The campaign to sway public opinion on the problem of manipulation and triangulation of children in divorce and separation continues this week, with the release by academic researchers from the USA and UK, of an unashamedly gendered framework with a new label for what is the very old problem popularly referred to as parental alienation. Paradoxically, the authors of this new label have spent a long time working to undermine the label and theory of parental alienation, but now introduce us to a concept which they call Child and Mother Sabotage (CAMS), which they say describes the dynamics which cause a child to reject a mother and align to an abusive father. This new label,which appears to be an attempt to address a yawning gap in this group’s thinking, is said to describe why some children reject their mothers outright and align strongly with their fathers. Presumably this label is also designed to explain why some children reject their fathers and align to their mothers, the common denominator being that fathers in both instances are claimed by this group to be abusive. The problem this group have however, is that the defensive strategies in the child, which they claim are indicators of children being aligned to an abusive father, are the same defensive strategies seen in children who are aligned to a mother.

What’s in a Name?

I have no issue at all with people calling this well known phenomenon anything they like. We can call it parental alienation, resist/refuse dynamics, child alienation, the alienated child, attachment based parental alienation, child and father sabotage, child and mother sabotage, family relationship terrorism, domestic abuse by proxy. Whatever we call it however, the underlying dynamics which cause a child to align and reject in this way are the same, they are a relational trauma which causes disorganised attachment in the child due to the onset of infantile defences. In outlining the indicators of CAMS in the child’s behaviours as defensive strategies, this group, perhaps unknowingly, concur with the views of those who work with children who align and reject, that the child’s behaviours are the core indicators of what is called the defence of ‘Identification with the Aggressor‘ in the psychoanalytic literature.

What the authors of CAMS are asking professionals to consider in their new framework, is that when a child shows a set of these defensive indicators, further investigation is necessary to understand how the child is being controlled. As the indicators for CAMS are the same in a child who is aligned to a father as in a child who is aligned to a mother however, the authors, again perhaps unknowingly, are simply falling in line with the protocols of those of us who already undertake further investigation in situations where children show these defensive strategies. CAMS therefore, joins the list of labels to describe the underlying dynamics of children who reject a parent and align with the other in divorce and separation due to the control behaviours of the parent to whom the child is aligned. The only difference being that CAMS is designed through a gendered ideological lens making it suitable for identifying where mothers are being rejected by children due to the actions of abusive fathers but not suitable for treatment purposes.

Whilst CAMS is said to be gender specific in that it only relates to the behaviours of children who are aligned to their abusive fathers, the claims used to support CAMS are not gender specific and also explain extremely well, the behaviour of children who align with their mothers against their father.

Taken from the article introducing the new term, the authors state the following –

‘Post-separation, some children may seem to take the side of the abuser. If there is a backdrop of family violence, this behaviour cannot be taken at face value.  Rather, it should be explored for whether it is a continuation of a child’s defence and survival strategy used during abuse, i.e.

● Children facing abuse from a parent are less likely than an adult to be able to “fight” or “flee”. They are more likely to “freeze”,  “submit” and “trauma bond” or develop a coerced trauma attachment to the abuser to try to keep safe and avoid harm (Bancroft, 2022a; 2022b; Lahav et al., 2019; Santos et al. 2023).’

From ‘Parental Alienation’ to [Abusers’] Child and Mother Sabotage (CAMS) as a preferable term for how perpetrator fathers intentionally sabotage the child-mother connection
Dalgarno, E., Meier, J., Ayeb-Karlsson, S., Pollack, D. and Katz, E.

Saying that a child’s behaviour cannot be taken at face value, is simply another way of saying that the wishes and feelings of children who reject a parent and in circumstances where they are strongly aligned to the other and where there is evidence of patterns of behaviour which give rise for concern that control is in play, cannot be safely relied upon. Which is exactly what those of us who do this work have been saying for many years but which this group of researchers have hitherto been vehemently opposed to.

As I wrote in December 2022 –

“In their article entitled Fear in Love – Attachment, Abuse and the Developing Brain, Sullivan and Norton Lasley, describe their work which demonstrates why children remain attached to abusive caregivers. Their work describes the epigenetic changes to the brains of the descendents of abuse victims, explaining why the trauma of a child’s alignment and rejection is transgenerational.”

