How to Tell Children You’re Getting Divorced

By David W. McMillan, Ph.D.

Qualifiers:

The most important caution is not to speak to them about your marital struggles. Don’t confide in them. Don’t tell them you are angry or hurt by your spouse. Don’t tattle on your spouse and tell your children that your mate has done you wrong.

A second thing to remember is the Bible verse, “Honor your Father and your Mother… so you can live long and life will go well with you.” (My translation of Deuteronomy 5:16).

This is your child’s job description. In conflicts between parents, children should remain neutral. They should do everything they can to avoid taking sides. Though having two parents nurture and support children is not essential, it is definitely best for them.

Children come into the world wanting to split their parents, push one away and have the other parent (usually the mother) to themselves. It is the parents’ job not to let that happen. This is why parents draw a line between adult business and children’s business. Your finances are none of your children’s businesses. Your sex life is none of your children’s business. Your vacation plans should not be shared with your children until both parents have agreed on them.

And of course, as mentioned above, your quarrels are adult-only business.

Some children are eager to be part of adult discussions. They seen power in family business. These children are eager to cast the deciding vote between two disagreeing parents. They would love to be privy to the details of parent conflicts so they might assume the role of parent to their fighting childish parents. They are eager to take one side (usually the favored parent’s side) against the other parent. Boys often want to protect mother against their mean old father and replace him as the main man in their mother’s life. Girls are often happy to take their father’s part and might see their mother as rejecting and cold to their beloved father and ally with him becoming his main feminine support.

Some children are wise enough to not want to know details of parental conflicts and they avoid having opinions or judgments in adult matters. These children fair best in a divorce.

Divorcing parents should do everything they can to protect their children’s neutrality. The best protection from divorce fallout that you, as parents can give your children is a firm and opaque boundary between their adult intimacy issues and adult conflicts and the children’s awareness so that your children know nothing about their parent’s relationship struggles.

When to Tell:

Children are often blindly wrapped up in their own lives with their friends and in their own social struggles. They can easily not notice their parents’ moods. They often take for granted that they are loved and supported by their parents and they may have a naive faith in the stability of their parents’ marriage. 

So often they don’t suspect a divorce is imminent. The longer they don’t suspect, the better. If you can wait until you have clear plans for where they will be living and the parenting schedule, then that is the best time to tell them about the divorce.

Often the legal process won’t allow for that and telling them earlier is necessary because it will become obvious. And you want to tell them and prepare them for their new roles in a blended family before the divorce process creates bad habits.

The Truth:

Some parents feel that they must tell their children “The Truth.” Those parents can’t possibly tell “The Truth” because they know only one side of the truth. They will hide behind their righteous judgment of the truth and use the phrase, “The Truth,” as an excuse to bludgeon their mate with their accusations and to demand the loyalty of their children against their target parent.

The other parent may respond with their version of “The Truth” and place the children in the middle of a loyalty battle, one parent pulling one way while the other pulls in the opposite direction.

Parent is a role, not a person.

Your job as a parent is not to be an authentic person with your children. Your job as a parent is to protect the children from the reality of your intense and often childish feelings. All parents have the job of being the audience for their children’s emotion and authenticity, to help them learn how to channel their emotional energy into constructive behavior. Parents are a version of a coach or a teacher. Children don’t need to know that their dance teacher hates her husband. Parenting is playing a role for your children. The role is to care for them, protect them and emotionally nurture them. The stage should be theirs not yours. You are to give them a safe place to be themselves and tell you their truth, not for you to capture the emotional spotlight and tell them your truth. Your job is to act as if, not to be real or honest with your children. If you are with your child in the forest and you come across a bear, do you tell your child that you just peed your pants?

The Unraveling of Parents:

When I was four years old, at lunch time (called dinner time in the South), I would sit on the front porch steps waiting for my father to turn the corner coming down our street for our noon meal. As soon as he appeared, I ran 100 MPH down the sidewalk to meet him. His arms and hands absorbed my momentum and pushed me up in to the air, into the trees, above the clouds. I knew my father loved me fiercely. He had a temper too and if someone tried to hurt me, he would get them. I knew what. And I believed he would keep me safe

My mother’s name was Elizabeth and she was more beautiful than Queen Elizabeth and knew all about how to be the perfect hostess, how to love and comfort me, manage me, my three siblings, take care of her three aunts and her parents, all of whom lived within two blocks. To me she was the most wonderful person in the world.

Young children need to believe that their parents are gods. At about the same time children begin to question Santa, the Easter Bunny and magic, they begin their years long task of discovering their parent’s flaws.

They don’t need for someone to expose their parents as frauds, less than perfect, before they have some mastery for how to understand and manage emotional and social realities for themselves.

So, it is imperative that, as you divorce, you help your children maintain the myth of the other parent. They need to believe that myth until they are strong enough to realize it’s a myth. Then, let them discover the other parent’s flaws for themselves with no help from you. They surely will.

Don’t Tell the Children Without the Other Parent Present:

It is nearly impossible, no matter how neutral one shares information about a divorce or how supportive one might be of the other parent, for your children to not take your side when the other parent is not present and you speak about the divorce. They will naturally begin their grief process with you as the only parent present, and they will gravitate to you for comfort and they will give you comfort as well.

What to Say:

It is important that both parents speak to the children. They need to hear you sing the same song together. If one parent shares the information and other parent is silent, it will create the impression that this divorce is the product of one parent’s wishes against the other. This silence by itself will begin the loyalty battle and place the children in the middle.

You might consider scripting this scene. Before you begin, imagine the room and who sits where. It would be best if the parents could sit next to one another. And even better if they could hold hands.

This would present a united front and would be an antidote to their children’s initial splitting impulses. You might place the children together on a couch, so they have a physical reminder that their best alliance is with their siblings rather than with one or the other parent.

Choose which parent will speak first. It might be best if the parent least interested in divorce speaks first. You hope your children don’t figure out who or what precipitated the divorce.

The script might go something like this:

First Parent Speaker: Children we have some sad news. Though we remain friends and we are both dedicated to you and to taking care of you, we have decided to divorce.

Second Parent Speaker: We know we are letting you down. We have failed. We broke our promise to you, to God and each other to remain married. And we are both ashamed of our failure.

First Parent: We have asked God to forgive us and we believe God has forgiven us. We are asking for your forgiveness now.

Second Parent: This is not your Mother/Father’s fault. Don’t blame them.

First Parent: This is not your Mother/Father’s fault. Don’t blame them.

Second Parent: We failed each other. We are both at fault. We have grown apart and we are going in different directions.

First Parent: The most important thing for you to know is that it is not your fault. This had nothing to do with you. You are not to blame. We are. We both are.

Second Parent: Lots of things happened since we married which neither of us handled well.

First Parent: We aren’t proud of the hurt we caused each other. And we would just as soon get this divorce over and buried in the past and forget it. And to go forward to the next chapter of our lives

Second Parent: So please don’t ask us question about what led us to this decision. It’s our business, not yours. It’s in the past, so let’s leave it there.

First Parent: And remember neither of us are proud of this story. Though we are tending our wounds now, we remember why we fell in love and I know why you love your Mother/Father.

Second Parent: And I understand why you love your Mother/Father. And we are grateful to each other for you.

First Parent: And we are going to be on the same team raising you.

Second Parent: When you are in trouble with your Mom/Dad you are in trouble with me.

First Parent: Yes, when you are in trouble with your Mom/Dad you are in trouble with me too.

Second Parent: We both love you.

First Parent: The most important thing you can do is to stay focused on your life. Please don’t get distracted by us.

Second Parent: We will both be grieving in our own way. And we will both be excited about our new opportunities. But these won’t distract us from our job as parents, which is to keep you children on track doing what God meant for you to do.

First Parent: And remember your job is to love your Mom/Dad.

Second Parent: And your job is to love your Mom/Dad. And if we hear you throwing shade on the other parent, you will be in trouble with us.

If you have the details of the parenting plan, share them now. The sooner the children know what to expect of you and the future, the easier will be their adjustment to their new circumstances.  

Who Decides:

First Parent: The decision of where you will live and how much time you will spend with each parent is not your decision to make. It is ours and perhaps a judge’s decision. (It is better if you two can agree.)

Second Parent: However, neither of us want to be an impediment to you when you wish to see the other parent. If you wish to see the other parent, when it is not their parenting time, simply ask the on-duty parent and we’ll make that happen. But you must ask. The parent with the designated parenting time is always the in-charge parent.

First Parent: That said, we will be cooperating together. Sometimes, when one of us is out of town, for example, you might stay with the other parent. We will work all that out. You will know the plan and what to expect, except, on rare occasions when some surprise happens.

Second Parent: We are committed to being cooperative parent with your best interest in mind.

