Call To Action

January 2018: Call to Action

Please watch this video.

Here are three easy things that YOU can do right NOW

to help end family court trauma!

1. Sign Dr. Childress’ petition to the American Psychological Association (APA). 

The Petition to the APA is on Change.org.

2. Support Ginger Gentile’s Documentary Erasing Family.

Tomorrow, January 10th,  add the frame #erased to your profile picture on facebook--it's easy.

1. Go to Erased Family Facebook and “like” their page.
2. Go to your facebook and click on “update profile picture,” and frames will come up.
3. Select the frame #erased.

3. Support House Resolution 443. 

Here is a summary of the bill:

HR 443 recognizes the importance, effectiveness, and need for trauma-informed care among existing federal programs and agencies. (Trauma-informed care takes into account a patient's history of trauma in the design of the patient's treatment.) Encourages the use of trauma-informed care within the federal government.

Expresses support for the designation of National Trauma Awareness Month and National Trauma-Informed Awareness Day.

Here is what to do:

Call, write, email or visit your state representative in Congress (your opinion will probably be taken by an aid who will relay whatever you tell him or her).  They are paid to listen and relay you message.  Tell them how law enforcement, child protective services and/or family court has ripped apart the bonds between you and your children because they are not trauma informed. 

Believe me, they will listen!   The aid that I talked to has a degree in psychology and worked at a psychiatric hospital!  She was very empathetic and understanding.  

If family court and/or child protective services become trauma-informed, it would end the nightmare!

OR

Contact Congressman Mike Gallagher from Wisconsin and Congressman Danny Davis from Illinois at 202-224-3121.  Thank them for co-sponsoring the bill.  Be sure to tell them where you are from.

Currently 14 Representatives from 9 states have signed on as co-sponsors for this bill.  If you are from on of these states please call the representative and thank them for co-sponsoring this bill.  If you are from another state, please call your representative and urge them to sponsor this bill.

• Rep. Davis, Danny K. [D-IL-7]*,
• Rep. Duffy, Sean P. [R-WI-7]
• Rep. Napolitano, Grace F. [D-CA-32]
• Rep. Kind, Ron [D-WI-3]
• Rep. Grothman, Glenn [R-WI-6]
• Rep. Sensenbrenner, F. James, Jr. [R-WI-5]
• Rep. Pocan, Mark [D-WI-2]
• Rep. Moore, Gwen [D-WI-4]
• Rep. Bacon, Don [R-NE-2]
• Rep. Kelly, Trent [R-MS-1]
• Rep. Comstock, Barbara [R-VA-10]
• Rep. Hanabusa, Colleen [D-HI-1]
• Rep. Love, Mia B. [R-UT-4]
• Rep. Delaney, John K. [D-MD-6]

Boom! Your Done!

I thank you, we thank you, our children thank you!

Lead, Follow or Get Out of the Way

I'm sorry this isn't a video blog, but my house is getting new windows and it's 90 degrees ( feels like 120 with the humidity) and I'm self conscious enough,  thank you. 

But there are many experts that we need to be listening to and one of them is Nadine Burke.  In this widely popular TED talk, Dr. Burke a pediatrician and public health expert,  describes the staggering "big picture" of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs).   She represents just one of the professional domains who are quickly coming on board with the trauma-informed movement. 

ACEs and the Trauma informed movement is not a fad.  It is a paradigm shift in the way we address the toxic environments our children are being raised in.  This is a national scientific, child centered paradigm shift, not something we need the from the American Psychological Association (who didn't discuss our petition at their board meeting).  This movement dwarfs our petition and the APA.

Targeted parents are the perfect ambassadors to carry this movement into every community in America.  We are trauma survivors(or recovering)  and soon to be trauma informed.   As a brief and powerful introduction to the mission that awaits us, please watch "How Adverse Childhood Experiences Affect Children Over Their Lifespan".   And as you do, keep in mind that our children have ACE scores of 7-8+: highlighting for everyone to see, that our children are at the GREATEST RISK for mental health and physical problems. 

We are working hard on developing the very best presentation for targeted parents to take into their children's school system.  Partnering with educators is the fastest way to move this battleship.  While the APA is "discussing" what to do, we will be doing it. 

They can lead, follow or get out of our way.

(did I say that out loud?)

For Far Too Long...

 For far too long we were isolated and alone.   For decades, narcissistic parents tore the souls out of our innocent children that they called their sons and daughters, as if they had the right.  Slowly they bled the life out of their happy and healthy partners, as if they had the right.  No one believed that a person would terrify their own children into complete submission and use them as decoys and weapons to hurt the person who had pledged them their love.   Pure trauma engulfed the American dream and crushed our spirits aided by the mental health and legal systems.  Friends, family members, neighbors and bystanders chose to ignore or even profit from our pain and torture.  We remained isolated and alone, for far too long.

Last October, a few isolated targeted parents banded together on a hope and a prayer over the Internet.  Together, we faced the hard facts.  First, we accepted that we had loved, trusted, married and had a family with someone who never had the capacity to care about anyone but themselves.  We were not unlovable, as they tried and sometimes succeeded to convince us; they could NOT love.   Second, we acknowledged that no one else was going to care enough about the health and future of our children to actually DO anything to help us.  Child protective services just whined about caseloads.  Law enforcement didn’t enforce the laws.  Mental health professionals couldn’t recognize trauma, child psychological abuse or narcissistic patterns of behaviors and misdiagnosed us as the problem.  Guardian ad litems were insecure, arrogant and uniformed.  Getting to the truth, was too much work for what they were being paid.  And Family Courts felt entitled to ignore state statutes, roll their eyes at our constitutional rights and punish us if we protested their misconduct or questioned their mistaken assumptions. Third, we decided that awareness and education had gotten nowhere and needed to be replaced by action.  We; you and I were exactly where we needed to be at exactly the right time.  We decided that this horror had to end.

None of us had any money or extra time to devote to the “good of the order,” but we had to start DOING something.  Three months after a pretty shaky start, the National Alliance For Targeted Parents launched a petition to the APA demanding that they formally acknowledge that the pathology of “parental alienation” is tragically real.  We didn’t care what they called it or who took credit for labeling it, we were done arguing a mute point in the face of our children’s demise.   It was time for America to recognize that narcissistic parents were  psychologically/emotionally abusing and neglecting their children to reject the other fit and emotionally available parent.   The American Psychological Association(APA) was the avenue to acknowledge us as a special population and assert the need for protective separation between our children and the abusive parent.

It's a sad commentary that we are surprised and feel grateful to the APA for taking a strong, visible lead.  At our request, the APA is moving forward to validate and address our family crisis by establishing a conference/team of experts in attachment theory, personality disorder pathology, trauma, and family systems.  The goal is a short and intense conference to produce a white paper on the pathology of “parental alienation.”  Our request for a conference of experts has only one more committee to hurdle before it can be presented to American Psychological Association’s Board of Directors for consideration. 

Concurrent with this movement, the web page that contained the APA's position statement on "Parental Alienation Syndrome" was removed.  Although we haven’t heard why it was taken down, this actionis extremely significant.

 For over a decade, the published position statement has fueled a false adversarial relationship with our natural and common allies in domestic violence and stalled progress.

2008 Statement on Parental Alienation Syndrome

The American Psychological Association (APA) believes that all mental health practitioners as well as law enforcement officials and the courts must take any reports of domestic violence in divorce and child custody cases seriously. An APA 1996 Presidential Task Force on Violence and the Family noted the lack of data to support so-called "parental alienation syndrome", and raised concern about the term's use. However, we have no official position on the purported syndrome.

What is becoming abundantly clear is that narcissistic abusers have stayed under the radar by NOT battering with their fists.  My ex-partner would shame me and insist that he never abused the children or me because he never “touched” us.  And the fact that society focuses almost exclusively on physical and sexual violence leaves narcissistic-abusers free to savagely assault their ex-partners and children without ever being held accountable. 

This is about to change!

If you haven’t had the chance yet to join us as an official member of the National Alliance for Targeted Parents, please fill in your name and email at the bottom of this page.  You are no longer isolated or alone.  Join us as we save our children, save the next generation, and save this nation!

APA Responds With Respect and Enthusiasm

We were delighted to receive a confirmation from the American Psychological Association's (APA) Committee on Children, Youth & Families (CYF) that our petition had their full attention.  What really made me smile was that they immediately realized that the crisis we experience day and night can not be handled by their committee alone.  CYF bumped our petition up to their parent board, The Board on the Advancement of Psychology in the Public Interest (BAPPI), who determined that our petition has strong practice implications.  And indeed it does!

 BAPPI is considering forming a joint working group with the Practice Directorate but there are others who need to be represented on the work group in order to get all the pieces together.  The following diagram is not perfectly accurate, but illustrates how fragmented and complex our issue is.  However it also illustrates the power of collaboration, which is highly valued by the APA.

The NATP is not a polished, well-funded lobbying organization, or celebrities or even folks with any clout or influence.  On the contrary; we are parents who have been abused, tormented, marginalized and re-victimized by every system in place that claims to advocate for the best interest of children and families.  Even so, we never stopped trying to find a way to protect our children from our narcissistic/borderline ex-partners who have caused so much pain and suffering.  

Now, for the first time in the history of this nationwide travesty, one of the world’s most powerful organizations, the APA has heard our collective voice and responded swiftly with respect and compassion.  

Chills just ran down my spine as I re-read that last sentence.  I know this means that we are just at the starting gate, but my dear long suffering and heroic targeted parents, we are

AT the starting gate

and it’s only April.

We didn't start this war on families in American, but we will finish it. We still need to get as many of us in one place as possible, so PLEASE Join Us!  Submit you name and email in the red and black box at the bottom of this or any page of our website www.targetedparent.com.