Children Caught In The Middle

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Welcome back to the Post Separation Abuse Podcast. I'm your host, Danielle Black. Today we're talking about when children are caught in the middle, when there is influence, manipulation, and loyalty conflicts. This is part eight of our When Children Resist or Refuse Contact series. This is a topic that I wanted to ensure that we covered in this series because sometimes children really have been manipulated into rejecting a parent. They've been lied to, they've been frightened, they've been told things about money affairs, morality, any other thing about the breakdown of their family unit that they should never have been exposed to. They may have been made responsible for one of their parents' emotions, for the emotional survival or well-being of that parent, or they might have been given the impression that loving both parents means one parent was being betrayed. Sometimes that manipulation, that influencing, that loyalty conflict can have devastating consequences for a child's relationship with one parent. They can begin resisting or rejecting a parent. I'm not going to spend this episode pretending that deliberate parental undermining doesn't happen. It does. Sometimes it's blatant, sometimes it's subtle, sometimes it goes on for years and years and years.

When Influence Meets Real Grievance

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And we're also going to talk about something that I think is much more common and much harder for many parents to hear. That is that sometimes children have been influenced by the other parent and they have genuine grievances with you. Sometimes a child loves a parent who has been abusive and resents the parent who left. Sometimes a child is furious about the separation itself, even when neither parent has been deliberately trying to turn them against anyone. And sometimes the explanation that you've become so invested in is preventing you from hearing what your child is actually telling you. So, before you spend another six hours Googling parental alienation, I want you to consider a different question. What else might be going on here? Not because every explanation is equally plausible, not because we should pretend abuse is merely a difference of opinion, but rather because genuine curiosity is capable of making space for facts, evidence, complexity, and the actual experience of a child. Certainty, particularly when we become too certain too early, can leave us defending an explanation of our own or an opinion rather than genuinely seeking to understand our child or understand our relationship with our child or to understand our child's relationship with the other parent. Let's

How Undermining Shows Up

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begin with something that can be a bit more straightforward. A parent can deliberately or inadvertently undermine a child's relationship with the other parent in many different ways. They can vent, they can share things with their child that no child should be exposed to. That can happen deliberately, but it can also happen because the parent is treating the child as a friend, as a confidant, rather than maintaining the important boundaries of that parent-child relationship. They can tell the child that mum has taken all of Dad's money, that dad has abandoned the family, that mum destroyed everything by having an affair, or that dad doesn't really love them. They can turn the child into an audience for their legal grievances, their financial frustrations or fears, or their moral judgments about the behaviour of the other parent and about the separation in general. Sometimes there are religious elements. A child may be told that a parent is sinful, that they're going to hell, or that maintaining a relationship with them is somehow disloyal to the family's faith. Sometimes the pressure is emotional, such as if you spend more time with Dad, I'll be alone. Or worse, saying things like I don't know how I'll cope if you leave me too. Children might also hear such things as how can you spend time with him after everything he's done? Let's reflect on those examples. Imagine

Strong Feelings Are Not Proof

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being a child, let's say twelve. Imagine being twelve years old and believing that your mother might not cope emotionally if you spend the weekend with your father. What is that child supposed to do with that information? How are they free to enjoy their time with the other parent? How are they free to even admit that they want to go, let alone that they love that parent, irrespective of how that parent might have behaved in the past? The child might come to believe the stories that they've been told, and they might repeat them with absolute conviction. Their distress may be genuine, but none of that necessarily tells us whether the underlying information is accurate. And this is why we need to examine the behaviour rather than assume that a strongly expressed view is either proof of manipulation or proof of harm. What was the child told? By whom? How often? In what circumstances was the information accurate, exaggerated, selective, or completely false? What did the child witness or experience directly themselves? What opportunities have they had to truly develop their own understanding? Here at Danielle Black Coaching, our view is that a parent who repeatedly recruits a child into adult grievances, either deliberately or inadvertently, is not helping that child to make an informed decision. Rather, they're putting the child in a position where their relationships are entangled with adult loyalty and adult pain. And yes, sometimes the resulting rejection is severe. A child who once enjoyed a warm relationship with a parent may come to view that parent as entirely bad, frightening, or unworthy of love. That possibility does deserve serious attention. And we also need to make space for the fact that influencing, manipulation, and being impacted by loyalty conflicts does not mean that the child has not also been genuinely hurt in some way by the parent that they're rejecting. I know this makes the entire picture a little bit more complicated, but anyone who knows me at all or who has listened to enough episodes here at the Post Separation Abuse Podcast should know by now that the information that we share here, the conversations that we have are not surface level ten minute fluff pieces. We go for the deep dives, we go for the nitty-gritty. Because ultimately we believe that that is what is far more helpful for you and it's far more interesting and honest for us.