Frequently Asked Questions[1]:

1. What happens next?

2. Where each of you will live?

3. Where they will live and what will happen to their “stuff”?

4. Whether they will be able to see each parent and for how much time?

5. Whether each of you will continue to love them?

6. Whether it is okay for them to love each of you?

7. Who will care for them, including day care providers?

8. Will they have to change schools?

9. Will they still be able to see their friends?

10. Can the continue in their activities?

11. Will they still be able to see their grandparents or favorite aunt?

[1] What Should We Tell The Children? A Parent’s Guide for Talking About Separation and Divorce. 2009 American Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers. Chicago, Illinois.

From This Point Forward:

Children are usually very self-centered. Assuming that the world revolves around you is a marker of immaturity and we can expect that in children. This is an asset for children who are adjusting to divorce.

If a child’s life remains more or less the same except for the bed they sleep in, then they will barely notice the divorce. If the parents don’t speak ill of one another; if they support the disciplinary decisions of the other parent; if they remain polite and cordial to one another when they are together, then the children may not carry any significant wounds from the divorce.

If fact, if both parents find new satisfying relationships with step parents who also love them, your children’s lives may be even further enriched.

Though this is not the topic of the essay, it is important to understand that the role of a step parent is the most difficult role in a blended family. If you hate your children’s step parent, your children may hate them as well. And what will their Christmas, Easter, Thanksgiving, summer vacations and school breaks be like having to share time with a step parent they hate for you?

Once again, parenting is an act, a role to play regardless of how you feel. If you want your children to thrive after your divorce, put on a smile and play your role as mature adult parent. Confess your sin. You should not be getting a divorce. You should have found more strength, or you should have gotten better help earlier or whatever… Share the blame and learn from the painful tuition you paid for this wisdom. Carry it with you into your life’s next chapter. Wish your ex well. Forgive them for your sake and your children’s sake, not for your ex’s sake.

Typical Parent/Child Reunification Therapy Plan

By David W. McMillan, Ph.D.

To see and download my typical parent/child reunification therapy plan, click here:

Parent/Child Reunification: When Child Has Rejected a Parent

By David W. McMillan, Ph.D.

Definition of Reunification Therapy
It is a court-mandated therapeutic approach that assists a child in building and maintaining constructive relationships with both parents usually after a divorce. Children are caught in the middle of a family loyalty battle. When this happens, a child is tempted to play an adult authority role that a child cannot manage responsibly. Reunification therapy helps the child return to the safety of a child role with two effective coparents. 

Goals of Reunification Therapy

1. Restore contact between child and resisted parent. 

2. Help each parent learn what the child needs in order to have constructive and appropriate relationships with both parents. 

3. To address distortions/irrational beliefs and replace them with beliefs that come from the child’s present experience. 

4. To rescue the child from loyalty battles between parents and help the child develop a path toward individuation from both parents equally. 

5. To help parents evaluate the child’s complaints and work together sharing concerns and information while respecting one another’s role. 

6. To assist parents resolve parenting conflicts. * 

7. To protect children from being sucked into adult roles for which they are not prepared. 

*Adapted from AFCC 12th Symposium on Child Custody Evaluations, Reunification and Court Orders, by Emily Miskel, Susan Fletcher, Aaron Robb, and Christy Bradshaw, Nov. 5, 2016. 

Examples
In a recent case I was working as a consultant to an alienated father, Paul, a CEO of a company with 300 employees and offices over the Southeast. His daughter Sally was rejecting him. 

The family was in the middle of a divorce. The parents were raising their children to be devout Christians, as they were. The mother, Anne, in her church work had fallen in love with an assistant pastor at their church in Franklin. Anne was a buxom blond who enjoyed wearing tight fitting dresses and necklaces that drew attention to her neckline. She had, until recently, seemed indifferent to her sex appeal until… It was a brief affair, what she called “a moment” with him. It was likely a consummated affair. The affair seemed to awaken Anne to her husband’s know-it-all, must be in charge, constant need to be seen as the best, the hero. She became disgusted with him and filed for a divorce, while claiming that she did not want a divorce. She wanted Paul to change and become a softer, kinder, less controlling man.

She communicated her complaints and her disgust of Paul to Sally, the fourteen-year-old straight A student, soccer player, burgeoning beautiful girl. Sally became her mother’s ally against Paul in the divorce.

Prior to Anne’s awakening “moment,” Anne had worshipped Paul. She had been glad Paul was in charge and fought the dragons so that she could focus on home and the children. There were two younger children. Al, age nine and Tom, age five. The two younger children were not rejecting their father. In fact, Al defended his father when his mother and sister complained about Paul’s narcissism with words like, “He’s entitled to be in charge. He’s the man and the Bible says he’s supposed to be the head of the family.”

Before her mother shifted her perspective of her husband, Sally had also adored her father and was eager for his attention. She loved talking about her soccer games with her dad. But this changed when Anne began to see Paul’s worst side. Old stories which were humorous legends of the father’s stubborn temper, had once been accompanied by their mother’s comments, “That’s your dad. God bless him,” have now become evidence of child abuse and Sally refused to have a relationship with her father.

Or as in another case, (fictionized here), Candice’s ten-year-old daughter, had a significant social anxiety disorder. She had forgotten that her father was to take her to a doctor’s appointment. When he told her, she froze in fear and would not move. The father had to pick her up while she scratched and screamed and he forced her into the car and then into the doctor’s office. The doctor’s office called the police. Child Protective Services became involved and the father lost parenting time with his daughter at the recommendation of CPS. The mother had a low opinion of the father and thought that her daughter’s rejection of her father was appropriate.

Healthy Families: How Attachments Develop

To understand how to build a therapeutic process for reunifying and rebuilding an alienated relationship between a parent and a child, one must first understand how the once healthy strong alliance parent/child bond became a painful alienated/estranged relationship.

The parent/child relationship begins in the womb, continues after birth through breastfeeding and during the infants first eighteen month of mirroring and crying in distress for food and for the discomfort of diaper rash. A healthy parent/child attachment bond develops because the child comes to have faith in knowing this particular person who they believe will be there to nurture and play with them.

At first, we can usually assume the parent/child attachment is between mother and child. Soon after birth, as the mother needs relief from the constant burden of child care, most of the time, the mother introduces the infant to the father, letting go of the child and childcare for a short time, giving the father her blessing and affection, reassuring the infant that the father is up to the task of mirroring, playing and tending the infant and then leaving the field so the father can prove his childcare chops to the infant. The father, with the mother’s support, develops his attachment bond with the child.

Usually, but not always, the mother remains the favorite parent. We say not always because sometimes the father is a better fit for the nurturing role and the mother may be best suited for the provider role. In such an instance, the favorite parent may become the father.

In any event, the alliance to the less favorite parent depends on the blessing of the favored parent.

Essential Ingredients to a Healthy Family
Healthy families have two essential ingredients. The first is a passionate expression of love and commitment at conception. In a healthy family, this loving bond between mother and father precedes the birth of a child. Imagine the legacy a child receives at birth from a rape conception compared to the legacy of a conception produced by a loving eager male/female embrace.

It is the perpetuation of this loving bond between mother and father that is the foundation of a mentally healthy child and family. As long as the parent-to-parent bond is loving and warm, the recipe for the nurturing of an emotionally healthy child remains intact. Imagine the powerful healthy impact on children’s nurture and development when they are raised in a home in which parents consistently express and share love with each other. Anything that diminishes the parent’s bond will negatively affect their children.

The second essential ingredient to a healthy family is children who equally honor and respect their father and mother. This is the fifth Commandment in the Jewish Bible. It is a primary job description of the duties of a child. When parents are given equal love and respect from their children, the children have an effective authority structure and the wisdom and resources of the parents’ flow to the children from both directions. Any influence which diminishes a children’s respect for one of their parents injures the child. Since the child is the direct DNA descendant of each parent, half of their DNA comes from each parent. If they disrespect one parent, they disrespect half of who they are. If they love, respect and honor both parents, they have the basis of loving and respecting themselves. Children naturally want to love both parents.

Parents rarely maintain a perfect balance of building equal bonds with their children. A typical parental rupture may happen at the birth of a child. The mother, at birth, is often overwhelmed by the new baby’s needs and demands. The father often feels displaced by the child in the hierarchy of the mother’s priorities. The mother may resent the father’s requests for her attention. She may feel abandoned by him and left alone to care for their infant. She may feel as if she has two babies, the needy father and a new infant.

Even In Intact Families
The parents may have trouble learning a new intimacy dance which includes their role as adult partners. For some families, this is the beginning of marital discord. From this parental rupture, parents may begin to meet their intimacy needs in their relationship with their children. The mother may refuse to wean the child from her breasts. The father may over attach to the caretaking role and use the child as his excuse to withdraw from his wife or he may simply withdraw into work or a hobby, like golf.

Terms like “parent/child enmeshment,” or “oedipal complex” or “parentified child” apply to these circumstances. These overly tight bonds between parent and child can injure marriages and alienate/estrange a parent from a child.

And this can happen in intact families. So, imagine how the dynamic of building a parent/child alliance at the expense of the other parent might happen in divorcing or divorced families.

