These divorce education groups provide parents with the new skills and attitudes needed to successfully co-parent their child in the midst of all the divorce pressures. Wendy Gregson, M.F.T. - is a licensed marriage and family therapist in private practice in Thousand Oaks and Camarillo who has served as a Special Master with the Ventura Courts resolving custody issues. This experience results in the child having conflicting feelings which manifest themselves in acting out or acting in behaviors. Expresses surface sincerity, while presenting underlying discounting messages about the other parent. Common behaviors when leaving one house and going to the other, when one parent remarries or has another child, are clinging, crying and withdrawing.
Transitions are even more difficult because of the polarization of the two homes.
During transitions child is often moody, angry, withdrawn or uncooperative. The anger or hatred that the one parent feels for the other is blatant and that parent is seen as harmful to the child. The child feels extremely split as it becomes more and more obvious that it is impossible to love both parents. To draw the focus away from the home life, the child begins to act out or in by getting into trouble, drugs, bad grades or shutting down emotionally. The alienating parent holds that the other parent has no value.