Repair Starts With Validation

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I've worked with parents whose extramarital affairs contributed to the end of their relationships. Their children were deeply hurt. In some cases, the children stopped speaking to the parent who had the affair, either for a short period of time and in some cases for an extended period of time. In some cases, contact has not yet resumed. Were those children sometimes exposed to information that should have remained between the adults? Yes. Did the other parents sometimes share too much, speak from their own hurt, or encourage the children to see the separation through their perspective? Yes. But did the children also have genuine grievances of their own? In most cases? Also yes. They may have felt deceived. They may have been furious about the upheaval in their lives. They may have watched a parent move into a new relationship while they were still grieving the family that they thought they had. They may have wondered whether promises meant anything, whether they could trust that parent again. Did mum ever really love dad? Or did Dad ever really love mum? And what did that mean about their own identity? Betrayal and affairs in relationships can cause significant turmoil for children, even adult children. And those feelings don't disappear simply because the parent who may have been betrayed by the affair handled the separation badly. Imagine a father responding to his teenage daughter's anger by saying, Your mother has poisoned you against me. She's told you lies. One day you'll understand. Now, maybe the mother in this situation really has said inappropriate things. But what has the daughter just heard? That her hurt doesn't count, that her account of her own experience is not really hers. That before her father has listened to her, she first has to accept his explanation of why she feels the way that she does. That response can become a new injury in the relationship. The original betrayal may have damaged trust, but the refusal to acknowledge the child's experience can make repair even harder. A far more useful response might begin with something like I can understand why my choices have hurt you, and I'm sorry for the impact that they've had on your life. That was never my intention. You don't have to see things exactly as I do for me to take your feelings seriously. Your feelings matter. Let's talk about them. That doesn't require the parent to agree with every allegation or accept a distorted account of events. Rather, it requires them to make room for their child's separate experience. A child can have been influenced, manipulated, and still have legitimate reasons to feel hurt by the parent that they're rejecting. If we lose that distinction completely, we risk turning the child into nothing more than evidence in the adult's dispute. And we have to make space for the fact that our children haven't been on the exact same journey as us. This

Coercive Control Changes The Dynamic

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is a dynamic that I think deserves particular attention, especially where coercive control and other forms of family violence have been present. Imagine a mother who has spent years in a controlling relationship. Over time, she's begun to recognize what's happening. She's spoken with professionals, learned more about coercive control, found language for the abuse that she's been experiencing, and has gradually built the practical and emotional capacity to leave that relationship. For her, separation may represent a hard one step towards safety and freedom. But her children haven't necessarily been on that journey. They may not have spent months reading about abuse or talking it through with a counsellor. They may not understand why mum has suddenly changed her view of the relationship. They may still love their other parent, miss that other parent, want to spend time with that other parent. Yes, a parent who has perpetrated abuse. Some of them may also be furious that the family has separated. That can be extraordinarily painful for the victim survivor parent. She may be thinking after everything that they did to us, after everything that they did to us, how can you possibly want to go back? She may feel rejected by the very children that she has been striving to protect. And in that pain, she may say things like Don't you remember what they did? Why would you want to see them? Do I need to remind you what we've been through? I can understand how those reactions can happen. I remember feeling some of those exact things myself. And we still need to think about what they ask of our children. Our children may hear that loving their other parent is a betrayal of us. They may feel that they are expected to demonstrate that they understand the abuse by rejecting that other parent too. And they might not be ready, willing, or able to do that. Relevant to this is that they may never choose to do that. The reality is that a child can genuinely love a parent who has harmed them or someone else in their family. Now, that love does not invalidate the harm. And a child's wish for contact with a parent does not establish that contact is safe. There's also a difference between helping children to understand harmful behavior in an age-appropriate way and repeatedly trying to persuade a child to adopt our own assessment of the relationship. We can be truthful, we can name unacceptable behavior, we can maintain safety boundaries, we can respond to their questions. But we don't need to turn every interaction into another lesson about why the other parent is abusive. Children can also need time to think, to need space to feel conflicted. They can need to know that having complicated feelings about someone doesn't mean that they're betraying either parent.

