a stepparent’s guide to parental alienation

Parental alienation is an insidious problem that occurs in more blended families than anyone probably realizes. Yet, for all its devastating impact, overwhelming challenges, and indescribable heartbreak, the conversation about how parental alienation affects stepparents and impacts the process of blending your family is practically nonexistent.

Not to imply that parental alienation is strictly a stepparenting problem — it's not. Parental alienation is a blended family problem that negatively impacts every member of your household, adults and kiddos alike. Even extended family members like grandparents can be affected by parental alienation.

And while, sure, yes, there's always gonna be some degree of conflict between households after a divorce, parental alienation takes high conflict co-parenting to a whole new level of misery and pain — as my husband Dan & I can personally attest to, lucky us. If you’re interested in more personal details about our story, we talk about our experiences at length in our workshop on parental alienation, along with what we wish we’d done instead and where we’re at now in terms of our relationship with my stepdaughter. (Which, thankfully, is pretty normal these days.)

Education is one of your most powerful tools to fight alienation. So let’s dig a bit deeper into what alienation is, some signs and symptoms you might see in an alienated stepkid, and the impact of parental alienation on you as a stepparent and your stepfamily as a whole.

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WHAT IS PARENTAL ALIENATION?

Simply put, parental alienation is when one parent tries to turn a child (or children) against their other parent… and actually succeeds.

While badmouthing a kid’s other parent is, sadly, not unheard of even in traditional families, most kids see through those attempts at slander and keep right on loving that parent anyway.

Parental alienation syndrome is a term coined in the 1980s by child psychiatrist Dr. Richard A. Gardner to describe what happens when one parent programs their child into rejecting their other parent, and the kid becomes a willing participant in this brainwashing campaign.

More recently, Dr. Craig Childress has argued that parental alienation “syndrome” isn't anything new in terms of child psychology; parental alienation is just a particular type of attachment disorder. The attachment system is the brain system that controls all aspects of love & bonding throughout our lifetimes. The alienating parent’s tactics can be so effective that they actually interfere with a child’s ability to attach to their other parent.

I appreciate this updated definition because it explains how parental alienation interrupts a kiddo's normal mode of forming emotional attachments at a developmental level. So literally the part of my stepdaughter's brain that should have been able to create loving bonds did not function correctly as a result of her mother's alienation tactics. (Which explains sooooo much about why it's a massive challenge to become a stepparent to an alienated stepkid.)

IS PARENTAL ALIENATION a real thing?

Those of us who've experienced parental alienation can 100% vouch for its existence based on the catastrophic impact it’s had on our kids'/stepkids' personalities and our own lives. Yet, the identification of parental alienation as a “syndrome” remains fiercely debated.

Detractors claim PAS is fabricated nonsense that gives abusive parents a free pass, suggesting that alienated children are not alienated at all but are genuinely scared of an abusive parent. And yes, it’s unfortunately possible that an abuser could hide behind false claims of parental alienation so they can continue abusing their kids. But that doesn't mean parental alienation doesn't exist, any more than someone crying wolf means wolves don't exist.

I’m not a legal professional or a mental health professional — all I can speak to is our lived experience. Having witnessed my stepdaughter suddenly and disproportionately reject a previously much-loved father… yep, parental alienation is super real. And devastating. Call it by whatever name or syndrome you want.

The effects of alienation can be so severe as to qualify as child abuse. Dr. Amy J.L. Baker, author of my fave book on parental alienation, explains that parental alienation tactics cause the affected child to feel worthless or unloved; alienated kids measure their value only in terms of how they meet the alienating parent's needs by rejecting their other parent. Dr. Baker says this means parental alienation meets the same definition as emotional abuse as it's outlined by the American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children (APSAC). And yet, parental alienation remains unrecognized by the DSM (aka the bible of psychiatric diagnoses), so finding any objective data or statistics on alienation is practically impossible… not to mention finding effective treatments and support.

The effects of parental alienation can vary in severity, ranging anywhere from a child showing mild reluctance to spend time with the targeted parent to their complete refusal to interact with you. Alienation can occur as an isolated event, but an ongoing pattern of targeted rejection is what truly constitutes parental alienation.

WHAT ARE THE SIGNS OF PARENTAL ALIENATION?

