Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Parental Alienation in Divorce with Dr. Amy J.L. Baker, Part 1
Transcript
- Speaker 1 (00:04): Welcome to it's all your fault on true story FM, the one and only podcast focused on high conflict human interactions, which usually involves someone who may have a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter here with bill Eddie. We are the co-founders of the high conflict Institute in San Diego, California. In this episode, we talk with Dr. Amy Baker, author of several books on alienation and divorce and a program called the restoring family connections program for parents and their adult alienated children. Now, after taking a short hiatus, we are back, it went very quickly and we missed all of you. We, we really hope you've had a lovely summer in the Northern hemisphere. And for those of you in the Southern hemisphere, we hope you've kept warm or cool depending on your location. We feel refreshed and energized to start this new season. Bill had a little time off. Speaker 1 (01:00): I much deserve break after writing numerous books. The past couple of years, interspersed with loads of speaking and training. And I took a little time here and there to spend with my husband, my kids, and their littles. I'm happy to announce a new little one who was born in June in, uh, joining our family. So now I have three littles who names all start with L I adore them and I'm pretty sure they adore me or at least tolerate my kisses. All right. So let's get down to business. This episode is the first in a series on high conflict divorce, and whether it's a public health problem, bill and I have been involved in family law for many decades. Um, I don't wanna say how many between us, but quite a few, uh, high conflict divorce was, was bad. 30 years ago, 20 years ago, 10 years ago, about five years ago was when we started hearing reports of increases in violence, coercive control, repeated trips to court alienation, and lots of other issues. Speaker 1 (02:04): I specifically recall a group of lawyers in Australia in a training I was giving who reported an increase in strangulations in their divorce cases. And it just hasn't stopped from there. Such information stops. One in one's tracks. Then the pandemic happened. People were trapped at home together, violence increased new topics, arose giving parents new issues to fight about masks schools. What was going on in the other parents' home to ensure the child's protection from the virus virtual school vaccines. Now for two plus years, we've heard from courts, attorneys, mediators, counselors, researchers, the kids, and from the parents themselves, that the level of conflict is higher than ever before. Is it just about masks and vaccines is, or is it about the overarching heightened levels of anxiety and aggression that seem to be present throughout the world? I don't know, but we'll be talking about that in this series today, we launched the series by talking with Dr. Amy J L baker on one of the most challenging and affecting areas within the family law field alienation. But first, a couple of notes. If you have a question for our Q and a sessions about your high conflict situation, send them to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast, where you'll also find the show notes and links. Please give us a rate to review and tell a friend about us, especially if they're dealing with a high conflict situation, we are very grateful. Now let's go, Speaker 1 (03:48): Dr. Amy jail baker joins us today. She is a nationally recognized expert in parent child relationships, especially children of divorce, parental alien alienation, and emotional abuse of children. She has a PhD in developmental psychology from teachers college of Columbia university, and is the author or co-author of nine books, including co-parenting with a toxic X and over 100 scholarly articles. Her areas of research include parental alien nation, child welfare, parental involvement in their children's education, early intervention and attachment. She provides training to legal and mental health professionals around the country, and also offers individualized coaching for parents dealing with parental alienation and a little tidbit here. Dr. Baker was recently interviewed for an upcoming episode on red table talk, hosted by Jada Pinkett Smith. She had a seat at the proverbial red table. So keep an eye out for that. Dr. Baker, we are indeed privileged to have you on our program today and very grateful for your time. You are most welcome here, listeners you're inf retreat with the opportunity to listen to two people who have put so much of their life's work into understanding alienation. Uh, I know you'll enjoy hearing, uh, the, these questions and, and hearing Dr. Baker's answers. And bill will be discussing all of this with Dr. Baker as well. Speaker 1 (05:22): Let's start with hearing about you Dr. Baker. Well, Speaker 2 (05:25): First of all, thank you both for having me and welcome to the listeners. Um, I'm not exactly sure what to say about