Protector, Not Alienator!

One of the most painful experiences as a protective parent is when your natural instinct to protect your child from your ex is labelled parental alienation. You do everything in your power to deflect this accusation by bending and flexing with your ex to demonstrate the opposite, but you remain desperate to protect your child. You diplomatically highlight to your ex unfavourable behaviours, hoping they’ll understand and adjust. At least for the sake of your child’s well-being, but no matter what approach you use, instead of acknowledging the concern and working with you to enhance the child's experience, they turn the focus on you. They pick at the language you use. Repeatedly accuse you of being controlling, or state that you are trying to stop them from seeing their child, worse still, they minimise the concerning calling it a different parenting style.

You hate the confrontational behaviour the ex always display in front of your child. Its a tactic they use because they know, in front of the child, you will submit, that your aim is to keep the peace, in order to protect them. You feel teh familar tightness in your chest. You live each day with a degree of anxiety that has you constantly on edge. There is a little voice that is growing, but recently it has got significantly louder. It questions the gambling of your child’s emotional well-being, with the avoidance of being accused of parental alienation. This incongruence eats you up inside, as you observe your child return home, yet again having emotionally regressed. You put them to bed and sit with a glass of wine, feeling powerless to protect them.

But one day, you can take no more, you snap, and either reduce or stop contact. As well as parental alienation, you are also labelled the bitter ex who is weaponising their child (the new excuse), because your ex has a new partner. You’re actually relieved they have moved on, and pity the new partner. You hope that if they have children, they are okay – you recall your ex’s lack of patience and temper. But it makes no difference how you feel. The court order is set. The Child Has A Right To A Relationship With Both Parents – you never disagreed with this, you just wanted boundaries and safety for the child. But you were accused of being an alienator, your parental rights failing to provide you with the right to protect your child against the abusive parent under the guide of parental alienation.