WTDW Podcast | Episode 41: What To Do When… There’s Parental Alienation Involved in Your Case.

Parental Alienation, Dr. Jill Gasper, Resistance and Refuse Dynamics, Family, Conflict, Parental Rejection, Divorce, Family Law, Seperation, Custody, Parenting, Co-Parenting, Childen & Adolescents

What To Do When… There’s Parental Alienation Involved in Your Case.

Follow the What To Do When… Legal Chat Podcast – Proudly Featured On:

• Apple Podcasts – What To Do When | A Dummies Guide to the LegalVerse.
• YouTube – What To Do When… A Dummies Guide to the Legalverse Playlist.
• Google Podcasts – What To Do When… A Dummies Guide to the Legalverse.
• Spotify – What To Do When… A Dummies Guide to the Legalverse Podcast.
• Amazon Music / Audible – What To Do When… A Dummies Guide to the Legalverse Podcast.

WTDW Podcast Home Page – What To Do When… A Dummies Guide to the Legalverse

What To Do When… There’s Parental Alienation Involved in Your Case.

What To Do When… Intro 00:01
Welcome to What To Do When… A podcast from real lawyers with real perspective, where we explore a variety of legal issues and scenarios. Each week we focus on a new topic and discuss what to do when and if any of these legal scenarios ever happened to you or a loved one. With over 40 years of combined legal experience, our hosts offer their unique perspectives and insights on a range of real life legal situations.

Jackie Critzer 0:28

Hi, welcome back to another podcast here at Critzer Cardani in Richmond, Virginia. It is another episode of What To Do When…

Scott Cardani 0:35

What’s on the docket for today, Jackie?

Jackie Critzer 0:38
Well, today we have Dr. Jill Gasper, guesting being a guest with us guessing with us. And we’re this is our second in a series with Dr. Gasper and today the focus is What To do When… you are experiencing a case with parental alienation or what to do when parental alienation is involved in your case. And boy, that is a mouthful. So this is Dr. Gasper. We did her introduction in our last podcast but briefly, Dr. Gasper, if you want to give the Reader’s Digest version of your experience, and what you do and where you’ve where you’ve come from, that’d be great.

Dr. Jill Gasper 1:14
Sure, so I have been in private practice here in Richmond for the last 13 years. And I am a clinical psychologist with a focus on children and divorce. And that’s really what I’ve been doing. Since graduate school, I did even my master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation on co parenting, and the importance of it in terms of child of adjustment, and then in terms of an intervention. So really, as long as I’ve been in school, this has been my focus.

Jackie Critzer 1:44
And my experience with with you in particular is that you you stay busy. I do. And are there times when you in fact, just take a break from taking on new new patients or new clients.

Dr. Jill Gasper 1:59
For months at a time, I have to take a break, when things kind of get full up. And then I’ll sort of let things trickle. I especially have to freeze my kid cases, because I really like to offer those to, for after school opportunities for kids, I hate for kids to have to miss school, you know, every Tuesday at 10am for therapy. So I really try to reserve those for kids. So that’s probably the fault that I have to turn off the most co parenting I can squeeze in a little bit better, because most families I’ll just see twice a month. So it’s a little easier.

Jackie Critzer 2:31
Got it? Well, parental alienation is what I think is a loaded word. It’s maybe one of the more overused words in custody cases, in my experience. Could you tell us what is parental alienation? And what is it not?

