Yes, The Dr. Phil Show is doing another show on parental alienation and Dr. Phil’s producers are frantically searching for a parental alienation family willing to appear on the program. While many targeted parents want to believe that Dr. Phil can reunite them with their children after the Courts, family members, friends and full-time mental health professionals couldn’t, Mike Jeffries, author of A Family’s Heartbreak: A Parent’s Introduction to Parental Alienation, uses his latest Basil & Spice blog at http://www.basilandspice.com/love-and-relationships/category/jeffries-mike to point out that television can’t script a happily-ever-after ending to parental alienation.

As Mike Jeffries, author of A Family’s Heartbreak: A Parent’s Introduction to Parental Alienation said at D.C. Rally Fest 2010 last month (Part I and Part II), we can all apply our unique skills to parental alienation advocacy. “If you can write, write about parental alienation. If you can sell, sell the idea that parental alienation is a problem that needs fixing. If you design buildings or corporate strategies, apply the same problem solving skills you use at work to parental alienation,” Jeffries said. ”The key to becoming an effective advocate is to move past your personal pain and approach parental alienation advocacy work objectively,” he added.

Even if you are not a writer, salesperson, engineer or corporate strategist, you can help raise awareness of parental alienation by sharing A Family’s Heartbreak: A Parent’s Introduction to Parental Alienation, or any parental alienation book, with others. For example, you can:

Give a book to a friend, even a stranger, as a gift.

Ask your local library to order a book.

If you have a web site or blog, consider writing something about a book you’ve read, and how the book helped you.

Write a book review for your local paper or favorite web site. Ask your favorite radio show to book the author as a guest.

If you own a shop or business, consider putting a display of books on your counter to resell to customers.

Buy books and donate them to homeless shelters, prisons, rehabilitation and group homes.

If you are a pursuing a degree in psychology, counseling, social work or any mental health field, ask your professors to incorporate parental alienation into their course overviews and put parental alienation books on their reading lists.

Sometimes, the best idea is so obvious you have to laugh. A targeted parent once called us desperate to educate the public about parental alienation. He was very passionate about doing something, but he rejected each idea we suggested. Finally, out of ideas, we changed the subject. 

“What do you do for a living,” we asked?

“I’m a movie producer,” he responded.

One of the jokes in our family revolves around my Dad and his encyclopedia-like knowledge of roads, highways and mileage. No matter where I’ve traveled, Dad asks about the route. More often than not, he tells me I could have taken a shorter, faster, safer, more scenic route– complete with a list of the fast food restaurants and tourist attractions I would have passed along the way. The fact that Dad may have never been within 500 miles of my destination doesn’t matter.

It isn’t often a son gets to stand where presidents have addressed millions and deliver a speech, but I recently did just that at the 2010 Family Preservation Festival in Washington D.C. On the day I spoke about surviving parental alienation the temperature was approximately 115 degrees. Festival participants were more interested in surviving the heat so attendance was sparse. That’s okay. I had the U.S. Capital behind me and the Washington Monument in front of me. I started my speech with an inside joke to Dad and the rest of the family. Only about one dozen people in the world would have understood it, until now.

To hear my little family joke and how I’ve survived parental alienation please click on the links below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fc9XTQw582g
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YfGmE_o2EFo

His rejection that night hit me especially hard because the New York Yankees and Yankee Stadium is something my Dad shared with me, and something I wanted to share with my sons. Dad took me to my first Yankees’ game at the pre-renovated ”old” stadium in the 1960s. I wanted to give my sons the same fond memories of attending a game with their Dad that my Dad gave me.

George Steinbrenner, owner of the New York Yankees, died today. The Boss’ death comes two days after the death of long-time Yankee Stadium public address announcer Bob Sheppard. The House that Ruth Built is also gone – replaced last year by a “new” Yankee Stadium.

As alienated parents we often think of our children as if time stands still. We picture them as they looked the last time we were together. In our minds, they have the same friends and interests too. We’re well aware that months, and even years, have passed since we’ve seen them, but a small part of us wants to believe that one day we can pick up right where we left off.

Father Time constantly reminds us that nothing stays the same. Today George Steinbrenner entered the ranks of Yankees mythology. We’ll talk about him in the past tense — just like we talk about Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio and Mantle. Maybe one day I’ll attend a game with my son and tell him how I was sitting in the stands at the Old Timer’s Game when George brought Billy back, but it won’t be the same. The Boss is gone. The old stadium is gone. My son’s childhood is gone. Time marches on.

Jeffries will first address participants of the D.C. Family Preservation Rally Fest 2010 on Saturday, July 23 at 1:00 p.m. Jeffries will then move over to the Family Preservation Festival. The author’s appearance at the second event is scheduled for 3:o0 p.m. the same day.

Both events are located within walking distance of each other in downtown Washington D.C. The Rally Fest 2010 event is at the beginning of the National Mall between the Capital and the Capital Reflecting Pool. The Fesitival is in Upper Senate Park. 

“I am thrilled to address both groups because everyone involved in these events are dedicated to raising the visibility of parental alienation,” Jeffries said. “In addition, many of the participants are alienated parents who would much rather be spending the summer weekend with their children. We hope we can help them deal with their status as targeted parents so they will be ready when their children reach out to them.”

