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I don’t know how this is in the rest of the world, but here’s how it works in the corner I know.Many people already envy teachers because the short work hours and long vacations. Tell them that Mrs. Pepper will have an extra day off for her father’s funeral or to take her kid to a doctor, and they will explode.But let me tell you about the program of a preschool educator (kindergarten teacher) in Eastern Europe.The Kindergarten has a six-hour program, but she usually spends 8–9–10 hours there, because some kids are brought in earlier, some are taken home later, and she has to be there to receive and release all those noise packages. The same thing happens in some elementary schools too, at least in the first grade(s).After work, she goes home, but she has homework to do: evaluate individually each kid’s activity through the whole day, 1/2 - 2 hours.Then she has to make the lesson plans for the next day, and prepare the materials, again 1/2 - 2 hours. That means 9–14 hours a day. In case you wonder what a lesson plan looks like, here is a sample: Matching Numbers. There are also weekly plans she has to make, something like this:No, she can’t just download and print those papers. Everything has to be personalized, every kid has to be taken in consideration, and some of those tables and charts had to be hand-written.There are also monthly/yearly evaluations and other papers she has to do, and she spends 2–3 weeks of her two months of “vacation” with paperwork. Then another 2–4 weeks of mandatory courses (“head expanders”) and exams if she wants to keep her job. She even has to pay herself for some of the courses.For this, she gets just a bit more than the minimum wage, and the kids will cry and the parents will be outraged if she wants a day off.Disclaimer: these were only the papers I remembered, but they have to make papers for everything, so a preschool/school teacher could expand the list beyond a hefty headache!

Tough question. There have been studies done into this but do keep in mind it's more than just parenting at play.While parenting behaviors among anxious parents have been implicated in the familial transmission of anxiety, little is known about whether these parenting behaviors are unique to specific parental anxiety disorders. The current study examined differences in the use of five specific parenting behaviors (i.e., warmth/positive affect, criticism, doubts of child competency, over-control, and granting of autonomy) in anxious parents with (n = 21) and without (n = 45) social anxiety disorder (SAD) during a five-minute task with their non-anxious child (aged 7-12 years, M = 9.14). Parents with SAD demonstrated less warmth/positive affect and more criticism and doubts of child competency than did those without SAD. There were no group differences in over-control or granting of autonomy. Findings help clarify inconsistent results in the literature, inform models of familial transmission, and suggest intervention targets for parents with SAD.Personally shyness ruined most of my twenties. What made a difference for me (finally) was a real structure to learning to overcome it - not just random advice: From Lonely to Social Life in 27 DaysAnxiety disorders are among the most common mental health disorders, with a lifetime prevalence rate of 17% [1]. Further, anxiety runs in families, and children of anxious parents are over five times more likely than those of non-anxious parents to have an anxiety disorder [2]. Genetic heritability accounts for only a portion of the etiology of anxiety disorders. Therefore, it is important to examine the role of environmental factors such as parenting.Several parenting behaviors have been identified in the literature as being related to excessive anxiety in children, including high levels of criticism and over-control, and low levels of warmth and granting of autonomy [3-6]. It has been theorized that anxious, compared to non-anxious, parents may engage in greater amounts of these anxiety-promoting parenting behaviors. The majority of existing studies investigating this theory have compared parents with a broad range anxiety disorders in one sample to non-anxious controls, which restricts our understanding about whether there are differences in parenting behaviors which are unique to specific anxiety disorders [7-11]. Identifying whether there are anxiety-promoting parenting behaviors that are unique to specific anxiety disorders is important as it can inform etiological models of child anxiety and refine interventions to target parents with those anxiety disorders. Among the adult anxiety disorders, social anxiety disorder (SAD) appears most likely to have an impact on parenting behavior.SAD is the second most common anxiety disorder in adults [12] and is associated with a number of unfavorable outcomes and impairments such as dysfunction in interpersonal relationships and work roles, and increased suicide attempts [13, 14]. Adults with SAD have been shown to demonstrate less emotional expression and warmth than those without social anxiety, even in close interpersonal relationships [15]. They are also more likely to demonstrate self-criticism and negative interpretation bias than those diagnosed with other anxiety disorders [16, 17]. These phenomenological characteristics of individuals with SAD likely have an impact on parenting behaviors. For instance, these parents, compared to those with other anxiety disorders, may show less warmth with their children, be more likely to interpret their childs behavior or performance negatively, and make more attempts to correct their childs behavior for fear it will reflect poorly on them. Though limited, some research has demonstrated that social anxiety impacts parenting. As one example, Murray et al. [18] observed the reactions of new mothers with SAD (n = 84), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD; n = 50), and no diagnosis (n = 89) while their infants were held by a stranger. During this task, mothers with SAD were rated as appearing more anxious than mothers with GAD, engaging with the stranger less, and were less encouraging of their infant interacting with the stranger. These findings suggest that SAD, relative to other anxiety disorders, may have a unique impact on parenting behaviors very early on, which may in turn impact child outcomes. However, these results are not generalizable to older children as this study was restricted to infants and mothers, and assessed only a small number of parenting behaviors.With few exceptions, the specificity between anxiety-promoting parenting behaviors and SAD has not