Dr. Jill Gasper 2:51
Sure. I think one thing to note is that we really don’t even use that term very much anymore. The field has kind of shifted away from it. And so I think when most people use the term parental alienation they’re talking about the other parent is turning my kids against me. Essentially they are there’s they’ve created what is a pattern of it’s called and literature a campaign of denigration of that rejected parent. It’s not subtle. And it’s very significant and is creating a real sever in the relationship between the parent and the child. I personally was aware of this terminology before, but I think it really hit the zeitgeist what I remember isn’t during graduate school, I don’t know if folks cup you know, follow People magazine the way I might have. But when Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger split with their daughter, Ireland, Alec Baldwin made the term I think very, very popular in terms of speaking out about fathers rights and this major problem that that we had. The American Psychological Association and Psychiatric Association did take a look at it. They considered parental alienation syndrome as a diagnosis, but it was never made an official diagnosis psychiatrically. So that’s the thing to know. Because you could go down a rabbit hole and on the internet about parental alienation syndrome, and someone should probably let you know that that’s not really a thing. So our term and not to say that alienation does not exist, it does. It’s just that we’re coming to look at it differently because it’s really not that simple. So the terms that are used more now or resist refuse dynamics, so that would probably be your better Google Search option. And again, I mentioned in our last podcast, the Association of family and conciliation courts AFCC they have a lot of resources and including entire journals dedicated to this topic. So the way I explain it to family a lot is usually this is occurring when we have a child who’s resisting or refusing visitation with a parent. And there’s if we think about what are their contributors to that resistance, there’s usually a chunk of that that is can be attributed to that rejected parents, they probably screwed something up, they made some kind of mistake. But the level of rejection seems to far outweigh whatever that mistake was. And the example I’ve often use, I had a former life working with more families involved in social services and foster care. And, you know, there would be kids who had been really significantly abused. And when they were released from foster care on their 18th birthday, they went straight home to their biological family who, you know, put cigarette burns in their arm. And so if you think about how resilient kids are, and how forgiving they are, how much they innately wish to love their parents, when you hear my dad yelled at me, or he spanked me once, and I don’t want him to be my father anymore, that doesn’t really make any sense. So the point is, there usually is a legitimate mistake that that rejected parent has made or maybe a series of mistakes, but it’s gone that the punishment doesn’t seem to fit the crime in terms of a complete severing of your family tree 50% of it. The other pieces, there’s the preferred parents, so that’s most frequently mom. So it is usually dads who are resisted or rejected. It’s something like 70% Dad’s. And that preferred parent has typically done some things to, instead of help build the bridge to repair whatever that the problem is in the parent child relationship with their resistant parent, I think they burn the bridge instead of build the bridge. And so they might reinforce exactly what the child’s concerns are about that parents, they might legally try to protect the child from that parent in a really over the top manner. But whatever it is that they’re doing, they are not facilitating a relationship or repair. And then I think the other piece is the child themselves. There are some kids, that you could badmouth their other parent all day long, and it would not impact their relationship, that bond is just too tight or that child is just you know, ricocheting all of those Barb’s off their shields, it’s just not it’s not holding. So it does tend to be certain kinds of kids who are more vulnerable to this, especially are people pleasing kinds of kids, sensitive kids, depressed or anxious kids, it’s, you know, a number of different things. But that’s why sometimes we see entire families where some kids seem to be impacted, and others don’t. So all of those factors are how we got here. And so we need all of we need interventions within all of those realms to make it better. So actually, I will look up the book that I liked to give you the accurate name, like to use most in these resist refuse cases. And it’s called overcoming the co parenting trap, essential parenting skills when a child resists a parent, by John Moran, Tyler Sullivan and Matthew Sullivan. And so that is a pretty thin, easy read, that I will often refer parents to. I particularly like it because there are chapters broken down by your the preferred parent, what what can you do? And you’re the rejected parent, what should you do? So it’s very practical. And I think it really helps explain the dynamics that are at play here. Certainly, when you are attorneys trying to argue this in court, it’s difficult because you just put your part of the pie forward, right? Like, this is what dad did. And no, this is justified rejection. And that’s where we are, it’s his fault. And so he needs to go to therapy, and he needs to fix this. It’s not it’s not my clients job to repair this relationship for him. Whereas then the dad in that case, their attorney is likely going to put on these are the horrible things that mom has been doing, she’s matched with the child or children. And she does not allow me to parent she does not allow me to have a relationship and is not doing anything to facilitate this.