Most of us can observe our own family dynamics and recognize that parents and the children in their families have favorites, even when this is denied by the parents or children.

Children can become estranged and alienated from a parent without any conscious awareness of either parent. The rejected parent may have inadvertently insulted the child without meaning to or knowing. The favored parent may not play the advocacy role they once played between the other parent and child to buffer or defend that parent. The child’s mind can begin to look for reasons to reject the out-of-favor parent and without the favored parent’s opposition. The child can join the favored parent and emotionally divorce the other parent. Confirmation bias can build the momentum of the child’s fear, hurt and anger and especially with absence of contact, the child’s mind may build a wall that the rejected parent cannot penetrate alone.

Family Tensions Magnify in Divorcing Families
It shouldn’t be a surprise that divorcing parents build alliances with their children unconsciously and sometimes consciously against their divorcing spouse. The problem is not so much with the fact these alliances happen in divorcing families. The problem becomes toxic to children when the favored parent is unaware of what’s happening and subtly demands their child’s loyalty at the expense of the other parent.

We should not vilify the favored parent for such a common parental mistake. Our job should be to help them become aware of these subtle dynamics so that the favored parent can release their child from the obligation they feel to reject the target parent in the service of their favored parent.

The work of parent/child reunification may only be successful if the favored parent mentally, physically and emotionally supports their children to love and respect the once target parent.

Children in all families usually test the parents’ adult relationship by trying to replace the less favored parent as the most cherished person by the favored parent. For hypothetical purposes, let’s call the favorite parent the mother and the less favored, the father.

Often when the infant observes the parents cuddling or sitting close to one another on the couch enjoying adult company together, the toddler or young child will push themselves between the parents, attempt to push the father away and establish themselves as the mother’s main lover.

At that point, in a healthy family, the mother will put the child on the floor, disappointing the child and reminding the child that, in the mother’s eyes, the father comes first and that the child must give the father respect equal to the love and respect the child gives the mother.

Children will continue to try to displace the father throughout their young lives. The father may be insensitive to his children at times. He may not understand them or appreciate them in the way their mother does. He may be emotionally clumsy in his response to them. Often, when this occurs, the children will tattle on the father implicitly asking the mother to betray her parenting alliance with the father and join the child in an alliance against their dad.

Again, in healthy families, the mother will refuse this invitation at the father’s expense and remind the children that their father is their authority when they are with him, that he loves them and his actions and decisions are consistent with caring and providing for them and the family. If they have a problem with him, they should trust him and their relationship with him to tell him their feelings.

And when the child is unnecessarily building an exaggerated case against their father, the mother should reprimand the child and support the father.

Parental alienation often occurs in a high conflict divorce in which the mother, the favored parent, is angry and feels hurt by the father and he becomes the target of her anger. She often abandons her responsibilities as a co-parent, unconsciously or consciously. Either she accepts her children’s invitation to ally with them against the father or invites the children to join her in her campaign against their father, the now target parent.

The children are then caught in a loyalty struggle between their parents and they feel they must choose a side. As the children ally with their favorite parent, they build their own cases against the target parent, forgetting the care and nurture they have received from him, discounting his contributions to the family and to them. They exaggerate his flaws and minimize his strengths and the benefits he offers.

Causes for rejection of a Parent by a Child Usually Multi-Determined
Each family experiencing a child rejecting a parent is different. Parental alienation may be the cause and the favored parent may be the reason, knowingly or unknowingly. Or the child may be estranged from the parent because of that parent’s poor parenting. There are extreme cases where it is either or, but these cases are rare. Most of the time all parties, parents, stepparents, children and sometimes extended family contribute to the problem.

Usually, all parties pass the blame back and forth, claiming innocence. These are complex family dysfunctions. Sometimes children enjoy the power given them by the parent’s conflict. The lack of a united parental authority structure may pull the child into a power vacuum. The child may enjoy being in a position to declare one parent the winner over the other, thus creating a powerful but illicit alliance.

Effective treatment involves all parties. The therapist’s job is to encourage the parties to stop pointing fingers at others and discover the peace-making power of acknowledging and being accountable for their mistakes. One parent will never change the other, but each parent can see their contribution to the problem and be responsible to make appropriate changes for themselves. The wrong that they claim can become a powerful negotiating asset in bringing peace to the family. Discovering their wrong can be like finding gold. The whole family needs to be part of this accountability process. Continuing to assert innocence and claiming to be falsely accused may be the biggest impediment to their child’s mental health.

Goal of Reunification Therapy
The next example represents the goal of reunification therapy:

In a recent reunification therapy case, the favored parent thankfully had the insight that their belief that the other parent was a demon and they were the innocent victim only damaged the child. They said to me, “I came to understand that my righteous insistence on my innocence was hurting my child. When I got that, I changed. I became a polite, respectful co-parent for my child hoping that they would have Christmas dinner with the other parent’s family without feeling disloyal to me. And they have. That may be the best thing that came from my divorce.”

It is in the context of parental discord that reunification therapists begin their work. Their job description is to take on the task once filled by the favored parent as cheerleader and advocate for the target parent. And the goal is to help parents learn how to be divorced and yet support the other parent and support their child’s love for that parent.

Conflicting Treatment Approaches: Individual Child Therapists
The professionals who gravitate to the professional role of therapist for parent/child reunification work tend to come from one of two training and theoretical orientations. One is a therapist trained specifically to work individually with children. Their expertise is in building therapeutic alliances with children while doing the best they can to protect the child’s confidentiality in a world in which children have little to no privacy rights.

Usually, these child therapists are taught that children are neutrals in their families and they want to love both parents so their perspective is valid and truthful and can be trusted, where adults have egos and vested interests and they tend to provide biased narratives. Hence, you may often see ‘Believe the Children” bumper stickers.

Children, however, are not reliable reporters. Linda Gottlieb found that of her 700 children treated for parental alienation 80% later reported at least one knowingly false child abuse charge against a target parent. Add to that the number of charges made which were false but which the children have become convinced were true and you see how parental alienation becomes child abuse. Linda Gottlieb is an advocate of the second treatment model, a family system’s model.

Family Systems Therapist
The second training theoretical paradigm, which informs therapists, who work to help reunify alienated parents and their children, comes from a family systems treatment model. The reader can observe from reading our introduction that I ascribe to the family systems approach. A family systems therapist has the obligation to be objective, neutral and transparent in their work with the family. They inform the therapy participants that they will avoid the role of secret-keeper of individuals working in family therapy. In their role as parent/child reunification, their primary goal is to help the family nurture and protect its children. They, as therapists, wish to avoid win/lose, right/wrong, liar/truth-teller scenario. Their job is to repair the parent/child fracture.

They do not believe or disbelieve any therapy participant. They do not want to pursue the “One Truth.” Rather, they want to pursue building future agreements and a family consensus. They especially don’t want to cast the child in the role of the person speaking the truth. This is a burden too extreme for children to assume or be given. [More about the contest over truth later.]

Family systems therapists approach confidentiality almost exactly opposite from individual child therapists. While child therapists attempt to protect the child’s secrets from the parents and everybody else, systems therapists make no promise to keep children’s secrets from parents. Of course, family systems therapist work to protect the family’s confidentiality as much as possible, but within the system. The goal of the systems therapist is transparency inside the family with the promise to not keep secrets but to reveal to all members what they know and think as therapists to the family system. When the system is expanded to include the courts (judges and attorneys) transparency remains the systems therapist’s guiding ethical principle.

The therapist in such cases begins their understanding of family dynamics by looking first through the eyes of the alienated parent, followed by developing a picture of how the child views that parent.

Often the alienated parent has made some parental mistakes which becomes solid-evidence in the child’s mind for why that parent cannot be trusted.

The parent and child then begin a reconciliation therapeutic process of apologies hopefully going both ways and forgiveness but beginning with the parent to the child. Though, often the favored parent will not become a constructive part of this process, inviting them to participate and guiding them into playing a reconciling role will greatly aid the process. (This process will be described later in more detail).

Child oriented therapists often make a therapeutic error by initiating therapy with building a primary therapeutic alliance with the child. Frequently, children are not reliable sources of family events. They are easily entranced by a favored parent’s narrative. Hearing the same story three times from a trusted parent can plant this version into their minds so that they firmly believe it and represent it as the truth.

In a previously mentioned case, there is an example of one major “unforgivable” parenting error by a target parent, the father. It was to wake the children with a loud recording of a trumpet playing revelry. The children reported this to have been a frequent occurrence happening after midnight. The mother confirmed this as an example of the father’s abusive behaviors.

The father acknowledged that he did this on two occasions because the children had gone to bed before picking up their belongings as they were required to do. His version of the story was that he did this two times and that it was not after 10:00 P.M.

The therapist, who allied with the children, initially continued her alliance with them joining them in calling him a liar and confronting him demanding that he be accountable for his abuse.

A systems therapist would suggest that a contest over who is telling The Truth is unnecessary and that even using the children’s version of reality, the father was doing his job in a humorous and creative way to enlist his children in the family’s job of fighting chaos and creating order together. This is and was never child abuse as the mother and children alleged.