When Kids Become Emotional Caretakers

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Sometimes there is another layer again. In a family that is organized around one person's moods and demands, children can grow up learning that everyone's job is to keep that person happy. They learn when to agree, when to stay quiet, when to apologize, when to anticipate an outburst, and when to provide reassurance. They may become highly attuned to the controlling parent's emotional state. Some children take on the role of emotional caretaker, even when no one has explicitly instructed them to do it. Then the parents separate. The victim survivor parent may feel relieved to be outside the relationship, but the child may be experiencing something very different. They may worry about dad being alone, they may feel guilty about leaving him, they may feel that mum has left them to manage his feelings without her support and protection. Reflect for a moment how complicated that is. One parent has finally recognized that they are not responsible for regulating the other parent's emotions. But the child may still believe that someone has to do it. And that someone is now them. In those circumstances, alignment with the abusive parent can feel safer than disagreement. If that parent still seems to hold the balance of power and control, pleasing that parent, aligning with that parent may feel like the least dangerous option. In short, it can feel much safer to be friends with the bully than to not be friends with the bully. From the outside, that alignment can look like a clear preference. Now, sometimes it might actually be a genuine preference, supported by affection and positive experiences. Other times it may also reflect fear, obligation, familiarity, or a sense of responsibility. We cannot know exactly what's going on simply by looking at which parent the child is choosing. We need to remember that what feels familiar to a child is not necessarily what's safe. Children who have grown up around abusive, controlling behaviour may regard that as normal, ordinary family life. They may not yet have the language or the distance to recognise what the adult victim survivor has come to understand. That doesn't make the child silly or foolish or immature. Rather, it makes them a child with their own developmental experience of their family.

Even Adults Hate The Logistics

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And when you're a child, your parents separating can be just a massive fucking pain in the ass. I don't only mean when a child is seven or twelve or fifteen. I mean even when you are a fully grown adult, when you've got children of your own, when you're managing your own household, and you're still navigating the logistics of parents who would rather not spend time in the same room. I'm speaking from experience here. My own parents are divorced. I love them both. My children love them both, and for so many reasons that I'm not going to unpack on this podcast, my parents generally prefer not to spend time together. This means that Christmas, Easter, birthdays, and other family occasions can require a level of logistical planning that I would much rather live without. And yes, there have been times when my brother and I have got on the phone and had a very good vent about the whole thing. Not because we don't love our parents, not because someone has manipulated us into rejecting either parent, and not because we think that our parents should still be married. But rather, sometimes because it's just really fucking inconvenient. We're adults with our own families and responsibilities, but in some ways we are still managing the practical consequences of a relationship between our parents that ended a long time ago. I'm certainly not suggesting here that separated parents should be expected to spend time together when that's unsafe or genuinely inappropriate. There are good reasons why some people need distance. Rather, what I am suggesting is that parents recognise that the consequences of separation don't necessarily end when they establish two households, and the consequences of separation certainly don't end when children become adults. Children can love both parents and still deeply resent the logistics. They can understand why a relationship ended and still wish that birthdays, Christmases, Easters, all the things when they have their own children were simpler. They can be angry about the decisions that their parents made without having been recruited into anybody's manipulation campaign. Sometimes a child's frustration, irrespective of their age, is really just their own frustration and doesn't need to be explained away.