Jackie Critzer 9:27
Whew… That’s a lot to even just take in and I’ve been we’ve all done this for a long time. That’s a That’s a lot. But so how long does it take you in sessions with with folks to figure out oh, we’ve got some dynamics here. Not just parental alienation, so to speak, but we’ve got the resist refuse dynamics. And then we’ve got the parent who’s you said not facilitating repair with the other parent and all of us, how do you how long does it take to really see these these patterns emerge?

Dr. Jill Gasper 9:58
I think it’s pretty quick and terms of my involvement. And maybe it’s because of the way I do an intake when I start a case. So I always meet with mom and dad separately, to get their perspectives on things. And so they’re really allowed to speak unencumbered by, you know, having to be polite, or you know, any edits in their story. So I get to hear their perspectives. And if they have any documentation, they want me to review, I can do that. If I’m during reunification, I’ll also then after that, meet with the child and get their perspective. And I’ll talk in around that time period, once I’ve met with parents, I always start with parents, not professionals, but then I’ll connect with any other collaterals that have been involved. So whether that’s a child therapist, or a parent therapist, or maybe they’ve already had a co parenting counselor, really, it’s usually mental health or legal professionals that I might circle with like a guardian ad litem, for example. And usually reveals itself pretty easily as to, you know, different contributions everyone might be making. And the child, I think the child interview is usually especially helpful too, are things that come to me that have come from the child’s mouth, whether they send them directly to me, or whether they’re shared with me from the child’s therapist or through the parent that can be helpful and understanding what’s going on.

Scott Cardani 11:13
Do you feel like some of your cases are more ignorance than pathology?

Dr. Jill Gasper 11:19
Yes, I do think that that’s a component for some folks that, you know, there’s a degree, I have had some very significant alienation cases where it’s, it’s, it seems like the other parents are on a mission to destroy the children’s relationship with the other parent. But that is really the rarity, it is more common. To have a more moderate situation, or what we call a naive alienation case where it’s more of the what the parents not saying to help fix things. That’s the big problem. And they’re kind of implicit corroboration of the kids fear. So if that, if that helps, I think and I think that’s, that’s the most difficult because there’s, there is some ignorance of it. And it’s just a lack of insight there. And so we hope that bringing that to light can help. And I think it helps to say and you’re not all of it, like, right, it’s an hour, and I’ll I’ll say to families, I can never accurately tell you that is 40% of this and you’re 50, and the kid is 10. I recently had a case where I actually thought mum and dad were a very small percentage. And it was mostly this kid just taking on the conflict and putting themselves in the middle. Like the parents were pretty amicable people and did not want to fight it at all. They were very conflict avoidant, but the child was very, not fearful of conflicts. So you do have to, regardless of what percentage you are, if you’re 9%, or you’re 90%, you just need to work on your stuff. This is the perspective I take. And we all need to fix this.

Scott Cardani 13:01
And you know, further do you see sometimes that what you thought at the beginning kind of flips as things go on, and you go, Oh, I see something, you know, something reveals it’s all I mean, I’ve been a garden line for years. And sometimes I get into a case I take two perspective, this parents doing these things, and then you know, we’re going through therapy on these things start to go, Wait a bit, this, this train looks completely different. I flipped it.

Dr. Jill Gasper 13:26
Yes. So I think that happens, especially when you have somebody who’s more aggressive. So there are times that you know, I think somebody else in the room is like, almost pathologically passive, but all they have to do is sit there and the other one’s gonna blow up in the room. And they make all the noise that they’re hiding the other person’s pathology. So I think those cases, especially, where you have this really aggressive parent who’s just out of line in your office, right, and they’re, they’re just, they’re masking the other person’s stuff, right? And it’s only when you get that under control that you can even see oh my gosh, this, this mom is actually super rigid and not doing anything she said she was going to do but I was so focused on him yelling at her all the time. Exactly. Right. And so and I will say that to folks like you are so out of control right now. I can’t even see what’s going on with her. Right. It’s not always that gender but again, I’m going with what’s most of the time true.

