What You Need to Know About Parental Alienation

Do you feel like your child’s other parent is turning your kid against you? If so, your fears may be well founded, as parental alienation is a very real phenomena that impacts many parents across North Carolina. And the impact can devastate your parent-child relationship and cause emotional and psychological damage to your child.

How parental alienation occurs

Parental alienation occurs when one parent manipulates a child with the intent of negatively impacting the child’s relationship with their other parent. This manipulation can take many forms, including:

• Disclosing intimate details about your marriage to your child.
• Lying to your child about what you’ve said about them or things that you’ve done.
• Exaggerating factual situations to make you and your family look worse.
• Failing to provide you with information about your child’s medical appointments and school and extracurricular activities.
• Disallowing you from contacting the child.

Signs of parental alienation

If your child is caught in the middle of parental alienation, then they’ll probably exhibit some symptoms. This includes:

• Unfair and unfounded criticism targeted at you and your family members.
• Immovable support for their other parent.
• Making false statements about you that have no basis in truth.
• Saying things using words that don’t match their age or otherwise sound like they’re coming from someone else.
• Demonstrating a lack of trust.

What to do if you suspect parental alienation

If you think that parental alienation is occurring, then you need to gather evidence that supports a child custody modification request. After all, modifying custody may be the only way to bring parental alienation to a stop. Just make sure you have the physical evidence, including text messages, emails, and medical records, as well as the testimony, including from an expert witness, if necessary, to prove your arguments.