Ben and Heather welcome special guest forensic psychologist Dr Robert Simon from San Diego California to talk about resist/refuse behaviour in children, including the heated subject of parental alienation. Dr Simon is a specialist in child custody matters in the United States and is renowned for his expertise in parent/child contact problems. He provides an excellent overview of the most common reasons for resist/refuse behaviour, and makes it clear that parental alienation is not the most common cause.
Topics discussed include:
Dr Robert Simon, Ph.D, Forensic Pschologist, Dr Simon’s website provides a good overview of his background, experience and the type of work he does, particularly in the area of child custody and parent/child contact problems.
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Benjamin Bryant: Hello everyone. I’m your host Benjamin Bryant from Bryant McKinnon Lawyers and I’m glad to have you with me for episode 54 of our podcast. In this episode we talk about parent-child contact problems – which is sometimes accurately called parental alienation… but sometimes not…as you will discover in our discussion.
I am joined by my partner and family law specialist Heather McKinnon and our very special guest Dr. Robert A Simon, Ph.D. who joined us all the way from San Diego California.
Dr Simon has 40 years’ experience working in family law as a forensic psychologist, consultant, author and educator, specialising in child custody mediation and custody evaluation. As a consultant, Dr Simon works with family law litigators in complex child custody cases in the United States and abroad. As an author and educator, Dr Simon shares his wealth of knowledge and experience to help family law professionals like us to better understand the issues in determining parenting arrangements (or child custody as it is called in the US). We first became aware of Dr Simon when I saw him speak at a family law conference in Adelaide in 2022. I was so impressed I asked him if he would be willing to share his in-depth understanding with our listeners and he kindly agreed.
On today’s show, we tap into Dr Simon’s expertise to better understand how parent/child contact problems arise and when these problems can accurately be called parental alienation. Heather helps us to understand how Australian courts treat parent/child contact problems when determining parenting arrangements.
Before diving into the show, a reminder to please share this podcast with any family and friends who are starting out on the rather scary journey of separation. We now have a library of over 50 podcasts that will provide the answers people need to feel less fearful and to make informed decisions.
And now, on with the show.
Benjamin Bryant: Thank you for joining us, Robert and Heather. I’d like to start by asking you, Robert, to clarify the difference between a forensic and a clinical psychologist and perhaps give our listeners an insight into the sort of work you do as a child custody consultant.
Robert Simon: Sure. Well, first of all, thanks for having me, and I’m glad to be here and to answer all of the questions you’ve got. The first question you had was the difference between a forensic psychologist and a clinical psychologist. A lot of people are confused about that. So when you think about the problems or the issues or concerns you have in your life and getting some help, and you think about seeing a psychologist, you’re going to see a clinical psychologist, who is somebody who’s there to assist people with their psychological concerns, their worries, their relationship issues, but they’re there to help through one process or another. And so they’re providing treatment. They’re providing a health care service. And it’s private; it’s confidential. The therapist can’t talk about what goes on in the sessions. They can’t even acknowledge if somebody were to ask that a certain individual is their client or patient. It’s a helping process. A forensic psychologist, on the other hand, is a psychologist whose job is to interact with the legal system, to do assessments of people or assessments of family, answer questions that a court has about a family, about an individual. So it is a non-confidential role typically. And it’s not a helping role, in that we’re not there to help the people that we are assessing with the problems that we’re trying to understand. We’re there to analyse and advise the court. So it’s the overlap between psychology and the law. Just to be clear, many psychologists are qualified and practice in both roles, but they’re distinct roles.
Benjamin Bryant: What is the type of work that you do as a child custody consultant?
Robert Simon: I primarily, nowadays in my practice, am retained by lawyers to assist them with their cases. But over the years, I’ve done this work about 40 years now, I’ve done also a number of these evaluations for the courts, mediation with families and with parents. All of my work is related to child custody concerns, that is to say: disagreements, disputes, battle royals sometimes between parents about the care and custody and well-being and best interests of their children. That’s my expertise. And in that role, there’s a number of things you can do. Primarily, what I do right now is assist attorneys with their very complex cases. But I also do a fair amount of expert witness work, where I review the work of other psychologists and offer an objective critique. And sometimes I’m just there to educate the court about things like, for example, parent-child contact problems.
