What Are The Impacts Of Parental Alienation On A Child?
Parental alienation is an extremely serious allegation and can have various impacts on the child’s health and well-being. Basically, parental alienation refers to the manipulation of a child by one of their parents to denigrate the other or ‘targeted’ parent and undermine the relationship of the child with that parent.
More often than not, it can also be considered as a sign of a parent’s disability of separating from the conflict and taking care of the child’s needs. This may result in the emotional barrier between the child and the targeted parent, resulting in the loss of a loving parent from the child’s life.
Apart from this, parental alienation also results in affecting the life of the child in a variety of bad ways. We will discuss some of these ways in this article in detail, so read carefully.
Negative Impacts Of Parental Alienation:
Study shows that afflicted children develop several disturbing patterns as a result of parental alienation. It gives way to extreme psychological maltreatment for the children of divorce, such as exploiting, terrorizing, and denying emotional responsibility.
Moreover, parental alienation is an extremely serious mental condition for the child, based on a negative belief that the alienated parent is harmful and unworthy for them. This leads to the severe effects of parental alienation on the child, including;
- Lack Of Trust For The Targeted Parent
Since the children are taught not to trust the targeted parent as part of the parent alienation, they develop false assumptions in their minds about the targeted parent. This demolishes their trust level and build-up hatred towards them.
- Diminishes The Child’s Self-Esteem
The affected children believe that the alienated parent is undeserving and dangerous. On allowing this belief to continue, the child’s self-esteem diminishes, and he is unable to talk to his family members or worst case might not even mourn the loss of his parents.
- Promotes Depression In The Child
The belief that the alienated parent is not loved may also lead to depression among the victimized child. This is because of overthinking of the affected children that the targeted parent does not want them or love them.
- Future Conflicts In The Child’s Life
Study results also reveal that alienated children who proceed with depression and self-hatred may have conflicts throughout their life. They may even result in becoming alienated from their own children.
Conclusion
To sum it up, it’s true that parental alienation can result in harming the child’s mental health and produce many severe effects on their behavior and well-being. Thus, the parents and society must take care of the children who are the victim of parental alienation and report the family law authority about the case. Parents should be the ones to help their kids to overcome the negative impacts of parental alienation. Understanding your child, giving attention, listening to them, and spending quality time with them will help them to lessen the negative impacts of parental alienation. Equal shared parenting might always be the best option after the divorce. In this way, both parents will have equal time to spend with the child and will be able to create more meaningful memories.
