How to Determine the Extent of Your BPD Spouse's Alienation of Your Children

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

In preparation for my son's impending divorce, I have been reading as many articles and books that I can to help with his more than likely contentious child custody battle.  This week we will be vetting  child custody evaluators/therapists so that we will have a list for our DIL to choose from, in case the court orders such an evaluation.  If the court doesn't order an evaluation we will seek one on our own.  We don't want our BPD DIL to have the upper-hand in this situation.  I think most of the signs of alienation are fairly obvious, but the following lists of models and behaviors may help others to determine the extent of child/parent alienation by their BPD spouse.  If you don't have the finances to pay for a child custody evaluator/therapist, I'm hoping that these lists will give you a starting point to prove alienation yourself.  Be sure to journal the time, place, and circumstances surrounding your observation of alienation and abuse.  

The 5 factor model -  (William Bernet 2020)
1.   Child refuses to see targeted parent
2.   Child and targeted parent previously had a  good relationship
3.   Lack of evidence of abuse by the targeted parent
4.   Alienating behaviors by the favored parent (Parent is exhibiting some or all of the 17 different alienating behaviors listed below)
5.   Behavioral signs of alienation in the child (child manifests many of the 8 distinctive behaviors of children who have been alienated listed below.)
   
17 different alienating behaviors – (Amy Baker & Paul Fine 2008)
1.    Badmouthing
2.   Limiting Contact
3.   Interfering with Communication
4.   Interfering with Symbolic Communication (gestures, facial expressions, body language.)
5.   Withdrawal of Love
6.   Telling Child that Targeted Parent Does Not Love Them
7.   Forcing Child to Choose
8.   Creating the Impression that Targeted Parent is Dangerous
9.   Confiding in Child
10.   Forcing Child to Reject Targeted Parent
11.   Asking Child to Spy on Targeted Parent
12.   Asking Child to Keep Secrets from Targeted Parent
13.   Referring to Targeted Parent by First Name
14.   Referring to the New Stepmother or Stepfather as Mom or Dad and Encouraging Child to do same
15.   Withholding Medical, Academic, and Other Important Information from Targeted Parent
16.   Changing Child’s Name to Remove Association with Targeted Parent
17.   Cultivating Dependency

   8 distinctive behaviors that distinguish between alienation and abuse – (Richard Gardner M.D.)
 1.   Campaign of Denigration - Past (Child says they never had a good time with the targeted parent.  They erase the past) Present (The child is hostile, rejecting, provocative, arrogant, entitled, nasty and rude in general.) Future (If you ask the child what that parent could do in the future to make you happy and they say “nothing.”)
2.   Absurd reasons for rejection. (i.e. I don't want to come to your house.  You smell like coffee.)
3.   Lack of ambivalence.  (One parent is seen as all good, and the other is seen as all bad.  There is no criticism of the favored parent.)  
4.   Lack of remorse for their bad treatment of the targeted parent. (As if one parent gave the child the okay to break the other parent’s heart.)
5.   Independent Thinker Phenomenon.  (Protecting the alienating parent, by saying Mom didn’t have anything to do with my opinion.)
6.   Use of borrowed scenarios and speaking in language of the favored parent.  (Child has become brainwashed by the favored parents, and then believes the lies being told to them.  The child thinks the ideas are their own, even though they may not know what they are saying. i.e. "It looks like we're going to have to get a new daddy/mommy now.")
7.   Reflexive Automatic Support for the favored parent.  (They will take the favored parent’s side in every conflict. The favored parent is always right.)
8.   Spread of hate to anyone connected to the targeted parent.  (Anyone who has anything good to say about the targeted parent is cut off.)

Abused children do not show these 8 behaviors.  They still have positive memories of the abusive parent.  They provide information about actual mistreatment.  They don’t start worshipping the other parent.  They can still see the favored parent’s faults.  They don’t generally lack remorse, they’re just mad that the parent hurt them, but they still feel bad for setting appropriate limits with the abusive parent.  They don’t always take the other parent’s side, just because they were abused.  They don’t cut off friends and family of the abusive parent.  Research shows that they don’t generally  reject the abusive parent.  

   
   

[OnPinsAndNeedles]

In preparation for my son's impending divorce, I have been reading as many articles and books that I can to help with his more than likely contentious child custody battle.  This week we will be vetting  child custody evaluators/therapists so that we will have a list for our DIL to choose from, in case the court orders such an evaluation.  If the court doesn't order an evaluation we will seek one on our own.  We don't want our BPD DIL to have the upper-hand in this situation.  I think most of the signs of alienation are fairly obvious, but the following lists of models and behaviors may help others to determine the extent of child/parent alienation by their BPD spouse.  If you don't have the finances to pay for a child custody evaluator/therapist, I'm hoping that these lists will give you a starting point to prove alienation yourself.  Be sure to journal the time, place, and circumstances surrounding your observation of alienation and abuse.  

The 5 factor model -  (William Bernet 2020)
1.   Child refuses to see targeted parent
2.   Child and targeted parent previously had a  good relationship
3.   Lack of evidence of abuse by the targeted parent
4.   Alienating behaviors by the favored parent (Parent is exhibiting some or all of the 17 different alienating behaviors listed below)
5.   Behavioral signs of alienation in the child (child manifests many of the 8 distinctive behaviors of children who have been alienated listed below.)
   
17 different alienating behaviors – (Amy Baker & Paul Fine 2008)
1.    Badmouthing
2.   Limiting Contact
3.   Interfering with Communication
4.   Interfering with Symbolic Communication (gestures, facial expressions, body language.)
5.   Withdrawal of Love
6.   Telling Child that Targeted Parent Does Not Love Them
7.   Forcing Child to Choose
8.   Creating the Impression that Targeted Parent is Dangerous
9.   Confiding in Child
10.   Forcing Child to Reject Targeted Parent
11.   Asking Child to Spy on Targeted Parent
12.   Asking Child to Keep Secrets from Targeted Parent
13.   Referring to Targeted Parent by First Name
14.   Referring to the New Stepmother or Stepfather as Mom or Dad and Encouraging Child to do same
15.   Withholding Medical, Academic, and Other Important Information from Targeted Parent
16.   Changing Child’s Name to Remove Association with Targeted Parent
17.   Cultivating Dependency

   8 distinctive behaviors that distinguish between alienation and abuse – (Richard Gardner M.D.)
 1.   Campaign of Denigration - Past (Child says they never had a good time with the targeted parent.  They erase the past) Present (The child is hostile, rejecting, provocative, arrogant, entitled, nasty and rude in general.) Future (If you ask the child what that parent could do in the future to make you happy and they say “nothing.”)
2.   Absurd reasons for rejection. (i.e. I don't want to come to your house.  You smell like coffee.)
3.   Lack of ambivalence.  (One parent is seen as all good, and the other is seen as all bad.  There is no criticism of the favored parent.)  
4.   Lack of remorse for their bad treatment of the targeted parent. (As if one parent gave the child the okay to break the other parent’s heart.)
5.   Independent Thinker Phenomenon.  (Protecting the alienating parent, by saying Mom didn’t have anything to do with my opinion.)
6.   Use of borrowed scenarios and speaking in language of the favored parent.  (Child has become brainwashed by the favored parents, and then believes the lies being told to them.  The child thinks the ideas are their own, even though they may not know what they are saying. i.e. "It looks like we're going to have to get a new daddy/mommy now.")
7.   Reflexive Automatic Support for the favored parent.  (They will take the favored parent’s side in every conflict. The favored parent is always right.)
8.   Spread of hate to anyone connected to the targeted parent.  (Anyone who has anything good to say about the targeted parent is cut off.)

Abused children do not show these 8 behaviors.  They still have positive memories of the abusive parent.  They provide information about actual mistreatment.  They don’t start worshipping the other parent.  They can still see the favored parent’s faults.  They don’t generally lack remorse, they’re just mad that the parent hurt them, but they still feel bad for setting appropriate limits with the abusive parent.  They don’t always take the other parent’s side, just because they were abused.  They don’t cut off friends and family of the abusive parent.  Research shows that they don’t generally  reject the abusive parent.  

   
   

[livednlearned]

I hadn't heard of the others before but Gardner is a problematic source.

In other literature he normalizes sexual abuse of children by adults, calling it an "ancient tradition" 

He was an MD who worked to characterize alienation as a syndrome, something he wasn't equipped to do without training as a theorist and scholar who understood what constitutes a syndrome. While he did a lot to describe the alienation behaviors, he also did much to damage it when experts were called to testify and poke holes in the theory. Some courts won't recognize alienation formally although most people in family courts are aware that a version of alienation is present, just not a syndrome. It's gotten complicated.

