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Children Who Resist Seeing a Parent

10 bytes added, 19:09, 21 August 2022
Adjust the children's parenting arrangements
Most commonly, parenting arrangements are changed to clarify and reduce ambiguity in parenting schedules, particularly in high-conflict cases. The purposes of changes like this are to eliminate either parent's discretion to avoid complying with the children's parenting arrangements and make sure that the child's time with each parent happens as it is planned to happen.
Sometimes parenting arrangements are changed to reduce a parent's time with the children, particularly when it is suspected that the parent is undermining the child's relationship with the other parent. When the problem is particularly difficult, parenting arrangements may be changed to require that the favoured parent's time with the children be supervised. This will usually only be appropriate as an extreme measure when the parent simply cannot be trusted to refrain from trash-talking the rejected parent to the children and sabotaging the children's relationship with that parent, or just refuses to stop engaging in these behaviours.
In extreme cases, parenting arrangements may be changed to suspend or terminate the favoured parent's time and communication with the children, usually with the result that the children have their primary home with the rejected parent. This is a drastic remedy as it puts the children in the home of the parent they don't want to spend time with, and can be fairly traumatic as a result. Orders like these require the court to be convinced that the long-term benefit to the children outweighs the discomfort they'll feel in the short-term, and are usually only made where the court believes that the favoured parent is trying to alienate the children from the other parent. These orders are rare, but they do get made from time to time.