Erasing Alienation: Ginger Gentile's Mission to Reunite Families
Reuniting with Your Alienated Child
In this powerful episode, Seth Nelson and Pete Wright dive deep into the heart-wrenching topic of parental alienation with guest Ginger Gentile, an activist on a mission to reverse this silent epidemic. Ginger shares her personal journey as a child caught in the middle of a bitter divorce and how it led her to create the eye-opening documentary "Erasing Family". Seth and Pete explore the complexities of parental alienation, its devastating impact on families, and strategies for reunification.
Ginger provides valuable insights into the manipulation tactics used in parental alienation, the challenges faced by alienated parents, and the long-term effects on children's mental health. The conversation highlights the importance of perseverance, unconditional love, and seeking the right support when navigating this difficult situation.
Questions we answer in this episode:
What is parental alienation and how does it manifest?
How can alienated parents effectively respond and maintain connection with their children?
What are the long-term impacts of parental alienation on children's mental health and relationships?
Key Takeaways:
Parental alienation is a form of emotional abuse that can have lasting effects on children.
Alienated parents must prioritize self-care and seek support to effectively navigate the challenges.
Consistent, unconditional love and perseverance are crucial for reunification with alienated children.
Whether you are personally affected by parental alienation or simply want to better understand this complex issue, this episode offers valuable insights, strategies, and hope for families struggling to reconnect. Seth and Pete's compassionate approach, combined with Ginger's expertise and powerful storytelling, make this a must-listen for anyone navigating the challenges of divorce and co-parenting.
Plus, we tackle another listener question!
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Hello everybody, and welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships, from True Story FM. Today, it's time to reunite with your toaster.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show everybody. I'm Seth Nelson, and as always, I'm here with my good friend, Pete Wright. Today, we're talking about parent alienation. Ginger Gentile was a child caught in the middle of a bitter divorce and now helps parents facing similar battles find peace. She even reunites families via coaching design for the worst cases of parent alienation and estrangement. She's an activist on a mission to reverse parent alienation, a silent epidemic. And you can hear her stories on her work in her documentary film, Erasing Family. Ginger, welcome to The Toaster.
Ginger Gentile:
Thank you, Pete. Thank you, Seth. It's so good to be here to be able to talk to you guys today, so I'm looking forward to it.
Pete Wright:
Well, it's great having you.
Seth Nelson:
She obviously hasn't listened to the show.
Pete Wright:
She's never listened to the show, she's way too kind. We'll fix that. I just have to say, first of all, I watched the documentary this morning because we've talked about parental alienation on the show before. We've talked about it probably a year ago last time we actually had the conversation, but I don't think I was able to connect abstractly to the concept of what is going on with parental alienation until I saw these kids and these parents telling these stories to your camera. That was an extraordinary bit of ... It felt really transformative for me watching these kids learn about being lied to for so long. Yeah. I know the film came out 2020 now, it's been several years, but can you reflect just a little bit about the act of making the film and what it was like capturing these stories?
Ginger Gentile:
My journey to make Erasing Family, I don't want to veer too far off into the woods with this, but when I graduated college, I decided to get as far away as I could from my crazy family and my parents who after they got divorced, the divorce got worse. Both of them tried to poison me against the other parent. My mom did a better job at it. My dad didn't have the skills on how to react. When I turned 21, I decided to move to Argentina, a country halfway around the world. I have no connection to Argentina, I didn't speak Spanish. It's the only subject I ever failed in school, was Spanish.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Seth Nelson:
It took me three years to get through two years of Spanish. In fact, I took Spanish one and Spanish two at the same time to graduate on time, because it turns out Spanish one was not a pre-req for Spanish two. And I read the fine print, Pete, I was going to be a lawyer.
Pete Wright:
You were going to be a lawyer. Look, my Spanish is Duolingo Spanish. You end up in a country where you don't speak the language, just to get away from your family.
Ginger Gentile:
And then when I was there, six years into being in Argentina, I met a man, fell in love, and the first thing he tells me is I haven't seen my daughter in six years. And like most people I'm like, @Well, you must have a bad lawyer. There must be some mistake.@
Seth Nelson:
Blame it on the lawyer.
Ginger Gentile:
"Let's go down to the courthouse and fix this."
I was also working as a legal translator, and I realized that this wasn't a mistake. He had a great lawyer and the judge actually gave him visitation, it was not enforced. He was on year six of not seeing his daughter. And I was a documentary filmmaker, I decided to make a film about this, called Erasing Dad, which you can see for free on YouTube. It's called Borrando a Papa in Spanish, has English subtitles, and it became the most controversial film that year in Argentina.
Seth Nelson:
Why?
