Latest / It’s All Your Fault: High Conflict People / Parental Alienation in Divorce with Dr. Amy J.L. Baker, Part 2
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 and interactions, which usually involves someone with a high conflict personality. I'm Megan Hunter, and I'm here with Bill Eddie, where the co-founders of the High Conflict Institute in San Diego, California. In today's episode, we'll continue, uh, the second part of our two part series with Dr. Amy j l Baker, who is an expert on the topic of parental alienation in high conflict divorce. And, uh, she's written many, many books. You'll want to listen to episode one if you haven't yet. There's just a load of great information in there. Before we get into that, a couple of notes. If you have questions for our q and a sessions about your high conflict situation or stories you'd like to share with us, send them to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or on our website@highconflictinstitute.com slash podcast, where you'll also find the show notes and links, and please give us a rate to review and tell your friends about us, especially if they're dealing with a high conflict situation. We're very grateful. Now, let's get back to this very important topic of alienation with Dr. Baker and Bill. Speaker 1 (01:25): Uh, you've done a lot of research, speaking of research, um, on adult children of parental alienation. Do you find that, that most do or don't reconnect with their parents someday? Speaker 2 (01:36): So, again, a great question that I'm gonna, um, qualify in my answer. So the first study I did, I, in, I conducted indepth interviews with 40 individuals who believes they self-identified as having been turned against a parent by the other parents when they were a child. None of them knew the term parental alienation, by the way. When I finished the book, I sent them each a copy and I kept in touch with them. And the first thing that pretty much they all said was like, I didn't, I thought I was the only one. You know, so for sure that wouldn't happen today, people, because of the internet, because of all the, you know, the podcasts of the articles and the news about it, it is definitely out there. Um, in that study, most of the people that I interviewed had reconnected with the parents that they have rejected at some point, but that was not a, uh, representative sample. Speaker 2 (02:33): So I couldn't generalize, you know, let's say 30 of the 40. Oh, well, that means that three quarters of the people, you know, um, are going to reconnect because that sample was a convenient sample. It wasn't developed through systematic research strategies that would allow for generalizability. All the other research that I've done on adult children have been survey studies finding large groups. Some of my sample have hundred, you know, 700 people, but I didn't, I wasn't asking them, Did you reconnect? I was taught, I, the purpose of all of that research was simply to establish what are the primary, primary parental alienation strategies and are they associated with long term negative outcomes for individuals? So I would say every study I've done has focus other than that original study focused on that question. So I can tell you, you know, sort of definitively what are the 17 primary parental alienation strategies, all the different outcomes it's associated with buts. Do we know what percentage of people reconnect? I would say we don't. But also, even if we knew that number from some study that was conducted years ago, targeted parents are getting much, much better advice now and again, I can't put a number on it, but there are a lot of us out there providing books and resources to parents. So they're much more skilled, I think, at navigating this and not making a catastrophic mistake. And when they do, figuring out how to repair it. Speaker 3 (04:16): You know, one thing I was gonna say, if you could, um, mention what some of that advice is and, and the reason I'm saying that I, I read your book years ago when it came out, parental Adult Children of Parental Alienation, and I found it really helpful in talking about talking to rejected parents about some things they could do because what you mentioned in that book is things like keep sending cards and letters and keep reaching out. So eventually a child comes back and doesn't say, Why didn't you try to communicate with me and keep copies of that? So you could show, here's what I tried to do, but that advice and other advice, what would you give for our listeners? Speaker 2 (05:02): Yeah, that's a lot. I mean, I, not only did I write co-parenting, but the Toxic X, which is just filled with advice for parents, I'm actually writing a whole other book because I've developed much more detailed strategies for what to do. But if I had to the big, big taking the, you know, 10,000 foot view, the first thing is do everything you can to be safe, loving and available and to enhance the feeling of