When A Label Becomes A Prison

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That need for explanation to explain why children feel a particular way about one parent or the other can become a prison. And this is something that I have sometimes seen in parents who have lost contact with their children. Sometimes the explanation of what caused that rupture in the relationship becomes an enormous obstacle to the very relationship that they're hoping to rebuild. A parent can begin to believe that the other parent has, quote, alienated the child. Sometimes they might have strong evidence of very deliberate undermining. Sometimes there is absolutely no evidence of deliberate undermining. Rather, perhaps there's evidence of undermining, but we can't say for sure whether it's been deliberate or inadvertent. Sometimes there are just suspicions. Sometimes they've been searching desperately for an explanation that makes sense of a fucking painful situation. They begin reading, watching videos, joining online communities, listening to people who have experienced something similar. And at first, finding language for what they believe is happening can feel like relief. But sometimes the explanation becomes so complete that nothing is allowed to challenge it. Child refuses contact? Alienation. The child sends an angry message. Alienation. The child says, You hurt me. Well, that's something that the other parents taught them to say, obviously. The child asks to visit but seems a bit cautious. Maybe the other parent has sent them, maybe there's a hidden agenda. The child pulls away. Hmm, clearly proof of influence. The child tentatively approaches. Hmm, we need to be suspicious because they're clearly being influenced. Now at that point, how could the parent ever learn anything new about their child? If every possible interaction has already been explained. The terrible irony is that a parent who is deeply distressed by the idea that their child has been denied an independent mind may absolutely stop recognizing the child's independence themselves. Instead of asking, What is my child trying to tell me? They ask, What has my ex-partner done to make my child say this? And obviously, those are not remotely the same question. This is also why I become concerned when parents approach every interaction as an opportunity to educate their child about the other parent's abuse, manipulation or dishonesty. Your child might be trying to tell you about school. They might be upset with you about something ordinary, and suddenly the conversation is back to what the other parent has done and what the child needs to understand. Children don't need every interaction to be an intervention. Sometimes they just need to be able to have an ordinary conversation with a parent without being asked to adopt that parent's explanation of the family.

Responding Without Recruiting Your Child

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Now I can almost hear some of you saying, But Danielle, my child really has been manipulated. Are you just expecting me to do nothing? No, of course not. Curiosity is not naivety and it's not passivity. It's not pretending that facts that evidence doesn't exist. If a parent is telling a child that the other parent doesn't love them, is threatening to harm themselves if the child leaves or is using money and adult grievances to worry or frighten the child, those are serious concerns. They may need to be documented, they may need to be raised with appropriate professionals depending on the situation and circumstances. Safety concerns might require protective action. But how you respond to the child still matters. If your child says Dad says you took all his money, you don't need to launch into a forensic accounting presentation. You can acknowledge that money disagreements are adult matters. You can reassure your child that they aren't responsible for resolving the adult matters. Of course, you would not ask them to carry messages between households. You can acknowledge why hearing something like that would be so worrying for them, whilst also saying that what they've been told may not be accurate, that you're sorry that they've been given that information, but that you're not going to continue having that conversation with them because it's something that needs to be discussed between adults. If your child says, Mum says you destroyed our family, you can make room for your child's anger without demanding that they accept your version of the separation. If your child says Dad will be lonely if I don't call, you can acknowledge how worrying that must feel for them. And also make clear that managing Dad's feelings is not their responsibility. If your child tells you about behavior that has frightened or harmed them, you can listen. Take it seriously and seek appropriate support without turning the conversation into an interrogation or repeatedly asking them to repeat their account. Curiosity means asking what this particular child has experienced, what they understand, what they're worried about, and what they need. It also means being willing to consider that more than one thing might be true. And it also means being prepared to hear things that could be really uncomfortable to hear about yourself. Perhaps the other parent has deliberately or inadvertently influenced your child. Perhaps you've also been defensive, rigid, dismissive, or emotionally unavailable. Perhaps your child has been exposed to lies. Perhaps they also remember occasions when you didn't listen to them. Those realities can coexist, and acknowledging one does not excuse the other. Now

Living With Uncertainty And Grief

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I want to spend some time directly speaking with parents who are living with the uncertainty of not knowing whether their child will ever want a relationship again. That uncertainty can be excruciating. You might not know whether you'll hear from them next month, next year, or ever. You might be desperate for the chance to tell your side of the story. Sometimes parents organize their lives around that imagined future conversation. They might spend years collecting evidence, reading alienation content, rehearsing what they'll say when the child finally reaches out and discover what really happened. I understand that urge. And I also don't think it's a good place to live. You deserve a meaningful life even while you're grieving the relationship you wish you had. You can build friendships, pursue interests, develop other relationships, seek support and experience joy. That isn't abandoning your child and it isn't giving up hope. It's recognising that your child cannot be responsible for giving you your life back. And if they do reconnect, I suspect that the last thing that they'll need or want is to be handed years of accumulated pain and told how much their absence impacted you. They probably won't want their first conversation to be a detailed explanation of how the other parent lied to them. They may not be ready to reconsider their understanding of the past, and they may not want to hear about court proceedings, sacrifices, or all the ways that you've suffered. They may simply want to know whether it's possible to talk to you, whether you'll listen, whether you can tolerate their uncertainty, whether you'll respect their boundaries, whether there's room for a relationship that doesn't require them to agree with your account of the separation or your opinion of their other parent. Your pain absolutely matters and it does deserve care and attention, but it needs somewhere appropriate to go, trusted people, professional support, meaningful activities in a life that isn't entirely organized around your child's hopeful return. And when contact is possible, remember that repair is not you giving a speech. It's being consistent. It's allowing your child to have feelings that you don't control. So what does all of this mean in practice?

What Both Parents Can Change

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If you're the parent that your child currently prefers, consider whether you're giving them genuine freedom to have a relationship with the other parent where that relationship is safe. Are you sharing adult grievances? Are you deliberately or inadvertently seeking reassurance from them? Are you communicating even subtly that enjoying time with the other parent would hurt you? If you've experienced abuse you're entitled to name it, to seek protection, and to maintain appropriate boundaries. And your child does not have to share every aspect of your understanding in order for you to be able to support them. They can love someone who has harmed you. That might be painful. It also doesn't make them disloyal. If you are the parent that your child is resisting, consider whether your explanation leaves room for the child's independent experience. Have you asked what being in a relationship with you feels like for them? Have you listened to that answer without immediately explaining why the other parent is responsible? Are there things about your own behavior that need to change, regardless of what anyone else has done? And for both parents, try to keep the child out of the role of witness, messenger, therapist, judge, or emotional caretaker. Let adult problems remain adult problems. Don't require your children to prove loyalty by rejecting someone. Don't make their affection a referendum on who was right about the separation. Where serious manipulation or harm is alleged, careful independent assessment matters. The answer isn't to guess, and it isn't to treat every case as being identical because the behavior resembles a story that you've read online. The question is what is happening for this child in this family and what response is most likely to protect their well-being and support safe, beneficial relationships.

Two Truths And A Better Question

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We've covered a lot today, and I know that some of it might be deeply uncomfortable. I want to share with you two ideas that belong together before we wrap up this episode. The first is that genuine manipulation does happen. Parents sometimes lie to children, frighten them, recruit them into adult grievances, and interfere with relationships that could otherwise have been safe and beneficial. We should name that clearly and take it seriously. The second is that a child's resistance is not automatically explained by manipulation, even where some kind of influence might have occurred. Children can have their own grievances, their own grief, their own experiences of abuse, their own loyalty conflicts, and their own frustrations about the consequences of separation. A parent can have been treated unfairly or abusively by their former partner and still need to take responsibility for the way that they relate to their child. A victim survivor can have legitimate safety concerns and still need support not to burden their child with adult emotions. A child can be influenced and still be telling us something important. Rather than beginning with a label and fitting every interaction into it, we need to begin with curiosity. What has this particular child experienced? What are they telling us? What might we be missing? What can the adults change? Starting with their own behavior to make this child's life and relationships safer and more manageable. Understanding why a child might be resisting a parent is not the same as understanding what that child needs from each parent. If every conversation somehow becomes about the other parent, we can lose sight of the person who matters most in the entire conversation, our child.

Building A Relationship Worth Choosing

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In our final episode of this series, we're going to return to something that we've touched on in other parts of this particular series, and that is the scaffolding that can be provided by parenting plans and court orders. Those arrangements can keep contact happening while children are young. Eventually, children grow up. They develop more independence, and at some point the relationship is increasingly sustained not by a parenting plan, not by a routine, not by court orders, but by what has actually been built between a parent and a child. What happens when no one can make the child participate anymore? What kind of relationship is left? What can parents do now to make the connection more likely later on? The goal was never to simply get a child through the front door on the right day. The goal should always be a relationship that is safe, beneficial and worth choosing. Thank you so much for being here with me for this episode. I'll look forward to chatting with you again soon.