Ginger Gentile:
It was the first film censored. Divorce moves a lot of money, that's a simple explanation. And there's a lot of people behind what happens in family court who may not speak publicly about it, but a lot of politicians and all political parties, this is not a right or left issue, they basically want to keep the status quo because every time you file paperwork, there's a filing fee. There's lawyers, there's judges who all eat off of this high conflict divorce, but also you can have the other professionals and programs who are also eating off of this. But in Argentina specifically, they were funding domestic violence centers that weren't doing anything to help domestic violence victims. And all the political parties were using this as their petty cash box. They didn't like me talking about it, and that's a very small ... It's 10 seconds of the film where someone says, "Hey, a lot of people make money off of this."
And people freaked out. The president got involved, my phones were tapped. It was a whole ... I don't want to take up too much time. This was a whole crazy situation, but everybody wants to see a censored film. As a filmmaker, it would've been some small indie documentary, and now we're on national news. I had a debate in Spanish, so that Spanish came in handy.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, that's good. I would've lost that debate. Let me get this straight, because they censored it, it went viral.
Ginger Gentile:
Yes. The internet in 2014 was a little different, but people would copy DVDs, sell DVDs illegally, repost on YouTube because YouTube took down our official link. It was also on the front page of the newspaper because journalists don't like censorship. And then we'd go on a show and everyone would be like, "Oh, the cameraman, he can't see his kids. My brother can't see his kids. I can't say this publicly, I can't see my kids."
And so we untapped all these people who were too ashamed to say that they couldn't see their kids, basically because they were accused of being a man, of being a dad. Because what we showed is that you don't need ... And this was in Argentina, you didn't need a lot of proof, it wasn't like criminal court, to make an accusation. And after the film came out, the good news is the laws changed. One, they allowed for joint custody, before there was only sole custody allowed in Argentina. And they took away the gender bias in the law. Before it said custody automatically went to the mother. This is interesting, except in the case of same-sex marriage, that was the only case joint custody was allowed because then who's the better dad if there's two dads?
Seth Nelson:
The taller one.
Ginger Gentile:
That's an insane thing. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, yeah. And I'm only 5' 6", so I'm good with it.
Ginger Gentile:
Then after all this, I decided to ... I myself got divorced. For those wondering, my now ex-husband, he did reunite with his daughter. It took 12 years, and she reunited with him when she was 21. And he did the whole film. He helped me with the film and produced it to get a message to his daughter, and she did get the message. It was like, "Stop messing with my family."
And the film has nothing about him. He's not in the film, it's not his story, but just mentioning this ... And when I get back to the US, I'm like, "Okay, I want to make a follow-up film in the US."
I start going online and the first thing I see is one, a lot of moms can't see their kids in the United States. Now, statistically, and the government does not keep good statistics on this, it's probably more dads who can't, but women are very vocal. Since I started this work, more than half of the people who follow me and who I work with are moms.
Pete Wright:
I would say, as an observation, that's a fascinating thing in the documentary that I did not expect, was that this is not a gendered issue. This is a universal issue.
Ginger Gentile:
And now it can often be for different reasons. There's different types of accusations, prejudice. But that's what we found when we were making the film. Now, again, self-reported data, I want to make this clear to all the people who work in statistics, does not mean that moms and dads equally cannot see their kids. What it means is that those seeking help are equal and this isn't a gendered issue. The government has horrible statistics on custody in the US, it's very hard to find accurate statistics because this is not accurately tracked in the census data. We'll know children who grew up in fatherless homes, but is that a result of divorce? Is that a result of an absentee father, of not being married, of poverty? We don't know.
Pete Wright:
Or alienation
Ginger Gentile:
Or alienation. Then the other thing I found when I wanted to make the film is that kids were posting as young as seven, videos on social media saying, "I can't see my parent. I can't see my sister"
Open videos to judges. And so I was able to actually find children or young adults who were going through this, which when I made Erasing Dad was impossible because people were not posting their private lives on social media. Of course I had to get the permission of the parents and I had a lot of legal support making the film, Erasing Family, because it's so sensitive. But I was able to talk to the kids. And I also want to explain what it is for people who don't know.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah.
Pete Wright:
For sure, we need a little primer.
Ginger Gentile:
Parental alienation, and I define it a little differently than other people, but it's basically when one parent or also a step-parent or a grandparent poisons the child against the other parent. The most extreme example, which is actually not the most common, false accusations, telling lies about the other parent. It could be as subtle as, "You're going to see Dad, I'm so alone when you go see dad. Makes mommy really sad. If you stayed with mommy we'll do something fun like go getting ice cream to the park. Do you feel safe with dad? It's okay if you don't feel safe, you tell me, baby."
Pete Wright:
Oh, my goodness. Yeah.
Ginger Gentile:
Just like, "I feel lonely."
Having the child sleep in the bed with you. And then the other way ... Now, you can have all three. Especially with younger children, you don't take them to the pickups. You have an unauthorized move. Dad or mom goes to the house, knocks on the door, and we saw this in the film, the mom would go knock on the door. The step mom would come out and say, "The kids don't want to see you."
