This article originally appeared on Epinions.com

A couple of years ago, I wrote an essay about my role as a stepmother. When I wrote that essay, it was August 2003. My husband and I hadn't even been married a year. I had just met, for the first time, my stepchildren. At the time, they were 15, 12, and 9 years old. The kids spent two nights with us at our cramped apartment in Virginia.

Since the summer of 2003, a lot of things have changed for the better. My husband got promoted. We moved out of our crappy apartment into a nice three bedroom house. I've had a couple of lucrative writing assignments that allowed me to purchase some furniture. My husband had a vasectomy reversal so that we might hope to have kids of our own some day. The one thing that has gotten much worse is my husband's relationship with his kids. He hasn't seen them since Christmas 2004. I haven't seen them since they visited us in the summer of 2003.

On our third wedding anniversary, my husband's oldest child, a son, turned 18 years old. My husband's daughters are now 14 and 12 and his son only recently started talking to him again. The two girls refuse to speak with him at all. For the life of me, I don't understand how my husband copes with being separated from his kids. Somehow he's able to do it and stay sane.

Through a rather heated email exchange with his ex wife, my husband was told that the girls no longer want him to be part of their lives. My husband's ex wife wrote that she wanted him to stop calling them and sending cards and gifts. She says that the gifts are annoying and meaningless to them and they just end up getting thrown away. She insists that the girls will be "fine", and she asserts that it will be better for everybody if their my husband just walks away and lets her current husband continue to raise the girls as if they were his own. She hasn't quite gone so far as to suggest that my husband formally sever his parental rights. I imagine that's because she doesn't want to stop receiving the generous amount of child support my husband faithfully sends her every month.

My husband's ex wife also wrote that the girls didn't like me when they met me almost three years ago. She wrote that neither of the girls wants visitation with their dad. They supposedly don't want me OR their father in their lives. When the kids visited us, they did have a good time. It was very obvious they had fun, even if meeting me was awkward at first. We went sightseeing. Later, we went swimming in the pool at our apartment complex and the youngest child played with me the whole time. The older daughter referred to me as her "other mother" and even gave me a big hug. They watched me cook and complimented me on the hash browns and grits I made. That's the only contact the girls have ever had with me, but it's not because that's the way I wanted it.

If the girls really do hate me now, I can't help but think it's because their mother has been poisoning them against their father. But their mother has never met me either. Until last week, she had never even so much as spoken to me on the phone. Until this week, she never got so much as an email from me. But she did get an email from me this week because I just had to say something to her. For the past three years, my husband has shown me her hateful, abusive emails. Up until now, I have ignored her repeated insults. This time, I had to take a stand. She may use that against me when it comes to the kids. At this point, though, I'm just exhausted. Besides, I don't have a relationship with my husband's children anyway. That's their loss.

I am a stepmother with three stepchildren I barely know. When I got married in late 2002, I didn't know the first thing about Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS), even though I had newly minted master's degrees in social work and public health. PAS was not a subject that I learned about in my social work courses, even though it's a phenomenon that many social workers, especially those who work with child protective services, will have to deal with on a daily basis.

According to Dr. Richard A. Gardner of Columbia University's Department of Child Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Parental Alienation Syndrome refers to the systematic attempts by a custodial parent to destroy the non custodial parent's relations with their children. Custodial parents who engage in parental alienation will use a number of very effective techniques to make it impossible for their child to enjoy a normal relationship with their non custodial parent. Since more custodial parents are women, it's often mothers who will employ parental alienation tactics, although fathers can be guilty of it as well.

Below are some of the symptoms of PAS. I found this list of symptoms, compiled by Douglass Darnhall, PhD. Because the list is long, I decided to just paraphrase the ones that my husband's ex wife has employed. As it turns out, we've seen fourteen of the twenty symptoms of PAS.

1. Allowing children to decide whether or not they will have visitation with their non custodial parent. Generally speaking, court orders do not allow children to decide whether or not they will see their non custodial parent. By asking the child's opinion about visitation, the PASing parent is setting the child up for conflict. She's also victimizing the non custodial parent by making him a scapegoat. This is a big one. My husband's ex wife claims that the girls, ages 14 and 12, don't want to see us. According to their court order, they don't get a vote. Unfortunately, their mother, who has sole custody, does. Nevertheless, she blames the kids for their lack of interest in being with their dad.

