Hidden Harm at Home: The Attachment Trauma Behind a Child’s Rejection of a Parent

A busy urban street scene overlaid with a quote by Gabor Maté highlights the internal nature of trauma, emphasising the psychological impact over external events.

When a child aligns strongly with one parent after family separation and begins to reject the other - often with sudden, intense dislike - the underlying issue is rarely as simple as it appears. Whether it is labelled "parental alienation," "resist/refuse dynamics," or dismissed entirely, what is frequently missed is the profound attachment trauma that underpins this behaviour.

Drawing on the work of Karen Woodall and the Family Separation Clinic, this is not simply a behavioural issue or a loyalty conflict in isolation, but is a relational trauma. It is a trauma that originates in the child’s attachment system, which has been forced to adapt - often maladapt - in the face of overwhelming adult dynamics and psychological splitting.

Psychological Splitting and Attachment Trauma Maladaptation

What do I mean by this? Children are highly sensitive to the emotional climates in which they live. When exposed to a high-conflict post-separation environment, especially one where a caregiver is unpredictable, distressed, or coercively controlling, children may enter a disorganised attachment state. As Woodall and others have shown, children reflexively adapt to the dominant emotional narrative of the parent they are most dependent on - not out of preference, but as a survival strategy.

The attachment literature is clear: in the face of unpredictability or fear, children often disavow their own emotional needs and align themselves with what they perceive the caregiving adult needs or wants. This phenomenon is well-documented in the work of Bowlby, Main, and Crittenden. It is an unconscious, protective adaptation - not an informed rejection.

The Role of the Resident Parent

Post-separation, children are often primarily resident with one parent. If this parent is emotionally distressed, angry, fearful, or transmitting subtle (or overt) inter-psychic messages that the other parent is dangerous, irrelevant, or disposable, the child may begin to internalise this narrative. The psychological safety of staying "aligned" with the dominant parent becomes more important than preserving a previously loving relationship with the other. The result is rejection - not just of the other parent, but of an entire part of the child’s identity.

As Karen Woodall argues, this is not about blame. In some cases, the non-resident parent may be enacting coercive control themselves. These situations are complex and nuanced. But what is consistent is the mechanism of splitting - the all-good/all-bad narrative that develops in the child's mind - and the emotional tone of rejection: it is almost always laced with contempt, disdain, and an absence of ambivalence.

When “Alienation” Becomes a Gendered Battleground

Debates around parental alienation are increasingly polarised. In some feminist circles, the concept is viewed as a tactic used by abusive fathers to silence mothers' safeguarding concerns. In response, some groups have reframed the dynamic when it happens to women as “Child and Mother Sabotage.” In the USA, Dr. Craig Childress has attempted to ground this phenomenon in attachment theory through the framework of ABPA (Attachment-Based Parental Alienation), while at the Family Separation Clinic, Woodall refers to it simply and clearly as attachment-related trauma.

Whatever we call it, the children involved are too often lost in the battle. As Woodall points out, their lived experience is subsumed under political narratives. When advocacy for parental rights - on either side - overshadows the developmental needs of the child, what results is the normalisation of emotional abuse. Hidden harm becomes invisible, unspoken, and unexplored.

A Hidden Loss

I have seen videos myself from a time before the rejection began. The child’s face was alight with joy and connection, their world rich with family, friendship, and emotional security yet today, that relationship no longer exists. Not because the parent harmed the child, but because the child was caught in the gravitational pull of overwhelming adult needs. The loss is profound - and the child, now older, may not even realise it.

As Woodall and others note, the psychological cost doesn’t vanish. It waits. It surfaces later - perhaps when that child becomes a parent themselves and finds they don’t know how to securely attach or when they repeat the same rejection pattern, passing on an intergenerational trauma that no one ever named.

What Needs to Change?

There are situations where children are better off without a harmful or abusive parent. This cannot be denied. But what must also be acknowledged is that in many cases of stark parent-child rejection post-separation, the issue is not protection but coercion, not safety but fear-based adaptation.

Until we face the reality that some children are being forced - psychologically and emotionally - to sever loving bonds with a once-secure caregiver, we will continue to miss the mark. We will fail these children again and again.

Karen Woodall writes that we must stop viewing these dynamics through a binary lens of belief/disbelief, alienation/abuse, mother/father. Instead, we must attune ourselves to the child’s experience - their terror, their confusion, their loss. We must speak the language of attachment, not ideology.

Final Thoughts

I don’t need to watch videos of children smiling in the arms of parents they later rejected to convince me of the scale of this hidden harm. But when I do, I am reminded why this work matters - not for the parents, but for the children who grow up not knowing what they lost, and who may carry that loss like an unexploded bomb into the next generation.

We say we care about child abuse yet until we recognise attachment trauma caused by coercive family dynamics for what it is, we are only seeing part of the picture.

If we listened to children’s experiences more closely - really listened - we might find the will to act.

For more information and Karen Woodall's excellent Blog: Karen Woodall – Psychotherapist, Writer, Researcher, Trainer. – SUBSCRIBE TO MY THERAPEUTIC PARENTING NEWSLETTER HERE.