attachment between you and your child. And I have like five or six different things that go under that, whether it's the magic ratio or your child's love language or, um, I teach parents literally, What do you do when your child says, I want ice cream for breakfast? And the answer isn't to say, What are you talking about? We don't need ice cream for breakfast. How you say no to your child really matters. Speaker 2 (05:55): And I teach them everything that I can think of about enhancing the feeling that the child has, that you are a safe, loving and available parent. Topic two is all it's called, Don't Take the bait. And the whole concept is how to navigate when your child is behaving in unpleasant ways. How do you give them feedback? How do you maintain that connection? How do you not get over aroused with negative emotions? What do you do when your child says some allegation, you know, you stole my college money. You beat me when I was a baby. And again, the answer is not to say, How dare you say that, You know, that's not true. Why would you say that? Well, I have this thing called the five steps. It takes me 20 minutes to teach parents, literally, how do you correct, you know, a a false information about you? Speaker 2 (06:50): And then there's a whole thing I teach them about how to apologize. Cause most people don't know I have seven steps. Most people do not really know how to do it in a way that feels satisfying. I teach parents how to foster compassion and forgiveness and integrity in their children so that their children will treat them compassionately and with forgiveness. I teach parents how to invite criticism to process little grievances before they, you know, flourish into big problems. How to instill critical thinking skills in their children so the children don't just blindly believe whatever the other parent says. And I teach parents all about positive parenting so that they learn effective discipline strategies so that the child doesn't feel that they're being unnecessarily harsh. So I, I just have so much that I can say about how to help parents navigate this situation. And that's just the first two topics. Speaker 2 (07:51): Enhance the attachment and don't take the bake. There's just a lot there. And in fact, part of this new book I'm writing, the first third is Parenting in Person. The middle third of the book is all devoted to how do you send a message to your child? Because a lot of people do not know how to do it in a way that doesn't come across self-serving, modeling, manipulative, or blaming somebody else. If only you knew my side of the story. All of that is not helpful. And I literally teach parents, I think there's 30 categories of text messages and then 10 to 20 examples within each one. And then the final third of the book is how to write a letter to an adult Alienated trial. What are the principles? I have them do homework and then I walk them through the components. Speaker 3 (08:46): That's excellent. And I really look forward to seeing that book. So good luck with Speaker 2 (08:51): That. Yeah, I'm very excited. Speaking of delivering Speaker 1 (08:54): Messages, it, what what came to mind was the very first case I was ever, uh, exposed to that had involved alienation, um, in my opinion was the, the children went to live with their father by order of the court, and the mother would put notes, uh, she would, you know, write notes to one of the children and put them in a hole in a tree at the city park , where she knew the little boy played, um, after school some days, and he knew where that was. So that's how she would get messages to, to the child. The court put a stop to that. But I, uh, that, that's what popped into my head. No, it's kind of shift into alienating parents, you know, I wonder if they ever recognize, do you ever come across parents who recognize that they are alienating? And and I know this came up for me once, uh, in a training I was giving, and there was, uh, a woman in the audience who was quite challenging, uh, right during the, the training about what I was saying. Speaker 1 (09:53): And, um, you know, and, and that was fine. I welcome challenges about, I don't know, three to four months later, I received an email out of the blue and, and it was this woman. And she said, Hey, look, I was, I was the person in that training at this particular city and the one who was, you know, kind of being challenging and disruptive. And I just want you to know that at, at one point, uh, or I went home and, and thought about this and realized that this is exactly what I've been doing. So do you come across parents with that kind of insight ever or often? Speaker 2 (10:28): I don't have that much contact with the alienating parent. I can say that the few times I've had the opportunity to speak with the favored parent, which is the term I would use, speaking with them, right? Because, um, that's their experience. Hey, my child prefers me. I'm not doing anything. I