And we have to understand that a child living in a house, for children, love ... And they're different than adults in this way. For us adults, love is emotional. For kids, love is survival. If the parent who is your primary caretaker says you shouldn't see the other parent, kids for evolutionary reasons will go along with that. Because if that parent gets angry, that's not just love, that's their house, that's their food, that's protection. That's why when people ask, "Well, why don't the kids just come out of the house?"
I'm like, "You're asking a child to go against the parent who's taking care of them. And maybe they've seen that the courts aren't doing anything, that the other parent's scared of this parent."
I define parental alienation as conditional love. That's one parent saying, "I will love you, protect you, give you money, not punish you, not take your cell phone away."
Or for teenagers who are easier to alienate, "I'll give you a car if you don't see dad.!
Pete Wright:
Yeah, suddenly there's an exchange.
Ginger Gentile:
"There's no rules in my house."
I see this all the time. They say, "You have to study? I'll let you fail all your classes."
Pete Wright:
"I'll treat you like an adult."
Ginger Gentile:
Exactly. "I'll let you know adult things."
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Ginger Gentile:
And so the cure for this, which we get into later, is conditional love, is showing up with your child, loving them even if they're angry because that's what they learned, even if their love language is being mean to you because that's the love language they learned from the other parent. But going back to Erasing Family, when I filmed this and I interviewed hundreds of families to get to the three or four in the film ... And I filmed more who didn't make the final cut. What I saw from the children was that children see this much more gray. A parent going through this will say, "I'm being alienated. I did nothing wrong."
And no one is without fault. And children will often see how both parents were fighting. I also see alienation as a behavior. Some cases you have two parents who are alienating and one's better at it. Sometimes you see one parent, this is what happened with my dad, my mom alienated and my dad responded in the worst way you can respond to a child. Sometimes parents don't have the skills because this is ... You're driving a Honda Civic down the highway, alienation is, "You're driving a Honda Civic in the Indy 500 with no pit crew."
People make a ton of mistakes and they often say, "I wish I knew what this was years ago. I would've responded so differently."
They'll just be like, "Oh, I'll just give it a few months. I just won't show up to the visit. I'll wait it out."
And it gets worse over time.
Seth Nelson:
That's the problem. And I see that, Ginger, and I deal with cases where I'll get the call because dad doesn't pay child support. And so I get a motion from mom, and then I call dad, I said, "Do you pay child support?"
He goes, "No."
"Why?"
"Because she doesn't let me see the kid."
I said, "One, that's not a reason under the law not to pay child support. And two, you not paying child support is not a reason for you not to see your kid. It works both ways. You're supposed to pay, you're supposed to see your kid. If you're not paying, you're still allowed to see your kid. If you are paying, she can't withhold the child from you. They're two separate issues."
But immediately I say, "You have to enforce the parenting plan."
Well, I show up and in front of me, mom says, "You don't really have to go. We've got birthday party this weekend."
And so with that happening, no, now you have a child who's crying and is upset and you now have to deal with that. But that is better than saying, "Okay, stay with mom."
Because the next thing you know, it's going to be six months, a year, and they're not going to come back to court and try and get the child. What they're going to do, they already have what they want, the child. And so what they do, Pete, is when you come back to court and try and get the child, they file a petition to change the parenting plan because all the judges hear it. My client, the dad in this hypothetical, is going to say, "She withheld."
She's going to say, "You didn't show up, you didn't call."
Ginger Gentile:
And the parent who doesn't show up is in a worse position. And I tell this to all the parents I work with. I'm like, "Show up. Even if you can't see your child, you log that you showed up because otherwise it's abandonment."
Also in your child's eyes, so not just legally. Many children I've worked with and interviewed have told me that their dad knocking on the door and the mom saying you can't see the kid, was like, "Okay, dad loves me because he's knocking on the door."
And then the day that knock stops, then it's like, "You see, he didn't love you anyway. He abandoned us."
Pete Wright:
Oh, my goodness.
Ginger Gentile:
You have to keep knocking if it's ... And I always practice this, if it's safe to do so. We don't want anyone getting hurt or exposing themselves to a violent situation. And I also work with a lot of moms who have been abused by their ex-husbands, and they need work to be confident because it's very easy for them to fall back into a pattern of psychological abuse. I had one situation where the dad was like, "If you start having lunch with me again and answering my texts, I'll arrange a meeting with the kids."
... who are teenagers.
Pete Wright:
Let's transition just a little bit toward the ... Because you already started talking about the way love is withheld for these kids and the way it is used, it's weaponized. Over the course of your work with families and you're watching over the course of years of people reuniting, what do you see and what do you know about the impact on the child's mental health, on the experience of how they perceive relationships writ large, beyond the parental relationships over time?
Ginger Gentile:
The short answer is it's not good.
Pete Wright:
Okay,
Seth Nelson:
That's a wrap. That's good.
Pete Wright:
That's a wrap, we're done. Yeah, that's good
Seth Nelson:
Thank you, Ginger.