Benjamin Bryant: Excellent. And look, we don’t have child custody consultants in Australia, in the sense that you’re talking about. We certainly have Court child experts and different things. But for our listeners here in Australia, if they’re looking for more information about what you do and what your role and what your history is, we’re going to put a link to your website on our web page so they can check that out. And you’re very impressive. 33-page curriculum vitae, I must say.
Robert Simon: Well, please download it. Don’t print it. Let’s save trees. By the way, you actually do have some of what I do in Australia because you do have shadow experts, which we call behind-the-scenes consultants. But you don’t have a tradition of having somebody review another person’s work and offering the court impressions of its strengths and weaknesses. That’s true. So I would be, in Australia, considered a family report writer.
Benjamin Bryant: Absolutely. We asked you to come on today’s show to talk about parental alienation. And you agreed. Thank you very much. But asked us to change the topic of the episode to parent-child contact problems. Can you explain why you didn’t want this episode to focus solely on parental alienation?
Robert Simon: Absolutely. First, let me say that I agreed to come on, not to talk about parental alienation, but to talk about the wider view of parent-child contact problems. So whatever you call this, in my view, this is not a show about alienation. It’s a show about trying to help people understand that when children resist and refuse contact with a parent after parental separation or divorce, that it’s a far more complex problem than to say, well, these children are alienated. Because parental alienation is a very specific thing. In my experience and the experience of the majority of my colleagues, the most common reasons that children come to resist or refuse parental contact is something other than alienation. I think it’s important to understand alienation because when truly alienation is taking place it’s a real big problem. But I know you in Australia, certainly we in America, quite frankly, in Western Europe, in Asia, Singapore, Japan, we’re seeing more parent-child contact problems nowadays than we did ten years ago. And 20 years ago, it was very rare. At least we didn’t see it in our practices. It wasn’t coming to our attention. So it’s a big deal. And the reason that I didn’t want to limit this to parental alienation is I want your listeners to take a wider view, because unless you identify why children are resisting and refusing properly, you can’t intervene effectively. And if we’re thinking about solutions, then we have to take a broader view of this problem. I hope that answers the question.
Benjamin Bryant: It certainly does. And I think broader view and also kind of the spectrum, look at the whole kind of picture and see that there’s a spectrum of problematic behaviours. And I know that, you know, parental alienation gets a lot of airtime. But I think in what you’re saying, in your experience, it doesn’t account for much of it. It’s actually a small part. It’s just a very popular piece.
Robert Simon: In my experience. But let me be honest with your listeners and with you guys, the parental alienation community and I have many friends and colleagues in that community, is a community that has been very effective at raising the profile of this phenomenon called alienation. They’ve been very effective at doing it in numerous places, many of the places that I just previously mentioned. It’s also a simple answer. There’s a couple of reasons that therefore it’s appealing. One is that the human brain does not like complexity. The human brain likes things that are simple and easy to answer. So that’s one of the reasons it’s appealing. Another reason is that when a parent is not seeing his or her children, it is painful. Whatever the reasons are, a parent, frankly, who’s not in pain because their children are refusing to see them is probably a parent who shouldn’t see the kids. So there’s enormous pain on the part of the parent. So when they come to see an attorney or they come to see a mental health professional, they’re seeking simple answers because they’re in pain and they want it over. They want to be able to like, you know, when you’re ill, you want to go to your doctor, have them say, “here’s a pill. You’ll be better in two days.” It just doesn’t work that way. So there’s a couple of reasons that things like, well if their kids are resisting refusing, it’s alienation. To me, it’s a reductionistic and overly simplistic answer, but it’s an appealing one for a lot of reasons and for lawyers and for court systems. All of us are, work too hard and feel burdened by not burdened by our workload, but at times overwhelmed by our workload. Yes, I guess sometimes burdened. We too then try to find simple answers. So it’s just the human condition
Benjamin Bryant: And I think, Robert, it’s very easy for people, in the vortex of it all to place external blame on other people. And so if they’re not the problem, it’s very easy, the other person’s a problem. There it is. Fix them and we fix the problem. I’m sure you have a very proper definition for parental and alienation, but I think the general community would understand, it’s an intentional disruption of the relationship between the child and the other parent. But you also speak of realistic engagement and also response to intensity of parental conflict. I was wondering if you could just speak to those two for me.
