SHOW NOTES AND LINKS -

Disclaimer - Show notes are not exact quotes and should not be reproduced as such.  They are paraphrased sections of the show, links to resources mentioned and helpful quotes.

Our guest for Episode 2 is Internationally known artist, writer, former nurse, Toastmasters-trained speaker, corporate training manager, life coach, Christian leader, and alienated mom, Monica Giglio is the founder on nonprofit Speak Worldwide, nonprofit foundation.

http://www.speakw.com

 

Q.  As a parental alienation survival coach I would really like for you to define parental alienation or pathogenic parenting for the audience assuming I know nothing about this.

A. PA is a slang term for a severe form of psychological abuse by an unhealthy parent that makes a child reject, hate, and fear a good, loving, emotionally available parent and entire side of the family.

 Q. How common is PA?  Why don’t we hear more about it?

A. Family court attorneys tell me that it's present in varying degrees in most divorces with children. Parents are mostly adversarial in midst of divorce and some parents cannot stop themselves from triangulated the children into the adult conflict, coercing and demanding them to choose a side, while the other parent is saying things like "it's ok mommy and daddy are still a team and we both love you and want all good things for you". But triangulating a child into the adult conflict is not simply "badmouthing another parent" as many flippantly will say, it's often one of the first acts of psychological child abuse. Often it was already present in the marriage as it does occur in intact families. We most often see it expressed as a custody battle. Experts like Dr. Childress will tell you ITS NOT ABOUT CUSTODY. It's about abusing a child to hate another parent and entire side of family and toss them aside like trash, as the sick parent has done. I say sick parent because normal parents don't do this to a child.

Triangulating a child into parental conflict is abusive and leads to enmeshment, both are unhealthy and dangerous forms of boundary violation and are done without conscience. The child is drawn into a cross generational coalition against you; and are examples adultifying a child to validate their adult battle instead of being a parent who validate the needs and wants of the child.

So. It's very, very common in most divorces due to anything from immaturity and hurt feelings of parents that they eventually get over, to sever pathology where the parent just cannot stop themselves from making the child hate the other entire side of family and forcing them to love only them. The cases that escalate to this level of severity do not have a good prognosis.

You also asked why we don't hear more? Because of the severity of this abuse people don't like to hear about it. Their natural defense mechanism is to re-butt or rebuke a heartbroken parent and scold them that they either did something to contribute to it; or they could end it by sending their child more cards and letters of love. This is s defense mechanism to assimilate something so eerily unnatural they cannot stand hearing it and realizing it could happen to anyone including them.

 

Q.      PA is one of the biggest issues in the family court reform movement.  Where do you see positive change coming and where do you think more work needs to be done.

A. Change cones thru education and standardization in mental health diagnosis and treatment recommendations. I don't know if it's possible to stop a sick parent from attempting to abuse their child's mind, but I believe education can help therapists, lawyers, judges, and everyone who works with children and famili...