myself, because I think that the one thing that, um, people who know me want to know is whether I personally have dealt with parental alienation. And that first came up when I was interviewed for the New York times for my first book, adult children of parental alienation came out and I made that decision way back then, that was roughly 2007 that I actually wasn't going to share that particular piece of my personal story because I, for two reasons, one is I really want my work to stand on its own. That was a research based book, and I really wanted it to be judged on the quality of the work. And the second thing is, and certainly as I've moved into providing individual coaching to clients who do wanna know, they are curious, what I end up saying is whether I've had my own experience or not, I haven't had your experience. Speaker 2 (06:27): And so my job as your coach is to hear your story and feedback. What I can say is what I bring to this field is to me a unique combination of being a developmental psychologist. So I really understand children's developments, um, specifically early social, emotional development. I did my dissertation on attachment theory. So I really understand what does it mean for a parent and child to forge that bond because alienation occurs when that bond is being disrupted. So I bring that to it, my developmental perspective, my deep understanding of psychological maltreatment, which is another piece of my life, and then all the work I've done in alienation. So that's sort of who I am and what I, what I bring to this field. Speaker 1 (07:18): And I, I respect what you said about, um, you know, kind of keeping the, any, anything personal out of it, whether you have it or not. It it's just, um, we've had so many people, uh, I have a little publishing company and so many have come to me with, you know, they, they have their story and they want to tell the world about it. They wanna write a book about it and they come with this particular angle, perhaps. So I, I think that was a wise choice. Speaker 3 (07:43): Let me jump in for a second here and just say Dr. Bakers, that I think I actually attended one of your seminars at a conference a year after you got your PhD. Could you tell me when that would've been, how long I've known you Speaker 2 (08:01): So I got my PhD in 89. It, the topic was attachment in toddlerhood all the attachment research at that point had really been on infancy and toddlers have sort of a different developmental agenda. So that's what my research, that's what my focus was at that time. So the only conference I could imagine would've been like society for research and child development or the international, you know, uh, infancy studies conference. I didn't really find my way to parental alienation until about 2004 ish. Uh, and that's how I started doing research on that. Speaker 3 (08:40): I think it was when your book had come out the adult children of parental alienation Speaker 2 (08:46): In two and 5, 6, 7 ish. Wow. Speaker 3 (08:49): Okay. So we go back ways, but you've certainly done a lot of work even before getting into this, which I think is so good because the field of parental alienation has so many controversies to it. It's important to have really solid researchers behind it. And I think you're really well respected in that regard. So anyway, I'll pass it back to Megan with her next question, but I'm just so glad we get to be in the, the same program at the same time, Speaker 2 (09:19): The same zoom room. Speaker 3 (09:20): That's right. Speaker 1 (09:21): zoom room. Exactly. All right. Well, let's roll into the first question, which is about alienation obviously. So how do you define alienation? You know, what is it? Speaker 2 (09:32): So the way that I generally define it is that it's a family dynamic in which one, parent engages in a set of behaviors that are likely to foster a child unjustified rejection of the other parent. So the alienating behavior engage, uh, parent, the alienating parent engages in alienating behaviors. And when that does work, when it's successful, then the child becomes alienated. So the parental alienation sort of refers to the whole family drama. And then there's a name for the behaviors of the parents. And then for the effect on the child Speaker 3 (10:12): That didn't involve in probably about 20 alienation cases as a lawyer and about 30 as a high conflict consultant. And all the cases I've seen have basically centered on one person driving the alienation process and the other parent, really not doing something, as you said, unjustified and the other parent not doing something, but I've always been, been wondering, is there a family out there that has two parents alienating the child against the other parent? And I've just never seen that. So I just wonder as part of the definition, you're saying it's a parent who seems to be involved in this behavior, is that correct? Speaker 2 (10:57): Yes, that is correct. If both parents were engaging in it, it would just be a horrible family situation for the child. And I have