Ginger Gentile:
We want to get more profound. The person doing the alienating was a child who was alienated. This becomes intergenerational trauma. We know that half the children who are alienated grow up to become parents who are alienated and can't see their kids, or who alienate. And I'm sure a lot of kids grow up and they don't want to have relationships or can't have relationships. They never become parents, they never settle down because it's like, "Who wants a relationship like that? If it's always constant fighting and manipulation, I'd rather be single than deal with this."
But in general, and this helps people heal, if you can see the person doing this as a hurt child who never got the skills, and this is not to excuse what they do, but I say, "This is your child 20 years from now if you don't solve this. Your child's going to do the same thing as your ex if we don't solve this."
And 95% of the people I work with, they went through something similar as a child and their ex did too. Every once in a while, I get someone who's like, "Mom and dad were happy. I'm great."
And they're so naive they fell into a narcissistic trap. I've had one or two cases like that. Even if they're like, "Well, mom and dad are married but dad was an alcoholic and never there."
It was like, "Okay. There's an abandonment issue there."
And a lot of times in the families of the parents who I work with who are alienated, they will also say, "Oh, I don't talk with my dad. Oh, my brother and dad don't talk. My aunt and cousins don't talk."
This is a repeated pattern, and we need to see this as a sickness. This does not excuse the behavior, but it helps us understand why, because people are irrational.
Seth Nelson:
I'm with you, Ginger. I'm just telling you, when you're dealing with a court system and a client who's not seeing the kid, and I have to tell them, "Your former spouse is sick, we should have some empathy. It's not about you, it's a sickness."
I hear you, it's a tough ask. And what they're saying is, "I don't give a shit. I want to see my kid."
Ginger Gentile:
Then they're the angry dad who's demanding things, who's rigid ...
Pete Wright:
... which doesn't seem to improve anything.
Ginger Gentile:
That's how the courts will see them. I don't think they need to have empathy. I agree with you, forgiveness, empathy, great if you can get there. It's about strategy. P#because people will say, "I had the psychologist explain this is harmful."
The judge says, "Hey, let the kids see their dad."
And this person keeps doing it over and over again. It's because it's not coming from a rational place. A lot of what I do with people is teach them to stop pushing so much, pull back a little. And it depends on the case. Or if they go to court working with them so that they come calm and collected and looking for solutions. Because if they come in and it's like, "I'm not seeing the kids."
You've seen that. Because family court is a very biased ... It's a biased court.
Seth Nelson:
Oh. Well, Ginger, we do a lot of prep for trial and for testimony and depositions. And the reason for that is when, to your point, Ginger, you show up and my witness is jumping up and down saying, "I'm not seeing my kid. I'm not seeing my kid."
That is a very simple thing to demonstrate. And both parents are going to roughly say the same timeframe. And the fact will be in the record. You ask, "Mom, when is the last time dad saw the children?"
"Two years."
It's in the record, that's all you need for the court. It doesn't have to be [inaudible 00:20:03]. "How long has it been?"
"Well, I think it's more like almost two and a half. No, it's been 18 months."
Either way, 18 months, two years, three and a half years, four, it doesn't matter. It's in the record. That's not going to be the difference maker in this case. The difference maker is why and what we can do about it. And the harder part is when the kids are older, I believe there's a bias in court with judges that say, "Mr. Nelson, the kid's 16. What do you want me to do?"
And I say, "Judge, we make 16 year olds do a lot of stuff they don't want to do. They don't want to get out of bed, we get them up. They don't want to brush their teeth."
Til they have a boyfriend or girlfriend, then that changes quick. "But they brush their teeth. They don't want to eat healthy but we make them eat their vegetables. You make them go to their fathers. And if not, there's consequences. And you can order they're no longer allowed to be in extracurricular activities. They're no longer allowed to do X, Y and Z."
And judges do not want to do it. What happens is you end up going into therapy and you hope you get a good one.
Ginger Gentile:
It can be a trap, therapy can be a trap.
Seth Nelson:
And it can very much be a trap.
Pete Wright:
Wait, follow up on that. Why is therapy a trap in this context?
Ginger Gentile:
Therapy, and I say this to someone who's done a lot of therapy, I love therapy. Therapy is a great way to process emotions, it's a great way to pattern disrupt if you know you're anxious. It's a great way to talk about trauma. But if a therapist says to the kid, "Why don't you want to see dad?"
"It makes me anxious to see dad."
The therapist will sometimes say, "Well, we need to work on the anxiety."
And that might take years. And until the child says they want to see dad, I won't push dad. And then the parent might also come in and say, "I'm so upset because I can't see my kid."
"Okay, you're upset. We need to give your child space. You're controlling, respect your child's boundaries."
And there's also a big movement in therapy right now. The Economist of all magazines, did a cover story on this, of children, more young adults estranging themselves from their parents, cutting off. There's a lot of stuff on social media but it's encouraged to cut off someone who's toxic. That's not always the case. A therapist who coaches everybody on the basic rules of how to be polite and conduct each other and express what they want, can be incredibly helpful. But when it's all, "What do we feel?"
