When Children Reject Contact With a Parent

By Suzanne Chester

As a child’s attorney, I read an article by the child psychiatrist, Dr. Roy Lubit, with interest. The article is entitled “Valid and invalid ways to assess the reason a child rejects a parent: The continued malignant role of ‘parental alienation syndrome’” and is available in the Journal of Child Custody, 16(1): pages 42-66. Lubit’s article is loosely based on his review of fourteen child custody evaluations in which the forensic evaluator concluded the child had rejected a parent because of “parental alienation.” Lubit exposes the seriously flawed methodology and implicit bias which, he argues, led the evaluators to interpret the facts of the custody case through the lens of “parental alienation,” and to reach the foregone conclusion that “parental alienation” was responsible for the child’s rejection of a parent. By contrast, Lubit explores how a child’s rejection of visitation with a parent is much more often motivated by one of the following reasons: a) the child’s desire to remain with their primary attachment figure; or b) the child’s justified estrangement from a parent as a result of mistreatment or abuse; or c) a parent with major parenting deficiencies. As Lubit remarks: “[t]ragically for both justice and the welfare of children, conclusions concerning why a child rejects a parent frequently have more to do with who is doing the evaluation than the facts of the case and current scientific knowledge” (10).

In Wake County, attorneys with The Child’s Advocate of Legal Aid of North Carolina are appointed by family court judges to represent children in cases involving allegations of family violence, children with special needs, parents with substance abuse and/or mental illness issues, the relocation of a parent, and children who are resisting contact with a parent. As children’s attorneys, it is our responsibility to defer to our clients’ ultimate objectives and to advocate for their wishes throughout the litigation. We owe our clients the same duties of loyalty as parents’ attorneys owe their clients. See N.C. 2012 Formal Ethics Opinion (FEO) 9 for the differences between a “child’s attorney” and a “best interests attorney,” and the responsibilities of each.

A small but significant number of cases to which my colleagues and I have been appointed involve children who are refusing all contact with a parent, want only minimal time, or wish to avoid overnight visitation. In order to understand our clients’ concerns and their perspective, and to counsel them accordingly, we develop trust by meeting regularly with each child and by assuring confidentiality. Through meeting with our clients, consulting with their individual therapists, speaking with the parents and with collateral witnesses, and reviewing the child’s records — medical, mental health, educational, CPS, and supervised visitation — we are often able to flesh out the reason(s) that our clients are rejecting contact with a parent.

In these cases, it is typical for one parent to raise the charge of “parental alienation,” particularly when the other parent has made allegations of child mistreatment or abuse. [1] Lubit discusses what the research shows about one parent denigrating the other and how this impacts a child:

Negative comments about the other parent are very common. They occur weekly in two-thirds of divorcing families and occasionally in another one-fifth (Clawar & Rivline, 1991) . . . Moreover, research and clinical experience show that badmouthing is more likely to backfire than to succeed (Hetherington & Kelly, 2002; Mone & Biringen, 2006; Rowen & Emery, 2014) . . . Consistent with this, Kelly and Johnston (2001) found that many parents engage in indoctrinating behavior but few of their children become alienated from the targeted parent . . . Moreover, they found that some children reject a parent when there was no campaign of alienation. Therefore, campaigns of denigration are neither necessary nor sufficient to explain why a child rejects a parent. Research has shown that the parent’s warmth and empathy are the primary factors determining the quality of the parent-child relationship (Dallam & Silberg, 2016; Huff, 2015, Lampel, 2005) . . . After studying over 200 children, Johnston (2003) wrote “Rejected parents, whether father or mother, appear to be the more influential architect of their own alienation, in that deficits in their parenting capacity are more consistently and most strongly linked to their rejection by the child.”

Through our work at The Child’s Advocate, our experience has taught us what Lubit’s article demonstrates — namely, that children have many legitimate reasons for rejecting or refusing contact, and no less so in cases where the charge of “parental alienation” has been raised. For example, we represented one child with a psychiatric disorder who did not want to spend extended periods of time with the parent who repeatedly threatened to punish her if she told people she was hearing voices. Another child adamantly refused contact with a parent who had subjected him to multiple incidents of physical abuse before the parties separated. Some of our clients have witnessed a parent engage in violence against their primary attachment figure and are both fearful of, and angry with, the offending parent. Another child we represented did not want to spend overnights with a parent because that parent drank excessive amounts of alcohol at night, causing the child to feel nervous and ill at ease. Another client of ours, who was questioning her own sexual orientation, did not want to spend long periods of time with the parent who opposed any deviation from heterosexuality. Another client rejected a parent who, due to an addiction to alcohol, had repeatedly abandoned him as a young child. And yet another client, a victim of child sexual abuse, resisted all efforts to reunify her with the offending parent.

As children’s attorneys, we are acutely aware of how our clients are harmed when child custody professionals do not credit what the child is saying, or they seek to minimize the child’s concerns. As Lubit notes:

Invalidating children’s reasonable complaints, telling them that harshness is no big deal, or you do not believe it happened, does significant psychological harm (Crowell, Beauchaine, & Linehan, 2009; Linehan, 1993). It undermines the child’s trust in her feelings and perceptions, and also increases the risk of future victimization. It leads to self-blame, self-hate, alienation and revictimization (Summit, 1983, p. 177) . . . Their ability to feel secure, to trust in relationships, to focus energy on academic and social skill development, and their faith in authority can all be badly damaged . . . Forced reunification, ignoring the child’s perspective, will probably do more harm than good and can cause serious enduring psychological harm (Dallam & Silberg, 2016).

Conversely, we are also cognizant of the enormous benefit to our clients when their concerns are validated, their voices heard, and their wishes are given weight. There is nothing more gratifying than learning from a child’s therapist that our client is flourishing after a court decision has addressed the child’s concerns during visitation with a parent. Similarly, nothing compares with seeing a client after the weight of forced reunification has been lifted because testimony from her individual therapist persuaded the court it was not in the child’s best interests to reunify with a parent. Likewise, when a child goes from rejecting significant time with a parent to choosing to spend more time with that parent because the court has recognized the child as being of “sufficient age and discretion” to be able to make that choice, the value of giving children a voice in custody proceedings, and listening to what they say, could not be clearer.