2. Giving the child too many details about how the marriage went wrong. This practice, especially when the child is too young to understand that there are two sides to every story, is very destructive to the non custodial parent's bond. Moreover, most children are not equipped to be objective about a subject as adult-oriented and personal as their parents' relationship with each other. According to my stepson, his mother rolls her eyes whenever my husband's name comes up. She has told the children a lot of half truths and straight up lies about her marriage to my husband. She's even told them lies about his upbringing. The lies are only coming out now because my stepson is talking to my husband.

3. Not allowing the non custodial parent access to school or medical records. Refusing to give the non custodial parent information about the child's progress in school or participation in extracurricular activities. We recently found out that my husband's son will be getting a GED instead of a high school diploma. We did not find this information out from his mother; the young man told us about it himself.

4. Blaming the other parent for financial problems, breaking up the family, lifestyle changes, or having a new significant other or spouse. This is another big one in our case. The kids' mother has made it clear that she hates me just for existing. She has told my husband that he's to blame for breaking up the family, even though she filed for divorce and threw him out of the house. She also blames him for the fact that her son has decided not to practice her religion anymore. My husband, who was also a believer at one time, has also left that church. She says that the children are desensitized to the church every time they see their father. Yet the children haven't actually seen their father in almost 18 months.

5. Refusing to be flexible about visitation. My husband's ex wife will not let the children see us in our home. The last time my husband saw his kids, he had to go to his father's house. The whole time my husband had his visitation, his ex wife and her husband were in attendance. In fact, my husband was never left alone with his kids. Moreover, when my husband tried to set up visitation, he was told that the kids were too busy or that other activities had been planned. At the same time, my husband's ex wife repeatedly tells both my husband and the kids that he doesn't care about them because he's not involved in their lives.

6. Falsely claiming that the other parent is a physically abusive person. My husband is one of the kindest, most gentle people I have ever known. Nevertheless, his ex wife insists that he hates women and has violent tendencies. She reasons that because he's "violent", he will be violent toward the children. Ironically, when they were married, it was she who was violent toward him. At one point, she even threatened his life.

7. Asking the child to choose one parent over the other. My husband's daughters once enjoyed a very close relationship with their dad. Now, they claim to want him out of their lives. Not long ago, the older daughter lamented that she wanted to see him more often. Now, she says he's dispensible.

8. Unreasonable anger toward the non custodial parent that doesn't go away. Again, my husband's daughters used to be very close to their dad. Now, they say that he's never been part of their lives. The younger one is sullen and distant whenever she's forced to see him. She's been that way for over two years.

9. The parent or stepparent raises the question about changing the child's name or suggests adoption. My husband's ex wife hasn't actually suggested adoption. Instead, she's told Bill that he's not welcome in his daughters' lives and that her current husband is now their dad. Ironically, my husband's son is not actually his biological son. He is the product of his mother's first marriage. She managed to get her first husband to walk away from his son and my husband took on the role of his father. It wasn't until recently that my husband realized that his son's biological father might be innocent of all that his ex wife accused him of doing to her. Sadly, my husband's son may never have a real relationship with his biological dad. Likewise, my husband's daughters may not have a real relationship with their biological father.

10. The child cannot tell the non custodial parent a specific reason why he or she is angry at them. My husband's daughters have never really told him why they now dislike him. In fact, they won't even talk to him.

11. The custodial parent sets up activities that interfere with visitation. My husband's ex wife told him that the kids were too busy to see him last year. She told him that they were taking a trip during their one break from school. We later found out that the kids didn't actually take that trip.

12. The custodial parent acts hurt or sad when their child has a good time with the other parent. My husband's kids very obviously had fun when they visited us almost three years ago. Their mother later told us that they didn't have fun and didn't like meeting me. I suspect that even if that's what the kids told her, they did so because they feared being punished for telling the truth.

13. Making demands on the other parent that is contrary to court orders. My husband's ex wife doesn't necessarily make demands. Instead, she ignores what's in the court order, especially as it pertains to visitation.

14. Listening in on the children's phone conversation they are having with the other parent. My husband's ex wife doesn't listen to their conversations with my husband. Instead, she turns the ringer off the phone so that no one hears it when he calls. She also does not have an answering machine, so my husband can't leave messages for the kids.