Once a therapist becomes primarily allied with the children, they also become allied with the favored parent to whom the children are loyal. The target parent has no advocate with the children for making a place in their hearts to love and respect the target parent.

Working with the Children
When children join one parent against another, they often enjoy the power of being the tie-breaking vote. They become a co-adult ally to the favored parent. The reunification therapist hopes to release the children from such an adult role and invite them back to their role as children where they can trust both of their parents to know what’s best for them and feel less exposed and more secure in the love of two parents.

As the reunification therapist offers this invitation, resistance is to be expected. The therapist will have to be both patient, persistent and firm.

The first step in working with the children is to clearly define the therapist’s role as the alienated parent’s advocate and also as one who can influence the alienated parent to listen to the children with love and compassion.

This leads to the next step which is to listen to the children’s complaints. Be sure the children see the therapist reflect their points of view. And be sure they know that the therapist understands how their reality makes sense to them. And the therapist also invites the children to receive information from the target parent which they do not have.

In the third step, use the divorce and the conflict and emotion surrounding the divorce as the storm which dislodged them from their once strongly held role. Remind them of their primary child role, which is to love the father and mother equally. It is understandable that, in the middle of such intense conflict, they believed they had to protect one parent against the other, when in reality they couldn’t and they shouldn’t volunteer for that position. In these circumstances the target parent may not offer information about what happened in the divorce to the children, while the favored parent may be overwhelmed by all the hurt and sudden changes and their version of the events may spill out onto the children. In this circumstance, the target parent was doing his job to help their children remain neutral.

Here the therapist must remind the children that love does not require hate. Love is infinite, not competitive or restrictive. Adding love to your life does not mean anyone loses. It’s just more love. That can only be good. This may be challenging for a target parent and it may require time and patience and protection from an attacking favored parent.

Treatment: Don’t Diagnose
It’s not the job of the reunification therapist to determine whether or not parental alienation exists. That is the job of the court. Having a judge determine this or having a formal parenting agreement makes the work of the therapist much less complicated.

It, however, remains the therapist’s job to weigh the various stories around events that seem to have frozen people in their pain. Later, we will recommend a process rule to avoid arguing over history. But sometimes history can tie people in a knot from which they will need help untying. Remember, we want to avoid a truth search and we want to encourage compassionate understanding of all parties.

The target parent won’t effectively participate in the therapy with a therapist who does not understand them or who uses an exaggerated or false narrative of the children to diminish and attack them. The reconciliation with the children should begin with the target parent feeling supported and understood by the therapist. With the understanding that the therapist and the target parent have the same goal (i.e., to help the child or children to open their defenses and reconsider the target parent as a person who deserves their trust and respect) the target parent can have hope that this therapeutic process will be effective.

The First Step
This points to the first step of the reunification therapist, to get to know and discover the best aspects of the target parent and build a trusted relationship with that parent so that, the target parent will trust the therapist as that therapists tries to reweave the family tapestry. The reunification therapist is to become a cheerleader for the target parent. The focus of the therapy should primarily be on the present and future. Emphasis should be placed on the child’s current experience with the resisted parent.

If the therapist cannot find a way to like and respect the target parent, that therapist should not take on this therapeutic task.

It is likely that the target parent will have some thorns on his rose, which will make him a difficult sell to his children. These thorns are probably well-known to his children. It is likely they, with the favorite parent, have formed a mythical monster image of the target parent embellishing these negative aspects.

The children will be intransigent in therapy if they don’t believe that the therapist will support their voices with the father. Often the target parent has made parental mistakes, some of them may have been serious mistakes. Even the trivial ones deserve the target parent’s attention and accountability. The target parent should apologize and admit responsibility for them. This can be a tedious process for the target parent. The target parent must offer the children some reason to trust that the target parent has changed and that the children’s words taught him new ways to play the parent role with them.

Find Mistakes
The therapist must explain to the target parent that in listening to the children he wants to find parenting mistakes that he agrees he made. All parents make them. Surely, he has as well.

Once those parenting mistakes are identified, the reunification therapist begins teaching alternative parenting behaviors and skills. For example, while children need discipline children don’t need violent or long-lasting consequences for their behavior. Children want to please. The fact that their parent is displeased and disappointed is the most important aspect of punishment. A parent can’t expect a one-time consequence to change a child’s behavior. A child’s brain may not be capable of the level of restraint and impulse control that the parent expects. No amount of pain or shouting will successfully change such a child’s behavior. The job of the parent is to take a strong, moral, symbolic stand against inappropriate behavior consistently and with consistent reprimands and patience a child matures and their behavior changes.

When the target parent understands that their wrongs are their negotiating tool for re-entry into the relationship with the child as their parent, the target parent is incentivized to learn new parenting skills.

When the children see that the reunification therapist has been effective in helping their parent see his mistakes, apologize and change, then the children feel supported and championed by the reunification therapist.

Once the reunification therapist has the trust of the target parent, the therapist should begin to build a relationship with the children. In the first session with the children, therapists should be clear that they have met the target parent and they see him as a good, not perfect parent, who is devoted to his children and who wants them back in his life as their father. And the therapist has agreed to help with this project.

One might think that the therapist would immediately become the enemy of the children. But that rarely happens, in part, because beneath the surface of this conflict, the children want to be proud of their father and they are glad that people find him likeable. And after all, they have many of his qualities.

Once you have announced your intentions to the children to advocate for their father, they will likely unload all of their stories and complaints for why your task is an impossible fool’s errand. It should be made clear to them that you will be transparent with what you learn and that you will take their concerns to their father to help him prepare to address them.

Revisit these stories with the children, but do so carefully. Remember, it is the therapist job to help the children see the good in their alienated parent. As you listen to these stories, you are not searching for the truth. You are searching for respect, especially respect for the target parent.

Give the Children’s Voice Respect
The parent will not get his children’s respect or their favored parent’s respect, without giving respect to them.

Begin with having the target parent listen to his children’s hurt. You have prepared the target parent for this by teaching him to listen in earlier sessions. (For these instructions see appendix). Target parent’s listening job is focused on collecting the pieces of the children’s story that are true, especially the parts where target parents see they made a mistake. They are looking for what they did wrong. Wrong is their gold. That gold is the entry point for reunification. Help target parents discover new ideas and new aspects of the story they didn’t know or understand before.

If they dismiss their children’s words with a statement like “I heard you say that before,” the children will close down. If children hear target parents say, “I hadn’t understood that like I do now. I see how I was wrong. You were right,” think about what this does for the children’s self-esteem and hence their receptivity.

As the referee authority, it is the therapist job, not to let the children kick the exposed belly of the target parent. Be sure to acknowledge the target parent’s courage and strength to admit a wrong. Point out that this accountable responsible behavior is adult behavior and that the children’s once targeted parent is behaving honorably. Then later, you can use this as a model for the children to look for their mistakes. Don’t treat the child’s trauma without a court finding of abuse or neglect.

Apologies
Be sure that the target parent begins this confessional process.

If target parents say they did nothing wrong and learned nothing from the children, you have not prepared the target parent properly. Stop the process here. Either resign or have more individual sessions with the target parent until he understands what is expected of him in his work with his children. Once the target parent is on board, resume meetings with him and his children. What parent has done everything right for their children?

The ultimate goal of this part of the process is to put the stories about the same event together so that all perspectives are honored and understood and people can see how their stories can overlap into in a consensus.

Try not to dwell in the past. As soon as you can, focus the process on what’s happening in their current relationship. Go there. Help the target parent and children practice their listening skills processing current events so their consensus realities begin to build a new shared history.

Before you leave the past, be sure that competent apologies are made. Here are the steps to a competent apology:

1.

Respectfully say, “I’m sorry. That is my fault. I know what I did hurt you, but I’m not sure I understand how much. Can you tell me?”1

2.

Listen to the person you hurt. This lets him or her vent. Listen for what happened, then repeat back what you understand happened to your partner from their perspective.2 Listen for how they feel because of what happened. As you listen and repeat, be sure that your face reflects the hurt they feel. Seeing in your face their hurt and your shame solidifies an effective apology.

3.

Tell what you learned about the person you hurt. Validate his or her feelings and let your partner see those feelings in your heart. Again, express the hurt and distress in your face and voice as you come to terms with the hurt you caused someone you loved. (Remember Creative Listening, Chapter Two).

4.

Tell the person you hurt what you learned about yourself from this mistake and the pain it caused. Tell about the pain it caused you as you understood the hurt you caused. Tell the person you hurt what you would do differently next time.3 Tell them what you have learned from this.

5.

Make amends. Your mistake took trust out of the relationship. Do something to build trust back. Make a sacrifice that will matter to your partner. Invest some time, energy or money in your loved one. Add value to the relationship.

The Liar Trap
Often in sessions with the children, the children will use the term “liar” to discredit their father. How you handle this word “liar” will be critical to whatever success you have with this family.

