In this episode, Andrew and Barbara talk with filmmaker Ginger Gentile, director of Erasing Family, about family court and the long-term impact of parental alienation on children.
Note: This podcast was originally hosted on Barbara La Pointe’s website, which has since gone offline. I’ve reposted the episodes here so people still have access to the materials.
Transcript
Andrew Folkler: All righty, and welcome everyone to another episode of Broken Family where we host conversations on divorce, parental alienation, and high conflict relationships. My name’s Andrew Folkler.
Barbara La Pointe: And I’m Barbara La Pointe.
Andrew Folkler: Today we’re gonna discuss family court and the long term impacts on children, especially during parental alienation.
Andrew Folkler: To help us dive deep, we’ve brought on an incredible guest speaker on board. She has directed and released three feature films so far, with a number of shorts. Her first film, Borrando a Papa, which translates to Erasing Dad, was released in 2014, and was the first film in Argentina to be censored by Argentinian courts.
Andrew Folkler: This led to a huge increase in viewings, leading to Erasing Dad being the most popular and discussed film in Argentina for the year. As a result of Erasing Dad, joint custody legislature was passed in Argentina, impacting an entire nation of broken families. Later on, she would venture back to her home in the United States, where she would begin working on her third documentary, Erasing Family, a film released in 2019 where yet again rippling change in the way the nation views family court and parental alienation.
Andrew Folkler: In the short time she served on the National Parents Organization as an executive director, she brought on six new state affiliates and brought national news attention to the shared parenting report card. And to think, she’s just getting started. So without further ado, ladies and gentlemen, please welcome my good friend, Ginger Gentile.
Ginger Gentile: Thank you so much for having me on, Andrew and Barbara. It’s great to be here, and I look forward to talking about my new film, Erasing Family, and also what’s going on in this country today with divorce and how it affects kids.
Barbara La Pointe: Thanks, Ginger. It’s so exciting to have you on. And when I was doing my research and looking at your documentaries, one thing that I really noticed was your outrageous passion about this subject, and I thought you might speak to that.
Ginger Gentile: Well, thank you. So I feel like that there are so many families that are affected by divorce. Almost half of all marriages end in divorce, and we know that there’s 22 million children in the US, three million or more in Canada, who can’t see a parent after divorce. But no one really talks about this, and I think people don’t talk about this because they feel a lot of shame when they can’t see a family member after divorce.
Ginger Gentile: They blame themselves. We see this even worse with non-custodial mothers because to say, “I’m a mom who can’t see my kids, I don’t know where my kids are,” there’s a lot of shame associated with that. And also, we don’t wanna talk about this because when we acknowledge that maybe we are participating in high-conflict relationships, we feel really bad because it’s very easy to watch a documentary about some human rights abuse that’s going on in another country and say, “Oh, those people.”
Ginger Gentile: But when we look at human rights abuses that are happening in our own country, in our own court system, and in our own families, this brings a lot of shame, and people wanna not talk about it and focus on a refugee crisis somewhere else because it’s easy for us to disassociate and just blame others. And only by talking about this, only by making this a trending topic can we say, “Hey, what’s really going on here is systematic.”
Ginger Gentile: Society combined with family, individual choices combined with how the system is set up is leading to an epidemic of broken families and that’s very different from divorced families, separated families, never married families, blended families, a broken family system is when the kids are rejecting a parent or they’re unable to see a parent and by extension siblings and grandparents, cousins and this has really long-term lasting effects.
Ginger Gentile: We also know from research that when a child experiences traumatic stress, that’s long-term stress over and over again, they have very poor outcomes in their bodies, not just their minds, but they’re more susceptible to cancer, to diabetes, to alcoholism, to high-risk behavior as adults and I think we all knew oh if you’re abused as a kid or mistreated you might become depressed, you might repeat those patterns, but we’re seeing that this leads to heart disease because of all the stress hormones that are in our little bodies and then we also repeat these patterns as adults or we say we don’t want to get involved in relationships.
Ginger Gentile: I’m a child of divorce and I’m 40 and I’m still single, which I’m not happy about, that’s never had one of my life to end up, but realizing I have all these patterns and I’m just repeating from what I was told and what I learned and I observed and that there are millions of now adult children divorced like me, so I’m very passionate about this because I feel like not a lot of attention is being brought to the subject and even though a lot of people are affected, the people who are affected because they are still going through that trauma, they tend not to be the best communicators.
Ginger Gentile: And what we really need to start looking at is so professionals like yourself, Barbara, children, Andrew who have been able to process this really take the lead in expressing how we can change as a society because right now we have a lot of very traumatized people who are trying to scream their stories out and by screaming their stories out, they actually sometimes can make things worse for their stories and for what I would call the movement to reform family court or have healthier divorce because nobody wants to be around crazy and no one wants to get in the middle of a custody battle.