I have a lot of people who I talk to and work with who the kid's been in therapy for years and they've never had a session with the kid. Or the therapist also sometimes might say, "This is so awful, I don't know what to do so I'm going to withdraw."
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Seth Nelson:
And I believe in setting expectations and working through whatever the issues are, but you got to get on it and you've got to have positives and negatives, consequences for both.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, I think what you just said ... Just the way language has changed, as soon as you drop the word toxic, that has become a trigger word for pushing dominoes over for a whole litany of conversations that I can totally see could delay any unification, because we feel that's such a loaded emotional environment now. It speaks so much. I wanted to transition a little bit to the jurisdictionalization of this conversation, because when you are looking at something like state to state or country to country, the stories that you tell in the film come from the United States and Canada and South America, we're talking about a very broad set of assumptions around how we handle reunification and how the courts look at parental rights in this context, what did you learn?
Ginger Gentile:
About different countries and how they treat this?
Pete Wright:
Well, yeah, because I'm looking at what are the holes specifically in family law that allow alienation to happen? And I imagine there are some that are bigger holes in some places than others.
Ginger Gentile:
The first complication we have is that states in the US have their own divorce laws and custody laws and recommendations.
Seth Nelson:
We do that as lawyers to confuse people.
Ginger Gentile:
50/50 is the norm, then you go to another state and standard possession is two weekends a month and a Wednesday dinner. You might even go from county to county and have changes.
Seth Nelson:
Ginger, you can go from courtroom to courtroom.
Ginger Gentile:
Courtroom, judge to judge. One thing I discovered making the film, Erasing Family, is in the United States most family court judges ... I don't want to say all, but most have no training in child psychology. They have no training in how to talk to children if they interview them. Sometimes they're not even aware that just asking a child can be highly traumatic in court. But just talking to judges, I interviewed one judge, he's like, "I have a thousand cases on my docket."
And I was like, "Do you have any training in child psychology?"
He's like, "No."
In some places, you rotate in and out of family court.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, Hillsborough County.
Ginger Gentile:
In some cases also, family court is where you put the judges who you don't like, to punish them.
Seth Nelson:
Or are brand new.
Ginger Gentile:
Or are brand new. It's not the desired thing because ... This is a lawyer joke, you go to criminal court, everybody's on their best behavior.
Seth Nelson:
That's right, bad people acting very nicely.
Ginger Gentile:
I have a lawyer friend who was a criminal defense attorney, would work in Rikers, and he one day had to fill in for family court. And he was like, "This is a mess. I prefer to be in Rikers. I had to represent a guy who had no money and they threw him in jail for not paying child support, but he lost his job to appear in court. This makes no sense. I'd much rather talk with criminals who are rational and logical in the construction of their criminal defense."
Seth Nelson:
Pete, literally, I've had a judge tell me at a bar event who was on the criminal bench at one time, was on the family law bench, and she had left the family law bench for criminal. I said, "How's criminal?"
She goes, "Compared to divorce, give me a good clean murder any day. Any day."
Pete Wright:
It's the saddest joke in law.
Ginger Gentile:
Well, also there's more violence in family court. I remember recently in Las Vegas, a lawyer walked in and I think he killed his ex-wife or soon-to-be ex-wife, her partner, and then turned the gun on himself. You're more likely to see acts of violence in family court. But one thing I will say that I've seen a lot of is that if you know your soon to be ex-spouse is high conflict, having a custody agreement that's nebulous is the worst thing that you can do. There's a lot of agreements like, "Father shall see the child an ample number of times whenever he wants, or whenever the child decides."
Seth Nelson:
That stuff makes me stay up at night. It's horrible.
Ginger Gentile:
Yeah. And unfortunately with high conflict people, it has to be, "Mom has the kid on Christmas."
When does Christmas start? When does Christmas end?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Well, what our parenting plans say, and they might say anything, the standard would be you drop the kid off every other weekend and time sharing resumes at the end of school on Monday. Or when you got really high conflict, instead of saying each parent gets two weeks and they can work it out on which the summer is, it's going to be, "Dad gets from July 3rd until July 21st at 6 P.M.
Pete Wright:
Super specific.
Seth Nelson:
You're very specific.
Ginger Gentile:
You have to be super specific, yeah, with consequences built in if possible.
Seth Nelson:
... which is hard to do in a parenting plan because a lot of people don't want the consequences and court can't do it necessarily. But it's helpful.
Ginger Gentile:
These are things that can help. If someone really wants to alienate, they'll find a way. And then I think also having the parents learn new skills. A lot of jurisdictions will give parenting classes. In these types of cases, they might need more help. The parent who I'm working with who's alienated, a lot of what I do is just communication skills to not make it worse. For example, this is very common amongst moms, they will try to parent their child who's not in their time. They'll say to dad, "Make sure you leave an extra 20 minutes because of traffic."
Even though they're the alienated parent, they'll try to direct the other parent. They'll get into fights over small things. I was working with a mom who was like, "I really want the dad to pay for the baseball glove."