really don't know situations where there's been much ownership, if any. In fact, when I was just on the red table talk, they, uh, there was three segments of the show, and the first segment was an adult daughter who had reconnected with her dad and had very detailed examples of what the dad did. I don't know what's gonna end up on the show, but I got to see the hours of live interview. Um, so she was talking about all the things that the mom had done, and uh, the dad was on the show and they had reconnected, and then they actually brought the mom in, um, which is fairly rare. Speaker 2 (11:23): I would tell, like, when Dr. Phil wanted me to help him find people to go in the show, I'd be like, Oh, you're never gonna find the favorite parent. But okay, they found somebody that she took zero ownership, She had the most trite answers, Well, we're just different people, or we were so young. Then she had these phrases that she just sort of cop scotched, you know, through to avoid really sharing anything about what her thought process was. Even when she basically got the dad to sign away his parental rights, well, it just fell into my lap. This opportunity happened. She had this way of talking that was devoid of any agency. So I'm not gonna generalize and say every alienator is like that. Um, but I also used to do expert witness work. And so I would have the opportunity to read the entire case file, the interviews, you know, that the evaluator did with all of the parties and the transcripts from all of the hearings. Speaker 2 (12:28): And generally they come across as impervious to feedback. If I had to boil it all down, that's what I would say. So they would say, Oh, I believe the other parent is doing X bad thing. And even if that parent could absolutely prove like, here's the video tape, it didn't happen, or, you know, this is how it actually happened. Well, it's still, it still feels to me like it happened. Like they were not able to really adjust their thought process to reality. They had a fixed idea. I'm not saying like as a psychiatrist, but you know, they had a belief system that they were the victim or the hero and the other parent was the villain. And it was pretty hard to move them from that. Speaker 3 (13:19): I would add really in my thinking, uh, I was trained as a, as a clinical social worker in 1980 when the DSM three came out and they included personality disorders. And we had two people from the committee come to our clinic where I was being trained and they explained personality disorders. And of course that's been a big focus of my conflict work since then. I'm convinced, I said I had 20 cases as a lawyer, 30 as a consultant. I have not seen an alienation case without one parent with a personality disorder or at least significant traits. And the definitions of a personality disorder, certainly fit and enduring pattern, disproportionate emotional responses, all of these things. And so I, I totally agree that that parents in these cases doing these alienating behaviors do seem impervious to feedback. And that what's sad to me is how much time is spent in family court with lawyers and judges trying to change people's minds, whose minds aren't gonna be changed. Let's move on to what to do. Because having room for endless argument is really not constructive. Speaker 2 (14:46): Yeah, I, I completely agree. But one thing I would add to that is one of the things I do in my coaching is I prep people for their interviews with the guardian Adela, the attorney for the minor child, the custody evaluator, whatever. And one, I have like 11 points I go through. And one of them is don't label the other parent. Everybody thinks that guys of narcissist and all the men think their wives are ex-wives are borderline. It may be true, but what I teach people is people don't gain a lose custody because of a diagnosis. They gain a lose custody based on their behavior. So just focus on their behavior. What does that other parent do? It doesn't matter if they're doing, it matters for treatment, but it doesn't matter for diagnosis determining what's the cause of the child's disaffection. If the parent is calling you by their first, by your first name, you're have having the child's spy on you or keep secrets from you, that's what matters. Not whether they're doing that because they're a sociopath or a borderline or something else. Speaker 3 (15:47): Right. No, I, I totally agree with you and I don't wanna imply that I say we should use these terms in court, but what I do recommend to people is that they establish the patterns of behavior and how long they've lasted and that these patterns aren't going to change. This pattern's been five, 10 years in the marriage, et cetera. This pattern's not going to change. And that's why we need strong court intervention. And I put in my book splitting where I talk about how to present your case about personality disorder without saying personality disorder, but it guides