been examined, and in studies examining parents with SAD, the child sample has been restricted to infants [18] (described above) or the studies have relied on retrospective reports [19]. The current study attempted to address this gap in the literature by comparing parents with SAD to parents with other anxiety disorders on five parenting behaviors (i.e., expressions of warmth/positive affect, criticism of child, doubts of childs competence, over-control, granting of autonomy) during an interactive performance task with their non-anxious child. Non-anxious offspring were selected for the current study because of a growing body of literature indicating that levels of child anxiety, rather than parental anxiety, influences parenting behaviors (in both anxious and non anxious parents) [20, 21]. Therefore, the use of a non-anxious offspring sample allows for an examination of parenting behaviors without the confound of child anxiety. Based on the literature, it was hypothesized that parents with SAD would exhibit less warmth/positive affect and more criticism and doubts of their childs competency during the task than anxious parents without SAD. No directional hypotheses were made for granting of autonomy or over-control.Participants were anxious parents with (n = 21) and without (n = 45) a current diagnosis of SAD and their children with no anxiety diagnosis (Table 1). The majority of the parents were mothers (89%; n = 59) ranging in age from 31 to 58 years old (M = 41.17; SD = 5.61). Most of the sample had an annual gross household income of over $80,000 (68%; n = 45), were married (85%; n = 56) and had completed college (50%, n = 33). Of the parents without SAD, the primary diagnoses were GAD (69%; n = 31), panic disorder (PD) with agoraphobia (AG) (13%; n = 6), PD without AG (7%; n = 3), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) (7%; n = 3), and specific phobia (SP) (4%; n = 2).Demographic Characteristics of Participants and Anxious Group ComparisonsNote. SAD = Social Anxiety Disorder, SCARED = Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders, BSI = Brief Symptom Inventory. Results presented in percents, number of respondents for categorical variables or standard deviation for continuous variables indicated in parentheses.The child participants were evenly split between girls (52%; n = 34) and boys (48%; n = 32), and were between ages 7 to 12 years old (M = 9.14, SD = 1.80). The sample was primarily Caucasian (91%; n = 60). Of the remaining children, 3% (n = 2) were Asian, 3% (n = 2) were African American, and 3% (n = 2) other race or ethnicity.Dyads were recruited from the Baltimore Metropolitan Area through print advertisements in local newspapers, radio advertisements, mailings to local physicians and psychiatrists, and flyers that were posted in various community settings. Anxious parents were recruited to participate in two studies examining the impact of an anxiety prevention program for their offspring [22] and were eligible to participate in the study if they had a current diagnosis of an anxiety disorder (other than post-traumatic stress disorder or acute stress disorder) and no medical or co-morbid psychiatric condition that would contraindicate study participation (e.g., suicidality, current substance use disorder). Data for the present study were collected at the baseline assessment before the anxious parents and their children participated in the prevention studies.All families who responded to the recruitment efforts completed a preliminary phone screen to assess their eligibility prior to an in-person evaluation. Families that were deemed eligible based on this screen were scheduled for an in-person assessment in which all the measures of the present study were administered. The most common reason for study exclusion was that the child met diagnostic criteria for an anxiety disorder. Additional reasons included that the child met criteria for another disorder which required immediate treatment or the parent did not meet criteria for a primary anxiety disorder. Prior to completing their initial evaluation, all participants completed a written informed consent and assent. Data collection for this study was approved by the Johns Hopkins Medicine Institutional Review Board.The ADIS-Client is a semi-structured interview that was administered to determine parents diagnostic status. The ADIS-Client has demonstrated good inter-rater reliability [24]. For the current study, 12% of Client ADIS tapes were examined for inter-rater reliability. Inter-rater agreement for the primary diagnosis and severity was 88%.The ADIS-IV-C/P is a semi-structured interview that was used to determine child diagnostic status. Diagnoses were derived separately from the child and parent report, which yielded a composite diagnosis that was used in this study. The ADIS-IV-C/P has good test-retest reliability [26] and good inter-rater reliability [26, 27]. For the current study, 17% of the Child/Parent ADIS tapes were reviewed for inter-rater reliability which was 99.7% for the primary diagnosis and severity.Diagnostic interviews were administered by masters- or doctoral-level independent evaluators (IEs). Training of IEs included: 1) 20 hours of didactic training with the diagnostic interviews, 2) administration of the interview in the presence of a senior interviewer, and 3) obtaining inter-rater reliability (kappa) of .85 for primary diagnoses and severity ratings on five cases (live or with videotapes) prior to administration of the interview with study participants. During the study, weekly meetings with the IE supervisor were held to discuss all assessments and confirm diagnoses via consensus.The SCARED is a 41-item questionnaire measure of pediatric anxiety in which parents and children responded to items using a three-point Likert-type scale describing the degree to which statements are true (0 = not true or hardly ever true, 1 = somewhat true or sometimes true, 2 = very true or often true). The psychometric properties of this measure have been found to be favorable [28, 29]. The total scores were used for this study as control variables. The Cronbachs alphas for the child and parent reports were .91 and.92 respectively.The BSI is a 55-item self-report questionnaire which provides an efficient dimensional measure of adult psychopathology. Respondents are asked to rate how much a symptom has bothered them during the past week using a five-point Likert-type scale (0 = not at all to 4 = extremely). The BSI yields T-scores in nine dimensions of distress, including the anxiety dimension, which was used to evaluate parent anxiety severity in this study. Convergent