When Average Range Parenting isn’t “Good Enough” in
Parental Alienation.
Average range parents have normative strengths and
weaknesses, challenges and gifts, flaws and fortunes, and
peaks and valleys in their parenting lives, however, those
normative features, when placed into the alienation vortex,
are spun into a false narrative used as justification for
children’s resist and refuse dynamics toward the targeted
parents’ parenting time. By exposing the spectrum of
average range parenting regarding career challenges,
parental disciplinary and caregiving practices, personality
traits of parents, sentinel events, etc. we will have greater
awareness and less defensiveness to better present
ourselves to legal and mental health professionals when
navigating parental alienation.
Randy Flood, MA, LLP has specialized in providing
psychological services for individuals and families involved in
family and criminal courts since 1992. He provides evaluation,
parenting coordination, and parent-child reunification
counseling at the Fountain Hill Center in Grand Rapids
particularly when resist and refuse dynamics (RRD’s) are
present on the spectrum of parent-child contact problem
including cases of parental alienation and/or estrangement/
abuse. Flood offers testifying and non-testifying expert
consultation for attorneys and coaching for rejected/targeted
parents as well as helping parents cope and navigate the
world of custody and parenting time litigation. As director of
the Men’s Resource Center of West Michigan, he recently
launched a parental alienation support group for targeted
fathers. He is the co-author of two books, a prolific speaker
and trainer, and a media consultant in his areas of expertise.
