Imagine you have a teenage son.

It's Sunday afternoon and you have an argument. Maybe you've told him he can't go out because he hasn't done something he was supposed to do. He pushes back. You get frustrated. Your voice gets louder. He says something disrespectful. You say something you regret.

It isn't your finest parenting moment.

If you were still living together as a family, that argument would probably be followed by...

MONDAY
You might both still be angry at breakfast. He barely speaks to you. You drive to school in silence.

TUESDAY
You ask how training went. You get a one-word answer. He still thinks you are a complete jerk.

WEDNESDAY
You knock on his bedroom door and say, “Look, I shouldn't have shouted at you on Sunday. I was angry, but I shouldn't have spoken to you like that.”

He breifly makes eye contact and shrugs. You feel the stalemate thawing.

THURSDAY
Driving home something makes you both genuinely laugh. The tension is gone.

Nobody sits down and announces that the relationship has been repaired. It repairs because you keep having a relationship.

And your son learns something important about relationships in the process: Dad can get things wrong. Dad can apologise. People who love each can disagree. And none of those things mean the relationship has to end.

But when you are a separated dad, there may be no Monday.

Except this time, at 5pm, you take your son back to his mother's house.

He is furious with you.

He tells Mum what happened and says angrily:

“I'm not going back to Dad's.”

Maybe he doesn't go the following weekend. He's still upset, so Mum says he can stay home this time.

Then you call and he doesn't want to answer. The longer he leaves it, the harder it feels to answer. You send messages asking what's going on, which he doesn't know how to respond to.

Another weekend comes around.

Going back now means facing what happened and probably having a conversation he doesn't want to have.

So he doesn't go again.

Without making a conscious decision, he's backed himself into a corner that becomes harder and harder to get out of.

Each missed visit makes the next visit harder. Each unanswered message makes the next conversation more awkward.

What began as:

“I don't want to see Dad this weekend”

can slowly become:

“I don't want to see Dad.”

And eventually, not seeing Dad becomes the new normal.

While you are left hanging, he's trying to make sense of it all within himself. What started as a normal, childish response to boundries being enforced, has become 'a position'.  

One he has to explain to others; to grandparents, teachers, coaches.

And the harder it becomes to say:

“Actually, I think I want to see Dad.”

Refusing time with you is easier for him to deal with than the thought of having to explain his change of mind to one sidem and confronting you on the other. 

This is how your child can become entrenched in a position he never consciously decided, and certainly had no concept of where it might end up.

The tragedy is, that as a separated Dad, you no longer have the opportunities you would once have had to repair the relationship.

You can't show him through a hundred ordinary interactions that Sunday's argument was one bad moment in a relationship containing thousands of good ones.

You can't even discipline or enforce boundaries, in the usual way, because the entire learning arc of life lesson has to fit into a scheduled weekend visit.  

In an intact family, giving everyone a little time to cool down can make sense. You know you will see each other at breakfast, in the car or after school. 

After separation, particularly if your child is about to return to the other parent's home, you may not get that opportunity.

So, if something has gone badly between you and your child, don't assume you'll be able to sort it out later; you need to address it right away.

You don't need a lengthy discussion. It might simply be:

“I shouldn't have yelled at you before. I didn't handle that well. I'm sorry.”

Dont expect them to appologise. Or even to accept your apology. They just need to know that the relationship is secure.

Or even just acknowledging what happened creates an opening for healing:

“I know you're upset. We don't have to sort it all out right now, but I love you and we'll work through it.”

The important thing is not to let anger, or the need to enforce 'rules', turn into something bigger.

Because as a separated dad, the sad fact is that you may not have that next week to repair what happened.

The danger isn't necessarily that something went wrong between you and your child.

The danger is that separation can remove the ordinary opportunities you would once have had to work through it.

So is this Parental Alienation?

From your side, it may seem obvious that his mother is influencing him and that “parental alienation” is happening.

And if your ex is less than perfect, she may well be making things worse.

She may be reinforcing his decision, validating his anger or simply doing nothing to encourage him to return. But it doesn't mean she is intentionally trying to divide you.

Blaming the other parent can be easier than considering whether something you did has contributed to the fracture. That can be difficult to acknowldge, but it is actually a good thing.

You see, you have very little control over what your ex thinks, says or does. And proving she is responsible will not get you closer to your child.

That doesn't mean accepting blame for things you didn't do or pretending your ex's behaviour doesn't matter.

It means being willing to ask: “What can I do?”

Looking at part you played is harder, but it gives you somewhere to start.

Conflict isn't necessarily the problem. The inability to repair conflict is.

Children don't learn how relationships work because their parents never get things wrong.

They learn because they experience what happens after things go wrong.

They see someone lose their temper and apologise. They learn that you can be angry with someone and still love them. They discover that someone can disappoint you without becoming a bad person. They learn that disagreements don't have to mean the end of a relationship.

Sometimes they also learn that an apology doesn't magically make everything okay. You can still be hurt. You can still disagree. But you get up the next morning and the relationship continues.

That is repair.

And it is an important part of learning how relationships work.

When, due to a separated family, a child is able to cut themselves off entirly from a parent after conflict, they lose the opportunity to experience repair.

When this is the the lesson the child learns about confilict is very different. They learn that when a relationship feels uncomfortable, challenging or difficult, you leave it.

They may have lost an important opportunity to learn something within one of the most significant relationships of their childhood:

That people can get it wrong and still find their way back to each other.

That is why the argument on Sunday isn't necessarily the important thing. 

The important thing is whether there gets to be a Monday.

What if there hasn't been any issues between you and your child?

Instead, your child might witnessed an incident between you and their mother.

Coparenting can bring a whole new and unexpected set of challenges, and any dealing with your ex, particulary in front of the children, must be handled with the care of a bomb detonator.

Maybe there was an argument at changeover. Maybe your ex demanded an answer or made an accusation and you lost your temper. Maybe she was yelling and you were trying to leave. Maybe you were the one being attacked.

But your child may experience the same incident very differently.

As an adult, you can understand context and nuance. You know there may be two very different versions of what happened. You can think about who started it, what led up to it and whether your reaction was reasonable.

Your child may not be able to make sense of all of that. They may simply remember:

Dad was yelling. Mum was crying. I was frightened.

For some children, particularly sensitive ones, witnessing intense conflict between their parents is too much to process. Avoiding one parent can become the easiest way to avoid having to deal with complicated and uncomfortable feelings.

And afterward, the thought of returning to Dad may start to feel harder. Will there be questions? Will Dad want them to admit Mum was wrong? 

A child who is already struggling to make sense of a complex event may find it much easier to keep avoiding Dad than to deal with all of those messy emotions.

It doesn't necessarily mean they have decided that Dad is a bad or wrong. It may just mean that they are not up to dealing with processing the whole thing. 

And that is a position that can easily become entrenched. It can be exploited by a resentful ex. And it can be misunderstood by well-meaning extended family.

Sometimes there was no incident at all

There was no big argument with the child. No incident at changeover. No obvious reason that explains why a previously close relationship has changed.

But suddenly it has.

In situation like this, it may be that the child has been absorbing the emotions between their parents through hundreds of small interactions.

It might be the expression on Mum's face when Dad's name is mentioned. Or you becoming tense when a message from Mum arrives. A sarcastic comment here, a rolled eye there. Questions when they return from the other parent's house. Overheard conversations with grandparents or friends.

Sometimes it is what isn't said. People communicate through far more than words.

A child says, “We had such a good time at Dad's,” and Mum goes quiet.

Or the child tells you something Mum did and your face change.

Neither parent has said anything against the other parent but the child has still received a message.

Over time, the child starts monitoring what they say about one parent in front of the other.

They may avoid mentioning that they enjoyed themselves. They may feel uncomfortable showing affection at changeover. They may start worrying about how one parent will react to something involving the other.

Nobody has necessarily asked the child to choose sides. But the child starts to feel as though there are sides.

Maybe the child being angry with Dad sits comfortably in Mum's house. Or if he talks positively about Dad it creates tension. Maybe refusing Dad's weekend brings him sympathy and reassurance, and saying “Actually, I want to go” feels somehow disloyal.

And if you are not your ex's favourite person, then none of this is even deliberate - it's an emotionally secure person who can put aside their own resentment, plaster on a big smile and enjoy their child's blind admiration of a man they know is flawed.

And while all this is happening to your child, it's happening to you too

Yesterday, you were Dad.

You knew what your son was doing at school. Your drove him to football. You complained about the state of his bedroom. Your knew what was worrying him and what he wanted for his birthday.

Suddenly, you know almost nothing about your child's life.

The school term starts and you don't know how it went. Birthdays and Christmases pass. You get snippets of information second-hand. Your child may live twenty minutes away but it may as well be the other side of the world.

And this isn't a loss where you are really allowed to grieve. You don't get to mourn. Friends and family may not know what to say, so eventually they stop asking about the children. You may feel guilty. Somehow implicated. And you sure as hell feel angry.

That combination of grief, fear and anger can drive you towards the very behaviour that makes things worse.

The repeated texts. The demands for an explanation. The anger at Mum. The desperate attempts to prove what really happened. The “after everything I've done for you” — or worse — text sent at midnight.

None of that means you don't care about your child. It usually means you are terrified that you are losing them and have no idea how to stop it.

But your child can't carry that fear for you.

They can't be responsible for reassuring you, relieving your grief or coming back because they feel guilty about what you're going through.

As desperately unfair as it feels, you have to find somewhere else to put the anger and the grief, so that when your child looks back towards you, they have somewhere safe to return to.

When do you need legal help?

If your child is refusing to see you, you may be completely bewildered. And if you believe your ex is encouraging it, you may feel as though you are being expected to stay calm while somebody dismantles your relationship with your child.

This is often when fathers approach us at Full Circle Legal, looking for a legal solution.

And sometimes legal intervention is necessary. If your child won't communicate with you at all, or the other parent is preventing contact, your options may already be much more limited.

Legal proceedings or therapeutic intervention can create opportunities for contact to resume. If parenting arrangements cannot be agreed, the Australian family law system provides processes for resolving disputes about children, including parenting orders. But a Court order can create an opportunity for a relationship. It cannot repair the relationship for you. 

That's why the early stages matter so much.

If your child is beginning to pull away, don't wait until the relationship has completely broken down before taking it seriously.

If there is tension between you and their mother at changeover, don't let your child become an audience to it.

If you find it difficult to hide how you feel about their mother, remember that your child is probably noticing far more than you think.

If something goes badly between you and your child, don't let the need to prove a point get in the way of repairing it.

And if your child is already pulling away, don't make coming back harder than leaving was.

That brings us full circle to Sunday afternoon.

Don't assume it's just teenage attitude and they'll get over it.

Don't assume Mum will make them come next weekend.

Don't assume you'll explain your side when you see them next.

Don't assume there will be a next time.

You may not be able to control what happens in the other parent's home. You may not be able to control what your child believes right now. And you certainly can't force a relationship back into place.

But you can make sure you don't close the door from your side.

And if is something you can repair today, then repair it today.

Has your child started refusing to spend time with you?

If your relationship with your child is beginning to break down after separation, getting advice early may give you more options than waiting until communication has stopped altogether.