And I was like, "What would happen if you just paid for the baseball glove yourself?"
She goes, "Oh, my God. I would save us three months of back and forth court and arguing and him being upset."
I'm like, "Or ask for a hand-me-down baseball glove."
Seth Nelson:
I make a lot of money off of baseball gloves, Pete. And let me tell you ...
Pete Wright:
It just sounds so much ... Here's an example of somebody whose instinct is, "How do I exert control in a situation where I have no power? I feel completely lost at sea."
Ginger Gentile:
A lot of parents, when they learn to let go, even in things more important than baseball bats ... I have a lot of parents where one child will ... I have a lot of parents where one parent will withhold medicine to a sick child as a way of control.
Pete Wright:
That seems awful.
Ginger Gentile:
And the doctor will send a note saying, "Please give the child the medicine."
The other parent, "Please give the child the medicine."
And they won't do anything. This is the parent who's alienating. And with one mom, I said, "Instead of asking him to do that and telling him how he's harming the child, say, 'I so admire your opinion as the father of our child. I respect you. I'm all ears to hear the reasoning behind not giving the child medicine'."
Three days later he wrote back, "I'll give the child the medicine."
Pete Wright:
Just want to be heard, yeah.
Ginger Gentile:
It's a power struggle. We need to get out of the power struggle. And that's extreme, but I've seen a few cases where one parent doesn't want to give the medicine, so it's about ...
Seth Nelson:
The parent writes that, by the way, and then goes in the bathroom and pukes, but they wrote it.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, yeah.
Ginger Gentile:
Yeah. These are hard things to do. And also, these techniques to reduce conflict, the trick is you have to use them pretty much all the time. A lot of parents will use them once, not get a miracle and then stop. But we can't give other people advice.
Seth Nelson:
Got to be consistent.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
And the other thing too, Ginger, I was really interested to hear what you have to say about this, when you have a parent who's trying to alienate and the kid's going back and forth, so it's not to the extreme. They haven't seen him for a period of time, but you have a teenager, and I don't care what us parents think, they manipulate us. They will play the divisions against each other and they will tell you what you want to hear in your house and go tell the other parent what they want to hear in their house, and then they're getting what they want. Now, part of it might just be peace, "I don't want to hear it. I'm just going to agree with you."
It's troubling.
Ginger Gentile:
That is so true. Just to follow up with that, in Erasing Family, there is a scene where the young man says, "I decided not to see my mom because it was just easier."
Because whenever mom would come by, there'd be a fight, he'd have to hide. Or if he saw mom, she'd be crying, "Why don't you want to see me?"
Which is not the right response, you should keep a light and happy with your kids in these situations and not try to do therapy with them. He was just like, "It was just easier for me not to see mom."
And there was no accusation against mom. I asked everybody, no, it's just she would knock on the door, the stepmom would be like, "The kids don't want to see you."
There'd be a shouting match for an hour. And the kid was like, "It'd be easier."
And to your point, Seth, teens are easier to alienate than young children. Now, young children can be put in different places and hidden and not given access to easier, and you can pick them up and go. But a halfway decent psychologist will interview a child and the child will say, "I don't want to see daddy because I don't like daddy."
And they'll be like, "What don't you like about daddy?"
It's like, "Oh, I love daddy very much because we play baseball together."
It falls apart. A teenager, as you said, can be manipulated. They can hold a lie. They can make threats like, "Oh, I'll cut myself if I have to see the other parent."
It's a much more difficult situation. This can get very ugly, very nasty. There is hope. I don't want the people listening to this to think that there isn't hope. There needs to be strategy, skills, mindset. And also, when you go to court, court is to get an agreement that's enforceable. It's not to extract justice or emotional healing.
Seth Nelson:
I've literally had people tell me ... We're negotiating a deal, they've been deposed but I haven't deposed the other side, and we're getting what I think is a favorable outcome. I don't need to take the deposition, and they'll say, "I really want you to."
Pete Wright:
Yeah, there's a day in court argument.
Ginger Gentile:
How much is a deposition normally? That's not cheap.
Seth Nelson:
How much does it cost?
Ginger Gentile:
What's the deposition a day?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Well, if it's a four hour deposition, just me being there is going to be over two grand, then I got to prep for it. And so that's going to take a solid eight hours for a two hour deposition maybe, or for our deposition I mean.
Ginger Gentile:
And there's other people there too, other professionals. Sometimes it's recorded.
Seth Nelson:
Oh, yeah. We have a court reporter that's taking it down and then we're going to get the transcript. Then we're going to summarize the transcript for court and we're going to create our follow-up questions for court. There's a lot to do, or you can just settle your case. I want to take your deposition one day, Pete, now that I think about it.
Pete Wright:
You don't ever want to do that, that's not a thing you should ever wish for. I got a question for both of you. I know we're getting to the point where we need to wrap up, but I have this lingering question that I'm thinking through. You talk about the emotional storm that people are in when they're getting a divorce. They feel very strongly about their relationships with their kids one way or the other. How often do you run into situations where people get themselves wound into a situation of alienation and didn't even really consciously know they were doing it? They're just fueled by anger and frustration and confusion and just suddenly wake up one day and they're like, "Oh my God. Somebody has to tell me I'm alienating my kid."