guides people's thinking about how to present the patterns of behavior. But I think alienating behaviors is really the helpful thing to do. And I'm curious just some of your brief thoughts about how we've evolved with the term from parental alienation syndrome to parental alienation, to alienation to alienating behaviors. And I agree, what courts really do pay attention to is alien aid behaviors cuz they don't get triggered by syndrome, in other words. So I wonder if you might comment on how you seem to, how you're seeing this received now as compared to 10, 20 years ago. Speaker 2 (17:11): So, you know, when Richard Gardner called it a syndrome, he was referring to the eight behaviors in the child. And if you go back to the dsm at the time, I think it might have been three or four, I don't remember, it's very clear, a syndrome as defined by the American Psychiatric Association is a collection of behaviors that co-occur here. That is the definition. And he was right to call it a syndrome. What happened though is that in 2001, Joan, Janet Johnson and Joan Kelly wrote their famous reformulation paper and they basically lied and they said, according to the dsm, the syndrome has to, And then they used, um, a phrase and they changed the like or to an end or something like that. They actually misquoted the DSM and they said, therefore it's not a syndrome. And they really confused everybody. It's been so frustrating. And then on top of that, people sort of got up in arms around the idea that like, why are we labeling children? Speaker 2 (18:20): I actually did a pretty big keynote at, um, a FCC one year with Peter Jaffey who's a I know him, big guy, okay. And he said, you know, how dare would, he was all righteously indignant. We can't di we can't label children. How will they get jobs when they're older if they have a psychiatric diagnosis? Now it's actually I think against the law to um, ask an adult whether they had a diagnosis as a child. But the truth is, if uh, a child were having problems and they went to a psychia, you know, the parents took them to a psychiatrist, the psychiatrist would still have to label, they'd still have to diagnose them as something in order to get reimbursed from the insurance company. They'd just say it's an adjustment disorder rather than, you know, parental alienation syndrome. So that was a red herring, that was a total phony argument, but it had traction, it had appeal for poor children, they're victims. Speaker 2 (19:16): We don't wanna label that. So some of us sort of said, okay, let's just drop the word syndrome. You know, nobody disagrees that alienation occurs. Even the most argu anti, I mean there's like the small fringe maybe who say it never happens. But even the people who've caused so much trouble in the field essentially agree. Even Paul think the head of the American Psychiatric Association who published this article saying, you know, anybody who believes in alienation as a pedophile, we, we got him to retract it. And he wrote, of course alienation is real. We have that in print. But you know, the retraction is in tiny print and the the big com, you know, the false claim still, when I was going to court, people would bring that up and then I have to pull out the retraction. So it's been very frustrating. There are people, there are forces out there working against this being included because they're afraid that it will be misused. Speaker 2 (20:20): And my argument has always been, I share your concern, I would not want an abusive parent to get custody of their kid because they falsely claim their child rejecting them for alienation when really the child's rejecting them for being abusive. The solution is to have a better diagnostic tool, not to pretend that alienation doesn't exist, just like false allegations of sex abuse happen. Nobody would say, Well let's just pretend there's no such thing as sex abuse. I think there is a solution to this problem, which is to further promote the five factor model because embedded in the model is ruling out abuse or neglect. Yeah, my high horse about that Speaker 3 (21:08): . Yeah, no, I think that's real helpful. And I think today as a family lawyer, that there's been a huge shift in the last 20 years. Cause I remember when Janet Johnson and Joan Kelly's article came out and it really persuaded a lot of people that parental alienation syndrome should be rejected. And then when it would get raised in court, people say, Oh no, can't talk about that. But now I think people realize this happens and I wanna know what was the behavior and court of appeals cases rejected the syndrome, but pay attention to the behavior. So I wanted to just, just briefly, so there's a movement a foot now to include parental alienation, uh, relationship problem in the dsm. And I wonder if you think that might be approved this time around and what the significance would be if that is included in the dsm? Speaker 2 (22:07): Well, Bill Burnett, I