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When A Child Refuses Contact · Inside The Consulting Room - Understanding the Child Behind the Behaviour

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_00: Hello and welcome back.
• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is Kim Lee, child and adolescent psychotherapist.
• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: I'm going to introduce a new podcast series.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_00: This is going to be quite a large one, made up of eight episodes, and it's about a subject that's very close to my heart.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: And the title of this series is When a Child Says No to Contact.
• 0:25
  SPEAKER_00: And this first part is about the questions behind the allegations.
• 0:33
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is because there are few expressions in the family court capable of changing the direction of a case as quickly as the words parental alienation.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_00: Now, once introduced, those words can alter the way in which almost everything else is understood.
• 0:51
  SPEAKER_00: A parent says that they are trying to protect the child, their child may be described as obstructive, and a child who is frightened may be described as manipulated.
• 1:04
  SPEAKER_00: An allegation of abuse may be recast as evidence that one parent is attempting to destroy the child's relationship with the other.
• 1:14
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes, of course, a child is being influenced against a parent.
• 1:19
  SPEAKER_00: And there are parents who consciously or less consciously draw their children into adult disputes.
• 1:26
  SPEAKER_00: There are parents who communicate their anger, fear, or hatred so powerfully that the child comes to believe that rejecting the other parent is the only way to remain emotionally secure.
• 1:41
  SPEAKER_00: And there are also deliberate attempts to damage a child's relationship with a parent who hasn't harmed them.
• 1:48
  SPEAKER_00: Now, when this happens, it is potentially a form of emotional abuse and it must be recognized and addressed.
• 1:56
  SPEAKER_00: But that's not the whole story.
• 1:59
  SPEAKER_00: Children may resist contact for many different reasons.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: The child may be frightened, they may have experienced violence, intimidation, humiliation, coercive control, neglect, sexual harm, or persistently harmful parenting.
• 2:20
  SPEAKER_00: They may have witnessed the abuse of one parent by the other.
• 2:24
  SPEAKER_00: They may feel responsible for protecting a vulnerable parent.
• 2:28
  SPEAKER_00: They may be angry about the separation or struggling with the circumstances in one household.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_00: They may be caught within an acrimonious conflict from which there appears to be no psychological safe escape.
• 2:44
  SPEAKER_00: The child may also have reached their own conclusions about a parent.
• 2:48
  SPEAKER_00: Children aren't empty vessels into which one adult simply pours an opinion.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_00: They observe, they remember, they interpret, they misunderstand, they protect themselves and sometimes protect other people.
• 3:06
  SPEAKER_00: Their accounts may be incomplete, developmentally shaped, or internally conflicted, but that does not make those accounts meaningless.
• 3:16
  SPEAKER_00: When a child says no to contact, therefore the refusal is not a diagnosis, it's a communication.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: The task is to understand what the child is communicating and why.
• 3:30
  SPEAKER_00: So what is parental alienation?
• 3:33
  SPEAKER_00: Well, the expression parental alienation syndrome was originally presented as though it described an identifiable psychological disorder in children, but it doesn't have that status.
• 3:48
  SPEAKER_00: It's not a recognized clinical diagnosis.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_00: And the current guidance of the Family Justice Council states quite explicitly that parental alienation is not a syndrome capable of being diagnosed.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_00: And that distinction matters.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: A diagnosis suggests that a recognized condition has been identified through reliable clinical criteria.
• 4:14
  SPEAKER_00: But the expression parental alienation has often been used much more loosely, sometimes to describe a child's rejection of a parent, sometimes to describe the behavior of the parent with whom the child lives, and sometimes to describe an entire family situation.
• 4:33
  SPEAKER_00: And these are not the same things.
• 4:36
  SPEAKER_00: So current guidance refers more carefully to alienating behaviors.
• 4:42
  SPEAKER_00: Now these are actions by a parent which psychologically manipulate a child and cause the child to become reluctant, resistant, or unwilling to have a relationship with the other parent.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_00: But the Family Justice Counsel identifies three elements that must be established before a court can properly conclude that alienating behavior has occurred.
• 5:09
  SPEAKER_00: First, there must be evidence that the child is reluctant, resistant, or refusing to engage in a relationship with a parent.
• 5:18
  SPEAKER_00: Second, that reluctance or refusal must not be the consequence of the rejected parent's own behavior towards either the child or the other parent.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Now, if a child is withdrawing because that parent has been abusive, frightening, or harmful, then the child's response may be appropriate and justified rejection.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_00: Third, there must be evidence that the other parent has psychologically manipulated the child and that this manipulation has caused the child's reluctance or refusal.