and construct validity with other measures of psychopathology have been demonstrated for this scale [31]. Research on the BSI has demonstrated acceptable internal consistency [32]. For the current study, the BSI demonstrated excellent internal consistency (Cronbachs = .97).Anxious parents were videotaped during one of two five-minute performance tasks with their non-anxious child, a speech task (n = 37) or an Etch-A-Sketch task (n = 39). In the speech task, the parent and child were told to prepare a speech about yourself. Five minutes were allotted for the preparation time and parent and child were videotaped in a room alone. For the Etch-A-Sketch task, the parent and child were given an Etch-A-Sketch board and instructed to use the board to copy a series of three designs that increased in complexity. The parent and child worked cooperatively to complete the task as one controlled the left knob (draws only horizontal lines) and one controlled the right knob (draws only vertical lines). Participants were given a maximum of five minutes to complete each design. Only the interaction of completing the third (most complex) design was coded for this study. These five-minute interactions were coded by independent observers (IOs) using a standardized coding manual that has been used in previous studies [9]. IOs were undergraduate and graduate level research assistants, and masters and doctoral level study staff who completed an average of 15 hours of supervised training on the coding task and were required to obtain 80% agreement across all ratings on five sample tapes of the parent-child interactions prior to coding study tapes. Additionally, inter-rater reliability has been demonstrated with these tasks and coding manual in previous studies [9, 10]. IOs, who were blind to parental diagnosis and this studys hypotheses, rated the frequency and severity of parenting behaviors using a five-point Likert-type scale (0 = behavior not present, 1 = very rarely present/up to 25% of time, 2 = behavior present a little/26-50% of time and/or of mild severity, 3 = behavior present some/51-75% of the time and/or of moderate severity, 4 = behavior present most of time/76% or more of time and/or of marked severity). Five parenting behaviors were examined for the present study: 1) warmth/positive affect (e.g., parent expresses positive emotions towards the child including words/gestures of endearment, praise, smiles), 2) criticism of the child (e.g., parent criticizes, insults, or makes negative comments about the child and his/her performance), 3) doubts of childs competence (e.g., parent questions or expresses uncertainty about childs ability to complete the task), 4) granting of autonomy (e.g., parent supports, encourages, and accepts the opinions/problem solving strategies of the child, allows child to make decisions), and 5) over-control (e.g., parent provides intrusive, unsolicited help, is over-involved in the task). Fifty-percent of tapes with representative proportions of SAD and non-SAD participants from this sample were used to determine inter-rater reliability. Two raters independently completed the ratings and compared scores. All raters were within one point of each other on all minute-by-minute ratings of parental behaviors. When discrepancies were noted within one point (7%), the tape was reviewed and the two raters discussed and decided upon the most valid rating for the observed behavior during that minute. These final ratings were used in the following analyses.Demographic differences between anxious parents with and without SAD were compared using t-tests for continuous variables and chi-squared tests for categorical variables (Table 1). One-way analyses of covariance (ANCOVAs), controlling for parent and child reports of child anxiety and parental marital status, were used to compare the means of the five parenting behaviors.There were no significant group differences between parents with and without SAD based upon parent gender, parent age, parent education level, child gender, child race, child age, family income, severity of child anxiety symptoms, severity of parental anxiety, or type of task. However, parents with SAD were less likely to be married than parents without SAD (see Table 1). Thus, parental marital status was controlled for in all analyses.There were significant differences between anxious parents with and without SAD on warmth/positive affect, F(1,61) = 5.70, p = 0.020, partial = .09, criticism of their child, F(1,61) = 8.35, p = 0.005, partial = .12, and doubts their childs competency F(1,61) = 9.73, p = 0.003, partial = .14. Specifically anxious parents with SAD demonstrated significantly less warmth/positive affect (M = 0.90, SD = 0.77) than anxious parents without SAD (M = 1.49, SD = 0.84). Conversely, anxious parents with SAD demonstrated significantly more criticism of their child (M = 0.24, SD = 0.44) and doubts of child competency (M = 0.33, SD = 0.58), than anxious parents without SAD (M = 0.00, SD = 0.00; M = 0.04, SD = 0.21, respectively).No significant differences were found between anxious parents with and without SAD on granting of autonomy F(1,61) = .05, ns, or over-control F(1,61) = 0.25, ns. Anxious parents with SAD exhibited similar levels of granting of autonomy (M = 2.00, SD = 1.00) and over-control (M = 1.00, SD = 1.27), as did anxious parents without SAD (M = 1.89, SD = 1.25; M = 1.22, SD = 1.24, respectively).Theoretical models [3, 34] have hypothesized that compared to non-anxious parents, anxious parents engage in greater amounts of anxiety-promoting parenting behaviors. However, empirical data testing this theory have been inconsistent. One reason for these mixed results may be the practice of including anxious parents with a broad range of anxiety disorders in study samples. This study attempted to clarify this issue by examining the parenting behaviors of anxious parents with and without SAD. Consistent with our hypotheses, parents with SAD exhibited significantly more criticism and doubting of their children and less warmth/positive affect than other parents with non-SAD anxiety disorders with medium to large effect sizes [35], after controlling for the severity of their childrens anxiety symptoms. No group differences were found on the most commonly reported anxiety-promoting parental behaviors: granting of autonomy and over-control. Specific findings are discussed below.During the brief interactive task, parents with SAD demonstrated significantly less warmth and positive affect directed at their child (e.g., smiling less, fewer loving gestures) than did parents with other anxiety disorders. This is consistent with