mean, hats off to him. He has done an amazing job forging ahead tirelessly, you know, pulling together everything he needs to, to make the best case possible to the DSM committee. And you know, I really think in a way I hope it passes, you know, their approval process. But in a way he scored such a big victory a couple years ago. I just don't know if people recognize it that the last time the DSM was revised, I think that was 2013 maybe they had this new diagnosis called child affected by Parental Relationship Distress, PA, C A P R D bill, along with the DSM committee that created C A P R D wrote a separate paper in a psychiatric and law journal that said one example of C A P R D is parental alienation. He got those people on the record, that's William Naro and Marion Lu, I think, I think those are the names of the co-authors on that paper. Speaker 2 (23:15): They were representing the DSF and they were out there saying, alienation is an example of C A P R D. That is a huge win. And that helped in court. But again, people don't, you know, lawyers who wanna make trouble are gonna make trouble . And that's why the lawyers representing the targeted parents need to really know much more than they know now. That's for sure. When I used to do expert witness work, I would basically educate them, Here's how you do the direct exam of me. You anticipate this problem, give me an opportunity to head it off, then you're gonna ask me about the DSM and I'm gonna edit. And I, and I would walk them through that. But not every targeted parent has an expert, can afford an expert or has an expert who knows how to do that. And really the lawyers should know how to do it anyway on their own. Speaker 3 (24:08): Yeah, no, sadly, most family law cases are handled in hearings, not trials, and they very short 20, 30 minutes and so much people's lack of knowledge drives a lot of what occurs in those. I wanted to just ask a question about what should be done, what should the treatment be? And looking at mild, moderate, and severe cases. Speaker 2 (24:33): Well, severe is the easy one because once it's been established that it's severe, it's clear that the best solution is a parental alienation immersion program. I recommend two in the United States. There's some other ones that I don't recommend. I prefer the programs that have some data that they're safe and effective. They've been around a long time, they're tried and true and I hate to base everything on personal experience, but I've talked to a lot of parents who gone through the program. So I I really believe that they were mild and moderate cases require, I would say sanctions and sort of some sticks and carrots to get the alienating parent to behave with sort of clear milestones. Like if you do this one more time, X is gonna happen. I think that the main problem in those cases is the alienator gets rewarded for their bad behavior rather than, you know, seriously constrained. Speaker 2 (25:39): You know, what I tell people is, you know, somebody robbed a bank, nobody would say, Oh, the money's comfortable in his pocket. He didn't really mean it. , you know, would be like, you put that money back right now, but when somebody takes a kid that they're not supposed to, you know, Johnny doesn't wanna go today or he's not feeling well and I think I'm the parent, you should have him when he has a fever or Oh, I scheduled some other thing for him, or whatever it is, some interference with the parenting time. The courts just aren't that concerned about that. And there has to be such a long pattern. A lot of lawyers are like, Oh, the judge won't care if that parent comes 10 minutes early, don't bother filing a motion. Oh the judge won't care about that. It's like you have to wait for it to be so bad to think that you can file a motion and then you have a severe case. So if there is some monitoring of these cases where there was immediate automatic sanctions that the parenting coordinators were trained to deal with alienation and authorized to act on behalf of the court, that might make a difference. Speaker 3 (26:46): Let me just add, we have our, our method, new ways for families, which courts, uh, have ordered in, in a moderate number of cases that orders both parents to get a set of skills and then teach these skills to their kids. Flexible thinking, managed emotions, moderate behavior and checking yourself. And we found with moderate and some and, and mild and some moderate cases that it has had an impact on alienation is not on the severe. But I think that the intervention earlier is in many ways the key because this is so widespread and I I wish courts would, would admonish parents right from the start. That's what I tell judges. They say admonish them, Don't involve your kid, don't let your kids even know you're at a hearing. Don't compare yourself to the other parent. All of these kinds of things. Speaker 2 (27:40): One of the things I would love is if there was a pledge that