No doubt about it, children can frustrate the heck out of their parents. If you are in a conflicted custody situation, then you can multiply that feeling of frustration by ten. If you are a targeted parent (you believe that the other parent is trying to turn your child against you), multiply that by one hundred! That is because children caught in a parental alienation dynamic are being emotionally manipulated by one parent to push the other parent’s buttons in order to get that targeted parent to become reactive/angry or depressed/passive. Either way, the targeted parent is likely to have some choice thoughts for their child, perhaps thinking of the child as “rude” “disrespectful” and maybe even “abusive.” Certainly, the child’s behavior can be unpleasant and disruptive to the parent-child attachment relationship, which thrives when the child experiences the parent as safe, loving, and available (Bowlby, 1969).

The concern is that when parents think of their........

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