When the therapist reports back to the target parent the children’s stories and complaints, it is likely that he (and remember the target parent might be “she”) will rely on that same word, “liar” in his defense, and his defense will be just as dramatic and hyperbolic as his children’s attack.

If the reunification therapist allows the target parent, the adult here, to descend into the binary view of the truth in which someone is lying, your work is doomed.

Since you are aligned with the adult parent and you have his trust, you must now teach him how to avoid the “liar” trap.

Often parental alienation cases and parent/child reunification cases founder on the rocks of an argument over the truth. Often, sitting in the office as a therapist with a parent and child (or children) feels as if you are the referee in a verbal fight with third graders. The child may snarl “liar, liar, liar,” at the target parent and sadly. The target parent may respond in kind. These emotions are contagious and the therapist is tempted to join one side or the other (usually the children’s) to end this conflict with a heavy-handed executive decision that one side is right and the other wrong.

The problem with such an either/or contest is that only God knows the truth. Our brains are configured so that we collect evidence to support a reality that feels good to us. This is called confirmation bias. No one is immune from this brain dynamic. We all distort reality.

Our memory is fallible. We may have misspoken and not be aware that we did. We may have misheard, and we may have misremembered.

The point is that people may unfortunately misrepresent the truth and believe that they are telling “The Truth.”

Though we prefer to avoid the term “lie,” for clarity’s sake we will employ it here. If we are honest with ourselves, we all lie. Gottlieb quotes the famous developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, who stated, “the tendency to tell lies is a natural tendency… spontaneous and universal.” Seth Slater (2013, 2018) opines that deception is a valuable tool in the survival of human species. Gottlieb reported a study of Robert Feldman which revealed that 60% of his study participants lied during a typical ten-minute conversation. Theodor Schaarschmidt (2018) stated that lying is among the most sophisticated and demanding accomplishments of the human brain. According to Richard Friedman, children acquire the ability to deceive by the age of four. According to Bella DePaulo (2015), we improve our deception talents until we are between 18 and 29. We tend to lose our deceptive talents (or our need to be deceptive) at age 45.

Julia Shaw (2017) and Elizabeth Loftus (1997, 2000) determined that false memories can be easily implanted in children and even college students. Shaw (2017) was able to implant a false memory in 70% of the college students who participated in her study. So, children may actually believe the false narrative they tell.

To make matters worse, humans are terrible lie detectors. The average accuracy of people’s ability to make a correct binary choice, lie or truth, when in an experiment was 54% (DePaulo, 2015) slightly more than 50%. A coin flip would be just about as accurate.

Given that our minds distort reality, that we have trouble distinguishing a falsehood versus the truth, that false memories can be so easily planted, perhaps the best clinical strategy is to ask all therapy participants to acknowledge that the Truth is illusive and that no one knows it for sure.

As we wrote earlier, we can unconsciously misspeak, mishear or misremember. No one can be certain of their narrative. Therapists can encourage a bit of personal skepticism and help people release themselves from rigid certainties.

Therapists can help people use compassion to understand how others have come to see reality as they do. The word “liar” should never be used in reunification therapy.

How to Proceed with Parent/Child Reunification: Role Definition
The role of parent/child reunification therapist is similar to the role of parent coordinator provided for in Tennessee law by TCA§ 63-11-203 (2) (a) (vii). Both roles require an open channel between the treating therapist and the judge. When judges are required to make decision for families, they may need the experience, training and insight of the treating mental health professional and mental health professionals need the support and authority of the judge. Family members need to understand that the court, as it makes decisions regarding the family, wants and needs information and opinions from the treating therapist. This incentivizes the family to cooperate in therapy. The judge is the stick as therapist offers a carrot.

Therefore, reunification therapy should begin with a court order or an agreed order from the parents selecting the parent/child reunification therapist. That person should not begin treatment until the court has found or the parents have legally agreed that there is a parent/child rupture and your assistance is required. When a parent/child rupture is an issue in the family and the courts are not involved and both parents agree to work with a reunification therapist, the therapist should only begin treatment with a signed agreement acknowledging the possibility of litigation and defining the role of the parent reunification therapist.

American Psychological Association (APA) Forensic Guidelines and the Association of Family and Conciliation Guidelines for Court-Involved Therapy suggest that mental health professionals not serve in dual capacities as the treating mental healthy professional and as the forensic expert in cases. This emphasizes the need for a court order allowing the parent/child reunification to treat and testify.

Court Order and Employment Contract
In Parent/Child Reunification cases it is important that the mental health professional offer the information of a treating therapist and the opinions of a forensic expert. Consequently, the court order should specify that when the therapist testifies in court, the judge should expect to hear opinions and information from the treating mental health professional.

In any event, the parent/child reunification therapist should also have a signed letter of employment describing your role, which may be as both a treating mental health professional and a testifying expert when the parties cannot collaboratively work together with the therapist and the welfare of the child is being compromised. The therapist must be able to share their perspectives in court so the judge and the attorneys understand the dynamics of the case and can envision next steps for the family.

The Court order should specify how and when the therapist should document and report to the court and the attorneys. It should establish terms for reimbursement and payment of fees. It is helpful for the team coordinator to have a retainer that will cover consultation with colleagues and material review and report writing and documentation for the court. Some provision should be made for judicial continuity.

Of course, there are times when a child is validly rejecting a parent’s interest and attention. In these cases, the estranged parent has injured and frightened the child so significantly that the child has good reason to be afraid of being in the care of the rejected parent and the child is not safe in the care of an abusive neglectful parent.

Because this is a possibility, again, the therapist’s treatment should not include trying to determine whether or not the child has been alienated from a “good enough” parent or whether the parent is estranged and rejected for good reason. This is for the court or the parents together to decide. If, in your treatment, you come to believe the parent is a danger to the child, you should stop treatment and report that to the judge or the Department of Children’s Services.

Your employment letter should include a recognition that your role does not provide confidentiality to any single party; that your role is to be transparent so that no secrets are kept and all parties know what you know and have access to your information.

This document should open the therapeutic conversation and introduce therapy as a collaborative on-going process which revisits, throughout the process, the issues pertaining to role definition and confidentiality versus transparency.

Once the appropriate documents are in hand, the reunification therapist begins work with the alienated or target parent. As mentioned earlier, the therapist must build a strong bond with the target parent that includes the therapist’s ability to challenge the target parent to take responsibility for parenting mistakes and that the therapist expects them to learn new parenting skills. Generally, this is not difficult since the therapist’s goal and the alienated parents’ goal is one in the same, to help the parent rebuild a loving, trusting relationship with their child.

Included in this work is utilizing the redemption cycle of recognizing unacceptable parenting behavior, developing listening and empathy skills and learning what the children might need before the children can risk trusting the alienated parent again and then rebuilding a new parent/child agreement about how this relationship can go forward.

Work With the Resisted/Alienated Parent
The resisted parent needs the therapist. So, most of the time they are willing to learn from the therapist and accept their counsel. So, the therapist must be firm as they lead the target parent into new relationship territory. Often target parents have much to learn.

Before the resisted parent and the children meet, it is important to do two things. First, determine whether or not the favored parent will cooperate with treatment. If they do agree and do understand that they had a role in the parent/child alienation, then your work will be relatively easy.

In a recent case, the case I described earlier, where the daughter had severe social anxiety and the father forcibly took her to the doctor and CPS became involved (remember that case) I approached the mother and I explained that her negative attitude toward the father was influencing her daughter to distrust, disrespect and now fear him.

She saw and agreed with the picture I described and she gladly joined the reunification therapy. She and the father collaborated on building a family discipline structure used in both homes. She defended the father’s parenting and reminded the daughter that he was devoted to her and that all of his decisions about her came from a place of love and concern. When the father added new found listening skills to this recipe, the mother was happily surprised and gladly continued cooperative co-parenting with him. The daughter’s social anxiety improved as did her relationship with her father.

Unfortunately, the therapist may not have a cooperating collaborative favored parent to work with. Without that, the therapist’s work will be more difficult. In either event, a cooperative favored parent or not, the therapist’s next step is to establish treatment process guidelines to ensure constructive discourse.

Favored Parent Participation
Having the favored parent be part of the reunification process can be a great asset to therapy or a disaster. When the favored parent says, “I had nothing to do with this. I’ve never spoken ill of my spouse;” then they will be a dangerous liability to the process, sabotaging any progress that might be achieved.

As in any system, of course, the favored parent likely played a role in the alienation, perhaps an unconscious role, but a role nonetheless. Even if it is true, they never speak ill of the other parent, what does their silence say? Surely, it’s not bad to pray with the child before the child goes to the target parent’s home. But what does it say to a child when you pray that God will keep them safe at the home of the target parent?

The mother of the anxious daughter (mentioned earlier) admitted that she didn’t like the father. She saw how this dislike became contagious and that she was hurting her daughter, taking away an important positive male figure to her daughter as she began adolescence.

