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what exactly is parental alienation it's a family dynamic in which a child's been manipulated by one parent to reject
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the other parent who did nothing to deserve the rejection it's a steady stream of negative messaging to the
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child that everything that other parent does is bad wrong stupid contemptible and an indication that the parent
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doesn't love the child Michele narrator would tell people that she felt that her
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ex-husband was alienating the kids and people tended not to believe her sadly many mental health and legal
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professionals are untrained but even when a judge sees it they don't know what to do about it you
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can see why that would be so damaging on the targeted parent the parents whose kids are turning away is it also
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terribly damaging on the kids I mean why does this matter that's a great question
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I started by interviewing adults who had this experience as kids these are people
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who said to their parent I hate you don't ever darken my doorway again I don't want to see you anymore and it was
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stunning they talked about a lifetime of depression and despair and anxiety and low self-esteem and shame you know what
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is this girl who participated in this murder of her mother I mean when she comes around the pain that she is going
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to experience the guilt and the shame how could I've been so stupid why did I listen to my you know father that my
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mother was horrible why did I break my mother's heart why did I help kill my mother
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yeah my understanding of this case is that she the two things happened to an extreme degree one is she did not
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believe that her mother loved her and the other is she was dependent on her father and I think that she did what
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made sense to her which was to preserve a relationship with the caregiving parent rather than be abandoned by
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and he cultivated that dependency