• 5:54
  SPEAKER_00: Now the importance of this sequence can't be overstated.
• 5:58
  SPEAKER_00: A child's refusal establishes only that there is a problem.
• 6:03
  SPEAKER_00: It does not establish the cause of the problem.
• 6:07
  SPEAKER_00: Now here, the third element, psychological manipulation, can't simply be inferred from the child's refusal.
• 6:16
  SPEAKER_00: Yet this is precisely the leap that can and frequently does occur.
• 6:22
  SPEAKER_00: A child refuses contact, one parent alleges alienation, the focus then shifts towards the parent with whom the child lives, their attitude, their anxiety, their communications, and whether they are doing enough to promote contact.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_00: Meanwhile, the conduct of the rejected parent and the child's possible reasons for fearing or resisting that parent may receive far less attention.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_00: So that the explanation has arrived before the investigation.
• 6:57
  SPEAKER_00: I ask a question.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_00: Is it alienation or is it protection?
• 7:02
  SPEAKER_00: Now this series is concerned with what happens when the concept of parental alienation becomes a convenient coverall, an apparently simple explanation imposed upon a complex family history.
• 7:17
  SPEAKER_00: It's particularly concerned with cases in which a parent restricts or opposes contact because they believe that the child is at risk.
• 7:30
  SPEAKER_00: It may contain elements of both legitimate concern and personal anxiety.
• 7:38
  SPEAKER_00: No responsible clinician should decide the answer merely by accepting one parent's account, but neither should the court assume that a parent's resistance to contact is in any way evidence of an intention to alienate.
• 7:57
  SPEAKER_00: A genuinely protective parent can find themselves caught in an almost impossible position.
• 8:04
  SPEAKER_00: If they facilitate contact, despite what the child has reported or displayed, they may fear that they are failing to safeguard the child.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: If they restrict contact, they risk being accused of emotional harm, implacable hostility, or alienating behavior.
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: And the more strongly they express their concern, the more hostile they may appear, the more anxious they become, the more their anxiety may be used as evidence that they are transmitting fear to the child, and their attempt to describe a pattern of abuse may be characterized as an inability to move on from the adult relationship.
• 8:45
  SPEAKER_00: So protection can conveniently be reinterpreted as obstruction.
• 8:51
  SPEAKER_00: This doesn't mean that every parent who describes themselves as protective is necessarily protecting the child.
• 8:59
  SPEAKER_00: Self-description isn't evidence, but exactly the same principle applies to the parent who describes themselves as alienated.
• 9:08
  SPEAKER_00: Claiming to be a victim of parental alienation does not establish that alienation has occurred.
• 9:15
  SPEAKER_00: Both assertions require investigation.
• 9:19
  SPEAKER_00: Now, the use of alienation allegations in court is important to understand.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: The Family Justice Council has recognized that the concepts of parental alienation and so-called parental alienation syndrome have been increasingly exploited within family litigation.
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: And its guidance also warns that allegations of alienating behavior are sometimes raised in response to allegations of domestic abuse.
• 9:50
  SPEAKER_00: Now the domestic abuse commissioner has expressed similar concerns, describing the use of retaliatory alienation allegations as a potential means of avoiding accountability and thus minimizing abuse and continuing coercive behavior through the core process.
• 10:10
  SPEAKER_00: And this creates a profound danger.
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Domestic abuse and emotional harm often do not consist, in fact almost always do not consist, of a single easily proven incident.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: They emerge through patterns, intimidation, degradation, surveillance, control threats, manipulation, and the gradual narrowing of another person's psychological freedom.
• 10:37
  SPEAKER_00: Individual events may appear relatively insignificant when removed from that pattern.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: The evidential picture may be dispersed, it may be across police records, schools, health services, social care records, private messages, and the accounts of different family members.
• 10:57
  SPEAKER_00: But the harm to the child may be expressed indirectly through anxiety, bodily symptoms, disturbed sleep, dysregulation, aggression, withdrawal, self-blame, divided loyalties, or an overwhelming need to protect one parent.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_00: This complexity doesn't always fit comfortably, if at all, within court timescales and procedures.
• 11:22
  SPEAKER_00: A concise allegation such as parental alienation may consequently acquire much more explanatory force than a complicated history of cumulative emotional harm.
• 11:37
  SPEAKER_00: The language becomes more manageable than the child.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Advocacy and responsibility is a tricky one for me because solicitors and barristers have a duty to represent their clients, but they must test evidence and do so in advance in a client's case within the law.
• 12:01
  SPEAKER_00: But professional advocacy doesn't remove ethical responsibility.
