If you can’t obtain contact with your kids, I have suggested setting up a Facebook page and posting to it in hopes they will someday find it.

A father who goes by the name of Daddy Nmn sent me an email calling my attention to a website called “3 Sides to Every Story” where anyone, dads, moms, grandparents and others, can post letters to their missed loved ones.

The site is nicely done and categorized by state and type of letter writer.  The letters are heart-felt, honest and poignant.

Mishcon de Reya, a law firm in London, England, has completed a study in which 2000 parents and 2000 children involved in divorce were interviewed.  According to the London Times, the findings were:

• one in three children permanently loses touch with a parent, usually the father, after the divorce.
• one in five parents said that their primary objective during separation was to make the experience as unpleasant as possible for their former spouse.
• one in five of the children said that they felt used by their parents.
• One in three of the children said they felt isolated and lonely.
• Half of parents said that they had been to court to fight over residential custody arrangements despite knowing it made matters worse for their children.

“The adversarial, blame-focused system is polarising parents and prevents them thinking forward about the long-term interests of their children,” says Sandra Davis, head of the family division at the law firm.  “As a result the courts are drowning, trying to sort out what are fundamentally behavioural and family issues, with lawyers being drawn into disputes over what time a child is picked up from school.”

Does your ex alienate the children from you when they are with her?  Here’s an example of a provision that should be in your Parenting Plan to prevent that.

“Each parent (and any subsequent spouse) will refrain from exercising undue influence over the child with regard to the other parent, criticizing the other parent in the presence of the child, inducing the child to challenge the authority of the other parent, or encouraging the child to request a change of custody or to resist visitation. Neither parent will interrogate the child about the other parent.”

Katrina Daniels Lee had some good advice on her radio show last night for parents who are prevented from seeing their children by a hostile parent or by the court.  She told them to set up a Facebook site and post their positive feelings for their children on it.  She said that children are so  computer savy these days they will find it sooner or later.  In her interview with me, she also told her listeners to reach out for support, help each other and never give up hope for reunification with their children.

After an eight year custody battle with Kim Basinger, Alec Baldwin has harsh words for judges and lawyers reports ABC News.

“I don’t care if the judges and the lawyers die of heart attacks in the process of getting their job done. They are corrupt, inefficient, lazy, stupid — they’re the most God-awful people,” Baldwin said.

Baldwin’s new book, “A Promise to Ourselves: A Journey Through Fatherhood and Divorce,” hits stores tomorrow.

“The judges are like pit bosses in Vegas casinos,” says Baldwin.  “Their job is to make sure everybody stays at the table and keeps gambling.”

Baldwin and Basinger have had 91 court proceedings so far, and about $3 million in legal costs.  That’s enough to make anyone mad at the system.

My blood was boiling when I read an article by Elizabeth (“ Liz”) J. Kates, of Pompano Beach, Florida, who calls herself a “holistic lawyer”. In her article railing against Parental Alienation as a theory, there is a list of names she says to stay away from in your child custody case. And my name is smack there in the middle of the list!

Now I don’t know Liz. I have never spoken to her. I never had a case against her. I couldn’t pick her out of a line up of two.

But the source of her animosity towards me is that I am listed on the Parental Alienation Awareness website (along with many PhD’s and other professionals) as a lawyer who handles these types of cases. Liz seems to think that Parental Alienation is a big fraud and that Reunification Theory is a lot of nonsense.

Well, I don’t think it takes a lot of common sense to know that some parents alienate their children against the other parent. Alienation can involve words or conduct and it may be done consciously and unconsciously. It can be covert or direct. But if you have been the victim of it, whether as a mother or a father, you know it is real.

So Liz can rant all she wants, and tell you to stay away from me, but I am still going to be handling these cases and standing up for good parents and children everywhere against those who would advocate parental alienation and hostile parenting.

Ghost dads are fathers who disappear from the lives of their children following divorce, according to an article by Sarah Hampson. She says that often the loss of daily contact with their children was so painful, they react by staying away. Other fathers blamed the mothers for alienating the children against them.