The brains of children who suffer neglect or abuse—about 10 out of every 1,000 children in the United States in 2008¹—also develop in a way that reflects the child’s experiences. And the effects of early abuse can be notoriously difficult to detect. Contrary to commonly held beliefs, it is difficult to identify an abused child unless there are obvious signs, such as bruises or injuries. The child’s behavior usually provides few clues—in fact, when social workers, doctors, or police officers attempt to rescue a child from an abusive situation, the child will often lie to protect the parents.Regina Sullivan, Ph.D.,, Elizabeth Norton Lasley“

Karen Woodall.blog – December 2022

Children’s alignment behaviour in divorce and separation is defensive in nature, (also acknowledged in CAMS), but it is not confined to children’s experiences of their abusive fathers. The same behaviours seen in children who are aligning to abusive fathers, are seen in children who are aligning to abusive mothers, who also use coercive strategies to control their children as shown in recent UK case law Re A& B Children – Neutral Citation Number: [2023] EWHC 1864 (Fam) Therefore, where we see those defensive strategies in children which cause alignment with one parent and rejection of the other, it is a sign that there are behaviours in the parent to whom the child is aligned, which are placing pressure on the child. Those behaviours may be conscious or unconscious but they are highly likely to be harmful.

It would appear then that finally there is some convergence about the reliability of children’s wishes and feelings in circumstances where they are being controlled by abusive parents and that professionals should take account of the child’s defensive strategies to determine this. As someone who has been treating the problem of children’s alignment with abusive fathers for some time now, and in the light of the fact that CAMS does not provide any route to treatment of the problem of children’s alignment with abusive fathers, I would like to add to the development of the new term CAMS by offering some guidance on the way in which children who reject their mothers, whose behaviours we agree, cannot be taken at face value and whose wishes and feelings cannot be relied upon due to defensive strategies, are treated clinically.

Defences Serve a Purpose

The new term CAMS has been developed through a gendered ideological lens, meaning that there is little understanding in the this framework about the way in which defences actually operate in children, I hope therefore that my explanation of how such defences are treated clinically might be useful.

Defences serve a purpose, they protect us from dissociation in circumstances where we may become overwhelmed, for example by being coerced into rejecting a loved parent or by being trapped in a double bind by a parent we are frightened of. Removing such defences in a child who is utterly dependent upon a frightening caregiver, is both unethical and impossible without restructuring the power dynamics which hold that child in the position of trauma bonded alignment. Meaning that the way that a child’s defences in such circumstances will drop, leading to the child unblocking the incoming care of a rejected parent they love underneath their trauma bonded presentation, (in the case of CAMS, their rejected mother), is to remove the child from the frightening, coercive parent – aka residence transfer either directly to the healthy parent or via a foster care placement which is used as a ‘stepping stone’. The term residence transfer, which has been so attacked by these researchers, is in reality, removal from the abusive parent and it is this structural intervention which protects the child from the abuser first, allowing attachment trauma treatments to be delivered when the child is in proximity to the rejected parent (in the case of CAMS this being the formerly rejected mother).

Asking a child to re-enter into a relationship with their mother whilst they are trauma bonded to an abusive father, is, as I said earlier both unethical and re-traumatising. Such behaviour in children is tenacious (because defences are there for a reason) and will not drop until the child feels completely safe. Until the child feels completely safe, they may act out the inculcated trauma bond with the abusive parent, which is why children run away or resist the rejected parent they are moved to live with.

A good example of how far children who are trauma bonded will go to stay faithful to an abusive father is the case of Maya and Sebastian, two children whose ongoing trauma bond to their father and corresponding rejection of their mother, has been displayed across the internet by opponents of the label parental alienation and whose story is shown on the Website of the very group who has introduced us to the new term CAMS as an example of how badly children are treated when they are removed from what this research group call the ‘safe parent’ (who is in actual fact found to be an abusive father), to the rejected parent.

In my view, Maya and Sebastian’s behaviour in acting out the trauma bond to the father the Court found to be abusive, is the perfect example of the how a child behaves when they are suffering from from Child and Mother Sabotage (CAMS) and it is a real shame (as well as worrying), that these researchers cannot spot the problem they have devised a name for, even when it is staring them right in the face. Which is a clear evidence for why psychology not ideology is the correct framework for understanding and treating this problem.

Whatever we call it, the problem is the same

Whatever we call the problem of children’s alignment with one parent and rejection of the other, the problem remains the same, it is a relational trauma which arises in divorce and separation in children who have a latent vulnerability and it causes defensive psychological splitting in the child due to –

1. Patterns of power and control which have been present in the relationship prior to the family breakdown.
2. Often transgenerational patterns of unresolved trauma in one (sometimes both parents).
3. Personality profiles, usually in one parent, which causes unpredictability in behaviours.
4. Infantile defences which are normalised (denial, splitting and projection).
5. A child with a latent vulnerability to disorganised attachment strategies.
6. All of the above leading to boundary violations and cross generational coalitions between parent and child which triangulates the child into the adult relationship breakdown.

The importance of working with the problem from the perspective of family relational trauma, is that it enables the practitioners to –

1. Understand what they are working with
2. Protect the child first.
3. Map the patterns in the family system.
4. Provide structural intervention which changes the pressure points on the child and identifies who is causing harm.
5. Scaffold therapeutic work which provides protection for the child whilst addressing the unresolved trauma in the family system.