Parental alienation experts identify 8 specific signs that suggest a kid is being deliberately and systematically turned against their parent:

A smear campaign. The kids start denying any positive relationship or feelings toward the targeted parent or stepparent. Their formerly normal relationship with you turns on a dime. They suddenly stop showing affection toward you or even become fearful of showing affection.
… that's based on ridiculous rationalizations. Ask the kid why the emotional switcheroo and they'll give you a complete nonsense answer like "You're just mean! You didn't let me have ice cream!" (Sure, saying you don't want to come to our house ever again is a completely proportionate response to no ice cream.)
Everything's black & white. A normal child is capable of seeing both good and bad in both parents, but an alienated kid will insist the alienating parent is perfect and the targeted parent is horrible. If asked, an alienated kid couldn't list a single flaw in their alienating parent… and couldn't list a single good thing about the targeted parent or stepparent.
"I am NOT being brainwashed!" Even without you asking, the child will reassure you that their decision to reject you is theirs and theirs alone. They'll insist the alienating parent isn't influencing them.
Total absence of empathy. Alienated kids act cold, distant, and whatever the opposite of empathetic is. Guilt does not exist for them. Gratitude for any positive traits you have or contributions you've made as a parent or stepparent also doesn't exist in alienated kids.
Absolute support of alienating parent. If there's a disagreement between houses, the alienated child will always side with the "good" (alienating) parent. They won't even try to pretend they're being impartial or fair, and they don't care about the targeted parent's point of view.
Kid becomes a parrot. The alienated kid will repeat verbatim every argument you've already heard from the alienating parent's mouth… or in their emails, as was the case with us. My stepdaughter would say things like how moving away would mean she was "growing up in a better environment" or that she'd have "so many more opportunities." Yeah sure, that sounds like normal thinking for a 10-year-old.🙄
You're rejected! YOU'RE rejected! Everyone's rejected!! Rejecting behavior doesn't stop at the alienated parent, either! An alienated kid will reject formerly beloved stepparents, siblings/stepsiblings, grandparents, aunties or uncles… virtually anyone they view as a threat to the alienating parent's narrative.

So those are the primary signs of parental alienation you'll see in an alienated kid; these symptoms can be present in any combination or varying degree of severity.

However, no kid arrives at this place on their own — they’re guided there by their alienating parent. So if you’re evaluating the presence of parental alienation, you need to also look for common alienating behaviors from the other parent:

Consistent & intentional interference with visitation. The alienating parent withholds visitation, or you experience excessive calls/texts/emails/other interruptions from other parent during your time with your child. Visitation interference can also look like the alienating parent planning activities with your kid on your time without giving you notice or asking your consent.

Empowering the kid to reject the other parent. The alienating parent says the child can choose when to see you, for example, or that the child doesn't have to stick to the visitation schedule if they don't want to.
Consistent & intentional interference with communication. The alienating parent doesn't respond to your calls/texts/emails when the child is with them, nor do they encourage your child to respond to or initiate communication with you.
Consistent & intentional failure to inform you of important information of events related to the child: school events, extracurriculars, medical appointments, therapy sessions, the fact that the child is even in therapy, etc.
Parental replacement. The alienating parent actively encourages your kid to call their partner/stepparent "Mom" or "Dad" and call you by your first name.
Claims that child wants to see you less. "It's not ME who thinks Kiddo should see you less! It's Kiddo's idea!!"
Unfounded accusations of abuse or neglect. Despite zero evidence or history or symptoms of abuse/neglect in the kid, the other parent suggests, implies, or accuses you of abuse/neglect. Either formally, in court or with child protective services, or informally in interactions with you. Or both!
Encouraging child to keep secrets from you or lie to you. Alienated children become willing spies for their alienating parent, reporting back to their parent on every detail of what happens at your house. Simultaneously, the child is completely close-mouthed about anything that happens at the alienating parent's home.

Remember, parental alienation includes the child as a collaborator. In other words, one parent smack-talking the other isn't by itself parental alienation… unless the kid buys into it and starts rejecting the targeted parent. An alienated child develops Stockholm Syndrome and creates a co-dependent relationship with the alienating parent; rejecting the targeted parent becomes the primary way the kid can please the alienating parent.

ALIENATION CAN FEEL UNBEATABLE. HERE'S WHAT HELPED US >>

HOW PARENTAL ALIENATION AFFECTS STEPPARENTS

Parental alienation doesn't just affect parents; the entire family is impacted by alienation, including the stepparent. However, it’s also possible for the alienating parent to primarily and specifically target the stepparent. Both of these factors make parental alienation a stepparent issue as well as a primary parent issue.

As stepparents, we start out as outsiders — which makes it easier for us to recognize existing dysfunction in our blended families when we see it. Because of this, stepparents are often the first ones to recognize the signs of parental alienation. Heck, we're already out there researching like crazy to find out why blending our family is so hard, right? And one rabbit hole leads to another and then boom, suddenly you're reading some parental alienation checklist going "Us, us, us, us, totally us, yep, yep, HOLY SHIT THIS EXPLAINS EVERYTHING." That's how it happened for our stepfam, anyway.

In our case, HCBM's parental alienation efforts didn't kick up in earnest till around the time we got married, about 4 years after I met Dan. While my relationship with my SD wasn't smooth sailing before that, the introduction of alienation caused our entire blended family to take a sharp and sudden nosedive like someone flipped a switch.

