According to research by Dr. Amy J. Baker, there are 17 alienating behaviors used by alienators to win a child’s allegiance.
Those 17 tactics have been put into 5 main categories – isolation, fear, undermining authority, erasing&false memory implantation and encouraging betrayal.
Isolation is THE #1 tactic an alienator will use to keep a child from the target parent.
They do this for 2 reasons:
#1. To build emotional dependency
#2. To eliminate the competition for reality. This looks different in every situation. Listed above are the ways it manifested in ours.
Fear is the #2 most popular tactic used by an alienating parent.
This is done to:
#1. Build emotional dependency
#2. Help create the us vs. them environment
ALL OF US experience this in our parental alienation wars…just like we all experience isolation…Something I say often during my talks is -if parental alienation was a quilt, FEAR would be the thread…Fear is the undercurrent for every move an alienator makes…And motivates every single decision…Like you, we experienced this for all the years of our war…And now drives the hate the kids feel for us to this very day…Listed above are a few ways FEAR materialized in our story…
What does it look like in yours?
Undermining authority is definitely something every one of us experiences in our wars…
But then again, it’s very easy to do , isn’t it? I mean let’s be real – all the alienator has to do is the exact opposite of what you’re doing in your home…
Our home had rules, routines, schedules and expectations…
The alienator’s home had no rules, no homework, sleepovers in the middle of the week and zero expectations…
In addition, the alienator taught the kids to dehumanize us by assigning pet names for us. Jack was the “abusive alcoholic” and I was the “bug-eyed freak”…whenever one of the kids would want to talk about us, they were corrected if we referred to as “dad” or “cheryl” by the alienator and the pet name would be inserted instead.
Additionally, the alienator continually made disparaging remarks and engaged the kids in such behaviors like a game…
The alienator also continued to keep up that shroud of fear and create a feeling of homesickeness for them during those scheduled phone calls…
One of the tactics most effective was giving the kids a new keepsake before coming to our home…
There are many, many tactics out there to undermine authority and these are just a fews…
How is your alienator undermining your authority?
Erasing & replacing memories is a very effective tactic used by an alienating parent…
We were stunned to read about this in Dr. Warshak’s book Divorce Poison after witnessing bizarre reenactments in our home…
Even we were starting to wonder if we were crazy…
Rituals is a form of what’s called “stripping” and it’s used by an alienator to purge the child of symbolic & emotional connections w the target parent…
This lays the ground work for “new” false memories to be implanted…
I write about the rituals we witness and new memories shared in my blog posts “The Burning Party” and “Breastfed” and “Ritualistic.”
What rituals are you witnessing? What new memories have been created?
Encouraging Betrayal…
Not surprising, encouraging betrayal is easy once a child has been isolated, indoctrinated w fear, had loving memories erased and replaced w lies and been taught to undermine and dehumanize the target parent’s authority…
Encouraging betrayal helps solidify the alienator’s indoctrination and helps seal the fate of the target parent…
When a child becomes a spy, anything and everything is up for grabs in the target parent’s life…
These are a few ways the alienator helped to encourage betrayal for us…
How is betrayal being encouraged in your situation?