Providing material things is not the only provision a child needs from a parent. You might buy everything a child would need materially but still be abusive to them. This is what happens in parental alienation. You provide everything to your child since you have money. But you deny them any relationship with their other parent! Can you see how abusive you are as a parent??
So, how does parental alienation affect a child?
1. Parental alienation alters the healthy development of a child's identity. Every child is always curious to know their roots especially when they are raised by one parent. They yearn to know themselves better as they form an identity. Now if you're a parent raising a child alone and you lie to the child that their other parent died, that child might start identifying as half orphan. If other children are talking about their parents, the child might confidently defend to other kids that their other parent is dead that's why they live with one parent. Now imagine if the child grows older in teenage years and realizes the other parent is not dead?? You can imagine the level of acting out as they try to figure who they are.
2. Parental alienation makes a child grow up having difficulties in forming healthy relationships. Mostly when a child is denied access to the other parent, they think they are the reason the parents are in conflict. They therefore grow having a hard time being their real self as they are afraid of losing people. Again, if a child was lied to that their other parent abandoned them, they develop less trust in people as they think people will abandon them just like one of their parents.
3. It makes a child develop a negative self image. Alienating one parent and making a child believe that they were abandoned makes the child feel they are not good enough. They believe they must have done something wrong to be abandoned. They also think that it is their fault that the other parent is not in the picture. Little do they know the other parent has been denied access. They therefore develop low self esteem in the process which negatively affects their adult hood.
4. A child develops anger and emotional pain. When a child is alienated from a parent especially a parent they knew so well, they start grieving like the typical grief of the loss of a loved one. You deny them any chance of phone calls or visiting their other parent. What does the child do? They start grieving the loss. In this process, they might exhibit anger, guilt, denial or other emotions related with loss. As they deal with this, they might be highly irritable and defiant ( that's when you start complaining as a parent that your teen is not listening or they're overly aggressive).
5. Parental alienation leads to poor emotional and mental health outcomes. Alienating a child from their other parent because your relationship with the other parent has ended is emotionally abusive. For this reason, this child might develop all those outcomes that emotionally abused children develop. Self esteem issues, trust issues, codependency, people pleasing , anger, aggression, unhealthy sexual activities, Behavior disorders like narcism, substance abuse, suicidal ideation.
If you really care about your children, you would not alienate them from their other parent. Let them have a relationship with the other parent and form an opinion of their own about them. Don't force the relationship though. Just do not deny the other parent access to be in their children's life because they hurt you during your relationship. The child has nothing to do with it. They need their identify. Stop changing those birth certificates. Heal and move past the hurt. After all, even if you deny the children a relationship with the other parent, you can't drain their blood out.
If you're alienating a child from their other parent, you're an ABUSER. Even if you have money and you buy them everything, you're still an ABUSIVE PARENT.
#LetsEndChildAbuse
#joyinsights
No comments:
Post a Comment