Robert Simon: Yes, parental alienation, and it does happen. I’m not a part of the community of people who thinks that alienation doesn’t happen. It does. I’ve been involved in enough cases to know that it’s out there. But there are a couple of other broad pathways by which children come to resist and refuse. One of those is something we call realistic estrangement. So realistic estrangement would be a child resisting and refusing contact for good reasons. Things, for example, like a parent who is harsh, not empathic, disciplinarian. A parent who during the child’s time in that parent’s care seems to be involved in other things: on the phone, playing with the phone, at their computer, taking work calls, hanging out with a girl or a boyfriend. And the kid is feeling kind of lost in that. A parent with real mental illness. A parent with an active drug or alcohol problem. So these would be some examples of reasons that children might resist and refuse a parent that we call realistic estrangement. It’s the child realistically perceiving risk to their well-being in the care of the parent. And that is something that we want to, first of all, respect the child for being able to do, for their perception and for their ability to self-advocate. Those are examples of realistic estrangement.
Robert Simon: Another broad pathway is children who have difficulty, emotionally within themselves, managing the conflict their parents are having. With this increase in parent-child contact problems resist/refuse that I’ve been seeing, particularly over the last ten, maybe 15 years, we also are seeing an increase in the general level of conflict and hostility in divorce. So we’re seeing more conflict. And we’re seeing the conflict last longer and be more intense than is normal. Look, conflict is normal in a divorce. Conflict is normal in a good marriage. So not all conflict is necessarily a sign of a problem. But these are families with intense conflict who would argue over whether the sky is blue and these are parents who just can’t agree and for whom ultimately: the issue isn’t the issue, the battle is the issue for the parents. But the issues that they’re battling on really aren’t the issue. Because if that one gets resolved, another one replaces it or two more like a medusa. You cut off the head two grow. So these children are caught in this incredible struggle between the parents and just can’t navigate it. They can’t hold the middle. Some children are able to. Some children are not. Part of it is the child’s own temperament and disposition and style and how they process emotion. Part of it may be the intensity of the conflict or the nature of the conflict. So these are children who just decide they can’t hold the middle, and they align with one of their two parents and prefer to be there.
Robert Simon: Let me give you a visual. These are families for whom the parents constantly are in a pistol duel. Pardon the American gun metaphor, but in a contest where they’ve got pistols pointed at each other. Okay, so where do we want children? We don’t want children aligning with one parent. We want them in the middle. But if that child stays in the middle, it’s got to be careful about rounds coming from both sides, doesn’t it? So what that child does is says I’m out of here and they go and they hide behind one of those parents. That’s the child responding to the unremitting conflict. In fact, I want to tell you that many of the things the parents argue about, many of these things pale by comparison to the conflict between the parents in terms of the risk to the child. The greatest risk to children in divorce, other than really bad parenting, abuse, neglect, is conflict between the parents about the kids into which they’re drawn. And so one of the ways that children respond to this is by saying, I’m out of here, I’m going to go be with dad. I’m going to go be with mom. Enjoy your duel. And for me, by the way, if there’s a majority of those three categories and there’s other reasons for this as well, but these are the big three, in my view. oO those big three, if there’s one that gets most of it or more of it than the other three, it’s the conflict.
Benjamin Bryant: And Heather and I would absolutely agree with that in our experience as well. And Heather and I on a daily basis, talk to parents about the impact on their children. I want to ask you, what is the impact if it’s diagnosed wrong if there’s a misunderstanding, if you’re going about it as a parental alienation case, but it’s actually conflict or realistic engagement, what’s the impact on the families?
Robert Simon: Well, if I can just be nerdy for a moment.
Benjamin Bryant: Absolutely.
Robert Simon: Or maybe geeky, if you prefer. We don’t diagnose parental alienation because it’s not a diagnosis. Diagnoses are disorders inside an individual. We identify alienation. There’s a big debate about it, whether it’s a diagnosis or not. So I just nailed my colours to the mast, if you will, about where I’m at in that debate. In any event, if a child is resisting and refusing and the reason is either realistic estrangement or the conflict, somehow it gets identified as alienation. Again, as I said earlier, you can’t solve problems that you don’t properly identify and describe. So if I identify to the extent that alienation takes place when a parent sets out to toxify a child’s relationship with the other parent without cause. If we call that a definition of alienation. That there’s an intentionality to it most of the time. Sometimes it’s a result of a parent’s mental illness, but it’s still alienation. But if we allow that, most of the time, it’s an intentional thing. And the parent really knows at some level they’re not doing right by the child. But that’s not what’s going on in the child’s life. Then how do we help the child build the skills they need to build to cope with the stresses that they need to cope with? And in the case of realistic estrangement, the parent the child’s resisting/refusing can do a lot by taking responsibility for the behaviour that the child’s resisting and refusing, and do something about it. If the parent-child contact problem seems to be the result primarily of the parental conflict, then you know all eyes on mom and dad leave the kid. The kid may need therapy for being in the middle of a toxic brew, but the kid doesn’t need treatment, the parents do.
Robert Simon: The other thing is that for alienation, one approach to dealing with alienation is to make the argument that the alienating parent is perpetrating psychological abuse on the child or children. They are gaslighting them. They are brainwashing them to the extent that it is a form of psychological abuse on a child. We don’t usually leave children with abusive parents, do we? If a parent is beating a child, you know everybody throws in, oh my God, that’s horrible. But if you see it that way, then your goal is going to be to get that child away from that parent. But if we misidentify something as alienation that isn’t, then we’re removing a child from a parent that is actually serving them well enough in some ways, which is hurtful to the child. Let me say one other thing. And this is really, really important, I think, for lawyers and judges, for mental health professionals and for parents to understand. When resist/refuse starts, early intervention is key. Because resist/refuse is akin to cement that dries very fast. So we’ve got a child in quick-drying cement. If we don’t intervene early, the longer we wait, the less likely we are to be successful. The more quick drying cement around a child, the more risk that we’re going to take off a limb when we get a jackhammer to that cement, right? So early intervention is key.
Benjamin Bryant: Yeah. When I’m advising a client, they come to me and they say that the other parent says the child doesn’t want to come and see them. And it’s really difficult to advise in the circumstances because you don’t know whether to push or pull. It could well be that, the other parent is actually, alienating or actively doing something in which case you do need to push back. This is when your child needs you most. This is when they’re in some quick drying cement, like you say, and we need to intervene. But other times, if you get it wrong and it’s actually the child’s experience that that parent can’t see, if you’re going to push and not pull away, you’re actually becoming what they fear of you. It’s very, very difficult to advise.
Robert Simon: And alienation always unfolds, always unfolds in the context of severe parental conflict. Right? Nobody’s a good decision-maker at that point in time.As lawyers, I’m going to tell you that I don’t think you’re in a very position to advise because you’re not in a good position to assess.
Benjamin Bryant: Absolutely.
Robert Simon: Because you’re getting your client’s side of the picture and your client’s side of the picture, even if they’re trying to be as accurate as they can, they’re not. Because their emotions are in play. And emotions create narratives and distort what we perceive. And we all need to know that. And that’s normal. What you want to do when you’re asked to advise is try to get some data from somebody who has assessment skills, or somebody who has information about what’s going on for the kid from more than one angle. Right.
Benjamin Bryant: Heather, you’ve had decades of experience in the family law system. What is your take on the court’s approach to these types of matters?
Heather McKinnon: I’m really proud of the Australian system. As Rob knows, he’s come to train our lawyers, including our judges. Right from the beginning, the Australian system set up an equal arm of the court, which was the social scientists: the clinical psychologists, the forensic psychologists. So in Australia, it isn’t the lawyers who determine whether it’s alienation 0r whether it’s, sensible resistance of the child. Immediately a case comes into conflict, we have a thing in Australia where there is a, if you like, a triage event, where a specially trained forensic psychologist does a report to the judge on whether or not any of these issues are present. Could this be alienation? Is it more likely that the parent is experiencing psychosis? Is the dad on ice? We really try and get very quickly an idea of what factors are present. Then, once we have that road map, the things that Robert is talking about come into play. We get special lawyers in place for the children, called independent children’s lawyers, who will gather that objective evidence that Rob’s talking about. We’ll get ideas from the school, from the psychologists who may have been involved with the family, child welfare authorities to have a look at what’s likely to be going on in this family. Is it, in fact, factors that lead the child themselves to form a view?