Jackie Critzer 14:25
And is that often a pattern of behavior that’s developed because sometimes you’ve you’ve had this overbearing mom and constantly you know, controlling hi, hi type a sort of things. And then the husband gets in a split and then now he’s like now now he seems like the loud one because he’s gotten out from under this almost oppressive ma I’ve

Dr. Jill Gasper 14:52
definitely seen that before right and that and that dad suddenly wants to say so right when he just rubber stamp decisions before I I let her drive the bus. And she’s not handling him sitting as a co pilot very well.

Scott Cardani 15:07
I see.

Jackie Critzer 15:08
Well, what do you do with a child who isn’t four or five or six, who I think could probably be a little easier influenced by some of the tools and, and things but a teenager or preteen, who is rejecting a parent? How do you bring them back to center and not just the parents, but the teenager? Because I’ve kind of few cases where these teenagers aren’t heels dug in, and that parents horrible, and I never want anything to do with them. But it’s that disproportionate rejection?

Dr. Jill Gasper 15:37
Yeah. I think depending on the age, sometimes we really need the muscle of the court, honestly, because that parent, the preferred parent literally can’t make the teenager do it. So sometimes I’ve seen that be helpful. But I mean, we don’t start there, we start with having the rejected parent, really consider what they have done, that has been a problem. And to own that take responsibility for that with your team. And apologize. And that’s, that’s always where I start is giving, giving that if it’s a teen, giving the teen an opportunity to voice essentially what they perceive as the list of sins of that parent, and having the parent listen truly, and reflect back and, and take ownership of the valid concerns that have been raised. And that’s where we start, right. And then we’re hoping, especially with the team to try to identify what what can this look like and to try to find that foundation that hopefully they had, right? I think that’s what’s tricky. With kids, their memories are different than ours, right. And so I often joke with with another friend who worked very part time, and then more full time now that we stayed home with our kids at the wrong time, because they don’t remember that we played that puzzle, you know, 1000 times, but you were 18 months, and you now just remember that I’m working tonight and not going your basketball game. And that’s that’s how kids memories work too. But I hear parents talk about and I changed all these diapers, and I read all of the Harry Potter books to my children and right so they, they have these very fond memories. But kids remember like last year and last week and write an autobiographical memory really starts around the age of four for kids. And so especially if the things are prior to that unless it was something huge. They don’t really have a bunch of memories for for. And so finding that foundation can be tricky sometimes.

Scott Cardani 17:31
How do you find it, I find sometimes, especially when I was a ad litem. But did more of that work, I find that sometimes really hard for parents to admit that they did anything wrong, because they’re the parent. So that admission to them is saying something totally different than what the kid needs. And I think sometimes they need help navigating that to say, you might have been parenting but you know, you got to see how this affected your child and how he saw it. And you know how to moderate and I just thought I had one case where counseling and everything. And the counselor looked at me and said, they just can’t get off that that train. So I don’t see any way to move forward. Because the kid needs that acknowledgement that he wasn’t completely in the bad guy the whole time that maybe it was somebody, maybe dad or mom wasn’t playing the game, right either, you know, and that’s all he’s looking for. But that other parent can’t get there.

Dr. Jill Gasper 18:25
Yeah, I think when I have a rejected parent that can’t get there, we’re pretty dead in the water. Because you do need to eat a lot of humble pie to do this reconciliation work. And I think you do as a parent in general. I mean, I think a good parent acknowledges mistakes. You know, a lot of parents where they get that blind spot is because they have their own experience as a kid, right? And my dad did this or didn’t do this, or my mom did this or didn’t do this. And then they do they do the repair with their own kids, which is not necessarily what their kid wants or needs that that matchup is not the same, if that makes sense. So, you know, a parent who never had anything under the Christmas tree or didn’t have much right then showers their kids with gifts and then for that kid to then say, I feel like you’re just blackmailing me for my love. Right bribing me. And that’s so inconceivable to that parent then because they’re thinking, No, I’m the good parent. I did the thing you’re supposed to do for kids and recognizing, you know, maybe your daughter feels like you bought her love, but the sun is actually good. So you know that we have different kids who have different needs in terms of parenting. And the same thing doesn’t work for each.

