5 Things To Do (and NOT Do) for Parental Alienation Awareness Day

If National Parental Alienation Awareness Day (April 25) inspires nobody to do anything, then the day just occupies another square on the calendar, along with National Ding-A-Ling Day (Dec. 12) and Squirrel Appreciation Day (Jan. 21).

Parental Alienation (PA) is what happens when a child of divorce or separation is indoctrinated into the unwarranted view that one of their parents is unreliable, unstable, unloving, or dangerous. Not a few clinicians call parental alienation a form of child abuse.

So what could you do, for National PA Awareness Day?

DO

1. Educate yourself. Reading content online about this topic can deepen your understanding of what a friend or family member is going through, and if you have contact with the alienated children, you can learn to interact with them in a way that’s constructive.

2. Help a Targeted Parent. If you know a parent who is alienated from their children — what’s called a “Targeted Parent” — the best help you can give them is your attention. Phone them, or sit down with them, and listen. Let them vent. Let them cry. They don’t need a lecture about How Kids Are, and they don’t need to hear “It gets better,” especially if you haven’t experienced PA yourself. Just listen. You could say “I’m very sorry this is happening to you” or you could validate their feelings by telling them, “What’s happening to you is wrong, and I think it’s terrible.”

3. Help Divorced Families. Go online to find organizations that offer counseling and other support for children and families of divorce. Give them some money. You might also talk to your priest, rabbi, or imam to ask if your place of worship offers a support group for divorced or divorcing parents. If they don’t, suggest they do.

4. Take political action. If you live in a state that doesn’t have shared parenting laws, contact your local legislators to encourage them to adopt such laws. Call them, email them, or write them, and tell them what you think and what you want them to do. Before legislators take action on any issue, they need to justify it by saying that people are contacting them about it. And it’s perfectly OK not to have a 5-point plan for legislators: You can just tell them, “I want you to look into this issue and do something about it.”

5. Tell a Friend. Doing any of the above four things is great: doing them and encouraging a friend or family member to do likewise is even better.

DON’T

1. Do not light a candle. This is helpful only when your power goes out.
2. Do not post “It’s National PA Awareness Day” on Facebook with a request to get “likes” or to re-post “to show that someone’s listening.” You might as well light a candle.
3. Do not play therapist. If you know a child who’s alienated from his or her parent, resist the urge to “fix” things. It’s understandable and admirable that you want to see the parent/child relationship repaired — or just counteract the lies that are the lifeblood on which PA depends — but this is a job best left to a counselor or psychologist with experience in this area. One thing you could do, talking to a young person, is calmly offer a counter-narrative to the one the child is hearing via parental alienation: You could say, “Well, my experience of your Mom [or your Dad] is different: I know them to be a good and loving person, and I know that they love you and miss you very much.”
4. Don’t tell a Targeted Parent “Everything’s gonna be OK.” You don’t know that, for sure. No one has any way of knowing when or how a Targeted Parent and an Alienated Child will reconcile. It could take years, or decades, and it may not happen ever. Sad, but true. So consider, instead, saying something like, “No matter what happens, I’m here to listen to you and to support you.”
5. Finally, if you know parents who are alienating their own children, do not try to change the alienating parents using reason, shaming, or a good talking-to. That parent likely does not believe they are doing anything wrong; and if they do recognize that, they probably rationalize PA as being “for the best.” People who alienate their own children against the other parent have serious psychological problems that you cannot fix.

Having a National Parental Alienation Awareness Day is a good thing — but awareness without action accomplishes nothing. Do something, even a little something, and thanks.