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→Estranged children
====Estranged children====
The difference between an estranged child and an alienated child is that an estranged child has grown apart from a parent for reasons that are, to be blunt, reasonable and understandablefrom the child's perspective. An alienated child, however, is the victim of one parent's efforts to destroy the child's relationship with the other parent.
An estranged child is either absolutely ambivalent about a parent or enraged by that parent, and doesn't want to spend time with them. These feelings are, most importantly, justified by the child's experience of the separation or by the child's experience of that parent. (In fact, some researchers use the term "justified rejection" when talking about estrangement.) These children have usually become estranged from a parent for reasons that a stranger would understand and sympathize with, such as: