Children should never be placed in the middle of a conflict between their parents.

Yet in some high-conflict custody and divorce cases, a child may be exposed to repeated behaviors that damage, weaken, or interfere with the child's relationship with the other parent.

Researcher Dr. Amy J. L. Baker, together with Douglas Darnall and other researchers in this field, has identified 17 commonly reported parental alienation strategies. These behaviors range from openly badmouthing the other parent to much more subtle conduct such as withholding information, interfering with communication, creating fear, encouraging secrecy, or gradually removing the other parent from the child's everyday life.

One isolated disagreement or parenting mistake does not establish parental alienation. The concern arises when there is a pattern of conduct that places a child in a loyalty conflict or systematically interferes with a healthy parent-child relationship.

This is sometimes described as poisoning the message.

A child repeatedly hears negative messages suggesting that the other parent is bad, selfish, dishonest, irresponsible, uncaring, unstable, or otherwise unworthy of the child's love or respect.

The statements may be direct:

"Your father only cares about himself."

Or indirect:

"I would never do to you what your mother did."

The cumulative message is the same: there is something wrong with loving, trusting, or identifying with the other parent.

Unnecessarily reducing the child's opportunities to spend time with the other parent.

This may include:

• Cancelling or interfering with parenting time
• Creating unnecessary scheduling conflicts
• Making exchanges unnecessarily difficult
• Routinely shortening visits
• Filling the child's schedule during the other parent's time
• Failing to facilitate court-ordered contact

Over time, reduced contact itself can weaken the parent-child relationship.

Restricting the child's ability to communicate freely with the other parent.

Examples may include:

• Not answering telephone calls
• Blocking or restricting texts
• Preventing or discouraging video calls
• Monitoring conversations
• Refusing to deliver messages
• Making the child uncomfortable about contacting the other parent

A healthy child-parent relationship requires more than occasional visits. Ordinary communication helps maintain the everyday emotional connection between parent and child.

Children maintain emotional connections with parents even when those parents are physically absent.

Photographs, gifts, drawings, cards, belongings, memories, and conversations can all reinforce that connection.

A concerning pattern may involve removing photographs, hiding gifts, discouraging the child from mentioning the other parent, or creating an atmosphere in which the child feels uncomfortable displaying affection or positive memories involving that parent.

A child may begin to understand that expressing love for the other parent causes anger, disappointment, silence, rejection, or emotional withdrawal from the favored parent.

The lesson can become:

"If I love that parent, I may lose the approval of this parent."

Children should never be required to sacrifice one parental relationship to preserve another.

The child is led to believe that the other parent's actions demonstrate rejection or lack of love.

Examples can include statements such as:

"If your dad really loved you, he would be here."

"Your mother obviously doesn't care enough to call."

The child may not know about court orders, scheduling restrictions, blocked communications, financial circumstances, or other adult issues affecting the situation.

Children should not be asked to interpret complicated adult circumstances as proof that a parent does not love them.

A child should not have to decide which parent deserves loyalty.

The pressure can be explicit:

"Who do you want to live with?"

Or much more subtle:

"You can go with your father if that's really what you want to do."

When children believe that loving one parent hurts the other, they can become trapped in an impossible emotional conflict.

A child may be repeatedly led to fear a parent beyond what the available facts reasonably support.

This can involve portraying the parent as physically dangerous, emotionally dangerous, unstable, criminal, threatening, or otherwise unsafe.

Legitimate concerns about abuse, neglect, domestic violence, substance abuse, or genuine danger must always be taken seriously.

The problem arises when fear is unnecessarily created or amplified without a sufficient factual basis.

Children should be protected from actual danger — but they should also be protected from manufactured fear.

Children should not become confidants, investigators, therapists, witnesses, or allies in their parents' litigation.

Examples include discussing:

• Divorce litigation
• Court hearings
• Child support
• Attorney disputes
• Financial disagreements
• Marital grievances
• Allegations against the other parent
• Police or criminal matters
• Custody strategy

A child does not need to carry the emotional burden of the parents' legal battle.

Rather than encouraging a child to maintain an appropriate relationship with both parents, a parent may reinforce avoidance or rejection.

Statements such as:

"You don't have to see him if you don't want to."

may sound child-centered in isolation but can become problematic when part of a broader pattern in which resistance is consistently encouraged rather than appropriately explored and addressed.

The child's genuine feelings matter. So does understanding where those feelings came from and how they are being reinforced.

Children should not be used as intelligence gatherers.

Examples include asking:

• Who visited the house?
• Who did Dad talk to?
• Does Mom have a boyfriend?
• Where did you go?
• What did they say about me?
• What was in the house?
• Did anyone drink?
• What did Dad spend money on?

Normal curiosity about a child's activities is different from systematically using a child to gather information about the other parent's private life.

A child may be recruited into a secret alliance:

"Don't tell your mother."

"This is just between us."

"Your father doesn't need to know."