the parents had to sign, and it could be in the positive or the negative, I tend to think in the negative. So it would be the list of 17 days. I will not do x, I will not do Y. Both parents sign it and they have to put it on their refrigerator so the kids would see. So if a parents starts doing it, you know, they would know, Oh, that parent was told not to do this and they're doing it anyway. Speaker 3 (28:08): That's a brilliant idea. Speaker 2 (28:09): It's the 17th primary parental alienation strategies. I will not refer to the other parent by their first name. I will not ask the child to spy on the other parent. I will not ask the, you know, child to keep secrets from the other parent. I will not refer to anybody else's mom or dad, et cetera. Speaker 3 (28:25): Where's that list? Speaker 2 (28:26): Everywhere. I mean, it's based on my research, but it's in all my books, it's in. Speaker 3 (28:31): Great. Speaker 1 (28:32): So Dr. Baker, what do you, what would you recommend that therapists do about this? And um, along that same line, kind of what would you re uh, recommend for lawyers involved in these cases? Speaker 2 (28:43): Therapists for the targeted parents? I'll start there and then I'll go to the like reunification therapist. A therapist for targeted parent should be very careful about the advice they're giving. I do find that, um, they often give bad advice, you know, like, oh, let your kids decide, you know, Oh, if Bonnie wants to go spend more time with the other parent, whatever, whether it's being too, you know, you need to put your foot down and you can't be a doormat and don't let those kids walk all over you, which then leaves the targeted parent to be too harsh and to dictatorial or maybe it's just, oh, you know, appease the other parent to sign away, whatever. So I do think that unless they're really trained in alienation, they should be careful about the advice they're giving. So that's the first thing. Therapists who provide reunification therapy, when I'm using that term here, I'm not talking about the immersion programs. Speaker 2 (29:43): I'm talking about the, you know, your friendly neighborhood social worker who says on their website, even I do reunification therapy. What I can say is, I, I recently did a survey of about 130 plus people who advertise on their website. They do reunification therapy for kids of divorce. And I surveyed them and what I found was shocking, just shocking like off the top of my head. One of the things I remember is I asked them, What do you think the goal of treatment hits? Now you would think it would be repair the relationship, resume, parenting time, No, reduce the child's anxiety, improve communication. Now there's nothing wrong with those things, but that's not really the purpose of reunification therapy. Many of them let it go on for years without even a joint session ever. So when people tell me, Oh, I'm so excited I got reunification therapy ordered by the court, I'm like, buckle up because I'm gonna break your heart now. Speaker 2 (30:45): Right? So scrap in cuz I'm gonna tell you, you may never have a session with your child. They rarely hold the favor parent accountable. So they let the favorite parents sit in the waiting room sort of sending daggers of, you know, bad intention, you know, to the child. They don't challenge distortions. So the child, you never this, you always that to the parent and they just let it go on or they force the parent to apologize for something they never did. So my advice for reunification therapist is, is like really get trained, understand alienation theory. It's not the same as doing reunification with a bonafide abusive parent kid in foster care coming out, getting reunification therapy to repair that relationship where the parent does need to gro and you know, really own their piece of it. So I'm kind of appalled at how anybody can say they do reunification therapy and really basically what they're doing is saying to the child, Why don't you tell that parent all the things you don't like? And then now dad or now mom, you need to listen to Johnny. If he feels that you're unsafe, then you must be unsafe and you have to apologize. So my advice is just basically don't do it unless you know what you're doing. Ah, Speaker 3 (32:09): Agree. Yeah, I totally agree with that. And I would say the majority of cases in family courts that I've seen to reunification therapy have fail. And it's because of that Speaker 2 (32:22): To, and I, I, I try you here's seven reasons why this will not work. And I would go through it. Yeah. Who is the identified patient, the parent who didn't do anything wrong, right? So they looked, what's the court, what's the child gonna think? Well even the lawyer, I mean even the judge thinks mom needs therapy, you know, dad's off Scott, how does it help the child experience? The parent is safe, loving and available if the parent and child are treated as equals in therapy with the therapists