I mean I guess someone did kinda flip a switch: Dan’s ex. She went from "some high conflict plus casual parental alienation" to "DESTROY" in approximately 36 hours: the length of time it took for her to suggest moving 500+ miles away and have Dan consider her offer then decline to give his permission.

As hard as it was for me to accept my stepdaughter’s cold shoulder, once I understood that it wasn't only me she was rejecting — it was our entire family, including the dad she'd been absolutely crazy about just weeks before — I felt somewhat better. Before I learned about parental alienation, I just could not get why my SD acted the way she did. After I found more resources and learned more about alienation, the way my stepdaughter acted made sense to me. I still didn't like it. But at least I could finally stop blaming myself.

We have this idea as stepparents that we must be doing something really wrong if our relationship with our stepkids is less than ideal. In reality, blending a family is insanely complicated for millions of reasons, not least of which is because we typically have very inaccurate ideas about how life in a blended family should be.

Recognizing my stepdaughter was being actively turned against us helped me put her behavior in perspective and realize that she wasn't responding emotionally the way a typical stepkid would. I'm positive that without her mother's alienation, our relationship would have self-corrected in line with the normal process of becoming a stepparent.

ALIENATION IS NO LAUGHING MATTER, BUT A STICKER MIGHT HELP >>

WHY STEPPARENTING AN ALIENATED STEPKID IS SO MUCH HARDER

Parental alienation affects your stepkid's ability to form attachments, including their ability to bond with their stepparent. Alienated kids have a specific set of characteristics that also make them pretty damn hard to warm up to:

Acting cold & distant
Insulting and denigrating their biological parent in front of you (this is particularly hard to take when you know firsthand just how friggin' hard your partner works to maintain their relationship with that kid)
Saying (or acting as if) they don't want to be part of your family
Reporting every single little thing that happens in your house back to the alienating parent
Lying to the alienating parent about what happens in your house
Making false claims of abuse or neglect (again, super hard to watch when you know your partner is an amazing parent)
Telling the court they don't want to live with you or be part of your family

So if you're beating yourself up for not loving your stepkid the way you think you should — please don’t! Alienated stepkids make themselves unlovable on purpose so they can reinforce the narrative they're telling themselves: that you don't like them, the targeted parent doesn't really love them, they're unhappy at your home, you're bad parents, etc.

Parental alienation is child abuse; becoming a stepparent to a traumatized stepchild is a whole different ballgame compared to a standard stepparent-stepchild relationship. It’s important to keep this in mind and adjust your approach if needed as you move forward. Here’s a blog post to help with that: ➡️ STEPPARENTING A STEPKID WITH CHILDHOOD TRAUMA 👀

A LIST OF PARENTAL ALIENATION EXAMPLES FROM OUR OWN STEPFAMILY

Dan’s ex calling and texting my stepdaughter constantly during SD's time with us, including tracking her phone to see where we were at all times. If Dan did not answer his phone quickly enough for her tastes, HCBM would send follow-up threatening emails. On SD's time with HCBM, neither HCBM nor SD would answer or return Dan's calls for days, then reluctantly SD might have a terse, sulky, 2-minute call with him.
HCBM signing SD up for activities and extracurriculars that occurred on Dan’s time without his knowledge or consent. This is such a common alienation tactic, we recorded an entire podcast episode about it in our private podcast.
HCBM complained about specific details of SD's time with us — for example, which shoes she wore while hiking — while we would never even hear about big picture stuff SD did with HCBM, like taking a trip out of town or SD joining orchestra.
Speaking of going out of town, HCBM called it kidnapping when Dan left town with SD, but HCBM never felt the need to inform us if she and SD took a trip.
And speaking of kidnapping, Dan required the help of a police officer to pick SD up from her volleyball game because HCBM refused to let SD go with him on his scheduled visitation time. SD later described this as Dan "trying to kidnap" her. (And as an example of how the system commonly fails alienated parents, the police sent SD home with HCBM anyway even though Dan had his custody order in hand showing it was his time.)
HCBM filed a motion to reduce Dan's visitation time, and stated in the motion it was at SD's request. SD also insisted it was her own request. SD was 12.
My stepdaughter was all in favor of a long-distance custody schedule when her mom proposed a move, and completely against a long-distance schedule when Dan & I were the ones moving to a new city 2 years later.
My SD repeating — robotically and verbatim — every single argument her mom made about why she should move away.
One time I joked to the kids that Dan & I had found a perfect summer vacation rental but the kids would have to stay in a tent outside 'cause it was too small for all of us. HCBM's lawyer actually brought that up in her official motion to reduce Dan's visitation time: "a tent is not acceptable living conditions!" (You can't make this shit up.)
SD said she didn’t like coming to our house because she was always unhappy. Dan asked then how come we have so many photos of her laughing and having fun. She said she was faking it. “Well not EVERY time,” he said. Yep, she insisted. Every single time. She never had fun with us.
HCBM claimed I refused to help SD with homework. What really happened: SD & I agreed that she'd research in her book and I'd research on my computer, then in 1 hour we'd meet back up to work together on her paper. SD took her book into her room, then called her mom crying, saying no one would help her.
Dan took SD to get a haircut, then afterwards HCBM screamed at SD that the haircut made her look so ugly that HCBM couldn't stand to look at her. Bonus points: this example of parental alienation does double duty as standalone emotional/verbal abuse while simultaneously making it clear to SD that her father was parenting incompetently.

