After googling around it seems lying in Family Court is common R0bert and nothing much done about it. I’m just seeing even more reasons for courts to start talking to kids.

Benk:” No, the author didn't directly say that fathers were a threat to kids. Instead, they said that changes that meant more kids spending more time with their dads had put kids at risk. Isn't it interesting how some people can imply something in a way that allows then to deny having said it?”

I do it all the time. I can’t find any line that says that though or that hints at it. I swear I nearly know the article off by heart now.

Benk:”In relation to the wants of the kids, surely you have met some kids who miss parents who have done a crap job of parenting.

I’m a bit jaded though you have to go a long way to convince me it was a crap job. The children even desperately miss some very abusive parents – by my definition. That’s why I have a hard time with the PAS thing. Children really do love and miss their parents and are often even more jaded than I am. Other children are clearly afraid yet the parent’s rights seem to have over ruled the child’s emotional health being a priority.

Benk:”Giving autonomy to kids is nice to a point, but sometimes adults need to be the adult.”

I think stats showed we’ve failed.

R0bert:”I suspect whatever we do the system will never be perfect, that wealthy relative might just be a nutter. I do think that there needs to be really good cause to dismantle any changes which have coincided with a drop in substantiated abuse.”

Oh I forgot that bit – Benk I take back the stat comment or am at least going to twist it a bit - R0bert more kids happened to have come into foster care during that 4% drop – 16k now in care in NSW. Maybe both parents started losing so that type of abuse notification dropped.

Anti:”PAS works by stopping the child seeing their father, blaming the father for being neglectful, vilifying the father to the child and denigrating the father's love for the child. That sort of conditioning works very well on adults. What makes you think a child is so much better at fighting it?”

PAS don’t work at all. Even with parents that did abuse them. We know this stuff Anti – children protecting a pedophile not because of the bad bits but because of the good. So for a parent who hasn’t done any bad stuff the brainwashing would have to be incredible to convince a child to not love their parent and enjoy every moment with them.

Children will also forgive an abusive parent and want to reconnect and that should be allowed to happen too. Some don’t or aren’t ready or may never be… no one knows because custody is forced on children without their input or consideration of how they feel.

Mum might say “dad can’t be bothered seeing you”. That doesn’t translate in a child’s mind. They feel sorry for themselves and question themselves, they do not hate their dad. Children in reality start blaming themselves if someone doesn’t want to see them, not the grown up. Mum and dad are splitting up and they immediately decide it was their entire fault in some way.

Don’t accuse me of trying to poison things, that is unfair. I haven’t picked an adult male or female side here and I am not trying to say a child should spend more time with one than the other. I am trying to point out that maybe PAS in reality is horribly flawed.

We should question it because it is affecting children and portraying them in what I believe is a false way about how they process information handed to them by adults. I might be explaining it wrong… I want us to look at it because if we have it wrong it will affect how we correct it with the children.

vanna says; We live in a culture of divorce and separation. There is the problem. Instead of fixing all these issues about children. All you have to do is fix the perceived culture.
Marriage comes to easy, shacking up should be illegal.
How can married couples separate if there was a true relationship to start with.
People that shack up are just plain insecure.
Marriage runs very close to financial responsibility. If you have both you don't have divorce.
The culture today is borrow as muck money as you can and don't worry about interest rates or paying back the money, this problem will look after itself. Build a mansion on a very large block.
When the bank takes its money the first payments are to pay interest only.
When things get to much and you decide to sell, then you find out you have got no equity in the house at all. you have been paying rent for the past 8 years
So the bank takes the house and your on the skids , the only thing left to do is get a divorce.

Jewlery,
The ultimate PAS system was the system whereby the father paid money to the mother, and saw the children every second weekend.

That system trained the children to think that their father was not a parent.

It was a system that was enforced on many men who were never charged with any offence, and in many ways it was the ultimate feminist system.

I’m a bit lost now Vanna.

My understanding was it is the men using PAS in court to claim any allegation against them is false, not the women. The women are saying they are told to not make any allegations because PAS will turn around and bite them and the man will get more access.

Or you are saying it is the women trying to alienate children so women are guilty of PA so they can profit through child support?

I think it all needs to go away and if a few judges would stop and talk to the children they’d probably understand that children do not process negative comments in the way PAS implies they do.

A parent that HAS been abusive is still often forgiven by a child and those chances to reconnect should be attempted within obvious safety boundaries. Some children don’t and I wouldn’t want to see them pushed to aka Parental Inclusion…?

But I think the article was saying we should start asking our little stars of the custody battle what they want.

Jewely it's my understanding that women are more likely to do the false or exaggerated claims of abuse than men, public perceptions about child abuse, DV etc make it somewhat of a lost cause for men.

I suspect that men are more likely to do the big ticket spends, the great fun time parent thing if they want to try and differentiate themselves from mum.

You have a lot more confidence in the ability of young children to deal with difficult decisions than I do.

Criticism does not have to be direct, it can be a matter of taking advantage of any incidents where the child is already upset with the other parent, it can be a series of staged opportunities for the child to "overhear" conversations not aimed at them, it can be theatrics when the child is around to see how badly mummy has been hurt by daddy. I've been on the end of a few calls when I knew my son was present at the other end where the hysterics did not make any sense. One tactic I've been on the receiving end many times was the pushy emotive phone call just before I was due to pick my son up from after school care so that I'd arrive fresh from an upsetting experience. There are a lot of ways of manipulating situations and people to sway impressions.

R0bert