Open Letter from Adult Child

Open Letter to Adult Children Estranged from their Parents

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Amy Baker’s Study on Adult Children of PAS

When Ties to a Parent Are Cut by the Other Article in the NY Times - Sept. 2007 THIS is a nice moment in Joe Rabiega’s life. At 31, he has a good job as a research coordinator for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is happily married and feels blessed that his wife of five years, Tiffany, is pregnant with their first child. His hope is to give that child a happier upbringing than the one he had. Mr. Rabiega’s parents divorced when he was 8, and though they were supposed to share custody, he said, his father, a truck driver with a drinking problem, did everything possible to turn him against his mother and eventually kept him from seeing her. “He bullied my mother into giving up custody,” Mr. Rabiega said. When he was still allowed to visit his mother, he’d have to stay by the phone to take a call from his father at 4 every afternoon and 8 each evening. He said his father trained him to spy on his mother’s socializing and spending habits. “His ability to manipulate he...
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Parental Alienation: It can happen at any age

Don't believe what they say: that Parental Alienation cannot happen to older children, that it's just an oxymoron. Parental Alienation is the act of one parent deliberately undermining the relationship between the children and the other parent to the point of creating a hostile relationship and thus alienation of the children from the other parent. Another way to look at this is alienation of affection, which is one of the basic human needs discussed at length by Maslow in his Hierarchy of Needs. It is a serious form of psychological abuse, and it is very dangerous because it occurs internally and, thus, is harder to treat. Unlike physical abuse where the scars and wounds are on the outside, Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) is so deep inside that unlocking the key to it takes years of treatment and unconditional love. Though PAS is primarily seen in high-conflict divorces, it also occurs in intact families. And though it usually begins in early childhood, this is not alw...
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Severely Alienated

Falling into the severe category of parental alienation are those parents who become obsessed with destroying the child's relationship with the other parent and that parent's family and friends. Dr. Frank Williams describes this goal of cutting a parent out of a child's life as a "parentectomy." In these cases, a child will succumb to the alienator's programming or brainwashing and experience fear, anger, and hatred toward the target parent. When parental alienation is severe enough, children have no choice but to align with the disturbed parent against the target parent, thus destroying their relationship with the target parent. These children no longer have free will or the ability to continue loving the target parent. PAS describes the child's behavior in response to the brainwashing that has occurred; it does not describe actions on the part of a parent. The focus of this article in on children who are being severely alienated or who are already experi...
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