Things worth checking

If you’re wondering whether you might be doing this without meaning to, asking that question at all is rare and valuable. This page isn’t going to tell you you’re an abuser.

Protecting your child is not alienation

If the other parent has been abusive, keeping your child safe from them — limiting contact, supervising visits, saying no — is protective gatekeeping, not alienation. Alienation is about deliberately damaging a child’s relationship with a parent who doesn’t pose a risk to them. The two can look similar from outside and mean completely different things.

Specific things worth checking

Not labels — small, concrete behaviours. Most parents do at least one of these sometimes. The question is whether it’s a pattern.

• Who tells your child about a schedule change — you, or does it always come from you first?
• What happens to gifts, cards, or messages from the other parent when they reach your house?
• What does your child hear you say about the other parent when they’re in earshot, even if it’s not aimed at them?
• “Just so you know…” — how often do you tell your child things about the other parent that they didn’t ask about?
• Does your child ever carry messages, information, or feelings between you and the other parent that should be an adult conversation?

If some of this looks familiar

Pick one thing from the list above and change it this week. That’s the whole exercise — not a verdict on who you are, just one concrete thing you can do differently starting now.

Researcher Amy Baker has described 17 alienating strategies parents can use, drawn from interviews with adults who experienced this as children. They’re used here as a descriptive checklist for reflection, not as a validated diagnostic instrument — no combination of behaviours on this page proves alienation is happening.