It is this mature, responsible, aware favored parent with whom we wish to collaborate.

If the favored parent insists on their innocence and continues to blame the alienation solely of the target parent, the child must be insulated from the influence of the favored parent until the target parent and the child have built a strong enough bond to withstand the favored parent, perhaps unconscious, subtle attacks. This may take up to 90 to 120 days or more. And later, there may need to be time periods in which the child is separated from the favored parent.

Truth and Trust
Trust comes to a relationship because two people share a consensus truth. This is especially problematic given what we know about how people unconsciously distort the truth and how the same events appear differently to different people. So how can two people build a consensus truth?

First, we don’t worship the discovery of “The Truth.” Only God knows The Truth. We humans don’t. If our goal is to build trust, we must find another way. And that way involves respect and boundaries.

Who is the authority of what I feel or think, me or you? Who is the authority of what you feel or think, you or me? Of course, you are the authority of what’s in your head and I am the authority of what’s in my mind. This respectful boundary is essential to building trust. If we can agree that my definition of my reality is the closest thing we can have to the truth about me and your definition of self is the closest thing we can find about the truth about you, we have a path towards a consensus truth.

It doesn’t matter whether or not it is actually “The Truth.” What matters is that together we believe it to be true. There is significant evidence that the story of Exodus did not happen, that it is only a story. There is also evidence that Jesus wasn’t born on December 25. Yet the story of Exodus has and will continue to inspire fellow believers to fight against slavery and oppression. Many of us continue to celebrate the birth of Jesus’ redemption cycle of confession, forgiveness, and reconciliation on Christmas day. The fact that these events did not happen this way does not eliminate their meaning and value. Given the consensus, they are important parts of the meaning system for many of us.

The fact of the matter is not as important as the belief of the matter. The story or the shared narrative is more important than the truth. The truth is the best version of any story. But it’s often hard to find agreement on the truth. So, the story will have to do. Shared belief in the story can become enough of our consensus truth to allow us to renew our faith in one another.

So, we are not discovering “The Truth” together in a relationship. We are building a consensus narration which allows us to trust one another. Trust not Truth is our goal.

Therapy Process Guidelines
The participants look to the reunification therapist to referee their contests. Often, they have had the same unproductive conversations for years. The painful script is familiar to them. They are there in hopes that you can somehow transform their previous dramas into productive conversations.

So, they will give you authority to direct and facilitate the process. They expect you might have rules. Not only do you need rules, you need a strong presence to enforce them. (This is less difficult when you have a court order).

To get to trust, as we help parent and child build a consensus narrative, we can use the following agreements as we help them renegotiate their relationship.

1. God knows the Truth, we don’t.

2. There are a million constructive solutions, not just mine or yours.

3. The right answer is what we can agree on and that will change.

4. You are the ultimate authority of your truth and I am the same for my truth. I will believe what you say as you represent yourself and expect you to believe me when I represent myself.

5. We all need opposition as we consider our decisions. A careful deliberation requires more than one point of view. We should value those who oppose our ideas.

6. Pejorative labels and judgments are not allowed.

7. Try to remain focused on the present and future. As much as possible avoid arguing about history.

These rules of negotiations and of developing trust will build a workable consensus narrative.

The fifth rule is sometimes difficult for participants to embrace, but once they do, the process becomes civil and the spirit of curiosity, openness and tolerance emerges. Our first unopposed thoughts about a problem are not always well-considered. Having someone whom we respect, say, “Hey, wait a minute what about this can help us make better decisions. And this give and take is necessary if you are to co-parent and an agreement is required. It is important that you respect and value being opposed. It can be a gift to you if you allow it.

These rules eliminate the childish Liar vs. Liar refrain. The truth becomes a question rather than a statement and interest in and respect for each other’s point of view becomes our focus.

Agree to Disagree with Mutal Respect
After some apologies are made and some overlapping consensus narratives are formed, agree to disagree about the interpretation of the past that cannot be reconciled. Take refuge in some education about memory and how we all distort our memories to fit our dominant narratives and self-image. Refer to the December 2022 Psychology Today article about Gregory Bern’s’ book The Self-Delusion (2022). His thesis is that our mortality fears compensate for our feelings of insignificance by building narratives which make us feel important. We string selected facts from a series of distorted memories to build a story which helps us feel good about ourselves. We all do. Humans cannot represent Truth with certainty. Healthy self-doubt will create room for many versions of the truth. As agreed earlier, only God knows the Truth.

So, help families negotiate an agreement to agree to disagree and move out of the past into the present and the building of a future together, plan and participate in shared events. Use therapy to establish consensus memories around these moments, card games, sailing, tennis, weight lifting, dance, shopping, etc. When these moments create conflicts, use these conflicts to teach the family reconciliation and negotiation skills so that the parent and child begin to build faith in the strength of their relationship and their new found skills in consensus building.

Therapists need to bring their senses of humor and playful spirit into the therapy room and continue this work until the parent and child feel confident that you are no longer needed. Of course, remind them that you will remain a resource to them when needed hoping that you won’t be needed.

If possible, weave the favored parent into this process of trust building. If not possible, remind the parties that love is not a zero-sum game. Love is not a competition. The more people who love us, the richer we all are.

Conclusion
As systems therapists, we understand that an individual is interwoven with their families into a system. Treating one person, blaming one person for the problem rarely helps. When the system is treated, everything can change for the good. Just as an individual is part of a family, a family is part of an extended family, a community and a government. Everything is connected to everything. We need help from our families, our friends and the community and sometimes, especially in high conflict divorces, we need help from the courts.

In these litigious times, high conflict families need a firm hand to guide them toward reason and cooperative parenting. When a therapist tries to work with a family tied in these angry knots without the support of the judge, the therapist can be sued and charged with malpractice.

In a case I had in 2017, the judge told the attorneys and the experts that he did not know or care what it was called. He didn’t need a diagnosis of parental alienation. All he knew was the family had a serious problem that needed attention. When he spoke directly to the rejecting child, his words profoundly changed the course of treatment and became the foundation of the eventual parent/child reunification. He was an excellent member of the therapy team.

The structure given to parent/child reunification by a judge’s order or an agreed court order, provides the therapist great leverage with the family. The family is incentivized to cooperate with treatment or face the testimony of the reunification therapist in front of the judge.

The courts need the therapist because the courts, like most child therapists, often have a wish to believe the romantic notion of the innocent child who always tells the truth. Judges and attorneys aren’t trained in child development or family dynamics. They need the information and guidance, which the treating reunification therapist has gained through working extensively with the family.

Reunification therapists should not merely restrict themselves to the treatment role. Doing that will leave the attorneys and the judge in the dark about what this family and this alienated parent/child relationship needs.

The flow of information between the judge and the therapist should not be restricted. The therapist needs the judge’s order and blessing and the judge needs the therapists experience and wisdom.

In high conflict divorces, mediation will not likely resolve a parent/child rupture. The advantages to a family systems approach, which uses the collaboration of the judge, the therapist, and the families, are many.

First, this approach does not paint the favored parent as a demon and enemy of the target parent. Rather, it sees the behavior of the favored parent as perhaps unintended and the extreme of normal tensions which occur in many divorces.

Second, it avoids a several days trial over whether or not the term “parental alienation” is an appropriate diagnosis of a family. The focus is not on labels or blame but is on finding a way to safely rebuild a parenting bond with a parent and an alienated child.

Many therapists have been involved in cases in which days were spent arguing over whether the diagnosis of parental alienation was appropriate and thousands of dollars later, the judges refused to use the term or accept a label or diagnosis of parental alienation, yet they recognized the family had a serious problem and needed help.

Third, side-stepping the diagnosis of the family and the focusing on remedies for a family problem may avoid further entrenching the parents into blaming defensive stances toward one another. We avoid a win-lose contest and encourage coparenting cooperation.

Fourth, this approach has the potential of avoiding the extreme remedy of separating children from a parent for months. In the event that the parents cannot cooperate in reunification therapy, then separating the favored parent and child can be a further treatment option.

This collaborative approach among therapists, judges and families helps create an opportunity to use a model which creates a range of options that allows for the selective and often which is least intrusive, most natural and less expensive.

This model for therapist/court/family collaboration employs the ideals and values of the Association for Families and Courts. It invites judges, litigations, attorneys and therapists into a different paradigm for serving families. Litigation uses a fault-finding, blame, innocent/guilty binary, paradigm. Classically, the mental health profession has followed a medical model of individual diagnoses and treatment with an identified patient and a quest for a label and a drug to treat the typical symptoms of a diseases.

The family systems approach avoids fault-finding and blame. It avoids power struggles, in which parties search for diagnoses and labels to gain leverage in disputes. Rather it helps families discover a next step forward out of family dysfunction and toward a path of blended family harmony. The greatest potential for a healthy child in these situations’ rests in the appropriateness of their parent’s coparenting relationship.

In this model the courts are part of the family system.

