent who fears that they may be being alienated actually take to sort of try to maintain some kind of connection with their children while they fear that they might be a victim of parental alienation, like during that time? Well, there's two things. There's what you do with the child, and what do you do with everybody else?

So with the child, the most important thing to do. is to be available and listen and listen and listen and pretty much only listen. Don't quiz. Don't ask a bunch of questions. Inform yourself so that because you have to start parenting completely differently. You know, I started because I didn't know what was going on.

Why are you being rude? So I'm parenting like I would normally like I don't accept that kind of behavior, you know But it only emboldens them and then they would repeat it and it would go on and on So inform yourself Not in front of your child Never use the term parental alienation with your child ever.

It just is going to backfire on you. Try to get help right away, talk to a mental health professional who understands alienation, as well as a lawyer, get a legal consult right away. I've read extensively because before I wanted to talk to parents about this, I really did not want to give people bad advice.

And it's just, it's accepted generally now that it's a good idea to get a legal consultation as soon as possible right away. It doesn't mean you're hiring a lawyer and you're going that route. That's another step. But right away, let a lawyer look at, given what you've got, Are there some things we can do to contain the behavior of the other parents?

Difficult to do, and maybe in a second we'll talk about some changes in Canadian legislation that we'd like to see to help with that. But, in terms of your child, Don't get triggered by their behavior. Ask them because your child is in conflict right now. They're in deep conflict. One parent is requiring of them and putting pressure.

So you need to be the parent who doesn't require anything of them and is not putting pressure but is available to them to hear See what's going on. Maybe look at what's going on in their life. Is everything okay at school? How are you feeling? Is the divorce? You know Ask them questions that are open ended, but just listen, and go where the conversation, where they take you.

If your child's already alienated from you, one thing that I was very clear on, that I always did, some parents find difficult, I know instinctively it's what you have to do, and I believe this very strongly, you do everything you can to maintain regular contact. Now, regular isn't, texting them every day.

That's too much. Once a week, if you got a way to send them a message, do it. What's in the message? Only positive and only about the child. It's not about you and it's not about suffering. Because your child, unfortunately, again, it's back to that dynamic. You're the parent, they're the child. Them feeling sorry for you is not going to end the alienation.

It's actually only going to feed the narrative of the alienator. Look what a loser that parent is. Look how weak she is. So you're only asking to the child. How are you? What's new? I heard about this. Did you end up getting that follow up on the conversation if you can birthdays Try not to miss a birthday and if you need to get Help from others around you who know where the child lives because that often is a hard thing People don't know where their children are.

It's heartbreaking So you try your best your best To find out where they are drop off a gift no expectations because the child needs to know two things one that you always Love them and two that you never blame them or hold them Responsible for what's happened. And if you can maintain those two things I believe extremely strongly that you can turn this around but prepare yourself because It it's it's not easy Probably going to take months, if not years.

And if you'd told me that at the beginning, you know, I couldn't have imagined it. And indeed, that's what happened. Jacqueline, we only have a few minutes left, but I did want to ask you, we live in a time now where coercive control, intimate partner violence, high conflict divorces, these are all terms that are out there, in the societal discourse.

People are, More or less aware of them. You went through this more than 20 years ago when these terms weren't as, talked about as they are now. What do you believe needs to be done next? Or what needs to happen in the legal sphere in particular and the mental health sphere in order to better support Parents and families who may be experiencing this.

Right now, Bill C 332 is passed the House, it's in the Canadian Senate, and it's going to be read. And what that is, it's about inserting the concept of coercive control of an intimate partner into the criminal code. And what we'd like to see is that that is extended so that it's not just for the intimate partner, but it also includes controlling or attempting to control, marginalizing, or interfering.

With parenting time as well as taking advantage of the vulnerability of a child or a young person by turning that child against the parent by use of coercive control behaviors. That will cause a child to disrespect, hate, fear, or unjustifiably resist or refuse contact with that parent. So we need to add that to the bill.

That would help a lot because if that had In the legislation, the many times that he brought me to court, I could have pointed to that, and I had evidence of that, so that's very important. I believe that we need to understand that parental alienation does exist. We need to get people aware of it in general, so that we all don't fall into the trap of supporting the wrong side.

We need to get research to quantify the cost to society of this. So it's hard to know what something is when a lot of people don't know that that's what they're living in. So getting numbers about this has been difficult, but not impossible. It's estimated that about 4 million children in the U S are alienated from a parent.

Comparable populations we say roughly 400 000 canadian children That's the children that doesn't include the parents who are walking around with their hearts just ripped apart losing their careers the cost in um Social supports that are that are needed that they're not getting there's a massive cost to this And the children will go on and keep the the mental abuse The the the impact for the rest of their lives.

It's going to impact how they have other relationships. It's also been found to have a generational component. So, that's what we need. We need changes in the law and we need much more public awareness so that we all can identify it. And support these parents and children much sooner. You took the light, the nightmare that you lived through and somehow were able to channel it into a podcast, into helping other parents, into educating other families.

When you look back on it, Jacqueline, what do you think got you through your own situation? I knew I had to, for the wellbeing of my children. I knew that I could not take myself out of this world. What impact would that have on them? I couldn't do that. I had to fight for my children who were gone from me for a while.

It was, that's the unconditional love. I believe, I think, Unconditional love is the most powerful force in the universe. We know we'll walk through walls for these kids. Powerful. That's what did it for them. All of it for them. And for me, you know, like as a mother, that's my job, that's my role. It's my calling.

And today it's amazing. They're grateful. I have a great relationship with some of them have kids now. And I'm getting that love back that I missed the years that I missed through the grandchildren. It's incredible. Jacqueline Rourke, parental alienation expert and mother of three.

We thank you so much for your time and for sharing your story with us today. Thanks so much, Lianne. I really appreciate the opportunity. Thank you. To learn more about today's podcast guest and topic, as well as other parenting themes, visit whereparentstalk. com.