: Bill Eddy
: Don't Alienate the Kids Raising Resilient Children While Avoiding High Conflict Divorce
: Unhooked Books
: 9781950057153
: 1
: CHF 10.50
:
: Partnerschaft, Sexualität
: English
: 359
: DRM
: PC/MAC/eReader/Tablet
: ePUB
In this tenth anniversary edition of Don't Alienate the Kids! attorney, mediator, and therapist Bill Eddy shows readers how to protect children from the harm of alienation and high-conflict divorce, boosting their resilience by teaching them to think flexibly, manage their emotions, and moderate their behaviors. We all know breakups can get ugly. But sometimes they can get downright vicious, with badmouthing, brainwashing, and allegations of alienation, child abuse and domestic violence, all leading to nasty custody battles. And when they do, it's the children who suffer most. During a high-conflict divorce or separation, kids can develop lifelong habits of all-or-nothing thinking, unregulated emotions, and extreme behaviors. Professionals who want to help may unintentionally make things worse, believing everything a parent says or taking sides. No one can solve this problem alone. That's because the wall of alienation between parent and child is built by: the family's own patterns of conflict family court professionals who get emotionally 'hooked' society's rapidly escalating culture of blame But there's hope! Readers can help kids learn flexible thinking, emotion regulation, effective behaviors, and healthy relationships. Everyone involved must work together. This book shows how parents, family members, friends, counselors, lawyers, parenting coordinators, divorce coaches, and family court judges can become part of the solution, giving children a foundation of resilience that will last a lifetime. Bill Eddy is co-founder and chief innovation officer of the High Conflict Institute and the author or coauthor of thirteen books, including Five Types of People Who Can Ruin Your Life, BIFF, and Splitting.
CHAPTER 1
ALIENATION: What it is. What it isn’t.
The first half of this book explains the problem of child alienation: when a child resists or refuses to see a parent during or after a separation or divorce. The second half teaches how to avoid alienation: ways to parent a child to be resilient in today’s world even during these family changes and to avoid high-conflict divorce.
Since I wrote the first edition of this book in 2010, nothing major has changed about the problem of alienation. More children than ever are resisting or refusing to see one of their parents after a separation or divorce. Many parents and professionals still believe this is primarily a problem of intentional behavior by one parent against the other, or—at the opposite extreme—that alienation doesn’t exist. But, as I will explain throughout this book, it really is about the mostly unconsciousemotional repetition in isolation of pained facial expressions, angry outbursts, tears, side comments, and blurring of emotional boundaries between one or both parents and the child. A significant amount of time in family courts around the world is spent arguing over which parent is knowingly at fault without understanding the real underlying problem and without finding helpful solutions—while the child becomes more and more resistant.
Yet a lot has been learned over the past ten years that has significantly improved the situation for some children and families. There is great potential for the future for those who understand what is really happening and take reasonable steps to prevent thisemotional repetition in isolation and to overcome the alienation. In this second edition, I will explain my understanding of this problem and its solutions, after nearly forty years of addressing it first as a therapist and then as a family lawyer, and now as one who trains judges, lawyers, counselors and mediators in managing high-conflict cases.
What It Is
We need to start by looking at what alienation really is.
•It’s the resistance or refusal of a child to spend time with one of their parents (the “rejected parent”) during and after a separation or divorce.
•The child reports intense fear, anger and/or hatred for the other parent, sometimes including that parent’s parents, new partner, house and even pet(s).
•There is no good reason given for the child’s resistance or refusal. Typically, the child reports disproportionate reasons, such as disliking how one parent wears their hair or how another parent is no good at math. They may report fears of abuse when there is no history of abuse, or anger that the separation or divorce is all one parent’s fault.
•Alienation tends to grow as some parents are unable to manage their emotions and get more and more angry and upset during the separation and divorce process. It especially grows when the family is re