The person considered most expert in alienation that I know of is Dr. Craig Childress who has demonstrated the connection between alienation and personality disordered parenting behaviors (pathogenic parenting). He has a blog: https://drcraigchildressblog.com/ and does consulting: https://drcraigchildressblog.com/

It might be helpful to have a consultation with him to better understand the other instruments you reference. 

For many years here on the board it was popular to suggest that custody evaluators administer the MMPI. For that you need a forensic psychiatrist trained in administering and evaluating that test. I think the MMPI is now MMPI-3 after some revisions. Others have had psychiatrists administer tests more specific to PDs (which the MMPI is not). I made the mistake of requesting a psyche eval for my ex without being specific. We ended up with a 12 page document based on 4 one-hour sessions of chit chat. While it didn't end up in a dx, which wouldn't have mattered anyway, it did make clear that n/BPDx, while he loved our son, was a terribly flawed person and parent.

One thing you wrote in another post is the fear that your DIL will lure your son back in. If she is high-functioning and has high degree of narcissism, that's what would worry me most. Then she gets a lot of information about what he planned to do so she can regroup and make another attempt, this time much more informed.

He initiated the divorce, is that correct? Does he seem undecided about whether to go through with it?

[ForeverDad]

I made the mistake of requesting a psyche eval for my ex without being specific. We ended up with a 12 page document based on 4 one-hour sessions of chit chat.

When I separated and we both had TPOs against each other, the court ordered psych evals.  Mine was a short visit to a county agency.  Here's my summary:

We had a court order psych evals early in our case for both of us.  That started as a good thing but I flubbed it.  The risk with such orders is three-fold.  First, if only you get ordered to comply then you are typically seen as the accused and the other as the victim, not good.  You need the other parent to be scrutinized too!  If any order could cast you as the perp or let the other parent avoid being scrutinized, then if at all possible, get any ordered evaluations applied to both of you.  Second, these are only an overview of a person's mental state and don't even try to assess the impact on parenting and the children.  Third, the other spouse may not comply.  That's what happened to me.

During my separation in 2005-2006 we both were ordered to submit to psych evals and provide our results to the court and lawyers.  I complied.  (The quickie eval concluded I had "anxiety".)  Then silence.  Where was then-stbEx's eval?  To this day I still haven't seen it nor do I know whether she even got a psych eval at all...

My conclusion:  Any order, deal or process where both of you have to do something and provide it to the court and lawyers, you cannot risk complying first.  There is real risk the other side will simply not comply and not even be held accountable.  So I advocate this in such situations:  Tell your lawyer you have complied, maybe even provide the results to your lawyer but then instruct your lawyer to hold it (sort of as is done in escrow) until the other party is ready to exchange the results.

What I did was ask for an in-depth Custody Evaluation and fortunately we chose a respected child psychologist as the custody evaluator.  That was important, too many possible evaluators could be rookie lawyers.  Often real experts don't want to bother with complicated cases that could take many months to complete.  Be forewarned that a CE is expensive.  Mine was to be about $3K (others report costs up to and exceeding $20K) but of course my ex claimed she was more comfortable in another language and so there were time delays and additional costs due to her obstructions.

This too is why you get much better results with a good (or "less bad") temp order from the very start.  Do your best to include the favorable terms and exclude the unfavorable.  Reality check: This is not a time to try to show how "fair" or "nice" you are, court won't care, so do what is right for you and especially the kids.  My "temp" orders - I had two, one for the separation and one for the divorce - were never modified and covered a span of more than 2 years.

[OnPinsAndNeedles]

Livednlearned - Well darn!  It's too bad that Gardner has such disturbing beliefs about pedophilia. Because of this, using Gardner's 8 alienation behaviors in court would probably backfire. It's a shame really, because I believe his alienation observations are correct.  I'll have to do further vetting on the other authors I cited.  I'll also take a look at Dr. Childress' blog. Thanks for that!

