Early warning signs of parental alienation might include things like:
- Exclusionary requests by the child (don’t come to my baseball games)
- Oppositional or oppositional-defiant disorder in a child that previously demonstrated none or minimal symptoms
- Shut out or requests made by the child to not attend parent/teacher conferences.
- Shut out from school meetings (by the other parent via subtle and not so subtle methods) and no longer listed as contact parent for school/camp
- Being challenged by your child; they become argumentative and combative and, in the extreme form, exhibit provocations to the point of explosive rage reactions back to your child
- A sense of entitlement to receive parental tasks/gifts yet arrogance of how they are better than this parent
- A failure of the child to identify any prior positive bonding experiences
- Denigration of the targeted parent that he/she can’t do anything right. In fact, you might hear words from the targeting parent repeated which can be very triggering
- The child takes responsibility for the alienation and rejection; it was their idea. When confronted they don’t acknowledge manipulation by the pathological parent; in fact, they hold the process of rejecting as their own.