like the principal reprimanding two naughty children, or even the kid is sort of elevated and the targeted parent is the least power, the least respect in that setting. Speaker 3 (33:02): People need to understand what they're dealing with. But also I wanna add your comments on individual therapy for an alienated child, which I see fail 99% of the time, what do you think? Absolutely. Speaker 2 (33:15): They who's the clients? Speaker 3 (33:18): Your your child, Right? Right. Speaker 2 (33:20): I mean of course they, what, what, what's the first thing you learned in social work school? Join with the child. Speaker 3 (33:27): Join with your client. Start Yeah, their client's goals. And I is tell my start Speaker 2 (33:33): With the Speaker 3 (33:34): Tell my parents not to make me see one of the parents. And that's just the total failure. Speaker 2 (33:40): The other, if I had one thing I would like reunification therapist to do on top of everything else I already said it would be give yourself three months. And if you do not see objective measurable improvement, refer to an immersion program. Speaker 3 (33:58): I always ask the court for family therapy that may involve individual with mom, individual with dad, with child, with mom, child with dad, so that they're teaching a new set of skills and not just reinforcing the status quo. And people really hate to rein, hate to do anything, but that a lot of the research on anxiety, you reduce people's anxiety by letting them avoid contact. That's the worst way to deal with anxiety exposure is the way to deal with anxiety. Speaker 2 (34:31): And how about lo advice for lawyers? Don't get parenting advice. That's my number one pet peeve about lawyer. Oh, my lawyer told me to put my foot down and punish my child. I'm like, ah, I don't give legal advice. Lawyers shouldn't give parenting advice. Um, so that's, that's an easy one. Um, second, prepare your clients for their forensics. I cannot believe these pe I, I have like an hour long sort of like lecture for my clients. 11 points. Do this, don't do this. I explain it why you should do it. I role model, demonstrate here's how role play, here's how you do it. And then I ask them, Did your lawyer give you any of this? And they uniformly say no. So that would be my second thing for lawyers. The third is don't be reactive. The number one complaint I have about targeted parents lawyers is all they do is react to the bad thing that the other parent did. Speaker 2 (35:32): Oh, that parent took the kid, now we have to do this. Oh, the parent did that. Now we have to do this, this. They should be sitting down with their client and saying, Where do you wanna be six months from now? What's your goal and how am I going to get you there? And if the goal is the parental alienation immersion program, which it's not always, it could be a mild case, could be a moderate case. But if the goal is that, then learn how to do that because there's a specific way to make the case in court that you need to get this child who hasn't seen, let's say dad in a year to repair the relationship and go to turning points or family s And so I would like the lawyers to be driving the, the case much more than they are. Speaker 1 (36:24): And now let's turn to the parents and extended families such as grandparents. What, what advice would you give parents and grandparents that have been rejected? Speaker 2 (36:32): Well, my advice for parents sort of goes back to a lot of the things I already said about enhancing the attachment and not taking the bait and engaging in positive parenting principles so you don't make a sort of catastrophic parenting mistake. Of course getting educated about alienation so you're not like, Oh I didn't realize the other parent was doing this and that and I didn't think they were connected and now boom, you know, my kid hasn't talked to me. Like, the more you can get educated, make sure you're not doing it. Make sure you're the best parent you can be. Get a pa savvy attorney, get coaching. So you're the best parent you can be grandparents. I would say one thing I've been hearing sort of in my mind, cause I've been hearing it from some of my clients is sometimes the grandparents reach out to the kids or to the other parent and they think they're making things better, but they actually are making things worse. Speaker 2 (37:30): So check with your kid. Don't be a free agent here. Like one, a mom was telling me just I think it might have been this morning or yesterday morning, she brought her mom the grandmom to the kids' baseball game or whatever it was. And her mom picked a fight with her ex-husband, the alienator. And now that ends up in the pork documents for a case where that same woman, her brother wrote a nasty letter and now it's like she's stirring up trouble for me. I'm the poor victim. Instead of me being the alienator, now I get to play the role of the victim because the grandparents are whatever siblings of