Appendix:

The following are the steps to creative listening:

Step One: Listen. And while you are listening, imagine how you would feel if you were your partner. Let the words and feelings touch you. Play with these words in your mind. Come up with images of what this means or feels like to you if you were your partner.

It is important, as you listen, to stop our partners before you become overwhelmed with too many words to remember. Simply say: “I don’t mean to interrupt but before you go on, I want to be sure I understand.” Then reflect out loud to them what they have just said. Reflect back what was said as if you were a mirror, using as many of their words as you can remember.

Step Two: Reflect. Give these new visions and feelings back to them with a question mark at the end. The question mark is a sign of respect for them. It tells them you don’t really know what this is like for them and that you are trying to understand. Use feeling words to reflect how you understand them to be feeling. Listen to the metaphors they use and inquire about them. Again, be careful that you reflect what they are saying before you become over-whelmed with too much content.

Sometimes they will reject all your words, saying that they were not their words. When they do this, stick with their words as much as you can and reflect in a questioning, interested tone. Such a tone implicitly says that you know that you do not completely understand; that they are the authority about what they feel and think, not you; that are trying to understand; that understanding is important to you.

Step Three: Imagine. As you listen, use your imagination and visualize images of how the person talking must feel. Picture yourself facing the same life circumstances. Listen for the metaphors used by the talker to help you visualize what he/she feels and thinks. Then use those metaphors in your words as you reflect back what you understand.

Also share your images in metaphors. These usually begin with words such as “It is like you…” or “It is as if you…” or “That would be like…”

When you can capture people’s emotional experiences in metaphors, they feel understood at a deeper level. They feel the fruits of your labor to understand them. You move them out of the rational, verbal part of their brain into the visual and make it easier for them to detach from themselves, step away and look at their experience from a new perspective. Metaphors can be magic in communication.

Step Four: Validate. Once we understand what they said, we should tell them they are not crazy to feel as they do; that we have some understanding of why they feel that way and that if we were they, we would have the same feelings and think the same thoughts.

This might appear as if we are giving up our position and giving in to them. We are not. We are not agreeing with them. We are simply saying that if we were they (which, of course, we are not) and we saw reality as they do (which we do not)—then we only experienced what they did (which we did not and do not) that we would feel the way they do. All we are saying is that it makes sense the way they connect the dots of their experience to their feelings.

It is important that the listener embrace this task without reservation. When we validate our partners’ experience, we must be sincere. We must give them this space without us pushing our position on to them. This is their turn to be understood, appreciated, respected and validated. Our turn should be coming soon.

Step Five: Be Moved. Love means that someone matters to you, that this someone has influence over you; that you care about what your mate feels; that their feelings can change yours. Likely your partner wants you to change in some way. Why can’t you?

Of course, we cannot change our souls for them. We probably cannot make our partners feel better. But we try to do what we can to support them. If they want us to move to the left one mile and we can’t do that, how far to the left can we move? Once we figure that out, we should move that far. When we get there, we should see if there is more room for us to move left further. If there is, then we should move again. There are limits, however, to what we can do.

Often, we catch ourselves stubbornly saying, “I’m not changing. This is it. Accept me as I am. This is as good as I get.” This is such a silly statement.

I remember when I was ten years old, playing with my friends in the swimming pool, saying that I would never be like those adults lying around the pool. I would always be in the water playing Marco Polo. By the time I was thirteen I rarely spent time in a pool. When I was seventeen, I remember saying I would always play basketball, even when I was seventy. I haven’t played a game of basketball since I was thirty-five. At sixty I feel as if I discover a new ache or pain every day. I look at my fourteen-year-old god-child, Elise, and she seems to be changing right before my eyes. Aren’t you changing?

The point is we are always changing. Our bodies change. Our ideas change. Our feelings change. Our tastes change. Our values change. Our tactics change. Why can’t we change to make it easier for those we love to be with us? We probably cannot change and become who our mates wish us to be. But we can make an effort. We can become more conscious of trying to change. We can always do better.

Because our partners feel as they do, love means that their feelings make a difference to us. So, we move, find our limits and offer that to them. It won’t fix them. They have to decide to let our concessions matter to them. They may not have the strength to do that. But we can be satisfied knowing we have done what we can and knowing that we will move even further, when we can.

References:

Gottlieb, L. https://www.familyaccessfightingforchildrensrights.com/uploads/2/6/5/0/26505602/children_are_harmed_when_professionals_reject_science.pdf

December 2022 Psychology Today article about Gregory Bern’s’ book The Self-Delusion

Hoffman, L. (2001). Family Therapy: An Intimate History. Norton & Company: New York: NY.

Loftus, E. (1997). Creating False Memories. Scientific American, 277 (3) 70-75.

Loftus, E. (2000). The Dangers of Memory. Academia.edu. Online 105-117.

Schaarschmidt, T. (2018) The Art of Lying. Scientific American.

Shaw, J. (2016). The Memory Illusion: Remembering, Forgetting, and the Science of False Memory. Random House. New York: NY.

Slater, S. (2013). Why Do We Lie? Psychology Today.

1 Hardy & Laszloffy, Couple Therapy Using a Multicultural Perspective, p 569. Clinical Handbook of Couple Therapy (2002) Edited by Alan S. Gurman, Neil S. Jacobson 3rd edition.

2 Montouri, A. & Conti, I. (1993). From power to partnership: Creating the future of love, work and community. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

Atkinson, B. (2005). Emotional intelligence in couples therapy. New York: Norton.

Malcom, W., Warwar, S., & Greenberg, L.S. (2005). Facilitating forgiveness in individual therapy as an approach to resolving interpersonal injuries. In E. L. Worthington Jr. (Ed.), The handbook of forgiveness (pp. 379-393). New York: Routledge.

3 Montouri, A. & Conti, I. (1993). From power to partnership: Creating the future of love, work and community. San Francisco: Harper Collins.

4 Hudson, P.O., & O’Hanlon, W. H. (1991). Rewriting loves stories: Brief marital therapy. New York: Norton.

Divorce, the Courts and a United Authority Structure for Children

By David W. McMillan, Ph.D.

In the Beginning
In most families, conception of a child is the result of a passionate expression of love, trust, respect and commitment. This loving bond between parents, hopefully, precedes the birth of the child.

If this loving, trusting, committed, respectful, bond between parents is perpetuated, children will have the foundation for healthy development of a sense of psychological well-being. The co-parenting voices of such a union are likely to create sweet harmonious music for young ears. The main thing that such strong parental affections create for a child is a united authority structure.

A single parent can raise healthy children, sometimes much better than two parents. The reason a single parent might be better than two is because two parents can undermine each other, create loyalty battles, confuse the children, invite the children into unhealthy alliances, grant artificial power to the children that they are not mature enough to manage.

A single parent may be less likely to discordantly play authority music off key.

Divorcing parents are particularly likely to undermine one another and create a discordant authority structure.

Importance of a United Authority Structure for Children
A united family authority structure is so important to our species that all human cultures have public ceremonies consecrating the initiation of families using symbols, rituals and traditions to empower the original parent bond, which will become the basis of that family’s authority structure. These ceremonies are to protect the children conceived by such a passionate commitment.

Many families come to court in need of help to resolve family conflicts. Their expected resolution is a divorce. Their bond has been broken and they can no longer work together as a family in the same home. Remaining conjoined in the same abode is probably the worst option for everyone including the children.

Through an agreed order or a judge’s decision the couple proceeds with a plan for dividing assets and sharing parenting. Whatever decision and plan that comes from the proceedings is better than what had been. They need a judge or a legal agreement to help them move forward.

Yet, often the decision and plan to move forward is flawed and the parties and the children may have many complaints about how the plan might have been better.

Some families move on from the divorce and they use a flawed court decision to creatively build a competent united authority structure. Others don’t.

After the divorce, it really doesn’t matter whether or not the judge might have made a better decision or not. The judge has given the family a new authority structure. They can build on it, adapt it, or revise it, but it is the legal reality. And it provides the children with a new authority structure held together by the judge’s legal strength.

A New Authority Center Pole
The judge is the center pole in a new blended family tent. In reunifying families, the authority structure should be built around that center pole.

When mental health professionals participate in the litigation divorce process, they often don’t contribute to a healthy divorce or to a healthy building of a blended family.

Often each litigant hires different “experts” and consults different therapists. These therapists rarely communicate with one another or the court. They are often entrenched in their beliefs that the judge is wrong and they are right.

During, and especially after a divorce, the divorcing/divorced co-parents are best served working with the reality of the legal center pole upon which their tent, their new life, is being built. That pole once came from the strength of the parents love for one another. After the divorce is filed, that pole is replaced by the legal authority of a judge and the court orders which ensues from the divorce. Dissenting mental health professionals, no matter how well intended, no matter how smart and accurate in their assessments, are not helpful.

In several cases, judges have been successful in reuniting parent and child only to have that good work undone by alienating parents and well-intended siloed professionals who support the alienating parent’s point of view and have no other frame of reference.