talked to people who have had that experience, but generally the term parental alienation is reserved for a particular dynamic in which one, parent is the alienator engaging in alienation behaviors, fostering the child to become alienated from the other parent. And just to sort of, I know we're gonna touch on this at some point, I'm just gonna move this right here. Not every case where a child rejects a parent is a case of alienation. Sometimes kids reject a parent for a legitimate reason. We refer to that as estrangement. So you can say that when children are aligned with one parent against the other parent, it could be parental alienation, meaning the child's rejection is unjustified. It could be estrangement, meaning the rejection is justified. So of course, most people who are rejected by their children believe that it's alienation because nobody wants to think they deserve their kids' rejection. But from a professional point of view, we have to start with the concept of a differential diagnosis. Child is rejecting parent, is it alienation or is it estrangement? Speaker 1 (12:21): So it's like one is driven by the parent, right? Alienation would be parent driven where estrangement is more child driven. Would that be an accurate assessment? Speaker 2 (12:30): Parental alienation is fostered by the favored parents. Whereas, uh, estrangement is engendered by the parent being rejected and the child is in a sense sort of reacting to what the parents are doing. Speaker 1 (12:47): Okay, got it. Speaker 3 (12:48): I it's good that we're all estrangement versus alienation. I've had many cases recently as a high conflict consultant. And my background is as a licensed clinical social worker for 12 years, then representing as a family lawyer certified family law specialist in California, representing parents for 15 years in family court. And then focusing on mediation after that and high conflict education. So many of my consultations lately are starting to have true estrangement where they're the, the child's rejecting a parent. Who's screaming at them all the time, blaming them, humiliating them. Um, and sometimes physically abusive of them. And what's happening is in court. The other parents accused of alienation and it seems to me, the court has gone through these stages and different courts through different stages where they used to, you know, of course have an abuse presumption. And if a child resisted a parent, parent must have abused the child and then slowly coming to understand alienation to some degree. Speaker 3 (14:05): And now I'm seeing parents accused of alienation when in fact it isn't estrangement case, and it seems so hard and maybe we'll get into this later, but so hard for courts to hold these two concepts alienation and estrangement, and to consider both of them so that they know what's going on. Because I would say they look the same on the surface. If you don't go very deep, that's what you're saying. Would you say that, that you see it that way too, that at alienation of stranger, it really looks similar on the surface and that you have to consider both possibilities to really understand the case and figure out which one it is. Speaker 2 (14:49): Well, I absolutely agree. You have to figure it out. We don't want to make a presumption one way or the other, because the treatment is very different. If a child is rejecting an abusive parent, you need an abuse specific treatment, like a F C B T, or something else, depending on the context, if it's alienation, then you need an alienation specific treatment. And they're entirely different turning points for families and a F C B T like couldn't be further apart. So that's why it matters. It's not just sort of doling out blame. It's determining you do the differential diagnosis so that you then know what's the proper course of treatment. What I would say in terms of how easy or hard it is to tell the difference is they share one thing, which is that a child is resisting refusing a relationship or contact with a parent. Speaker 2 (15:41): So what we rely on in the field is something called the five factor model. And if all five factors are present, then it's alienation, all five factors have to be present. And if you know the five factor model, then you know, you can't just look at the behavior of the child and say, oh, this child seems so convincing. They say the parent yells and makes them uncomfortable. Of course, it's a estrangement. Or of course it's not a, you know, estrangement. So the five factor model, the first factor is the thing that they share. The child is in conflict with the parent and the, and it, and that can take many forms. It might be total, uh, refusal to visit, or it could be going, but, you know, totally checked out in their room the whole time won't drink water, won't have a meal, you know, brings their own clothes and food. Speaker 2 (16:30): And you know, so what does resist refuse look like at that severe level? It could be absence of contact or contact where the child is not open to having a relationship, but then