Unfortunately, there's not much my husband or I can do about this situation. We could take the ex wife to court, but that would be financially and logistically prohibitive, even if we didn't use a lawyer. And not using a lawyer would be absolutely pointless. The girls are now becoming young women and it's likely that a court would give them a choice as to whether or not they want to change custody. Since they seem to hate their dad, I doubt they'd want to live with us. Even if they did want to live with us, I don't think I'd want them here. Everything I've read has indicated that the only way to reverse PAS is for the non custodial parent to spend time with the affected children without interference from the alienating parent. At this point, it would be impossible for my husband to do that. My husband could allow the girls' stepfather to adopt them. But the girls' stepfather doesn't have a job. He's young, inexperienced, and has a history of being volatile. Moreover, if something were to happen to my husband's ex wife, her current husband would not be able to support the girls and the children he has with the ex. My husband contributes a significant amount of money toward their household and without that child support, the ex and her current husband would be financially ruined. The girls would be devastated by that. What's more, my husband doesn't want to give up his kids. He loves them and hopes that someday, they will understand what has happened to them.

I believe that my husband's ex wife is truly a sick woman. I also believe that her current husband and the children she has with him, are going to face some very rocky times ahead. If my husband's ex wife follows her current pattern, those kids will be fatherless by the time they go to kindergarten; only they won't get the financial support that my husband's children have gotten. If my husband's ex wife does split from her current husband, it's not likely that she will be able to find her kids a new surrogate father. She's morbidly obese, has health problems, and is over 40 with several kids by different fathers. Luckily, beyond supporting the first three kids, what happens to my husband's ex wife is not our problem. I still feel sorry for her youngest victims, though. I fear that they're really going to pay, just because they have an unstable mother.

The one ray of hope is the fact that my husband's son still talks to him. He also still has a relationship with his sisters. There may be a chance that someday, the girls will follow his lead and seek out their dad, especially as they get older. As for me, it breaks my heart to watch this horror show. I hate how it affects my husband, but I hate even more to think about how confusing and painful this experience has been for my husband's daughters. It would be good for me to detach from this situation, but unfortunately, it does affect my marriage and my relationship with my husband's family. I think it's tragic. If this essay helps even one person avoid the nightmare of PAS, it will have been well worth the time it took to write it.

Here are links to a few excellent Web sites about PAS.

www.fact.on.ca

www.parentalalienation.com

www.helpstoppas.com

A few months ago, I wrote the above essay about Parental Alienation Syndrome (PAS) as it has affected my husband and his kids. Parental Alienation Syndrome, as defined by Dr. Richard A. Gardner of Columbia University's Department of Child Psychiatry, College of Physicians and Surgeons, refers to regular attempts by a custodial parent to destroy the non custodial parent's relations with their children. Custodial parents who engage in parental alienation use a number of very effective tactics to make it impossible for their child to enjoy a normal relationship with their non custodial parent.

When my husband and his ex wife divorced in 2000, my husband had every intention of maintaining his parental relationship with his kids. But he was going to rejoin the Army full time and had a job that required him to travel a great deal. Because of the financial difficulties that preceded the divorce, my husband had to live in a very small apartment that would not accommodate three growing kids. When his ex wife presented him with divorce papers that granted her sole legal and physical custody of the children, my husband didn't object. He thought it was best for the kids. He also trusted his ex wife not to cut him out of his kids' lives. He didn't object when he read the visitation order, which was very loosely written. He never thought his ex wife would be cruel enough to deny him visitation because the kids loved their dad and at the time, wanted to see him. And unfortunately, neither my husband nor his ex wife ever sought legal advice before they signed their divorce decree. They didn't have the money to see a lawyer, nor did they have the resources to find free legal advice.

Sadly, all three of my husband's kids are victims of severe PAS. The eldest child is 18 years old. He's the biological son of his mother's first husband, and has recently moved out of his mother's home. Though he does not maintain any relationship with his biological father, he has recently reconnected with my husband, who was his stepfather and has been his dad for a significant part of his life. For a few years after the divorce, my husband had very little contact with his son. It's only been recently that my husband has been able to talk to his son any time he's wanted to. That's been the one bright light in this whole situation, even though my husband's ex wife claims the only reason the boy talks to my husband is because he still pays him child support.