Ginger Gentile: I always say to people, it’s like you’re in a restaurant or a dinner party and imagine a couple comes and they start to fight, the first thing you want to do is ask them to leave or say, oh, I got to go, no one says, oh, let me get involved, let me see if I can fix this.
Ginger Gentile: You want to run, so when people translate their problems to social media or they keep on saying, well, the press won’t cover my story, I’m like, well, of course they won’t cover your story, you come out and come off as crazy. So we need professionals to come and tell these stories for them.
Barbara La Pointe: Well, I think there is a lot of crazy-making, and it can make you crazy.
Ginger Gentile: Oh, yeah, for good reason. I’m not blaming the parents. It’s just you have to be careful when you tell a story to a wider audience that you’re not using the press as therapy.
Ginger Gentile: You’re not using social media posting as therapy, as a way to vent. Because it’s rightfully so. You can’t see your children. You are traumatized. You are stressed. You are, you think your life is ending. So I get that. But in other social movements, like if we look at, for example, I think the most successful social movement in recent history, which is the gay and lesbian rights movement.
Ginger Gentile: So they went from being considered criminals and insane people to being accepted members of society, running for office, having normal lives, being able to get married and being able to, to adopt, in about 50 years. And when they picked the people to become spokespeople for that movement, they did not pick random people.
Ginger Gentile: When they argued a case in front of the Supreme Court, they picked a lesbian couple who presented very well, who was old, because they felt that’d be more presentable to the public. Harvey Milk, the first gay mayor, in a city, he wore a suit, and he was a guy who really didn’t like wearing suits, but it made it more presentable to people.
Ginger Gentile: So I think there’s a big difference between the therapeutic space, the self-processing people have to do, and then the public telling of these stories, which can be quite messy, so we have to find a way to clean it up for the public.
Barbara La Pointe: Right. Well maybe we could just pause, taking all of that into consideration, and just maybe we could start with the system, the court system.
Barbara La Pointe: From your perspective, why aren’t they helping and supporting families? Or maybe they are.
Ginger Gentile: So when we talk about the system, the first thing I wanna say is that there are a lot of wonderful professionals who work in the system. But the system itself is designed, the family court system well first I’ll put a pin in that. There are ways to divorce and decide custody that do not involve going before a judge and hiring lawyers, and I strongly encourage people to look at mediation or something called collaborative law, where each person has a lawyer but they agree not to go to trial.
Ginger Gentile: And if you decide it doesn’t work and wanna go to trial, you have to find new lawyers. The whole idea is to resolve this. So I always tell people, “Please do not talk to a lawyer or hire a lawyer if you’re considering divorce. Try to make it work, and if you can’t, look into mediation and collaborative law with professionals who are used to dealing with high conflict and personality disorder.”
Ginger Gentile: ‘Cause there’s some who are, and there’s some who their form of mediation is just you guys figure it out. So I wanna put a pin in that. But now if you get into the family court system, the problem with the family court system is that there’s a winner and there’s a loser. It’s adversarial by nature. And this is great if you have to fight about a contract that wasn’t paid, maybe decide a criminal case.
Ginger Gentile: But if you’re trying to have a healthy family, two parents for days on trial say the worst thing they can about the other parent, how are they ever gonna co-parent after that? It’s nearly impossible. And then also, lawyers in law school are trained to be zealous advocates for their clients.
Ginger Gentile: Again, this is very good if you’re negotiating a contract. I want my lawyer to represent Ginger and look out for Ginger. But if I’m trying to negotiate a co-parenting agreement, a lawyer who’s representing me zealously and is gonna win at all cost and play dirty and fight to get every penny I can and every moment I can at the time, and the other lawyer is doing that, first of all, this creates more conflict, not less.
Ginger Gentile: But also, you can wipe out college funds, savings, home equity doing this. Or you can’t afford this, and then you have no access to justice. So a lot of parents don’t even get to go to court because they don’t have money for a lawyer, and you can represent yourself, being pro se, in about 60% of family law cases.
Ginger Gentile: I’m not sure what the stat is in Canada, it varies by state, but 60 to 70% of people represent themselves, or at least one party is self-represented. The problem is the system is so complex, it is so complicated. I know in California, and the problem is each state and province in Canada is different, but in California, which is a high divorce state, it’s the capital of divorce there are over 200 yeah, there are over 200 forms used in family court. How is anybody gonna be able to navigate 200 forms?