One thing you wrote in another post is the fear that your DIL will lure your son back in. If she is high-functioning and has high degree of narcissism, that's what would worry me most. Then she gets a lot of information about what he planned to do so she can regroup and make another attempt, this time much more informed. Yes!  This is something she would very likely think of doing.  She is sneaky that way.  I do believe she has a touch of narcissism mixed in with her BPD.  Our son asked for the divorce, thought they could evenly split things in mediation, but she filed first as the plaintiff.  They have come close to divorce in the past, but then she would behave for a couple of weeks and he would change his mind.  They have never gotten this far in the process (both retaining lawyers).  I've seen too much of the BPD push and pull to believe without a doubt that the divorce will happen this time.  I'm cautiously optimistic, because I think divorce will give our son relief from the constant humiliation, control, manipulation, and raging that he experiences on a daily basis.  I also believe our granddaughter will do better if she can live at least half of her remaining childhood in a quiet, stable home that models healthy behaviors.  

ForeverDad- That is excellent advise about not submitting any psyche evaluations first.  DIL has a long list of rules and expectations that she forces on our son and granddaughter, but the rules never apply to her.  


  

[livednlearned]

That is excellent advise about not submitting any psyche evaluations first.  

Stonewalling is probably the most insidious aspect of a pwBPD in a high-conflict divorce.

In my court system, plaintiff and defendant were not allowed to see psyche evals. Only lawyers and the judge could see them.

The only reason I was able to access n/BPDx's is because he gave me permission. He was representing himself in court by then and was cross-examining me about something in his own psyche eval. I mean, wth. When the judge pointed out that I did not have access, n/BPDx gave permission for me to have a copy. I believe he was experiencing psychosis and was interpreting some parts of the eval narcissistically to protect himself. He wanted me to agree with the paragraphs that described him in positive language, including things he said about himself. Same thing with emails he wrote. He would cross-examine me to get me to agree to things he wrote about me.

Things can get weird in court. 

This is your son's case and I can only imagine how frustrating this is for you to be in the wings, especially knowing first-hand about BPD.

We aren't lawyers here so the best we can do is point to what worked or didn't in our own cases.

[OnPinsAndNeedles]

Hearing about everyone's personal experiences is extremely valuable!  Helps me prepare for what's to come.  

Things can get weird in court.  
I'm expecting to be in for a wild ride. How can it be anything else, once you've fallen down the rabbit hole of BPD?  Lots of gaslighting, projection, tears, and overacting. This is the behavior I'm expecting from my DIL. Just hope we have a savvy judge.  We've told our son that we are willing to testify about our DIL's parenting issues, but I'm not sure how much weight an in-law's testimony would carry in court.  Mother-in-laws already get a bad rap. I've even thought about contacting her ex-husband's mom to see how the divorce went in their case, but I'm not sure that is appropriate. 

[Sluggo]

I am sorry you are going through this...  I put my family through hell as I stopped talking to everyone as that was what my ex-wife said would help our marriage. 

I took extreme comfort in knowing that despite my behaviours I knew their  love was unconditional.  And it proved to be once I separated ... and then shared with them what was really happening behind the closed doors. 

About 12 years into our marriage, We had a full day psych assessment because that is what our marriage therapist reccomended. That is when initial PD assessment came to light and I started working on my codependent behaviors.  I separated from her 6 years after the diagnosis and 6 years of becoming stronger and more independent emotionally. 

At initial divorce hearing, i requested a custody eval.  Exwife accepted our suggeation of the evaluator.  Evaluator was known to be very knowledgeable of alienation.  The custody eval took about 9 months to complete, cost 20k,  For me, that was the best 20k spent...  More so for me personally to have a 3rd party acknowledge everything I was feeling but could not put into words.   Evaluator wrote an 80 page report and was excellent.  I felt vindicated.    Stated everything perfectly.  Claimed alienation, sited multiple behaviors and abuse and testified about 3 hours in court saying all the same things, BUT In the end, the judge disregarded evaluation and gave ex-wife primary custody.  Probably because she was a stay at home mom with 7 kids and 2 had special needs.   I was desevestated. 

However I had some solace  because of the report- the truth, the evaluator testified in court where my ex wife had 12 of 'our' friends ( who by then had believed her stories about me) attend that then heard the truth. 

3 months later , ex wife sent a letter to saying she did not want any of the kids.  I got that signed off by the judge about 4weeks later. 

It was a difficult road.  I participated in the dysfunction...  I am so grateful my family did not abandon me despite me. 

Sluggo