Scott Cardani 19:36
A quick note. When I was teaching school, I taught at school sixth grade for three years and I used to have that mentality I’d go in if I made a mistake. I would sit in front of classmates say hey, yesterday, I lost my cool. And that wasn’t okay. Your behavior shouldn’t affect me. No. And I’d walk them through that and say, and it wasn’t the most I didn’t expect the result. I just did it because that’s how I was grew up. And that’s how you it was the right thing to do. You ain’t your own but you know, I was, it is amazing how quickly that can break down a wall and how quickly that can for the whole process like leaps and bounds. And I’ve just amazed how many people can’t get there and can’t have that humbleness, a little bit of humility, like use the little humble pie, but realize that you can build the relationship and you still have the same parental values you can still do, you can still have the same belief for your children to be this kind of person with manners and those kinds of things. That doesn’t change.

Dr. Jill Gasper 20:31
Yeah, I think that’s a if I could infuse that in all parents. I mean, that’s exactly that’s very meaningful for kids to have that experience. And it’s a great model for kids to see, right? Because we want them to take responsibility for their behavior, too. And nobody is perfect. I even think, you know, sometimes kids views are pretty exaggerated, right? Like, my mom yells all the time. And it’s really, maybe she yells like four times a week. Right? Like, and when she does, it’s terrible, and you don’t like it. But it’s a lot of being able to explain, like, we need to talk about this. And this is your child’s perception. And perception is reality at this point. So you need to deal with your kid sees you as a screamer, and you need to deal with that. And you might actually continue to yell four times per week, but you’ve processed it. Do you know what I mean? Like the actual data might not change. It’s just that the child feels more respected. And, and that when it does happen, you’re acknowledging it and apologizing, and you’re doing your best, but four times a week is your best.

Scott Cardani 21:35
That’s that whole identity being heard thing I think sometimes we forget as parents, you just need to be heard sometimes. Yeah, you know, and that sometimes is enough.

Jackie Critzer 21:47
I think it’s sometimes a parent who’s unwilling to apologize for yelling episode or taking responsibility for what they perceive as their, their parenting duty, is because they have this twisted idea that they’re the parent. And if they apologize, then somehow that they elevate the child to being above their parenting position, there’s, there’s a weird twist, I’m very quick to be like, kids, I’m sorry, I could have done that a lot better. I’m really sorry, I didn’t do that better. Let me figure out how I can work on this, this thing. And I that I have found that with our four teenagers at home, it really opens the door for them to have great communication. Instead of being they don’t take the position that oh, now I’m elevated to your friend the level or even above. They really don’t they go, Hey, thanks for acknowledging that I’m human. And I have feelings and what you did sucked.

Dr. Jill Gasper 22:41
And they might even do it to the right. When you hear them doing it, then then you know, you’ve done something right.

Jackie Critzer 22:48
I love that too. Well, so let’s see. What is the goal really, of? I mean, the what’s the goal of getting people through the the parental alienation and resist refuse? What would you call them? Getting them? The dynamic teaching them the tools, putting them through the exercises? What’s, what’s the goal? And then how do you handle it when there’s a parent who’s just unyielding?