Is that real?
Ginger Gentile:
Yes and no. First of all, I haven't met anyone who sets out and says, "I am going to alienate my children."
Pete Wright:
I should hope not.
Ginger Gentile:
What you often hear is, "I'm protecting my children. I'm respecting my children's best interest. It would just be easier if the other parent wasn't there so I can rebuild my life."
Some cases I have heard it's a financial thing. If you get more custody, more time, you get more assets, more child support.
Pete Wright:
Then it becomes a strategic conversation.
Ginger Gentile:
But I often tell people, "If that's the case, you're lucky because then you're dealing with a rational actor who you can bargain with."
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
The bargain on that is, Pete, if mom gets 80% of the time and she gets an extra $1,000 in child support compared to 50/50 time where she would get a thousand dollars less, that's easy, "50/50, and I'll pay you the additional thousand grand as if you had 80%."
Ginger Gentile:
Amen.
Seth Nelson:
And you're done. And your client says, "Well, why do I do that? That's not the law."
And I say, "Because it's $1,000 a month, that's $12,000 a year."
And we just discussed with Ginger, me taking a deposition can cost you 10Gs.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, you just saved yourself. Yeah. Okay.
Ginger Gentile:
And everyone's happy. It's like no one's a villain in their own movie. I think what's important is that they're saying, "I have to protect my kids. This is what's best."
Occasionally they'll get an overzealous lawyer or family members who will push them to this, or they'll come from a cultural place where children only need one parent, and that depends on different cultures, different locations, "I want to move on."
But in general, they're repeating a childhood pattern. What I have seen a lot is mom and dad got divorced at five, then the alienator gets divorced when the kid is five and doesn't want the dad to see the kids. And it's like, "This is so irrational."
I'm like, "Well, what was her childhood like?"
And you're like, "Because she can't admit that her mommy did this."
Pete Wright:
Well, this is exactly my point. And I guess, that's the root of my question, is you're listening to this, it's not about are you specifically unconscious about alienating? It's about recognizing a pattern of behavior that might demonstrate you or your spouse are in this pattern.
Ginger Gentile:
Exactly. And one thing that I've seen is that we can get alienation to stop. It doesn't mean that the alienator will apologize, go to therapy and admit that they're wrong.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Seth Nelson:
Wait a minute, that doesn't happen, Ginger? Come on, Pete, we got to cut this off.
Ginger Gentile:
Parents will often say, "I want them to apologize."
I'm like, "It's not going to happen. We can work so you can see your kids again, and there'll be a piece."
Even in horrible cases, it can happen because you have to take away the stimulus. If every time you can't see the kids, you're like, "Please let me see the kids I'm suffering."
The alienator will say, "Oh, you're suffering. I like that. Give me more of that."
But if you say, "Okay, I will talk to my attorney or I will try again next week."
And you're calm about it and don't act desperate along with other strategies and other techniques and also healing ... When I work with people, the first thing I do is healing their past trauma, healing their current trauma, letting go of anger, getting at the root cause of this, their own cause, how they're ... Even if 3% of the problem is their fault, I don't like to say fault, but their contribution, let's work on that. Then we apply strategy. What most alienated parents wants to do, and I understand why, is they say, "How do I text my kid? How do I text my ex?"
I'm like, "We'll get to that. But if you are so triggered ... "
I was working with a mom and every time she had a text from her ex or a kid, she'd cry. And I'm like, "You can't be crying all the time."
Now, it's more than just saying you can't cry, there's work involved. But if you're emotionally unstable or you yell, then even if I tell you exactly how to text or you get a book out and copy it, it's not going to work. There has to be this emotional healing. And also, so many parents think they need to suffer when this is happening, and that suffering will prove to their kids that they love them. Being happy and living your best life while keeping a space for your child and showing up, you can also show up on social media show by saying, "Look at how nice my life is. Can't wait to share it with my kids."
You can do stuff like that, not saying, "I miss you."
Pete Wright:
You're demonstrating through behavior.
Ginger Gentile:
But kids do not reunite with sad, broken parents.
Seth Nelson:
100%.
Ginger Gentile:
They just don't. They reunite with happy parents.
Seth Nelson:
100%.
Pete Wright:
Extraordinary. Well, I got to tell you, we're going to put the link to the ... Bless you for making the movie available to everybody. It's on YouTube, I watched the whole thing on YouTube and it's really ... There's just some really moving stories in there and some very sad stories that get reconciled [inaudible 00:39:48].
Ginger Gentile:
It has a happy ending. For the parents who are afraid to watch, it is about reuniting.
Pete Wright:
Yes.
Ginger Gentile:
There's sad parts but it gives you hope.