the targeted parent are angry. And sometimes they say things to the kid like, you know, you're, why are you listening to your mother? Don't, you know, you're breaking your father's heart a normal thing maybe for a grandparent to say, but ends up not being helpful and an alienation dynamic. So you're not a free agent if you were a friend or a family member of an alienator. Everybody has to be on the same team. What's okay to say what's not okay to say? Speaker 1 (38:44): Okay. And, uh, great advice there Dr. Baker. It's, uh, I'm sure a lot of people are paying attention. Um, last question here. In extreme cases, is it appropriate to cut off contact with a parent with a lot of alienating behaviors so that the child can reconnect with their rejected parent? Speaker 2 (39:05): So who's doing the cutting off? Do you mean like, is it okay for the court to order a no contact period between the child and the alienator? Speaker 1 (39:13): Yes, Speaker 2 (39:14): Absolutely. That's embedded in the two, um, immersion programs that I recommend. What they have both found is that the four day intensive immersion experience is sort of a jump start, is not the entire treatment. I think of it as a 94 day treatment, four days intensive, 90 days, um, less intensive where the child is living with a formerly rejected parent because after four days they're not really rejecting a parent anymore. But there's a lot of work that has to be done to write the wrong to, to sort of put things back in balance. And the best way to do that is to keep the alienator off to the side in one of the immersion programs that I recommend Turning Points, the staff are working with the alienator on the side to write a letter of atonement to demonstrate some ability to take, uh, responsibility for what happened. Speaker 2 (40:16): And then they get therapeutically reintegrated back into the family. Cause the goal is for children to love and be loved by both parents, but sometimes that requires a no contact period. I think where things get complicated is with social media, it's very hard to really know whether there is truly no contact. There's, you know, Snapchat which has no trace after an hour. So I don't, even if you had cell phone records or something, I don't know that you'd be able to demonstrate that they're truly not communicating or somebody the alienator can borrow somebody else's phone and call. You know, it's not perfect anymore. It's not a hundred percent. People find ways around that 90 day no contact Speaker 1 (41:01): Like the tree with the hole in it at the city park. . Yeah. Yeah. Pre-social media Speaker 2 (41:06): . Right. Speaker 1 (41:08): Interesting. Uh, wow, this has been, um, really fascinating and your level of expertise and, and detail and just understanding every facet of this is I'm sure fascinating for our listeners. And I, I hope you are listeners, have, have really gained a lot of information and knowledge and, and wisdom from, from this conversation. So Dr. Baker, we're so very grateful. And Bill, I know you wanted to add something here, here too. Speaker 3 (41:33): Yeah. Uh, I just really appreciate this and I wanna tell you something specific is I love your lists. You're a list person and I'm a list person and it tells me what to do when I don't know what to do next. So I think myself, professionals, parents, that your list should be paid attention to, you have them in your books, what to do, what not to do. So I really appreciate all of your work putting that in. Speaker 2 (42:01): Thank you. Thanks for the opportunity to talk to your listeners. I hope they found it helpful. Speaker 1 (42:06): I'm sure they did. And you know, truly from the bottom of our hearts, thank you for the, the, you know, the years and years of very hard dedicated work you put into this field because it's so, so necessary and you bring so much clarity to it. So thank you very much and um, we wish you all the best. Speaker 2 (42:23): Thank, Speaker 1 (42:30): And with that we wrap up this two part talk with Dr. Baker. You know, we can't thank you enough, Dr. Baker. This has been so helpful and I, I know that so many listeners will benefit from, from this discussion. We'll have more interviews in our high conflict divorce series very soon, so you'll wanna watch out for those. But next week we'll shift into a four part. What we're calling is Shortz series, just 15 to 20 minutes, uh, episodes where we'll answer a few questions starting with next week's episode where we'll talk about when to stop trying with high conflict people. In the meantime, send your questions to podcast@highconflictinstitute.com or submit them to high conflict institute.com/podcast and tell all your friends about us and would be grateful if you'd leave us a re review. Until next week, keep striving toward the missing piece. It's All Your Fault is A protection 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. 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