Dr. Jill Gasper 23:15
I think the goal is for the children or the child to have a relationship with both parents. And so anything that’s going to be as a complete sever is just is just not viable. And so we’re not going to support that, you know, unless, again, there’s significant abuse, something that it’s not safe to show that parent, right, like, that’s a different scenario, we’re talking about somebody who is fit. And so, and it’s whatever is the furthest we can go, you know, I mean, I’ve had some cases where, you know, I had a teen and a dad, and I just knew, like, the best we’re gonna get with this one is for this kid to go to dinner with the stat of Ruby, like, like, she’s just not, she’s like, 17, she’s not going to live with this dad at this point. Like, it’s, that’s, that’s too disruptive for this last, you know, for senior year, he’s okay with that. He just wants to have a relationship with his daughter, right? So sometimes the goal is is, is that sometimes we’re looking to get to a 5050 kind of place. So it’s really variable by case I think and by the parenting history. It’s not one size fits all. But the real hope the real, tangible goal is that the other parent sees the value in their CO parent and what that person can bring to the children. And that the child can see it that we get away from this all or nothing. We’re trying to break up black and white thinking and get to gray. I think that’s how I see my role. And when it’s very stuck, there will also there often will be an order from the court for the preferred parent if they’re feeling like there’s some significant alienation there will be an order for the court for that preferred parent to see a therapist trained in this try to help Um, how do you support your children’s relationship? The other parent, which, which is a person, you obviously don’t care for much? How do you get to a more neutral place? Because a lot of times in those cases by then you can’t even just be neutral. Now I need you to cheerlead that other parent because you’ve got to undo all this damage. It’s hard work hard work.

Jackie Critzer 25:21
That is hard work. Have you ever seen? Or can you think of a situation where this resist refuse dynamic or parental alienation? Whatever term we use, has risen to the level of an emergency like this kid needs to get away from that preferred parent. And it needs to happen yesterday.

Dr. Jill Gasper 25:39
Yeah, I it was not my case. It was a colleague’s case, actually, back in my, in my postdoc year or my internship year, where they had a case where a child had been taken out of the country, and had undergone kind of some controversial therapy of trying to retrieve lost memories. And this child had recovered. Suppose that memories of sexual abuse by by the other parent, and I mean, that clearly was seen as an emergency and that child was returned to the US. And it took months and months and months to essentially deprogram that child. I have not had that level of scenario, but that’s the most severe I can think of, of, you know, how significant that could be. But yes, I think especially when we see a child’s mental health is just so significantly declining, right, whether that’s suicidality. Whether it’s a kids refusing to go to school, because and their preferred parent is kind of enabling this behavior, it could be substance abuse in the child, but it’s usually those kinds of really significant clinical problems, where you might see an emergency hearing come in, and them to actually make a shift to say, this child is clearly suffering, you did not send this kid to school, you know, 31 of the last 60 days, this is not acceptable.

Jackie Critzer 27:06
And then expelled experience to such a case like that, not not terribly long ago, it and that really was the the factor, I think that the court honed in on I mean, it’d been a five hour hearing, and this child who was 11, at the time and is 12 now had been involved in litigation since he was months old. And the parents had gone back and forth. But this particular child had missed 41 days of school as of March or something, and, and there were lots and lots of other factors in it. But at that point, the court really didn’t have a choice, I think is how they felt. But here, here’s an interesting scenario of urine court, you’ve been called as the maybe as the expert, maybe as a fact witness, because you’ve been involved in the case. And you have a preferred parent and a non preferred parent, and it is your opinion, that this child, so it would have to be an expert, because you’re offering your opinion, the child, whatever age 5, 10, 15 really needs to be moved and moved quickly to the nonpreferred. Parent. But here you have maybe a guardian ad litem who says that may be the case, but we’ve got this resistant behavior this kid isn’t he’s not going to get in the car, he’s not going to stay at that house. Even if you get him there. He’s not saying he’s gonna take off, he’s gonna leave or self harm or whatever these things. How do you I mean, we can only do so much I understand that we can only do so much. But in that sort of scenario, how, how do you how do you how do you convince a judge that that change needs to happen, and then also with the parents and the attorneys that are involved, that something has to happen, somebody’s got to be in control of this kid.