Psychology not Ideology

The problem of children’s alignment and rejection is based in psychological relationship trauma which means that it requires psychological understanding and clinical approaches to treatment not ideological academic assertion. Whilst the gendered framework may have some use in helping feminists to address the yawning gap in their hitherto blanking out of the experience of rejected mothers, it does nothing to add to treatment of the problem or resolution of the plight of children like Maya and Sebastian, who in my view, are suffering from Child and Mother Sabotage (aka alienation from their mother due to the actions of an abusive father) and who are showing all of the defensive strategies which this research group claim are evidence of this new term.

This is why psychology in the hands of those who understand this problem and treat it successful, not gendered ideology in the hands of academic researchers, is the only framework of understanding which delivers a proper response to the harm being caused to children, which if we use its proper name, is emotional and psychological child abuse.

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Holding up a Healthy Mirror: Becoming a Therapeutic Parent to Alienated Children

31st October/1st November/2nd November/3rd November 2023 – 9am to 11am UK Time (Suitable for Australia / New Zealand / Hong Kong and UK/Europe Time Zones.

About this course:

Children who hyper align with a parent and reject the other in divorce and separation are usually in the age group 8-14 years. This is because this age group is in a stage in which their sense of self and personality is under development and the ego is not strong enough to regulate the anxieties which are generated by the experience of attachment disruption in family separation.

What we know about children who experience these difficulties, is that they can be helped when one of their parents is able to understand their experience and in response, hold up a healthy mirror. When the holding of this mirror is consistent, the child who has suffered from induced psychological splitting which is demonstrated by aligning themselves with one parent and rejecting the other, can experience an integrated sense of self which assists in recovery.

In order to hold up a healthy mirror, the parent in the rejected position must first address the reactive splitting that they are likely to have suffered. Reactive splitting, which occurs when the child rejects, (often accompanied by false allegations), can cause a parent to feel natural reactions such as anger, bewilderment and shame. These feelings, which are normal in the circumstances, can become blocks and barriers to the child’s recovery as the parent refutes the allegations and shows the child their reactive feelings. In these circumstances, the child withdraws further, struggling with their own guilt and shame and begins to split off their feelings further.

Restoring health to rejected parents begins with an understanding of what has happened internally and how that has become entangled with the child’s own splitting reactions. When parents are able to map this splitting across the family system, their own reactive splitting can integrate and they can begin the work of developing the healthy mirror needed by the child.

Parents who have healed reactive splitting can then learn to apply the skills of therapeutic parenting. This is an approach to parenting children who are suffering from attachment disorder due to being emotionally and psychologically harmed. Alienated children with therapeutic parents, are shown in evaluation, to be able to recover quickly from the underlying harms which have caused their rejecting behaviours.

On this course you will learn:

• What psychological splitting is, how it occurs and why
• How to identify your own reactive splitting
• How to integrate split thinking in a fractured landscape
• How to build integrated thinking strategies
• What to embrace and what to avoid when rebuilding health in the face of alienation
• How to build the healthy mirror your child needs
• Mentalisation strategies for mirroring health
• The power and importance of consistent mirroring
• How other parents have used integrated mirroring to bring their children back to health
• Therapeutic parenting – an integrated skills set
• Building a consistent communications strategy for recovering your children
• Working with the counter intuitive approach necessary to enable alienated children to withdraw their projections
• Staying healthy amidst the chaos caused by psychological splitting

Based upon successful work with many families around the world, Karen Woodall will share with you the deep knowledge of how to recover children from the nightmare landscape of psychological splitting. Karen has helped families to rebuild health and wellbeing with children of all ages and has developed a structural approach to working with alienation which is easily translated into strategies which can be used by parents.

‘I have worked with Karen Woodall for two years now and both of my children are back in our lives and thriving. One of my children was alienated from me for ten years and she is clearly suffering the impact of that. With Karen’s guidance, I am working to address her attachment difficulties, which I now understand and recognise. Karen’s guidance works, it helps children to come home and then heal. It has been invaluable to me to do this work and understand and feel skilled as parent again.’

Emma, Mum to two children aged 16 and 19.

‘My children are both in their thirties and I despaired of ever seeing them again. I have worked with Karen for six months and am delighted to say that I seeing them both regularly now. Working with therapeutic parenting skills, I have begun to understand how they have been affected and I can help them with confidence and see the difference it makes. I am recovering a sense that I can do something about this nightmare and that makes all the difference in my life’

Jack. Dad to two adult children aged 32 and 37.

Purchase of tickets to this course offers access to the recordings by all participants for up to one month.

BOOK HERE

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