Ordinary surprises and age-appropriate privacy are different from repeatedly teaching a child that one parent is an outsider from whom important information must be concealed.

Secrecy can place children in another painful loyalty conflict.

Instead of saying "Mom," "Dad," "Mother," or "Father," the parent is deliberately referred to by a first name in circumstances intended to diminish that person's parental identity.

Standing alone, use of a first name proves very little.

In combination with other behaviors, however, it may become part of a broader effort to psychologically redefine the parent as someone outside the family.

A child may be encouraged to call another adult "Mom" or "Dad" while the actual parent is simultaneously marginalized.

Healthy bonds with stepparents and significant others can be enormously positive for children.

The concern is not that a child loves another caregiver.

The concern arises when another adult is intentionally used to erase, replace, or diminish an existing parent.

A parent may be excluded from important aspects of the child's life.

Examples may involve withholding:

• Medical information
• School information
• Counseling information
• Extracurricular schedules
• Parent-teacher conferences
• Medical appointments
• School records
• Emergency contacts
• Academic problems
• Important events

In some cases, the parent's name may also be omitted from school, medical, or other records.

Where both parents are legally entitled to information, exclusion can make one parent increasingly irrelevant to the child's daily life.

A child's surname or manner of identifying themselves may be changed or discouraged in a way intended to reduce the child's connection with the other parent.

Names carry identity, history, and family connections.

The significance of any name change depends heavily upon the circumstances and should not automatically be interpreted as alienating conduct.

The child may be encouraged to believe that only one parent can protect, understand, comfort, or make decisions for them.

At the same time, the authority of the other parent may be repeatedly undermined.

The child may receive the message:

"You don't have to listen to Dad."

"Mom can't tell you what to do."

"I'm the only person you can trust."

Over time, this can weaken both the authority and emotional significance of the other parent.

These 17 strategies can be understood as several larger patterns of behavior:

Poisoning the Message

Teaching the child that the other parent is unsafe, unavailable, unloving, or fundamentally bad.

Isolation
Reducing contact, communication, and opportunities for the child and parent to maintain their relationship.

Erasing and Replacing
Removing reminders of the parent or attempting to replace that parent's emotional or family role.

Encouraging Betrayal
Using the child for secrets, information gathering, adult confidences, or loyalty tests.

Undermining Parental Authority
Teaching the child that the other parent's rules, decisions, parental role, or authority should not be respected.

This distinction is critical.

A child may have legitimate reasons for avoiding or fearing a parent. Abuse, neglect, violence, substance abuse, seriously deficient parenting, or other harmful behavior can create reality-based estrangement.

That is different from a child rejecting a parent primarily because of manipulation or interference by another person.

Therefore, allegations of parental alienation should never be used automatically to dismiss legitimate reports of abuse or danger.

The facts must be investigated.

The question should not simply be:

"Does this child reject a parent?"

The deeper questions are:

Why?

What happened?

What has the child personally experienced?

What has the child been told?

Are those statements supported by independent evidence?

Has either parent interfered with the child's relationship with the other?

Those questions require evidence, investigation, and careful analysis — not assumptions.

At Operation Due Justice, we believe family-court professionals should focus on observable conduct and verifiable evidence rather than labels alone.

Instead of simply alleging:

"The other parent is alienating the children,"

document the behavior:

What happened?
When did it happen?
Who witnessed it?
What exactly was said?
Is there a text, email, recording, court order, school record, medical record, visitation report, or independent witness that corroborates it?
Did it happen once, or does the evidence demonstrate a pattern?

That distinction matters.

A label can be disputed.

Evidence can be examined.

Except where legitimate safety concerns require otherwise, children should not be placed in a position where loving one parent means betraying the other.

They should not have to carry adult accusations.

They should not have to understand litigation.

They should not have to gather evidence.

They should not have to choose sides.

And they should never be made responsible for resolving the conflict between the adults who are supposed to protect them.

A child's relationship with a parent should be determined by the child's genuine experiences with that parent — not by a campaign conducted by someone else.

This educational summary is based substantially upon the parental-alienation strategies described in the work of Amy J. L. Baker, Ph.D. and Douglas Darnall, including:

Baker, A. J. L., & Darnall, D. (2006). Behaviors and Strategies Employed in Parental Alienation: A Survey of Parental Experiences. Journal of Divorce & Remarriage, 45(1/2), 97–124.

Additional discussion of the framework appears in the work of Amy J. L. Baker, Ph.D. and Paul R. Fine, LCSW, including Beyond the High Road and Co-Parenting With a Toxic Ex.

This material is provided for education and public awareness. It is not intended to diagnose a parent, determine whether parental alienation has occurred in a particular family, substitute for an individualized custody evaluation, or minimize legitimate allegations of child abuse, neglect, domestic violence, or other safety concerns.

Every allegation should be evaluated on its evidence and circumstances.

Operation Due Justice advocates for due process, evidence-based decision-making, accountability, and the protection of children's relationships with safe and loving parents.