Dr. Jill Gasper 28:46
I mean, I think by saying exactly that. tricky is that I’m typically, I’m not in a custody evaluator role. So I’m limited in terms of making specific recommendations. I feel like as an expert, I can make a recommendation about legal custody and my co parenting cases, because I literally watched them execute that in my office, right. But I can’t give recommendations about their physical custody, because I’ve not evaluated them, seeing them with their children necessarily met with their children. Right. So that’s not appropriate for me. And even in reunification, I don’t think it’s my role to give the schedule, but maybe to give all of the factors that the court needs to consider so that they decide right, so it’s, it would really just being an emergency situation, that I would go so boldly to say, I think that their contact needs to be restricted until x occurs. It’d be very rare for me to do that. Again, it would be an emergency, I’m more likely to say, you know, it’s critical that this child needs to have a relationship with the rejected parent. This is why this hasn’t been on successful thus far. This is what these are, you know, some factors we need to see to make this shift and hopefully kind of lead the horse to water To get to that decision,

Scott Cardani 30:03
Do you think that the removal of the other parent can actually cause more problems? Sometimes?

Dr. Jill Gasper 30:11
I think sometimes, again, we want to just get to that as a last resort, because again, I’m in the business of helping children have a relationship with both their parents. So severing the other side of the family tree is really not my preference, right? I have seen the court sort of say you need to get it together, you have this much time. And I had, I had a parent who did get it together, and they sorted it out. And I think without that threat, that parent wouldn’t have gotten it together to be able to support truly support the child’s relationship with the other parent, but saw the writing on the wall had an attorney who spoke frankly, like you’re going to lose custody if you do not do X, Y, and Z. And so the parent did X, Y, and Z. So I’d much prefer that approach, right? Because you’re taking what is usually the child’s primary attachment figure and severing it. But that is what the research tells us, we have to do if that if that preferred parent cannot facilitate things, because the loss of that other relationship is so detrimental. And, you know, in all the ways that we talked about with high conflict divorces in terms of the adjustment problems we see in kids, but especially in their interpersonal relationships, right, mom and dad are the blueprint, whether we like it or not for your intimate relationships. And that’s, you know, a lot of folks will say, Well, no, but we’ve got stepdad and we have a beautiful marriage and doesn’t matter. That’s not the blueprint. Mom and Dad are the blueprint whether you’re together or separated. And your child needs to have a relationship with both parents and especially I think about daughters and fathers and how critical that relationship how much that maps on to their relationships with the partners moving forward. That this this is a huge part of just funk basic functioning.

Jackie Critzer 32:00
Boy, isn’t that the truth? So big topic today parental alienation which was a really isn’t even a thing. We learned it’s a thing but not like really effects. So our takeaways today this is more of a campaign of denigration, I wrote that in my notes, I thought that was a really good phrase, just to share with people that the campaign of denigration really is about resist refuse dynamics. It’s not you know, parental alienation is a is a coined term that may not necessarily fit what’s going on in this situation and you’re gonna find more tools and reuse resources. When you look up the resist refuse dynamics, an important piece of this dynamic is disproportionate rejection of the rejected parent. And sometimes that’s the preferred parents influence on on the rejection and sometimes it’s not, but it can be what looks like not facilitating the repair with the other parent. And that those those two points along with the book that you recommended overcoming the co parenting trap, be sure and check out our website, we’ll have that link to where you can go check out that book. But the takeaways are are fantastic. And we’re hopeful that Dr. Gasper we’ll come back and we can talk about the mental health aspect of co parenting relationships and even pathology because maybe I’m the only one interested in that. But it’s fascinating and to figure out, you know what, what’s really going on and all these dynamics. So, Dr. Gasper, thank you so much for joining us today.

What To Do When… Outro 33:36
We hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of What To Do When… For more episodes, be sure to subscribe to our podcast and we encourage you to check archives to listen to previous topics. Tune in next week for a new episode and some fresh perspective from Critzer Cardani.

Need Legal Representation? Contact Critzer Cardani.

We look forward to helping you in this venture and Good Luck!

• Stream and Subscribe to Podcasts Here.
• Submit Questions or Suggest New Podcast Topic Here.