When a Child Rejects a Parent: Working With the Intractable Resist/Refuse Dynamic

• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/fcre.12238
• Date: 01 July 2016
• Published date: 01 July 2016

WHEN A CHILD REJECTS A PARENT: WORKING WITH

THE INTRACTABLE RESIST/REFUSE DYNAMIC

Marjorie Gans Walters and Steven Friedlander

A subgroup of intractable families, in which a child refuses postseparation contact with a parent, perplexes and frustrates pro-

fessionals who work with them. This article discusses the underlying forces that drive the family’s intractability, as well as

guidelines for working with the family. The guidelines include specific court orders developed from the very beginning of the

case that elaborate the court’s stance about goals and expectations for the family, along with specialized individual and family

therapies that are undertaken within a framework of planned collaboration with the court. The collaborative team of legal and

mental health professionals works in an innovative and active way to structure, support, and monitor the family’s progress in

resolving the resist/refuse dynamic.

Key Points for the Family Court Community:

A small group of families in which a child resists or refuses to spend time with a parent are especially resistant to inter-

vention. Their dynamic emerges as intractable when it is apparent that it is being fueled by a significant mental health

component, vulnerability, or rigidity within one or more family members.

The work with intractable families often raises serious and challenging dilemmas, such as determining the risks to the

child of losing contact with a parent, whether the child’s voice is separate and distinct from that of the parents, and if

emotional abuse is present, such that the option of a change in custody is raised.

The clinical interventions that are utilized with intractable families are specialized and nontraditional and require par-

ticipation of the entire family.

Helping intractable families requires a concerted, collaborative effort and an innovative partnership between legal and

mental health practitioners.

Essential from the outset, this collaboration requires small adjustments to the familiar paradigms within which each

professional is accustomed to work, including a new perspective on confidentiality.

The court also is a participant in the collaboration, as it has a crucial role to play in structuring, overseeing, and moni-

toring the clinical interventions and resolving impasses as they are reached.

Keywords: Child Rejection of a Parent; Court-Ordered Therapy; Favored Parent; Multi Modal Family Intervention;

Parental Alienation; Reconnection Therapy; Reintegration Therapy; Rejected Parent; Resist/Refuse Dynamic;

Reunification; and Reunification Therapy.

INTRODUCTION

In the 6 years since the last Family Court Review Special Issue on children who refuse contact

with a parent (January 2010), many families have participated in interventions aimed at unraveling

and resolving this complex problem—the Resist/Refuse Dynamic (RRD). The RRD refers to a com-

plex set of interacting factors, family dynamics, personality characteristics and vulnerabilities, con-

scious and unconscious motivations, and other idiosyncratic factors that combine to contribute to the

unjustified rejection of a parent.

1

While it has always been clear that RRD families pose a daunting challenge in their resistance to

change, an especially intractable subgroup of these families is gaining the attention of legal and men-

tal health professionals.

2

These “stuck” families typically reach an impasse early in treatment. While

some of these have previously been labeled as “severe” cases of alienation, it is currently apparent

that, in addition to severe alienation, other factors often underlie and contribute to the family’s

intractability.

Correspondence: ganswalters@comcast.net, sf@drsfriedlander.com

FAMILY COURT REVIEW, Vol. 54 No. 3, July 2016 424–445

V

C2016 Association of Family and Conciliation Courts

In this article we identify the characteristics of the intractable family and outline some intervention

options that can address their entrenched, potently resistive nature. These families require a carefully

framed, focused, and directive approach, implemented by a collaborative team of mental health and

legal professionals. Effective intervention requires periodic, preplanned communication with the

court. This refinement and extension of the Multi-Modal Family Intervention model (MMFI; John-

ston, Walters, & Friedlander, 2001; Friedlander & Walters, 2010) is tailored specifically for intracta-

ble and severe cases. The suggested framework can also be used for less severe cases to accelerate

progress and to ensure that the necessary supportive structure is in place if needed.

Intractable cases often leave professionals feeling increasingly helpless. In response, some mental

health and legal professionals develop an aversive reaction to working with them, and avoid them.

Others, who lose patience with these families, resort to using drastic measures to resolve the

impasse.

3

Professionals are more likely to employ misguided efforts to help when they have a limited

understanding of intractable cases and even more limited resources available toward which they can

direct these families. This paper is addressed as much to the bench and bar as it is to mental health

professionals.

UNDERSTANDING INTRACTABLE RRD FAMILIES

Intractability within RRD families can originate in one or both parents or the child, either alone or

in concert with one or both parents. Often, the intractability is fueled by a mental health component

within one or more family members that makes them vulnerable to the polarizing RRD dynamic,

including not being able to successfully cope with and move beyond the stress, loss, and even trauma

involved in the separation and divorce process, and/or becoming unduly influenced by another family

member (e.g., a child by a parent or a sibling, a parent by a new spouse, or a grandparent).

THE CHILD’S VULNERABILITIES

Kelly and Johnston (2001) have discussed the many pathways through which an “alienated child”

arrives at the point of refusing to have contact with an adequate rejected parent. Among those factors

are vulnerabilities of the child—physical, cognitive and emotional—that are too great to accommo-

date the stresses of a divorce. A child’s rigid rejecting stance may reflect, in part, having resources

that are too limited or inadequate for navigating shared time with warring parents, particularly when

conflicts arise unpredictably during transitions between homes. A young or developmentally limited

child’s postdivorce alignment with a parent can simplify the child’s dilemma about “who is right and

who is wrong” and “what is fair and what is unfair.” Younger children may also be less able to resist

the loyalty pull of the favored parent, especially when it is rooted in that parent’s neediness, or the

allure of modeling an older sibling’s stance toward the rejected parent.

In custody disputes, there has been a rise of the number of children with special needs—those with

specific learning disorders and cognitive impairment, chronic developmental disorders, physical dis-

abilities, serious medical conditions, and severe psychiatric and behavioral disorders (Pickar & Kauf-

man, 2015, p. 113). Being ill equipped to handle ongoing interparental conflict, these children may be

especially vulnerable to rejecting a parent as a means of solving an otherwise overwhelming problem.

Specific emotional vulnerabilities among children who reject a parent have been recognized by

Johnston, Walters, and Olesen (2005a). These emotional vulnerabilities include consistent use of

coping styles that involve avoidance and diminished ability to have realistic, mutual, empathic rela-

tionships with others (Johnston, Walters, & Olesen, 2005b). These vulnerabilities may not be evident

in the children’s daily lives, however, as the child may otherwise appear to be independent and com-

petent, even an academic and social “star.” The consequences of internalizing their distress and disre-

garding their unresolved grief about the loss of their intact family may emerge sometime later, and

the consequences can be profound.

Walters and Friedlander/WORKING WITH THE INTRACTABLE RESIST/REFUSE DYNAMIC 425