findings from other studies showing that adults with SAD are less emotionally expressive and tend to be inhibited interpersonally [15]. Baker and Edelmann [36] found that adults with SAD exhibited fewer pro-social, non-verbal behaviors during interpersonal interactions, such as eye-contact and gestures, than both non-socially anxious and control adults. While the literature is mixed, there is evidence that low levels of parental warmth and positive affect are linked with risk for the development of social anxiety in children [9]. According to attachment theory, warm, responsive caregivers are essential for secure attachment [39]. Thus, children who experience a restricted amount of parental warmth may not develop a secure attachment, and therefore may view the world as unpredictable and threatening, and experience more anxiety. It may also be that the combination of low warmth and other anxiety-promoting parental behaviors, such as criticism, co-occur in parents with SAD to increase the risk of developing disorders in youth. Taken together, these findings suggest that lower warmth and positive affect may present a risk factor for the development of psychopathology that is unique to children of parents with SAD.Findings revealed that parents with SAD were more likely to express criticism or make negative or doubting comments regarding their childs performance (e.g., You messed it up again! I dont think youre doing it right.) relative to anxious parents without SAD. This is consistent with existing research demonstrating that adults with SAD are more likely to exhibit self-criticism than those with other anxiety disorders [17]. Our results suggest that this tendency toward self-criticism and fear of negative evaluation may carry over into parenting behaviors, as parents may regard their childs behavior and performance as a reflection of themselves. Additionally, a tendency toward negative interpretation of ambiguous stimuli [16] may cause socially anxious parents to notice and comment more on mistakes than to notice positive efforts of their children. By definition, individuals with SAD fear negative evaluation and tend toward perfectionism; thus they may have high expectations for their childs performance in an effort to avoid anticipated social humiliation. High levels of parental criticism and doubting have been linked to risk of anxiety disorders in children and specifically, social anxiety [10, 40, 41] thus, highlighting an important target for intervention.Parents with SAD showed similar levels of over-control and granting of autonomy as anxious parents without SAD. These findings, paired with the evidence for over-control and granting of autonomy in studies examining anxious parents with other disorders [12, 42], suggest that these parenting behaviors may be common to all anxious parents. A core feature of many anxiety disorders (e.g., GAD, OCD, PD) is a perceived of lack of control [43]. Thus anxious parents, in an effort to reduce their own anxiety, may exert excessive control, or over-control, in their parenting behaviors. Conversely, granting of autonomy is a parenting behavior in which parents respect their childrens decisions; allowing them to have some control in a given situation. For anxious parents, allowing their children to make decisions and have control may be difficult and increase their own anxiety which in turn may lead to greater over-control, creating a negative feedback loop.The present study has several limitations. First, the small sample size likely restricted statistical power to detect differences. Next, the child age range in this study was limited to ages 7 to 12 years old, and did not examine the parenting behaviors of parents of either young children (e.g., infants, preschoolers) or adolescents. Therefore, the findings may only be representative of parenting behaviors of parents with children in this limited age range. The majority of the participants were Caucasian mothers with mid-high income, limiting the generalizability to anxious fathers, non-Caucasians, and families of other socio-economic statuses. Replication studies with a larger, more diverse samples and follow-up data are needed in order to investigate whether these findings are consistent across time, developmental levels, and in other populations (e.g., fathers, low income parents). Additionally, comparison with a non-anxious control group would be useful in clarifying within- and between-group differences in parenting behaviors. As described above, SAD is characterized by intense fear of humiliation or embarrassment; these parents may be particularly prone to observer-expectancy effect. Therefore, their behavior during these tasks may not have been representative of their usual parenting behavior. Finally, although IOs were used to identify parenting behavior which reduces bias based on parent or child reports, it is unknown whether the behaviors identified during the five minute task reflect real life interactions between anxious parents and their children. Future studies should include multiple informants and assess behaviors in naturalistic settings to replicate these findings.Findings from this study suggest that parents with SAD may exhibit a unique pattern of behaviors when interacting with their children that includes high levels of criticism and low levels of warmth. This parenting style is akin to affectionless control as first described by Parker [44]. In retrospective analyses, exposure to this parenting style has been linked to an increased risk of the development of anxiety [19, 45]. These findings, which are specifically focused on the behaviors of parents with SAD, may help to explain inconsistent findings in the literature on parenting that have included parents with a broad range of anxiety disorders. Further investigation is necessary to determine how the parenting styles of socially anxious parents influence childrens risk of developing anxiety or other disorders over time. Findings from this and future studies could be used to inform assessment and interventions for families with parents who have SAD by targeting these specific parenting behaviors.Existing studies have established a link between the parenting behaviors of anxious parents and childhood anxiety [7-11]. However, findings have been mixed. One potential reason is that previous studies have included parents with a broad range of anxiety disorders. To clarify whether anxiety-promoting parental behaviors are uniquely related to a specific anxiety disorder, the current study compared the parenting behaviors of anxious parents with and without a diagnosis of SAD during a brief interactive task with their child. Findings revealed that parents with SAD displayed more criticism and doubts of their childs competency, and less warmth/positive affect relative to parents without SAD. This investigation supports the hypothesis that anxiety-promoting parenting behaviors may vary depending on parental diagnosis, and highlights an important area for prevention and intervention. Further investigation into the relationship between parental anxiety, parenting behaviors, and the development of childhood anxiety over time is warranted.This study was supported by grants from the National Institute of Mental Health (K23MH63427 and R01MH077312) awarded to Golda S. Ginsburg, PhD.The source: What Causes Social Anxiety? - Overcoming Social Anxiety and ShynessPersonally shyness ruined most of my twenties. What made a difference for me (finally) was a real structure to learning to overcome it - not just random advice: From Lonely to Social Life in 27 Days

Since I was a2a, I wrote this:Judicial Discernment of Parental Alienation: An Essay for the Staff of Justice for ChildrenD. L. Robb, Ph.D.This paper will discuss observations concerning judicial decision-making, specifically as affecting court orders regarding custody of minor children based on the assumption of parental coaching leading to parental alienation (PA), and the associated Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS). Empirical evaluation of PA and PAS have indicated a lack of support. Factors considered are the psychological susceptibility of minors, false memory, expert forensic evaluation (generally involving interview by a qualified professional not associated with counseling of that minor), and a review of the professional literature on the difficulties with truth detection and/or a layman’s interpretation of perceived behavior; thus, potentially leading to a determination of facts not in evidence (i.e., evaluation of a child’s testimony as coached).A publication of the American Bar Association (ABA) indicated that research has questioned the validity of PA and PAS:PAS as developed and purveyed by Richard Gardner has neither a logical nor a scientific basis. It is rejected by responsible social scientists and lacks solid grounding in psychological theory or research. PA, although more refined in its understanding of child-parent difficulties, entails intrusive, coercive, unsubstantiated remedies of its own. Lawyers, judges, and mental health professionals who deal with child custody issues should think carefully and respond judiciously when claims based on either theory are advanced (Bruch, 2001, p. 550).The same ABA journal described the conceptualization of PA and PAS, to include identification of the three elements of PAS, and summarized the research negating these concepts (Johnston, 2005):The first (element) is a child who exhibits obsessive hatred of a target parent (an animosity that often extends to the parent's extended family); makes weak, frivolous and absurd complaints; justifies the stance by quoting "borrowed scenarios"; and lacks any ambivalence or guilt toward the hated parent. The second component is a vindictive parent who is involved in consciously or unconsciously brain washing the child into this indoctrinated stance; and the third component is false allegations of abuse that are generated by alienating parent and child.The main problem is that PAS focuses almost exclusively on the alienating parent as the etiological agent of the child's alienation … : an alienated child (who is supposedly distinct from an abused child) has by definition a brainwashing parent; hence if a child is alienated, then a brainwashing parent exists and is the sole cause … (; this view) is overly simplistic and not supported by available data. Indeed, our research shows that the problem of children's rejection of a parent is a family system's pathology exacerbated by an adversarial legal system, and not an individual psychiatric disorder. … Hence the label "PAS" does not add any information that would enlighten the court, the clinician, or their clients, all of whom would be better served by a more specific description of the child's behavior in the context of his family. Until recently, all of this controversy and debate occurred in the virtual absence of empirical support for the reliable identification of PAS as a diagnostic identity. …Until recently, all of this controversy and debate occurred in the virtual absence of empirical support for the reliable identification of PAS as a diagnostic identity. Rather, the evidence for PAS was largely based on Gardner's (and other proponents') anecdotal clinical experience. …We formulated a new conceptualization of the alienated child that we believe is more useful than PAS, developed hypotheses about the factors that are its causes and correlates, and distinguished it from developmentally normative reactions and from realistic responses to abusive and neglectful parenting. In addition, we examined the admissibility of expert testimony about PAS in court, assessment of alienation, case management issues, and therapeutic interventions. …This new formulation focuses on the "alienated child" rather than "parental alienation." An alienated child is defined as one who expresses, freely and persistently, unreasonable negative feelings and beliefs (such as anger, hatred, rejection and/or fear) toward a parent that are significantly disproportionate to the child's actual experience with that parent. Entrenched alienated children are marked by unambivalent, strident rejection of the parent with no apparent guilt or conflict. Early precursors of alienation include complaints and expressions of dislike along with resistance and lack of pleasure in visiting the target parent, together with role reversal and separation anxieties from the preferred parent. From this viewpoint, the pernicious behaviors of a "programming" parent are no longer assumed to be the starting point. Rather, the problem of the alienated child begins with a primary, neutral, and objective focus on the child, his or her observable behaviors, and parent-child relationships. Too often in divorce situations all youngsters resisting visits with a parent are improperly labeled "alienated" and too frequently parents who question the value of visitation in these situations are labeled "alienating parents." We argue that it is important to differentiate alienated children (who persistently refuse visitation and stridently express unrealistic negative views and feelings) from other children who also resist contact with a parent after separation but for a variety of expectable reasons, including normal developmental preferences for one parent, alignments that are reactions to the specific circumstances of the divorce, and estrangement from a parent who has been neglectful or abusive. Each of these will be briefly described. There are many components that make up a child's preference for one parent over the other in more normal family circumstances. Normal developmentally expectable reasons include the child's familiarity and comfort with a primary caretaker who provides "good-enough" care; separation anxieties at times of transitions for a preschool child; gender identification and affinity in interests with one parent; and means-oriented alliances with a parent who offers the best goodies, or makes fewer demands. Divorce-specific reasons for children, especially young adolescents, to make an alignment with one parent and potentially reject the other include: anger and hurt at the parent's decision to divorce and manner of leaving the family; moral indignation at the parent's behavior; worry and sympathy for the left-behind parent; and untenable loyalty conflicts and guilt that make the choice a relief. Disruptions to their school and peer activities, boredom visiting a parent, jealousy and resentment about the involvement of new partners and step siblings also can contribute to their negativity. Other reasons that certainly justify the child developing strong negative feelings and convictions about a parent include neglectful, endangering, and/or abusive parenting, witness to family violence, and parental abandonment. We view these children as being realistically "estranged" from one of their parents as a consequence of the rejected parent's history of family violence, abuse and neglect. This phenomenon needs to be clearly distinguished from alienated children. Estranged children may look like alienated children in that they can present with a mix of intense anger towards the abusive parent and fear of retaliation that can induce phobic reactions to that parent. (763)In our reformulation of the alienated child, we have proposed that multiple factors contribute to children's rejection of a parent including a history of intense marital conflict; a humiliating separation or custody dis position, the psychological vulnerability of both parents; the child's age, cognitive capacity and temperament; the influence of siblings, new partners and extended family; and an adversarial litigation process where powerful professionals are seen as allies or enemies. …Is it an alienating coparent (the PAS perspective)? Is it substantiated child abuse by the rejected parent (the family violence perspective)? Is it the child's role reversal and psychological enmeshment with the aligned parent (the family structure perspective)? Is it all of the above factors jointly (the multifactor perspective)? The findings were that substantiated child abuse occurred in about 15% of the sample, with both mothers and fathers likely to be perpetrators. Forty percent of fathers and 15% of mothers had perpetrated domestic violence. Whereas alienating behavior by both parents in this high-conflict custody-litigating sample was the norm, only about one fifth of the children had rejected a parent. Children were slightly more likely to reject their fathers than their mothers. …In contrast to PAS theory that views the indoctrinating parent as the principal player in the child's alienation, this study also found that children's rejection of a parent had multiple determinants with both the aligned parent and the rejected parent implicated in the problem, in addition to vulnerabilities within children themselves. Indeed, mothers who used their children for their own emotional support and acted in ways to sabotage their child's relationship with the other parent clearly contributed to the child's rejection of the father. However, in addition, lack of warmth, involvement, and competence in parenting by the rejected parent (whether mother or father) were strongly predictive of the child's rejection of that parent. Other factors that influenced children's rejection of a parent indirectly were prolonged custody litigation and the child's own attributes: older children and those who were more emotionally troubled and less socially competent were more aligned with one parent against the other.In light of multiple factors that could be contributing to the problem of the child's rejection of a parent, the dangers of misidentification are great and there is a need for well-trained forensic mental health experts to undertake assessments and make these distinctions. Only then can one begin to address the question of whether the child needs to have a relationship with both parents. A wide range of parenting capacities are possible (in both aligned and rejected parent) in any particular case, ranging from frankly abusive, to poor or marginal parenting, to adequate, to good or even very good. One needs to ask what each parent can contribute to the child and not reflexively assume that both parents are necessary, nor that one parent can be discarded. This is a child-centered and not a parental-rights approach. Indeed, a risk-benefit assessment needs to be made about the advisability of contact. Some of the benefits in having the rejected parent involved may include: sharing different perspectives on the world; promoting the critical sense of being important and unconditionally loved; providing the child a sense of his origins and identity, these being important components of self-esteem; maintaining continuity of a prior relationship that would be grieved if it were truly lost; consolidating the child's gender identity by validation from the same and opposite sexed parent; repairing a distorted relationship by preventing unrealistic idealization or de-idealization; and enhancing the child's coping capacities rather than allowing him to avoid or run away from a difficult situation. …These potential benefits need to be weighed against the risks of insisting on contact, including: the child remaining in the center of the parental conflict, subject to untenable loyalty binds and the continuing pressure of litigation; exposure to witnessing further abuse between parents; and being subject to unreliable contact with a parent who intermittently abandons the child because of frustration with the situation or preoccupation with his or her own interests. Not least is the risk of the child feeling overwhelmingly helpless, unheard, not believed, and dismissed as being no more than a puppet of the other parent when she expresses strong feelings and fears about access.As much as the scientist cannot interfere with the judicial decision makers’ area of competence, the juridical decision-maker cannot interfere with the process leading to the expert witness testimony, especially its content. The focus, Justice Blackmun remarks, “must be solely on principles and methodology, not on the conclusions that they generate.” As long as these decision structures are a function of valid scientific methods, they cannot per se be rejected or disregarded. Scientific conclusions cannot, however, anticipate ultimate issues, i.e., elements of the respective offense to be proved, let alone the verdict as such (pp. 759-767).The following legal conclusions were proposed in an article in Children’s Legal Rights Journal:As a legal matter, PAS’s inadmissibility is appropriate given its lack of scientific validity and reliability. As a policy matter, its inadmissibility is appropriate given its structural roots in an unsubstantiated patriarchical theory that advocates for child sex offenders’ access to their victims. The continued misrepresentation of PAS’s scientific and legal status by its proponents, including proponents’ deliberate circumvention of legal gate-keeping by testifying about PAS under other names, should place legal professionals on alert for continued attempts to bring this unsubstantiated hypothesis into American courts.PAS’s twenty-year run in American courts is an embarrassing chapter in the history of evidentiary law. It reflects the wholesale failure of legal professionals entrusted with evidentiary gatekeeping intended to guard legal processes from the taint of pseudo-science. Courts entrusted with divorce, custody, and child abuse cases may have found PAS attractive because it claimed to reduce these complex, time-consuming, and wrenching evidentiary investigations to medical diagnoses. … (However,) the answers to this complex question will likely be found in empirically proven science in the fields of psychology and developmental biology, not in unsubstantiated hypotheses grounded in theories that violate public policy.Two decades after Gardner first described PAS, an analysis of the materials he cited in support of PAS’s existence demonstrates that PAS remains merely an ipse dixit. As a matter of science, law, and policy PAS is, and should remain, inadmissible in American courts. (Hoult, 2006, p. 22)Biedermann and Kotsoglou (2018), speaking from a psychological perspective, discussed the intricate relationship between forensic science and legal adjudication; given the obligation of judicial fact-finders to assess facts, behaviors, and testimony, at what point should questions of validity of perceptions be best addressed by forensic experts.While rationality is widely upheld as one of the aspirations of the legal process across many modern jurisdictions, a pending question is how to remedy the uneasy relationship between general propositions (and knowledge claims) conditioning expert witness testimony, and individualized decisions taken by fact-finders. …Traditionally, forensic science is regarded as a collection of applied scientific methods and techniques for the purpose of assisting the judiciary in specialized matters where it lacks relevant knowledge and expertise. …A decision-making process in which the fact-finder does not properly understand the nature (e.g., statistical) and empirical content of evidence would be arbitrary and have deleterious effects for the public confidence in the integrity and accuracy of the legal system. …As much as the scientist cannot interfere with the judicial decision makers’ area of competence, the juridical decision-maker cannot interfere with the process leading to the expert witness testimony, especially its content. The focus, Justice Blackmun remarks, “must be solely on principles and methodology, not on the conclusions that they generate.” As long as these decision structures are a function of valid scientific methods, they cannot per se be rejected or disregarded. Scientific conclusions cannot, however, anticipate ultimate issues, i.e., elements of the respective offense to be proved, let alone the verdict as such (pp. 1-11).With regard to the question as to the viability of detecting deceit (analogous to coached answers of a minor in family court), the short answer is that more than likely, or at least at no better than at the rate of chance, one cannot detect a lie from the truth. Ekman, after spending more than 20 years researching lying, indicated that “there is no sign of deceit itself—no gesture, facial expression, or muscle twitch that in and of itself means that a person is lying” (2009, p. 80), and a practiced liar fools “most of the people most of the time” (p. 162). Although there may be clues of inconsistency in statements and emotion, misinterpretation of those clues by those not sufficiently knowledgeable is probable. Ekman indicated that the common practice of evaluating words and facial expressions is unreliable and misleading. Moreover, we are fairly ignorant of our own facial expressions; which may or may not provide clues as to deception.Vrij (2008), having studied and written extensively on the forensic psychological aspects of lying, and served as the editor of Legal and Criminological Psychology, indicated that his work confirmed the indications that people tend to overestimate their ability to detect lying, and underestimate their ability to lie.Vrij conducted a review of the available research and concluded that professionals, to include criminal justice personnel, frequently fail to detect lies. Ekman also reported that professional criminal justice and intelligence personnel scored no better than chance in empirical studies of lie detection.Vrij identified three theoretical cues indicating deception: Emotion, cognitive effort, and attempted behavioral control. Guilt and fear may elicit physiological arousal and display of visual cues. The cognitive effort needed to sustain lying tends to deteriorate over a sustained period, due to having to remember false statements, and tend to lead to suppression of physical arousal. However, as Ekman indicated, fear of disbelief can create the same reactions.There is also the question of false information being provided, when the questioned individual believes what they are saying is true. There is the potential for false memories, implanted by others and/or generated within the individual; and conscious recollection is partially illusory, with subconscious mental constructions being the other constituent. “Internally generated activity is modulated by sensory input (perception). … What we call normal perception does not really differ from hallucinations, except that the latter are not anchored by external