I could probably keep going but since I feel like I wanna go take a shower after reliving this garbage, I'll just stop here.

My point of sharing these examples is to show the many ways parental alienation can manifest, both large and small. Yes, some alienation tactics were related to official court action. But far more prevalent were those that took the form of subtle, consistent undermining. Just a never-ending whittling away at SD’s love and affection for her dad, ongoing erosion of any relationship foundation my SD & I had a chance of building, and most of all reinforcing to SD that our opinions, our home, and our family mattered less than her mom.

WHAT’S THE BEST WAY TO DEAL WITH PARENTAL ALIENATION? CAN YOU STOP IT? REVERSE IT?

Okay, so you didn’t need to read all this to convince you that parental alienation is no bueno. You already know it’s awful. The real question is, how can we stop it.

I don't think anything made me feel as powerless as trying to figure out how to fight back against parental alienation. Because what are you supposed to do? If you explain to the kid what the alienating parent is pulling, then aren't you yourself badmouthing that parent? And isn’t badmouthing exactly what you don't want them to be doing? Plus how are you supposed to defend yourself to an alienated kid when they shoot down everything you do or say that goes against the alienating parent's narrative?

Parental alienation feels like a no-win situation. Of all the challenges you can run into as you're blending your family, alienation is the absolute worst shitstorm. But as helpless as you feel right now, there are some steps you can take to combat the effects of parental alienation:

Educate yourself. Read every book on parental alienation you can find, scour every online article on parental alienation you can find. I put together a list of parental alienation resources for you in the next section. Dan & I also put together an entire workshop on parental alienation sharing the strategies that helped us. The more you know, the more prepared you are for recognizing signs of parental alienation as they arise and nipping them in the bud — or as close to the bud as you can get. Early intervention is always best if at all possible.
Document everything. Okay not everything, but for sure keep track of any relevant data that can be used to demonstrate a consistent pattern of alienation. Especially helpful is anything that shows the alienating parent is violating the current custody orders and/or is actively and intentionally limiting your access to the child.
Request help through the courts. Courts tend to really hate any mention of parental alienation, but you can make strategic requests that help minimize the impact of alienation without using that exact phrasing. For example, if you've written down (see, all that documentation is already coming in handy!) a log of all the phone calls/texts you’ve made to your child that the alienating parent has refused to answer, you can demonstrate that they’re interfering with your ability to communicate with your child. You can also request a court-mandated Guardian ad Litem (GAL), Parenting Coordinator, or regular ol' child counselor, any of which will offer a neutral third-party view on the situation that's admissible in court.

Most importantly, don’t give up.

If you have any doubts whatsoever about whether you should continue fighting for your relationship with your kids/stepkids, please read Adult Children of Parental Alienation Syndrome by Dr. Amy J.L. Baker. The author interviews adults who were alienated from one of their parents as children, and every single interview talks about how underneath all the bullshit, those kids deeply wanted their targeted parent to see through the act and keep trying… even as they continued instigating the alienation tactics themselves.

This book also helped me stop feeling so stuck where we were, like we just had to sit there and drink HCBM's poison and watch her destroy SD’s relationship with Dan and the rest of our family. Instead, I started feeling tentatively hopeful about our future, started believing that maybe we could someday still feel like a family… even if that might not be for a while down the road.

Where you are right now, as awful as it may feel, isn't where you'll be forever. My stepdaughter was aligned against us for a decade, and now that she's older and some time has passed and the drama has chilled out, we're seeing real signs of recovery after years of parental alienation. So hang in there. Nothing is impossible, and there's always, always hope. 💕

IF YOU ARE CURRENTLY BEING ALIENATED…
Text HELP to (865)4FAMILY to get emotional support from the ERASING FAMILY hotline between 8am ET and 10pm ET.

more resources for parental alienation

For help fighting parental alienation, including the specific strategies Dan & I used to combat alienation in my stepdaughter, go check out our workshop on parental alienation. We go into a lot more depth about our personal experiences, the lessons we learned, and what worked for us. We also talk about alienation on several episodes of our private podcast.

ONLINE PARENTAL ALIENATION RESOURCES