• 12:06
  SPEAKER_00: It becomes ethically indefensible when a contested psychological label is used strategically to eclipse safeguarding evidence or to discredit a protective parent or convert a child's fear into evidence against the person to whom the child has turned for safety.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_00: No allegation should become a forensic shortcut.
• 12:33
  SPEAKER_00: The court must determine the facts, experts must remain within their competence, clinicians must consider alternative explanations rather than adopting the account of the person who instructed them.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_00: And social workers and family court advisers must investigate the child's circumstances rather than beginning from an assumption that contact is necessarily safe or beneficial.
• 13:01
  SPEAKER_00: Above all, the child's welfare must remain the central consideration.
• 13:06
  SPEAKER_00: And quite often I hear of people saying, as a parent, I have a right.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's get it clear.
• 13:14
  SPEAKER_00: The child's right in law comes first.
• 13:17
  SPEAKER_00: Now the role of Kafkas is interesting because they occupy a powerful yet extraordinarily difficult position.
• 13:26
  SPEAKER_00: Its family court advisers are frequently expected to enter complicated family systems, assess risk, obtain the child's wishes and feelings, and evaluate competing accounts and advise the court.
• 13:48
  SPEAKER_00: It also says that domestic abuse, harmful parenting, and other possible explanations must be considered before alienating behavior is identified.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_00: This is an important and necessary position, but nevertheless, I remain concerned that Kafkas can sometimes function as a blunt instrument.
• 14:12
  SPEAKER_00: A brief assessment can't always reveal the meaning of a child's behavior.
• 14:18
  SPEAKER_00: A child seen on one or two occasions may say what feels safest, what they believe the adult wants to hear, or what enables them to avoid an intolerable conflict.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_00: And a parent who presents calmly may not be the safer parent.
• 14:35
  SPEAKER_00: A parent who appears anxious, distressed, or disorganized may be displaying the effects of prolonged coercion rather than evidence of psychological instability.
• 14:47
  SPEAKER_00: The quality of an assessment depends upon the practitioner's experience.
• 14:52
  SPEAKER_00: The information made available, the time allowed, and the conceptual framework through which the case is understood.
• 15:00
  SPEAKER_00: And the conceptual framework, as far as I am concerned, is far too narrow.
• 15:07
  SPEAKER_00: Policy and practice aren't always the same thing.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_00: Now, later in this series, I'll examine both the responsibilities placed upon CAFCAS and the limitations of a system asked to make highly consequential recommendations from evidence that may be fragmented, contested, and psychologically complex.
• 15:32
  SPEAKER_00: We'll also consider the responsibility of social services.
• 15:36
  SPEAKER_00: Because when there is reasonable cause to suspect that a child is suffering or is likely to suffer significant harm, the issue can't safely be reduced to a private disagreement about contact.
• 15:49
  SPEAKER_00: Safeguarding concerns require proper assessment.
• 15:53
  SPEAKER_00: An emotional harm is often difficult to demonstrate because it accumulates.
• 15:59
  SPEAKER_00: There may be no single injury, no isolated event that conclusively proves what's happened.
• 16:06
  SPEAKER_00: The evidence may lie in changes to the child patterns across time and the relationship between the child's symptoms and particular experiences.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: This makes professional curiosity and often clinical understanding.
• 16:25
  SPEAKER_00: This is required, it's essential.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_00: But social workers must consider what is happening to the child and what has happened historically, how a parent's accounts fit into the available evidence and whether a parent-parental conflict is masking coercive control or another form of abuse.
• 16:46
  SPEAKER_00: Now they also have to distinguish between conflict and control.
• 16:51
  SPEAKER_00: Conflict suggests two people with relatively equal power engaged in dispute.
• 16:57
  SPEAKER_00: Coercive control is different.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: It involves a pattern through which one person progressively dominates, intimidates, or restricts another.
• 17:08
  SPEAKER_00: Describing both situations simply as high conflict can just create a false picture, false equivalence which obscures the direction of the harm.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_00: Now my position in this series is, as listeners will probably already know, one where I approach these questions as a clinical child and adolescent psychotherapist who has worked with children and families for many, many years.
• 17:37
  SPEAKER_00: Now I'm frequently involved in cases in which parental alienation is alleged.
• 17:44
  SPEAKER_00: Sometimes I work, and often I work therapeutically, but at other times I am instructed under court order to assess a child or family, mostly as the whole family, and make recommendations to the court.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_00: Now, what is interesting is it's almost as if I'm the end of the line, because the courts will already have gone through a long process, including Kafkas, quite possibly safeguarding investigations and so on.
• 18:18
  SPEAKER_00: So this is a very different kind of role, and it requires a very different kind of discipline.
