| View Larger Image | Divorce Poison: Protecting the Parent-Child Bond from a Vindictive Ex | Paperbackby Richard A. Warshak (Author)
| List Price: | $14.99 | | Price: | $10.19 | | You Save: | $4.80 (32%) | | | Available: | Usually ships in 24 hours |
| | Binding: | Paperback | | Publisher: | Harper Paperbacks | | Page Count: | 320 Pages | | Publication Date: | March 01, 2003 | | Sales Rank: | 22,597nd |
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FEATURES | - ISBN13: 9780060934576
- Condition: NEW
- Notes: Brand New from Publisher. No Remainder Mark.
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Product Description
Your ex-spouse is bad-mouthing you to your children, perhaps even trying to turn them against you. If you handle the situation ineffectively, you could lose your children’s respect, their affection -- even, in extreme cases, contact with them. Backed by twenty-five years of experience in helping families, Dr. Richard Warshak presents powerful strategies for dealing with everything from tainted parent-child relationships in which children are disrespectful or reluctant to show their affection to disturbances in which children virtually disown an entire side of the family. Divorce Poison offers advice on how to: Recognize early warning signs of trouble React if your children refuse to see you Respond to rude and hateful behavior Avoid the seven most common errors made by rejected parents This groundbreaking work gives parents powerful strategies to preserve and rebuild loving relationships with their children and provides legal and mental-health professionals with practical advice to help their clients and ensure the welfare of children. |
CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 5.0 based on 80 reviews)
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Great Book and Great Service by Kimberly Zumwalt  5 Stars
November 15, 2009
This is a great book to learn to deal with
x-husbands, wives, etc. You can't change them
but you can change how you react. It's so sad a child
is placed in the middle of one parent who uses
the child to get back at his/her ex by demeaning
the other parent. It's not healthy for the child
to feel they want to defend the parent but can't
and a child feels powerless to say anything. The child may
begin to treat the parent in a demeaning manner
because they have heard it so many times over the
years. Children should not be messengers either.
Great Book!
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Read entire book overnight, got results beginning the next day. by tup66 (NY, USA) 5 Stars
November 14, 2009
My step-daughter has suffered from the actions of my husband's bitter ex-wife for years. As things became worse and worse, my husband and I poured our efforts into doing research and reading multiple books in attempts to improve the situation with his ex-wife. Most of the books we read were geared toward people who were going through the struggles of custody and other divorce issues with another parent who loved the child, but just didn't come to agreements with you on all the issues. They were based on the assumption that both parents had the best interest of the child at heart, even if they couldn't get along themselves. That, unfortunately, is not the case in some situations, and it was not the case in ours-- we are dealing with a mentally ill, vindictive, and unfortunately negligent mother whose prime goal in every action is to punish my husband and his daughter for their loving, close relationship. Other books could help little to none when the general idea behind them is to try to get the other parent to see how their actions are hurting the child. My husband's ex knows the damage full well-- she thrives on it, lives for it, delights in seeing her daughter miserable, anxious, hurt-- tells her that she is unloved and worthless and will amount to nothing, then sits back to smile at the effects of her handiwork on her daughter... just as she finds joy in frustrating my husband at every turn by using his beloved and devoted daughter to punish him. (Court appointed child protective workers have been involved in her home for years. She is well known to the court and social services for her inability to parent.) One of her favorite modes of punishment was to restrict my husband's access, then tell her daughter, "I wonder why your dad didn't want to see you today? Must be he doesn't love you anymore." We were dealing with that kind of mother.
I found Divorce Poison in a bookstore one day, and stayed up the entire night devouring every piece of information in it. I cannot explain the wonderful sense of hope this book gave us. One monumental piece of information was the simple concept that you do not have to remain silent when your child informs you that their other parent said this or that damaging, untrue thing about you. For years, we elected to remain silent when my husband's daughter would fill us in on some malicious, fabricated story her mother had told her about him, when she would repeat this litany of bad-mouthing, father-bashing falsehoods she was exposed to daily. We always held to the belief that it is wrong to say a negative word about the other parent, and we took the high road countless times in that area, stewing silently over the injustice of it all, hoping that maybe at some point, his ex-wife would tire of her behavior. Of course, our passiveness in her abuse did nothing but create a bigger monster, and we realized we needed to do something better in response to the horrible things she was implanting into my step-daugher's head. This book taught us the wonderful, effective, and simple concept of DAMAGE CONTROL. We learned the great disservice we were doing to my husband's daughter by letting her be exposed to such horrible things without correcting the misinformation... without telling her that her mother was wrong in saying or doing such a thing... without letting her know that such lying is unacceptable. We learned the many, many tools we could use to not just correct the damage that had been done (well, some of it-- counselers are also working with her to try to address the huge emotional toll that years of her mother's abuse has taken), but also to protect his daughter from further damage-- information about techniques to use that give the child a foundation of logic to help them counter the malicious bashing on their own-- be able to see through it for what it is at the very time the other parent is attempting to use such brainwashing on them. Pre-emptive damage control... I can't overemphasise the power we gained from that. A power to protect a daughter who was completely innocent and deserved none of what she'd been living through for years.
