Rosen column: Put kids first in divorce

MITCHELL ROSENChildren who are victims of parental alienation syndrome are likely to become emotionally damaged. For me this is the hardest part of doing counseling in PAS cases. Children need and deserve a mother and a father. To intentionally deny a child access to a parent for bonding, love and interaction is a loss for that child.If parents respected and enjoyed their partners, they would still be married. For that reason it is no surprise most divorces are ugly. Yet, I have seen many parents put their own pettiness aside to assure their children do not suffer. The parents make it a point to let their child know Mom and Dad can still communicate and wish their child well when it is the other parent's time with the child.It should not be hard to understand that kids need to look up to their parents. So, when one parent bad-mouths, misinterprets or intentionally misrepresents the other, this behavior results in a confused and anxious child.There are lots of ways that PAS messes with the minds of children. If a parent instills in a child the belief that the other parent is evil, then what does that do for the self-image of the child? He or she is then the son or daughter of an evil person and no child should be burdened with that legacy.When a parent wrongly convinces the child the other parent is out to hurt him or her and will stop at nothing until they are bankrupt, lose custody or are physically damaged, the child learns it is now his or her role to protect the targeted parent. Children deserve innocence, and their childhood is robbed from them when they are taught to protect their parent instead of being protected.Kids will quickly learn to play one house against the other and often discover that bad-mouthing one parent to the other is a way to get attention and affection.Another destructive behavior in PAS triangles is a parent calling the police about alleged abuse. The children associate police officers with one of their parents getting into trouble and it is not unusual for kids to see their mother or father led away in handcuffs.Often the officers will enforce court orders, as they are obliged to do, but these orders may be written as temporary stopgaps until more thorough psychological evaluations can be completed. Unfortunately, these evaluations can take months to finish and the backlog in Family Court means it may be many more months before the psychologists and therapists are able to educate the court.Meanwhile, there is a terrific tug of war with children being put in the role of savior, prosecutor, therapist and confidant. None of these are healthy roles for a child losing his or her family through an acrimonious divorce.There are not enough inches in this column to delineate all of the ways children are victimized by PAS other than to point out, long after the divorce is complete, the kids may be left with only one parent and that parent is often the one with serious emotional problems.Mitchell Rosen, M.A., is a licensed marriage and family therapist with practices in Corona and Temecula. Contact him at family@PE.com

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