• 18:23
  SPEAKER_00: Because my task isn't to decide which parent I like, which adults appear most convincing, or which narrative is most emotionally compelling.
• 18:35
  SPEAKER_00: It's to examine the history, the relationships, the evidence, and the presentation, the psychological presentation of all parties.
• 18:46
  SPEAKER_00: I have to ask compelling and competing questions.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: Is this child being manipulated?
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_00: Is the child frightened?
• 18:55
  SPEAKER_00: Has one parent consciously or unconsciously transmitted their own hostility?
• 19:02
  SPEAKER_00: Has the other parent behaved in ways that make the child's rejection understandable?
• 19:08
  SPEAKER_00: Is the child protecting a parent?
• 19:10
  SPEAKER_00: Is the child trying to escape an impossible loyalty conflict?
• 19:16
  SPEAKER_00: Are domestic abuse and alienating behaviors both present?
• 19:20
  SPEAKER_00: And what evidence is there for either?
• 19:22
  SPEAKER_00: And what is the contradictory evidence?
• 19:25
  SPEAKER_00: And what arrangements are most likely to protect the child's welfare?
• 19:29
  SPEAKER_00: Now, this is a forendic forensic understanding, and it doesn't begin with a label.
• 19:36
  SPEAKER_00: It begins with uncertainty.
• 19:38
  SPEAKER_00: I am not certain, and I need to remain holding that position until such time that I have enough evidence, enough information to form an intelligent clinical understanding that then translates into recommendations that I make to a judge.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_00: In the next episode, entitled The Name That Explains Too Much, I will examine the origins of parental alienation syndrome as it's been known, its movement into family litigation, and why contemporary guidance rejects the idea that it's a diagnosable condition.
• 20:21
  SPEAKER_00: We then turn to when a child says no, examining the many reasons children resist or refuse contact and what their behavior may be trying to say.
• 20:33
  SPEAKER_00: In Protection Recast as Alienation, a subsequent episode, I'll explore the position of the protective parent and the extraordinary double bind created when safeguarding action is interpreted as hostility.
• 20:48
  SPEAKER_00: Then we look at the counter allegation.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: And that will consider cases in which parental alienation is raised following an allegation of abuse of some kind.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_00: And interestingly, with that one, we look at how litigation itself can sometimes become a continuation of abuse.
• 21:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then I think The Child Lost Inside the Case is an episode which will examine the difference between recording a child's wishes and feelings and genuinely understanding the child's psychological experience.
• 21:26
  SPEAKER_00: Then, an episode entitled The Blunt Instrument will look critically at CAFCAS, but also social services, their responsibilities, their current guidance, but to understand the constraints under which practitioners work and the consequences when a complex family is reduced to a brief assessment.
• 21:52
  SPEAKER_00: In safeguarding is not a side issue.
• 21:55
  SPEAKER_00: I'll consider the responsibilities of social services and the courts when emotional harm, domestic abuse, or other risks are present.
• 22:06
  SPEAKER_00: And finally, in Beyond the Label, I will set out a more forensic clinical approach.
• 22:12
  SPEAKER_00: One that examines the whole family system, tests alternative explanations, respects the child's developmental reality, and makes safety, not parental entitlement, the organizing principle.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: And throughout the series, I'll draw upon clinical experience research, legal guidance, and the emerging concerns of organizations.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: I won't be discussing identifiable cases, and where clinical patterns of or examples are used, identifying information will be removed or altered.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_00: The purpose isn't to decide individual disputes in public, it's to examine the quality of thinking.
• 22:58
  SPEAKER_00: A starting position is this the series begins with four propositions.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_00: A parent can manipulate a child into rejecting another parent, and that can cause serious emotional harm.
• 23:13
  SPEAKER_00: A parent can also resist contact because the child is genuinely unsafe.
• 23:19
  SPEAKER_00: An allegation of abuse is not by itself proof of abuse.
• 23:26
  SPEAKER_00: An allegation of alienation is not by itself proof of alienation.
• 23:32
  SPEAKER_00: The task is to investigate.
• 23:34
  SPEAKER_00: Because when a child says no to contact, the most important question is not which parent is winning.
• 23:42
  SPEAKER_00: It is not which parent is more convincing, and it's certainly not how quickly can contact be restored.
• 23:52
  SPEAKER_00: The first question must be what has happened or is still happening that makes this child need to say no.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_00: And until that question has been properly examined, we don't know whether the child is being alienated from a parent or attempting to protect themselves from one.
• 24:10
  SPEAKER_00: And the difference between those two possibilities could not be more important.
• 24:16
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you for listening, and I look forward to coming back and offering you the next episode.