My husband's two daughters, aged 15 and 12, refuse to talk to my husband on the phone. They wrote him letters, which he received yesterday, stating that they wished for their current stepfather, their mother's third husband, to legally adopt them. One child accused my husband of being "jealous and inconsiderate" of her everyday "daddy". The other child said she'd never speak to my husband again if he didn't sign those papers... not that she speaks to him now. Their mother sent her own letter, full of accusations and declarations of how my husband has failed as a father to his kids and as her spouse. Curiously, in that same letter, she also admitted that she never expected my husband to sign the divorce papers that she presented to him at his father's house over Easter in 2000. It seems that she wants to punish him for not being able to read her true intentions that day. My husband's ex wife also sent a petition for adoption, which would provide my husband's consent to allow the kids' stepfather to legally adopt them and take on all the rights and responsibilities that come with parenthood.

I'd be lying if I said my husband wasn't at first tempted to sign those adoption papers. My husband's ex wife refuses to work with him to rebuild his bond with his kids. The kids refuse to talk to him or see him. He pays a significant amount of child support which we could certainly use in our own household. But, after the initial shock and anger, my husband decided that he's not going to sign away his parental rights. My husband's ex wife stated that the kids will pursue adoption on their own when they turn 18. A lot can happen in 3 to 6 years. Their mother could get another divorce. The kids could change their minds about ditching their dad. Quite frankly, their stepfather has exhibited some signs that he lacks the mental and financial stability to take on the responsibility of providing for my husband's children and the two young ones he has with my husband's ex wife.

I met my husband's children once, three years ago. I thought they were nice kids. At the time, I hoped we could get to know each other and form a bond, but their mother has made that impossible. Reading and recalling their letters to my husband makes me heartsick. I realize that they're adolescents who have been fed a lot of half truths about what happened in their parents' marriage. I remember being their ages and the black and white thinking that goes along with being that young. I don't think they realize that they're considering throwing away a wonderful, forthright man who really does love them. I sincerely believe that if they did get adopted by their stepfather before they were adults, they'd live to regret it.

On the other hand, it makes me angry to read those letters because the kids really DON'T understand. And I'm angry enough now not to want to have anything to do with my husband's biological children who would so cavalierly throw away the man who helped create and support them all these years... the man who changed their diapers, fed them, drove them to school, and nurtured them until the day their mother initiated the divorce. It makes me sad and angry to watch this destruction because I believe it could have been prevented. Moreover, this is not the first time my husband's ex wife has done this. She did it to her first husband, too, and there's nothing to say she won't do it to her third husband when he steps out of line. I have to wonder if the man doesn't see the obvious pattern as clearly as I do.

Of course, they're not my kids and this is not my decision. All I can do is sit by and watch in frustration as my husband struggles with his kids. I can rant and rave helplessly, feeling furious with my husband's first wife and her husband. I can indulge my immature wishes that my husband's ex wife would get hit by a truck or fall off a cliff. Of course, at that point, it would mean the kids might come to live with us and then I'd not only have to deal with two hostile teenagers, I'd also have to deal with their mother's ghost. I feel guilty for having those feelings because I know they're borne out of hurt and frustration. I know on an intellectual level, the kids have been manipulated. But part of me can't help but think that they have responsibility in this, just as their parents do. Part of me also fears that they're just as toxic as their mother is.

My husband and I have been trying to conceive a child of our own, something that's proved difficult because he had a vasectomy for his ex wife's benefit. He had the operation reversed and it was supposedly successful, but so far we've not been able to get me pregnant. After watching this horror show, I have to be honest and say that I'm beginning to have second thoughts about trying to have a baby. I thought I could handle parenthood, but looking at the tears in my stoic husband's eyes this morning, I wonder if I really could handle something like this. This was not what I signed up for when I married my husband. I didn't expect his kids to accept me with open arms, but I also didn't expect that they would so flatly reject their father, either. Luckily, I love their father very much and have no plans to abandon him. I truly am grateful to his ex wife for divorcing my husband because now he's with someone who loves him for who he is. As much as I hate to watch what's going on with my husband's kids, I plan to see him through this.

An excellent book on PAS...

An interesting book on how adult kids see their parents' divorces...