there are four ways in which they could be different. And at all, four boxes are ticked. Then it's alienation. So briefly, the first is a prior positive relationship. So that means that the now rejected parent had the capacity clocked in the hours, paid attention, was loving and sincere and genuine in their ability to connect emotionally with the child. If you don't have that, then it can't be alienation. It shows that whatever the flaws are of that parent, they didn't prevent the child and parent from bonding up until the time that there was, you know, the breach that is now happening. The second of the four that have to be present because we've already established the pre-condition is present. Speaker 2 (17:33): The next one is absence of abuse or neglect or seriously deficient parenting. So the premise is all parents are imperfect. All parents yell. Sometimes all parents disappoint, frustrate and hurt their children. The question is, didn't the parent do this to such an extent that the child's rejection is legitimate or expected. If the now rejected parent engaged in abuse, neglect, or seriously deficient parenting, then it cannot be alienation. The next is that the favor parent has engaged in many does not have to be all of the 17 primary parental alienation strategies. And we could get into a whole long thing about how does a parent document that and what is evidence that's admissible in court, cetera. Um, but you really have to show you can't say my child's rejecting me. Therefore it must be the other parent. You need to independently corroborate that the favorite parent is doing the very things that foster a child's unjustified rejection of the other parent. And then the final of the five factors is that the child has to be exhibiting the eight behavioral manifestations of alienation. These are behaviors that are unique and specific to alienated children, even children who are interacting with an abusive parent don't exhibit those behaviors. So what they share, what alienated in estranged kid share is just factor one. Yeah, there's a problem in the relationship. Speaker 3 (19:09): Sadly. So many court cases are just on the surface at brief hearings and the courts aren't trained in this. And so that's all they see. And they often I think have an unconscious presumption. And I always say, you've got to consider three theories, and I get a chance to, to speak to judges on a fairly regular basis. And I say, you've gotta be able to think what mom's saying may be really true. And by the way, moms and dads both are, can be rejected. So it's not really, it's not a gender issue, but one is what mom's saying could be really true. Second is what dad's saying could be really true. And the reality is both of them may be contributing to a problem, but you have to look into this. So is it alienation or estrangement or something that both people are doing in my experience, it's pretty clear. It's one or the other. Once you get deeper in the, under the Speaker 2 (20:10): Circle. Yeah. You know, the five factor model, which is science based, it really helps. But I think where the courts get in particular difficulty, one is that every state, the best interest of the child law consists of at least one factor related to the child's preference. And that means that sometimes they're just, uh, they take a shortcut, the judges, they don't really feel like they have to figure out what's the underlying cause they just say, well, the child wants to be with parent a and the, and the law allows me to honor the child's preference. Now the law, doesn't say you have to honor the child's preference. Many states have 10 factors in the best interest of the child law. And one is the child's preference, but there's other factors they could pay attention to. But if they wanna take a shortcut, that's an easy one. Speaker 2 (21:02): The other thing is once the alienation dynamic gets underway, the targeted parent, especially if they're not getting coaching from somebody makes a lot of mistakes, they end up yelling or calling their child rude or saying, well, if you wanna go live with your mother, fine, you know, be that way. And then they're sort of accused of abandoning the child or they grab the cell phone out of the kid's hands. And then they're accused of man handling the kid. So then everybody PS on that mistake and says, that's the reason, you know, mom showed up at my graduation, even though I told her not to, that's why I'm rejecting her. No, you were rejecting her. And that's why you told her not to show up at your graduation, but the courts always not always, they often seem to get, uh, persuaded by the child's seemingly authentic presentation of disgruntlement at the parent. Who's making mistakes. But most of the time, those mistakes are being provoked by the alienation dynamic. Speaker 3 (22:07): Yeah. Totally agree with you. And that's so much my advice with consultation clients, because they're so frustrated, they say, should I just tell the child what's happening or should I just let my child go? And they never wanna see me