Pete Wright:
It is illustrative of a really complicated situation. And yeah, it does. It ends on a note of hope, and I think it's really worth checking out. Ginger Gentile, thank you so much for hanging out with us today. Where do you want to send people so they can learn more about the work that you're doing to help reunite families?
Ginger Gentile:
If people want to work with me, and I'm very available on social media, I do not coach or give advice in DMs or over email, they can find me at reversingparentalalienation.com. I have a free mini course. I do group coaching and one-on-one coaching. And they can follow me on social media at Erasing Family. That's on YouTube, Facebook and Instagram. And we have a very active, engaged community, so only 35,000 followers on Facebook but today I sent out a post and we got 200 comments in an hour. People are very engaged because they want to heal, and often people feel hopeless. The first step for the people listening out there who are feeling discouraged, there can be a happy ending if you put the work in and the first work you do is on yourself. Then you find an appropriate strategy and appropriate skill set. But this does not have to be a sentence. This is rough. I'm not saying this is easy but I've seen parents from horrible alienation cases that have gone on for years, reunite with their kids, happy to see them, their kids reaching out. It is possible.
Pete Wright:
It is possible, it is beautiful. Check it out. Thank you so much, Ginger. We sure appreciate you sharing your story and your film and your work with our audience. And now everybody, we got to turn to a listener question. Listener question, Seth. This one comes from anonymous, are you ready for this?
Seth Nelson:
I'm ready.
Pete Wright:
It's a beefy one, here we go.
Seth Nelson:
Okay, let's do it.
Pete Wright:
"My husband is in a trial for domestic violence, for a gun spec charge and abduction, which he definitely did. And I'm trying to go through the divorce process as well. The prosecutor here in Ohio, his own lawyer and my victim's advocate, all believe that his mother is really driving the bus when it comes to all of this, fighting it like it's her personal hill to die on. This is the same woman that told me she was mad at me for calling her to let her know that her son had been in a horrible accident, and then told everyone I was drugging my children to get them to sleep while he was in the hospital, as well as many other things. How can you protect yourself from someone like this? She's paying all his legal fees and in every conversation. I currently have a no contact for me and my children so that he can't continue to abuse us while this is going on. However, his mother is driving all the major decisions. Currently he will not speak to the guardian ad litem and he's requested in a divorce proceeding back in the fall of 2023."
"In regards to the DV case, she's fired his first DV attorney, taken his plea deal back and requested a new trial, all the while pissing the judge off to no end by continuing this trial over and over again. I'm very concerned that the mother-in-law is really who I'm divorcing, since it's pretty clear the prosecutor's office out of Ohio is really fighting his mother, not my husband. Our divorce keeps getting pushed back until the DV trial is finished so that the divorce judge knows how to proceed. My question is, what can I do to keep her voice to a bare minimum in the divorce proceedings?"
Seth, what do you think?
Seth Nelson:
Not much. Beefy question, simple answer. "What can I do to keep her voice to a bare minimum in the divorce proceedings?"
This is what I call a ghost person. You can't see them ...
Pete Wright:
Oh, we've talked about them.
Seth Nelson:
... but they're around.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
And they're controlling things and they're manipulating things and they're getting things done that are not ever ... Well, I shouldn't say ever. Some ghost people can be helpful. This one, as you described it is not. First off, what you can do is have no contact with her. You're under no obligation in Florida at least, check your local jurisdiction, to have the children contact her. Remember, your phone is there for your convenience, not as a portal into your life from other people. Block the number, don't answer the text, don't answer the calls. Remove her from social media. These are the type of things that you can do. And when you're with your children, you focus on your children. You're going to live your life, not your divorce. Your divorce is going to take up much, much time in your head. It's going to take much too much time of your life. But if you think about it, even though the divorce process is going on, it's happening when you're sleeping. It's just another day you're not divorced. It's happening when you're getting ready for work, when you're at work, when you're at your kid's extracurriculars. Enjoy those moments. Get with your lawyer, do what you got to do and then move on. The DV case for a gun spec charge and abduction, I don't know the facts of it, that's the state bringing criminal prosecutions it sounds like to me. Let the prosecutor do their job and focus on your kids while you have them.
Pete Wright:
And that will have a serious material impact on the divorce case, that's what we're waiting for.
Seth Nelson:
But I'd also say from how I'm listening and hearing the question, Pete, it sounds like the children are with her all the time now.
Pete Wright:
That's what it sounds like to me too, yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Enjoy it with the no contact. Enjoy it. You only get those days once. I hope that's helpful.
Pete Wright:
Okay. Well, thank you so much to anonymous, who wrote this question to us. Please keep sending those questions. You just go to howtosplitatoaster.com and click the submit a question button right there. It'll come straight to us and we'll ask it to Seth right here on the show. Thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this episode. On behalf of Ginger Gentile and Seth Nelson, America's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright, and we'll see you right back here next week on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
How to Split A Toaster is part of the True Story FM Podcast Network, produced by Andy Nelson, music by T. Bless and the professionals and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce and Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing, legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
