Parents Who Successfully Fought Parent Alienation Syndrome 
By A. Jayne Major, Ph. D.

Nothing stirs up passions more than the controversy generated when parentsare at war over the custody of a child. A controversy is an issue where evidence on both sides can make a compelling case. It is never black and white, but when people have their emotions aroused, an issue can quickly turn into two polar opposites. Fear takes over reason, incomplete facts become evidence, and court calendars become jammed with repeat visits to a judge to try to bring sanity to what is unlikely to ever be sane. On top of this, social movements promoting one side over another clamor for justice. Politicians are lobbied to pass laws to bring order to chaos. Gender wars are fueled and lives are destroyed.

My exposure to custody wars came from the mothers and fathers attending my Breakthrough Parenting classes at The Parent Connection, Inc., an agency that I founded in Los Angeles in 1983. Many of these parents were litigating over child custody. Most said that they wanted to settle the case, but none of them would settle by giving up all access to their child, which seemed to be the only other alternative open to them. It was disturbing to see that in many of these cases, the child was behaving outrageously, to the point of cursing their parent, kicking, spitting, and calling them stupid, mean, and horrible.

What can you do when one parent is intractable and vitriolic? What can you do when the child becomes caught up in the fight and takes sides? I came to realize that this level of conflict in custody disputes was a fallout from sweeping societal changes.