PAS Articles
Declaration of Parental Alienation Awareness Day by Arkansas Governor Mike Beebe
TO ALL TO WHOM THESE PRESENTS COME – GREETINGS:
Parental alienation, often found in high-conflict-divorce and custody situations, involves manipulative language used by a parent with a child, which can result in destroying the loving and warm relationship they onceshared with the other parent.
Professionals agree that the problem of parental alienation exists and is damaging to children and the effects can last well into adulthood, with serious consequences.
Behaviors that indicate parental alienation include speaking negatively about a parent to or in front of a child, interfering with communication and visitation between parent and child, and discussing inappropriate information with a child that can destroy the bond between that child and a loving parent.
Parental alienation takes advantage of the suggestibility and dependency of children, depriving them of their right to love and be loved by both parents.
Using alienating tactics with children is confusing, frightening, and robs them of their sense of security.
There are more than 2.4-million divorced North Americans, including the parents of more than one-million children under the age of eighteen, with nearly as many unmarried couples with children separating.
Education and understanding build awareness that children should be allowed to love both parents and feel loved by both parents.
NOW, THEREFORE, I, MIKE BEEBE, Governor of the State of Arkansas, by virtue of the authority vested in me by the laws of the State of Arkansas, do hereby proclaim April 25, 2008, as PARENTAL ALIENATION AWARENESS DAY across the State of Arkansas, and I urge all Arkansans to help raise awareness of the importance of strengthening parent-child relationships and avoiding causing further distress to children caught in the crossfire of people they love.
IN TESTIMONY WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand and caused the Great Seal of the State of Arkansas to be affixed this 10th day of April, in the year of our Lord 2008.