Alienation in children is a journey not an event, it is a distinct reaction in the child which changes over time and as such, when observed close up, it can be divided into distinct stages. From a clinical perspective, each of these stages has psychological relevance to the dynamics around the child, from a parenting perspective, each stage indicates what is and what is not possible in terms of your child being able to relate to you. Understanding this issue as a journey and not an event and withdrawing your focus from what the other parent is doing to what is happening for the child, empowers you to understand what is possible in terms of how to respond to the child’s changing needs over time. This is because what the child is experiencing is disorganised attachment in response to the pressure upon them in the family system, as these disorganised behavioural responses escalate, the circle of reciprocity between you and your child begins to shut down, leaving you bewildered and often angry and upset and the child lost in a world of defensive reactions.

Choosing to put your focus on what works rather than what is not working, changes your perspective of who you are in your child’s life and when you begin to feel the shifts in your child’s responding as reciprocity begins to circle between you again, you will be motivated to use therapeutic parenting more. As a psychotherapist, finding that therapeutic parenting matches the needs of alienated children was like finding the key to a door that I didn’t know existed. Using therapeutic parenting as an approach in my work with alienated children removed from abusive parents and transferred to live with the parent they had been rejecting was one thing, but as soon as I began to train parents in the rejected position to understand and use these skills alongside me, I knew that we finally have the answer to healing the harms these children have suffered.

This psychological problem for some children of divorce and separation, is one which has been weaponised by campaigners to such a degree that the child’s experience is currently completely lost in a set of manufactured controversies which are rooted in parental rights arguments. The fight over whether the issue even exists as a problem for children, has become mired in false claims, personal and professional attacks on anyone who does this work and vicious campaigns designed to obscure the reality of what is happening to children’s relational health in divorce and separation.

Keeping the focus on the child, which is what therapeutic parenting does, begins with the ability to work from an anchored position, a place where the you understand the psychology of the child’s behaviours so deeply that nothing surprises you and you are always prepared. This is a place that Victor Frankl calls between stimulus and response, it is a place where you can think ahead, manage your emotions and plan your responses.

“Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.”

Victor Frankl

As a clinician subjected to repeated personal and professional attack, I work in the same world of projections that parents in the rejected position inhabit. As such I have learned to identify that attacks on my work, most often come at a time when I am challenging someone’s control over something. For example, media attacks often come when I am about to present evidence of alienation of children, the purpose of the attack being to try and shame me into silence. This is a reflection of what happens between parents, when a controlling and abusing parent feels that control is being removed from them, or their power is somehow being challenged. Learning how to identify projections and recognise that a child’s behaviour is changing because the controlling parent is feeling challenged, enables the healthy therapeutic parent to recognise the patterns in what have previously felt like mysterious shifts in the child’s behaviours. When you begin to see the patterns, that mystery is solved and you can begin to predict what the child will do and link that back to what is going on in the behaviour of the influencing parent. When you are able to do this, you will no longer feel ambushed by attack and shifts in the child’s behaviours, when you no longer feel ambused you will grow in confidence and find a greater degree of stability due to your depth understanding of what is really going on.

From onset to resolution the journey of the alienated child can be identified in the psychological literature and understood by the parent in the rejected postion. As someone who has worked with alienated children for over fifteen years now, I have come to recognise distinct stages in the child’s journey from onset to resolution. The following table gives you a short guide to those identifiable stages and how they are recognised psychologically.

In each of these stages there are particular markers of behaviour which show what the child is experiencing and how you can respond. For therapists working with alienated children, being able to recognise these stages enables you to work with the child in ways which are focused on what the child is really in need of, instead of what the child’s projections make you believe they need. For example, a child in stage 1, is not in need of someone to keep the rejected parent at bay or fix the rejected parent, they are in need of someone to provide structural support so that the child feels that there is someone capable of stabilising an unpredictable caregiver. A child in stage 4, who may be an older child or a young adult, will need someone to help the parent they are reconnecting with, to understand why their behaviours are sometimes unpredictable and reminiscent of the early stage of alienation. For parents, understanding stages and what can be done in each stage, brings both relief from self blame and shame, deeper understanding of their own position in this family attachment trauma and what they can and cannot do and when to act and not to act.

Demystifying the journey of the alienated child so that there is a greater understanding, empathy and support to help them heal from this harm, is what the Lighthouse Project at the Family Separation Clinic is all about. Through this work we are building a community of hope, help and healing, for alienated children and their families all around the world. Subscribe to our Therapeutic Parenting Newsletter below or come and join us at one of our upcoming events soon.