Archive for the ‘Parental Alienation Syndrome’ Category

PAS

Children should be seen and not hurt

The Parental Alienation Syndrome, so named by Dr. Richard Gardner, is a distinctive family response to divorce in which the child becomes aligned with one parent and preoccupied with unjustified and/or exaggerated denigration of the other, target parent. In severe cases, the child’s once love-bonded relationship with rejected/target parent is destroyed

Effects of PAS on Child and Target Parent

The effects of PAS on children and the target parent can be classified as emotional/psychological abuse.

For the children, unlike the target parent, they are totally helpless to help themselves. They can only rely on the adults handling their case to release them from this nightmare. If intervention does not come, the child is left to grow up with dysfunctional thoughts. Not only may the child never regain a positive relationship with the target parent but his/her own thought processes have been interrupted and coerced into unhealthy patterns. As the pattern of physical abuse is widely accepted; that the pattern of behavior can not stop until the person makes a conscious choice, so to we will find the pattern of emotional/psychological abuse passed down from generation to generation.

Therapy for children in the severe category is often not possible while they are still living in the (brainwasher’s) home. “There is a sick psychological bond between the children and the mother (brainwashing parent) that is not going to be changed by therapy as long as they remain in her home.”¹⁾

We have had the opportunity to interview hundreds of children after environmental change has taken place, and we can quote one child as a fair summary of the others²⁾:

I would never have made the change to spend more time with my mother if the court didn’t make it happen and you didn’t suggest it. Now that I have, I’ve gotten to know my mother. She’s a nicer person than I ever believed, and I realize that I could have grown up without ever knowing her and what she believes about life. It’s been real important, and I want to thank you (child extends hand to shake). I have also learned that I don’t know everything and I have to be real careful about making closed opinions in the future.

(This commentary was made by a seventeen-year-old child after approximately one year of reconciliation with his mother.)

As for the target parent that has literally lost their children to the severe case of PAS, their children have died. The target parent grieves. Without the intervention of the court system the target parent has no choice but to continue to love their children from a distance. Target parents parallel their grief to that of a death of a child. The only hope for the target parent is that someday someone will be able to reach their child and explain the insanity that has happened and that the child will be willing to start a relationship with their lost parent.

Brainwashing, programming, manipulation, whatever term you want to call it, is destructive to the child and target parent. Not one of these individuals will lead a healthy normal life unless the abuse is stopped.