again? They say, should I say, okay, fine. And it's, it's such a, you know, a, a tricky thing to not emotionally react, but I totally agree with that advice. Speaker 2 (22:33): Yeah. I spend a lot of time with my clients, helping them regulate their emotions, because if you're flooded with sadness, anger, fear, worry. It's very hard to be compassionate. And that lack of compassion is what gets the parent into trouble because then they end up saying something or doing something that hurts the child's feelings. And then that reinforces, you know, what happens is alienation starts as sort of a lie that other parent is unsafe, unloving and unavailable. And then through the provocation and the incitement of the conflict, the child, the, the targeted parent ends up behaving sometimes in an unloving unsafe, unavailable way. And then that, and then the child thinks, gee, you know, dad's right. Mom is a jerk or dad is a monster or Speaker 3 (23:21): Whatever. Yeah. It's so disproportionate, but it's, it's used as an excuse. So just to back up to get a big picture here, how prevalent is alien nation? I remember about 20 years ago, one of the articles when there were debates about whether it existed or not said that that 10 to 15% of children, uh, were resisting or refusing contact with one of their parents, this is 20 years ago. I don't know about you, but it really seems to me it's been increasing ever since then. So two questions. One is, how do you think it's increasing? And the other is how prevalent is this? Speaker 2 (24:04): I'm sorry to disappoint you, but I'm gonna answer, I don't know, to both , but I'll, I'll elaborate. We don't really have epidemiological data to say how prevalent it is. What we know is, you know, half of all marriages end in divorce, a million kids every year, see their parents' divorce about, you know, 80% of divorces. There's some dispute that could lead to alienation. 20% of divorces are considered high conflict in which it's highly likely one or both parents are engaging in alienation behavior. So it's widespread exactly how widespread we don't really know in terms of whether it's increasing, because we don't have epidemiological data. We're not tracking it over time. We don't really have a way of knowing the perception is that it's increasing. But I think there's some reasons why that's true. The main one being the more people talk about it, the more people self-identify as being victims of it, which doesn't necessarily mean that it's more true. Speaker 2 (25:12): I mean, think about any like health food thing, like leaky gut, like there wasn't even a term 10 years ago and now, you know, a million people would, I'm just making up a number. I don't really know. A lot of people say they're victims of leaky gut. Is it increasing? Probably not. But awareness of it is increasing. So that's true of sex abuse. You know, there was a time when nobody talked about it and now it's much more out there as something that people are willing to talk about. Does that mean it's increasing or just that we're more aware of it? I don't know. Speaker 3 (25:48): Well, I, I would add and it's totally anecdotal. I give about 60 seminars to family lawyers, mediators judges, therapists a year. And I often ask if they're seeing last about the same or more than they were 10 years ago, universally in the last couple years, they're saying we're seeing more, but again, that's anecdotally, you're a researcher, so I'll leave it to research. And hopefully someday someone can look into that. But what I find helpful is to tell parents, this is not a normal result of divorce. This is something extra that's going on and not something that will just necessarily play itself out. Speaker 4 (26:40): Thank Speaker 1 (26:40): You, Dr. Baker, and to our listeners. If you've learned something new in this episode and want to hear more, we will be continuing to talk with Dr. Baker in our next episode. And we'll focus on a few topics. Like whether a parent recognizes that they're engaging in alienating behaviors, how lawyers and therapists can, uh, be very helpful in these cases, what they can do, and then drilling down even further, what can be done in mild, moderate, and severe cases. Uh, also we take a look at what parents and grandparents can do because grandparents are often involved in alienation in some form. Then whether it's appropriate to cut off contact with a parent who may have a lot of alienating behaviors. So the, the child can reconnect with their rejected parent. In the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast. Tell your friends about us. And we'd be very grateful if you'd leave a review wherever you listen to our podcast until the next episode keeps striving toward the missing piece. It's all your fault is a production of true story. FM engineering by Andy Nelson, music by Wolf Samuels, John Coggins, and Ziv Moran. Find the show, show notes and transcripts@truestory.fm or high conflict institute.com/podcast. If your podcast app allows ratings and reviews, please consider doing that for our show.