Jeffries will also be at Cosi Restaurant on Friday evening at 8:00 p.m. signing copies of his book, A Family’s Heartbreak: A Parent’s Introduction to Parental Alienation. Cosi is located at 1700 Pennslyvania Ave. N.W.

Yesterday was the 10th anniversary of Elian Gonzalez’s return to Cuba. You remember Elian. He was five years old when a fisherman found him bobbing around the Atlantic Ocean in an inner tube. His Mom and others died in the waters off the Florida coast trying to reach the United States from Cuba. His family in Miami wanted to keep Elian in the U.S. — despite the wishes of his father in Cuba. Presidential candidates George W. Bush and Al Gore even got involved in the debate, and a SWAT team and INS agents had to pry Elian loose from his relatives’ custody so he could return to Cuba and his Dad.

A conversation with my future ex-wife about the Elian Gonzalez situation was one of my first signs that I would one day lose my relationship with my son. I missed the sign until yesterday — when I read that Elian said he is thankful for spending the last ten years with his father. But that’s the funny thing about signs — they are all around us. In my most recent Basil & Spice blog at http://www.basilandspice.com/love-and-relationships/72010-cubas-poster-boy-for-parental-alienation-elian-gonzale.html I explain how future alienated parents can miss the obvious.

Just that most informative, enlightening discussion on parental alienation you’ll find anywhere, that’s all. You can access the interview at http://www.DivorceSourceRadio.com.

“Steve Peck combines his background in broadcasting with his interest in family and divorce to produce a quality program that could go head-to-head with interview programs anywhere on radio or television,” says Jeffries. “His knowledge of the legal, psychological and emotional issues surrounding parental alienation allowed us to present perspectives of parental alienation that I don’t typically get to explore in interviews. Listeners will find the information enlightening and extremely valuable.”

Divorce Source Radio produces free programs featuring both legal and emotional advice from respected professionals. The weekly streaming podcasts are listened to by thousands of individuals through the  iTunes store by searching “Divorce Source Radio” or on http://www.DivorceSourceRadio.com.

“In A Family’s Heartbreak we talk about how parental alienation just doesn’t damage a child’s relationship with the targeted parent, but eventually damages the child’s relationship with both parents,” Jeffries says. ” This alienating parent may think she is going to jail for the noblest of reasons, but wouldn’t the children be better off having the love an attention of both parents this summer rather than being estranged from one parent while the other parent sits in jail?”

Basil & Spice is a daily content provider to online and print news organizations. Mike Jeffries is one of 400 Basil & Spice contributors.

Join Jeffries as he discusses Parental Alienation Awareness Day, coping tips for targeted parents, and a whole lot more with Parents Rule! host Pat Montgomery. The one hour program was originally broadcast on April 15, 2010 on Americas Web Radio and Radio Sandy Springs. Listen to the podcast (.mp3)

Every January 19th we’re asked to celebrate National Popcorn Day. April 16th is set aside for Stress Awareness Day. Mother Goose has her own day on May 1st. Even catfish, thanks to a proclamation signed by catfish-loving President Ronald Reagan in 1987, get June 25th to call their own.

At A Family’s Heartbreak we love popcorn, we’re opposed to stress of any kind, and we would never say a bad word about Mother Goose. We don’t even mind catfish having their own day, even though we’re more partial to salmon. I’m sure if we would have budgeted more than five minutes for research we would have discovered that there is a National Salmon Day too.

However there is one day that deserves to stand apart from days acknowledging snack foods, nursery rhymes and fresh water fish. Parental Alienation Awareness Day is April 25. This is the fifth consecutive year that parents, friends and family members will gather on April 25 and bring attention to parental alienation — a destructive family dynamic that is destroying countless loving, parent/child relationships all over the world.  On April 25 from Boston to Brazil, London to Los Angeles, and Singapore to Sydney, people will light candles, blow bubbles and share their heartbreaking stories — all to educate elected officials, legal and mental health professionals about a mental health issue that should not be ignored or mischaracterized any longer.

Contrary to what many damaged people and zealous advocates on the web would have you believe, parental alienation is not another name for pedophilia. Parental alienation is also not a legal strategy designed to allow an abusive parent to continue beating up on the kids. Finally, parental alienation is not the latest get-rich-quick-scheme from consultants and authors who are often accused of trying make money off the backs of people who are at their most financially vulnerable. 

Parental alienation is the unhealthy byproduct of one parent’s fear of abandonment. These fears often date back to childhood. When a parent with these fears faces divorce or separation they need a child to take over for the exiting spouse or partner and keep those abandonment fears away. The parent pulls the child into the adult conflict and makes his or her fears the child’s fears. It doesn’t take long for a child, looking for security in a world where his or her parents are no longer working together to take care of the child’s needs, to form a very unhealthy, co-dependent relationship with the alienating parent. There is little room for the previously-loved other parent in the child’s new world. 

At its core, parental alienation is about the alienating parent and child’s fears, and the child’s loyalty to the alienating parent. That reminds me, Loyalty Day is also May 1st.