Mental Health Professionals Are Often a Problem
Parental Alienation cases often become nightmares because of the way the case is conceived and the way professionals are engaged.

Typically, courts allow parties to engage their own experts and professionals. Much of the time mental health professionals are forbidden from communicating with one another or the attorneys or the courts. Often, they are hired as battling experts, jousting one another in court, while the judge, working alone, sorts through the mess.

As the reader considers this often-typical process, remember how important it is for children to have a united authority structure. Consider the benefits of a parental united authority. It prevents enmeshment, often described in the oedipal complex. Consider the universal human taboos of intimacy between parent and opposite child. There are so many ways that such parent/child alliances are not healthy for a child. A united authority structure prevents loyalty battles. It helps prevent cognitive distortions and provides strong reality testing for children. It nurtures the relationship of the children equally with both parents.

In recent a case, a mother believed her child was allergic to penicillin because she, the mother, was allergic. Medical testing of the daughter demonstrated that the child was not allergic to penicillin. The court resolved the disputes over medical decision-making granting medical decision-making authority to the father.

The judge’s decision created a singular non-confusing authority structure around medical issues and this helped this blended family move on with constructing their blended family tent around the judge’s legal center pole.

Return now to considering a way to construct a therapeutic/legal parent/child reunification process. What if prior to the employment of any mental health expert in a parent/child reunification case, the attorneys agreed or the judge ordered, the appointment of one independent objective neutral, who would be in charge of collecting information, construing a parent/child reunification process and choosing any other professionals needed in the treatment of the various parts of the treatment process. This might include a drug and alcohol therapist or program, a psychiatrist, a child therapist, therapists for the parents, etc. All of whom would consult one another. There would be no treatment silos. The team facilitator would report treatment progress to the court and take direction from the judge. The judge would be the center pole in this authority structure and the parties, the attorneys and the professionals would all be working toward the same goal, which is to support the judge and the judicial process to build a new and better united authority structure for the children in this blended family.

Litigant Mistakes
Litigants often miss the point of a divorce. In addition to terminating a painful relationship, the point of the divorce for children is to create a less fractious co-parenting relationship and a stronger united authority structure, which will help children better manage their emotions and discover how to take advantage of reality as it is rather than as they wish it was.

Instead of rebuilding a better unified authority structure for their children, divorcing parents are often more focused on winning their divorce and convincing the judge to side with them.

Most judges have a standard parenting plan that awards parenting time in predictable ways. It is usually 60/40 or 50/50. What parents should want is enough time with their children to maintain a strong parenting bond with their children. An award of 40% parenting time provides enough time with their children to maintain a strong parenting bond, especially when the 40% parenting time parent has the blessing, trust and support from the other parent. The 40% parent often feels as if they have lost, but actually they are likely to have as much or more quality time with their children as the 60% parent, less logistical parenting drudgery and more free time to pursue their own adult life.

As far as the money part of the divorce, litigants can spend their children’s college tuition on attorney’s fees and spend months or years in divorce purgatory or they can settle for something a bit less than they might get in court and start building a new life and a stronger united authority structure for the children with less acrimony and tension between co-parents.

Adding a Parent: Attachment Theory and the Doe Family’s Divorce: An Example of Parent/Child Reunification

By David W. McMillan, Ph.D.

Attachment theory is the leading family psychology theory that describes the development of the family bond. The bond begins with the parents’ love, respect and passion for one another; the pride they feel when they become aware that each of them is loved by the other; that they share a bond, an attachment that inspires commitment and mutual support. Hopefully, the moment of conception represents the joy each provides the other.

It is this bond that is often symbolized by marriage and eventually by the birth of a child that forms their shared pride into their family. Our species wish if for the joy and pride shared by the parents to emanate to the child.

If the child is also blessed by this love and acceptance, the child develops a secure attachment and the values that come from being loved, cared for and provided for by his/her parents. Research of infant brain development has shown that the care a child receives in the first eighteen months of a child’s life is critical to brain development.

If during that first eighteen months, the child has a relationship with at least one of its parents, in which the child can count on a caring response when she cries out for help (often not knowing why) and the parent responds and comforts her, that child’s brain develops differently than the child who does not get this kind of parental response.

The child with the doting parent(s) carries with him/her for the rest of their lives a confidence that they are loved and that they live in a world where they can believe, have faith and expect that trust and loyalty will be reciprocated. Research indicates that this faith and confidence extends beyond this child to the next generation.

The child whose parents are unable to provide this sense of security grows up to believe that they cannot trust others, that loyalty is not reciprocated, that the only person they can trust is themselves. These children become vigilant, suspicious and street smart. They manage to get by through manipulating the system. They don’t respect authority and they don’t follow rules and they have no sense of loyalty or trust in others.

These children have what’s called an insecure attachment. Their self-esteem is low. Integrity does not reward them. They feel no reciprocal loyalty, no sense of family. They don’t trust authority and often for good reason.

The child with a secure attachment is the opposite. They are trusting, not conniving. They are loyal and truthful. They believe that when they give love and respect, that it will be returned.

The strong union and bond of the parents with each other is what maintains the family attachment and sense of loyalty. The parent’s pride in the fact that their co-parent loves and respects them is contagious and it builds a family culture with a sense of pride in the family. This is seen in family events, Thanksgiving, Christmas, visits to graves, etc.

Divorce is a significant blow to family loyalty. This family once had a name, the Doe’s. What does that name mean after a divorce? Since Mom and Dad can’t be loyal to one another as husband and wife, what loyalties should the children continue to serve?

Some divorces don’t create these loyalty challenges. In these divorces, parents explain that they still love and respect one another. They still believe in the essential goodness of each other and they share a mutual respect. And they are sad and regret that they did not attend to their relationship as they should have, that both had a part in the failure of the marriage.

The children are not at fault. They didn’t cause the divorce. Yes, children create challenges but they (the divorcing parents) have always welcomed that challenge and both are confident in the other that they still do delight in their role as parents and take great joy and pride in their children.

The children have a job. It’s the same job that they have always had. And that is to love and obey both parents equally. And that when the child is in trouble with one parent, they are still in trouble with the other, just as it was prior to the divorce. The children can count on their parents remaining a close parental team united in what they believe is right for the children.

The children of such a healthy divorce usually remain on a healthy developmental path. They continue to feel a sense of family loyalty. They continue to have pride in the family name. They are proud to be a member of the Doe family. They know that this is what both parents wish for them.

Many divorces, unfortunately, don’t maintain this respect and loyalty. Often parents leave the marriage with the legacy of distrust and bitterness. Often they don’t share the same parenting values and don’t respect one another as parents. When this happens the parental authority structure disintegrates and the children feel forced to choose or they feel abandoned. They often feel that only one parent cares about them.

When one of the parents begins to develop a new intimate adult relationship after the divorce, children are often threatened. Sometimes the children watch the courting parent shift priorities and make decisions that honor their new romantic interest. They may feel betrayed.

Or the parent with the romantic interest may not change their approach to parenting, but the children fear that they will and imagine they have.

Blending this new romantic interest into a family takes time and requires a delicate approach. The new adult threatens the stability of the family system. Children will test that new person to see if they are trust worthy. It may take years for the new adult to earn the children’s trust. Children entering adolescence have a difficult time creating their own identity and at the same time accepting and trusting a new adult family member. This is a natural developmental period of testing adult authority.

The non-courting parent plays a critical role in this awkward family reformation time. They can sabotage and undermine the development of their child’s relationship with this new authority figure in their lives. Their acceptance, encouragement, and support of this new adult authority is essential to the success of this family’s blending.

The courting parent may have brought a new adult into the child’s home, who may assume they can discipline the children when they have not yet earned the right in the child’s mind and they may not know how discipline works in the child’s family culture. Often the oldest child or the strongest child will revolt against the courting parent and the new adult authority.

The way parents do or do not unite as parents after a divorce is critical to the child’s future. The decisions they make after a divorce can have long-term consequences. The courting parent may not be protecting the children from this new adult.

Dating should be siloed and compartmentalized away from the children. Yet, the children should know and expect their parents to be dating. The name of the person of interest should not become known for some time, at least six months or when the children show interest in knowing about this new person.

Time with the new love interest should be segregated from the children. Integration of this new person should be very gradual. The courting or later married coparent should always provide time with the children without the new adult or stepparent.

In the parent’s time alone with his/her children without the stepparent, the children report that they miss the stepparent and wish she was included, then the compartmental walls can begin to come down. Otherwise maintain some level of separateness between the new partner/parent and the children.

Hopefully the new love interest will also court the children, take time alone with each one, take advantage of opportunities to praise them, keep commitments and promises made to them. As a new person in the life of these children, look for ways to sincerely enjoy them and delight in their achievements, talents and personalities.

The job of a stepparent is the most difficult job in a blended family.

Model of an Agreed Order for Parent/Child Reunification Therapy

By David W. McMillan, Ph.D.

To see and download my model of an agreed order for parent/child reunification therapy, click here: