I offered to write this piece as I wanted to share a view of parental alienation that I suspect is often missed. That of the child caught in the middle.

My parents divorced when I was about nine. As divorces go, I imagine it was fairly amicable. When we (my younger brother, sister and I) returned home from our summer trip to our Grandmother’s it just so happened that Dad was living in his own home. Something we had been told was going to happen while we were away. They had been in separate rooms for a while so we weren’t surprised.

I remember spending half a week with each parent, agreed from the start with no court order. Our Dad started questioning what our Mum was doing almost immediately, would call her names, would tell us it was her fault that they divorced, that he regretted they had split…