We were amazed the first day we tried some of these simple, "why didn't we think of that" tools-- such as asking our daughter, regarding all the nasty things her mother had spent years trying to convince her, "does that sound like the kind of person your dad is? Take a minute to think about what you know of your dad, compared to the person your mom is trying to portray. Do those sound like things your dad would ever say or do?" She replied, "No way! I KNEW mom had to be lying! But how come when I told you stuff before, you never said anything? If I heard someone at school say mean stuff like that about me that wasn't true, I'd be yelling and freaking out that someone said that! You've never said anything before-- evem though none of it sounded like stuff you do, you never defended yourself, so I wondered why!" It was an eye-opener. Our silence had caused damage we never even realized.
I could write for hours on what we learned from the book. The "don't stay silent when you're being bashed by the ex" is just one of dozens of things we found out overnight. I will end this just by offering our most sincere gratitude to the author, who really did help change all our lives. My book is dog-eared, underlined, and has jottings written down on probably 75% of the pages. It is the single most important resource we happened upon in this maddening, unfair, and sad ordeal of dealing with a parent who has absolutely no interest in her child, other than her usefulness as a pawn in her vindictive obsessions. Thank you, thank you, thank you.
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The Poison of children and divorce by Tanya Floyd (beautiful northwest Arkansas) 5 Stars
October 18, 2009
For any who believe in the resiliency of children who can bounce back after most anything, this book is for you! It is also for the parents who made that decision and MUST face its consequences. For the sake of loving, stable marriages for our children, find this information!
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I was very pleased with the amount of information and tools I could use . by Ida L. Mercado (Manteca, CA) 5 Stars
September 17, 2009
I was pleased at the amount of information and tools that the book gave me , for me to understand how to deal better with divorce issues.
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THE ONLY BOOK FOR POST-DIVORCE CONFLICT THAT IS PRACTICAL by Monika Logan (Allen, Texas) 5 Stars
September 07, 2009
I wish I would have known about this book when it initially came out. It would have saved years of heartache. I agree with Sharon Marie Chester when she noted, "When it happened to me, my mistake was not to fight poison with poison, but to silently "take the high road." I figured two wrongs didn't make a right but the damage worsened." I am also a social worker and thought it was best to sit silently. When the children would come home from their every other weekend visit, they would display various forms of anger. This went on for over 10 years! During the ten years, I first tried to ignore their behavior, and then I tried to "talk sense into the children." Neither worked and sadly, any therapist that I contacted was clueless as what to do. Many do not believe in PAS, nor do they understand it. Dr. Warshak has published the only book that addresses this unfortunate result of post divorce conflict.
Applying his methods will save you tons of money from therapists who, over and over again diagnose your child with "Adjustment Disorder" but offer no treatment options. Reading this book will save you heartache, as you will know how to defend yourself from your ex-spouses tactics, but more importantly, it can save a relationship between you and your children. It will save you money from attending parenting classes that teaches you to use "I" messages. While, "I" messages are helpful, they will only work if the ex-spouse cares about the mental health of his or her child. Four of the biggest issues in post divorce conflict are: child support, carrying messages, quizzing the other parent, and bad mouthing. Most parenting classes address these issues. However, what the classes do not address is how one should respond when the ex-spouse refuses to stop the badmouthing. What some ex-spouses really care about, is getting even. Unfortunately, their own pain surpasses their child's relationship with the other parent.
The sad reality is that ex-spouses do not get over the divorce, they use their children as a sounding board, and they constantly place their children in the middle. My situation started when my children were in pre-school. They are now teenagers. I suffered for years not knowing what to do and trying methods that frankly, just did not work. Currently, one will soon turn 18 and it is too late. This is the only book that addresses such nasty unfounded hatred towards one parent, or even a step parent. Sadly, our court system often does not understand PAS. The term has been twisted and wrongly applied in cases where it should not have been. High conflict divorces occur in about 10% of divorces. Thus judges and other helping professionals are not sure how to deal with such conflict as they are under the assumption that, "the best parents are both parents." Sure, two loving parents are ideal, but that is not always a reality. I have devoted a lot of research into PAS. Without a doubt, it has been wrongly applied in court settings. However, for TRUE cases of bad mouthing and brainwashing, reading this book can save a relationship.
Monika Logan, LBSW
Texas
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