Heather McKinnon: I think one of the powerful things that Robert said was that adults who are in high conflict often have no sense of the independent intelligence of their children to be able to communicate to rational adults what they want to do. So if they’re in a situation where they have formed a view that they’re not safe, because of some of these really terrible factors, they will let you know. But it is that early intervention. So the initial contact the family has with these psychs is critical because they will give a list of what we need to do to sort out what’s going to happen. So, as Rob indicated, if an alienating parent is given a short course of intervention, to see whether or not they will shift their view of the world, that will help us assess whether the kids can continue to be there. If it is, in fact, that they’re so involved in the sense that only they can provide for the children. Big warning bells. And so it’s that expertise that we need, not from lawyers. And the other thing that I would say to all lawyers is alienating parents or parents who have an axe to grind, are expert at getting inexperienced lawyers to adopt their worldview. You know, from years of working with me Ben, the first thing I tell our young lawyers is never believe the punter. You have to remain objective. You have to sit above it. And, it’s really true. Do not get drawn into the vortex of the conflict. Sit above it and start to get that objective scientific evidence as to what’s going on.
Benjamin Bryant: What I say as well, Heather, is that the family law system is a blunt instrument. If a parent is actually taking steps to interfere in a relationship, I think the court is pretty equipped at dealing with that. If it is more nuanced than that, if it is because of the child’s experience, the court is not so equipped at dealing with that.
Robert Simon: One of the most rewarding parts of my career has been having the chance to really get to know Australia and get to know the various areas and the registries and the bar and do a lot of speaking and teaching in Australia. And I’ve come to understand how you all do things and you do things very differently with regard to many of these issues than we do in America. And you’re very fortunate to have that. Because you can quick triage a case into the hands of the Court’s in-house mental health professionals or one that’s contracted outside and get the input that you’re describing. At the same time, I want to say that, it’s always important to remember that these are personal problems that these families are having and that legal systems aren’t set up to solve personal problems. So having expectations that a court system can be expected to always do right by the family or see what that is, is a mistake. It’s so important for parents to understand that the court will give you an outcome. The court will give you orders and things that you must and must not do, and at least the conflict can be diminished in some families. But at the end of the day, all of us in family law, if we’re doing our jobs well, our first preference is to try to re-empower the family and assist them to their own solution. Right? And that’s where your system front end loads that possibility, because there are people trying to do that and they’ve got data.
Robert Simon: Another thing that you said that I want to just react to. I think you used a charming Australian about don’t believe the punter. I love that. And I’m going to figure out how I can use that down here in America. Anyway, the thing I want to say is that it’s so important that all the professionals stay above the clients narratives or to the sides of them. Even if they’re our client, the one representing them, or maybe I’m the consultant on their team, because they say it doesn’t make it true. The more we take on their narrative, the less subjective and the less helpful we can be. So it’s important to remember it’s their life, not our life. It’s their problem not our problem. We’re professionals. We can do what we can, but people break things in ways that we can’t fix. And we sometimes have to explain that to moms and dads. And I’ve seen parents who are just tooth and nail at each other, hammer and tong. When you tell them I’m out of tools, I have nothing left. If you can get the judge to tell them this is your fourth hearing, nothing’s changed. You’re going to have to do something about this. Some families come round. Some don’t, but some do. And we’ve got to be grateful for the ones that do. All right.
Benjamin Bryant: Well thank you, Robert. We could be talking about this very important subject for hours and hours, but I think we’re out of time. But I just wanted to say thank you so much for jumping on our podcast program and joining us talking about this.
Robert Simon: Thank you for having me. I really appreciate it and enjoyed it. I hope to get to Australia soon.
Benjamin Bryant: Absolutely.
Heather McKinnon: And Coffs Harbour, Rob, you got to come up.
Robert Simon: All right, if it’s a place I haven’t seen I’m up for it.
Heather McKinnon: Okay.
Benjamin Bryant: And thank you. Heather as usual.
Heather McKinnon: Pleasure.
Benjamin Bryant: Thank you for listening to this episode on parent-child contact problems. We hope that the amazing Dr Robert Simon has answered your questions on all types of parent-child contact problems, including parental alienation.
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