input” (Eagleman, pp. 44-46).Confabulation, the filling of memory gaps, occurs subconsciously within the subject. Our perceptions are often wrong due to the manner of operation of the central and peripheral nervous systems, in that substance is subject to loss or gain of detail during transition and disambiguation in all sensory perceptions. This process is labeled amodal perception, the inference of the presence of an object or fact situation based on partial sensory perception of some fraction of the whole, including faulty recall of information (Eagleman, 2011; Nanay, 2009).The logical conclusion seems to be that we must at times rely on others for information based on their expertise; moreover, many times independent corroboration of that information is needed in order to accept what is said as true; or of equal importance, to disprove a statement, as in rejection of the testimony of a minor due to a presumption of that child having been coached.According to neuropsychologist Dr. David Eagleman, who directed the Laboratory for Perception and Action and the Initiative on Neuroscience and Law, Baylor College of Medicine, is a Guggenheim fellow, and heads the Center for Science and Law, a national non-profit institute, “the first lesson about trusting your senses is: don’t. Just because you believe something to be true, just because you know it’s true, that doesn’t mean it is true” (p. 53).“And generally let every student of nature take this as a rule: that whatever his mind seizes and dwells upon with peculiar satisfaction is to be held in suspicion, and that so much the more care is to be taken dealing with such questions to keep the understanding even and clear.” Francis Bacon, 1561-1626, The New Organon, Aphorisms - Book One, LVIIIReferences:Biedermann, A., & Kotsoglou, K. N. (2018, October 31). Decisional Dimensions in Expert Witness Testimony – A Structural Analysis. Frontiers in Psychology. 9:2073. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02073.Bruch, C. S. (2001, Fall). Parental Alienation Syndrome and Parental Alienation: Getting It Wrong in Child Custody Case. Family Law Quarterly, 35(3), 527-552.Eagleman, D. (2011). Incognito: The secret lives of the brain. New York: Pantheon Books.Ekman, P. (2009). Telling lies: Clues to deceit in the marketplace, politics, and marriage. New York: Norton.Hoult, J. (2006, Spring). The Evidentiary Admissibility of Parental Alienation Syndrome: Science, Law, and Policy. Children’s Legal Rights Journal, 26(1), 1-61.Johnston, J. R. (2005, Winter). Children of divorce who reject a parent and refuse visitation: Recent research and social policy implications for the alienated child. Family Law Quarterly, 38(4), 757-775; Retrieved from: https://www.jstor.org/stable/25758265Nanay, B. (2009). Four theories of amodal perception. In: Proceedings of the 29th Annual Conference of the Cognitive Science Society (CogSci 2007) (pp. 1331-1336).Vrij, A. (2008). Detecting lies and deceit: Pitfalls and opportunities (2nd ed.). Chichester, England: John Wiley & Sons, Inc. Related references in my library: Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. (2014). Analyzing written statements for deception and fraud. Austin, TX: Author.About the author:Daniel L. Robb holds a Ph.D. in Human Services, specializing in Criminal Justice, Walden University (Public Service Fellow); and a Graduate Certificate in Forensic Psychology, Chicago School of Professional PsychologyLicensing & Certification (past): Academy of Behavioral Profiling, Criminal Profiling; Hare & Associates, Psychopathy Checklist-Revised Training Program; Texas Commission on Law Enforcement: Peace Officer & Investigative Hypnosis; Texas Department of Public Safety: Private Investigation, Personal Protection Officer; Child Exploitation Investigation Coordinator; American Professional Society on the Abuse of Children, Child Forensic Interview ClinicPublished Articles: Journal of Cold Case Review ([JCCR] American Investigative Society of Cold Cases [AISOCC]): Investigative Hypnosis in Texas; Assertive Questioning in Psychopathy Assessment Interview and Correlates with False Confession: A Review of Professional Guidance for Law Enforcement Interrogation and Psychiatric and Psychological Interview; Other papers published online: https://waldenu.academia.edu/DanRobbPresentations: Texas Association for Investigative Hypnosis, Eyewitness Identification, Criminal Profiling & AISOCC Overview; Texas Association of Licensed Investigators Region 3, NCMEC Overview; Houston Police Department, Positive Interaction Program, National Center for Missing & Exploited Children (NCMEC) Overview; Louisiana Juvenile Officers Association Training, NCMEC Overview & Child MolestationVolunteer Affiliations, Current: Representative, Project ALERT (America’s Law Enforcement Retiree Team), NCMEC; Auxiliary to Texas Children’s Hospital, volunteer, past president and board member; American Investigative Society on Cold Cases (Behavioral Consulting Committee, Educational Conference Chair, Editor JCCR); Justice for Children. Prior: Texas Department of Family and Protective Services, Special Investigations (consultant); Innocence Project of Texas (consultant)Adjunct Professor: American Public University System: graduate level Organized Crime & Criminal ProfilingSpecial Agent, Retired, Department of Homeland Security: (formerly U.S. Customs), Child Exploitation Investigation Coordinator; Regional Coordinator, Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force; Acting Customs Attaché, Panama; Acting Resident Agent in Charge, Galveston; Program Manager, Joint Drug Intelligence Group; Southwest Regional Program Manager, Office of Internal Affairs; conducted international investigations, participated in and led protection detail for Customs Commissioner; collateral duties: firearms & defensive tactics instructor, fitness coordinator, tactical team member & trainer; Certificate of Appreciation, Director, Federal Bureau of Investigation; International Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association Medal of Valor; Federal Law Enforcement Officers Association Bravery AwardSpecial Agent, Naval Investigative Service: (now Naval Criminal Investigative Service); criminal, counterintelligence, & physical/technical security investigations, collateral duties: firearms & defensive tactics instructor, two homicide investigation commendations, Central Intelligence Agency TSCM certification, final: supervisory special agentU.S. Marine Corps: Enlisted and officer ranks, Vietnam Service and Campaign Medals, Combat Action Ribbon, Humanitarian Service Medal, primarily Military Police; final: Captain, USMCR