Barbara La Pointe: Good point. That’s pretty overwhelming. Would you say about 50% of people get divorced?
Ginger Gentile: I would say, statistically, about half of all marriages end in divorce. So not all, everybody gets married, but about half of all marriages end in divorce.
Ginger Gentile: Maybe it’s down to 49%, but about that.
Barbara La Pointe: And so in the United States, I can’t speak for Canada, but I read a crazy quote that the industry of divorce was about $50 billion a year?
Ginger Gentile: Yes.
Barbara La Pointe: Billion. Billions. That’s quite a revenue.
Ginger Gentile: Yeah, so the divorce industry, and we talk about this in the Erasing Family documentary, is about 50 billion a year.
Ginger Gentile: And that’s also because, think about it, a lawyer charges $500 an hour. A one-week trial, that’s 40. I think you’re better at math than I am, Andrew, but that’s just for one week of a trial. So that’s not investigation, discovery, writing reports, forensic accounting, expert witnesses. A custody evaluation in the US can run you $40,000.
Ginger Gentile: Now, again, if you don’t have the money, then you don’t have access to justice. So I always say, you know, if you’re rich, you’re unlucky because you’ll lose all your money, and if you’re poor, you’re unlucky because you don’t get to lose all your money in court. And all of these resources could be spent and reallocated to provide people with free and low-cost counseling, mediation, collaborative law, and mental health services, parenting courses.
Ginger Gentile: I think a lot of parents also don’t even know about how harmful it is to even do a little badmouthing about the other parent to the kid. They really don’t. And I think that’s where a film like Erasing Family comes in, is to build this public awareness and just educate people on the harm that they are causing.
Andrew Folkler: Yeah, absolutely. Especially on just in general with your point on the educational process, how very little is taught. And even then, at least from my understanding of intro to parenting classes, it’s just for how to take care of a baby. At least I don’t see much in the curriculum on what it means to engage in healthy relationships with people, how to find the right partner what are the red flags to a very unhealthy relationship, and how to address conflict in general. ‘Cause there’s always gonna be disagreements in a relationship, but at least what to do and how to work through that. And so when you add on all these other elements when all the divorce and other high-stakes things, where everyone is butting heads and fighting tooth and nail to effectively destroy the other person, they’re just completely oblivious to the impact on themselves and on their children as well.
Ginger Gentile: Right. Yeah, that’s why I always like to highlight there’s a lot of good stuff out there. But the work of Bill Eddy, who writes a lot about how to deal with high-conflict people, I always send people to his stuff. I’ve used his stuff with my own family, which is keep communication with high-conflict people, brief, informative, friendly, firm.
Ginger Gentile: Yeah. And I often see a lot of parents who are going through parental alienation, where they can’t see a kid or their kid rejects them. And they post their text messages on social media, which please stop doing that. If you do that, please stop. But they always say, it’s like, “You can’t see the kids because you, I hate you,” blah, blah, blah.
Ginger Gentile: And then the parent says, “I will be there at 3:30 to pick up Jake. Thank you,” ‘cause you’re maintaining your parenting time. They say, “Well, you’re a narcissist, and you hate me, and you’re always blaming me. And I’m gonna go to the judge with this text message and show them what a piece of shit you are.”
Ginger Gentile: And then the other parent says, “Oh, yeah? Well, I’m recording this. And don’t even bother coming by because Jake is gonna be away.” And it’s like, “Well, I saw you posted on Instagram,” and it just devours. And then the other thing that parents do in these situations is they give up their power. So a lot of parents will ask me, “Should I go to my kid’s recital?
Ginger Gentile: Because they told me they don’t want me to go.” And then I ask the question, “What’s your relationship like with your kid now?” And they say, “Nonexistent. I haven’t talked to them in three years.” I said, “Well, then go, because you already have no relationship. You’re not gonna make it worse, but you make it worse by not showing up.”
Ginger Gentile: And all of a sudden the kid becomes the decider. And if it’s not the kid, they want the judge to decide in their case, so they give all their power away to the judge. And when the judge doesn’t decide what they want, or the kid doesn’t decide what they want, or the ex doesn’t decide what they want, then for some reason they see my film, they call me up and they say, “Ginger, I wanna tell you my case, and you tell me if I’m suffering parental alienation.”
Ginger Gentile: I’m like, “Why? I’m magic. If we decide you’re the victim, do you magically get cured?” And the answer is no. And so AJ, I wanna talk to you, ask you about this because you wrote a post with your experience and what kind of crazy things parents ask you because you were a kid who experienced parental alienation.
Ginger Gentile: And then how does it make you feel when they ask? I’m sure they DM you and ask you advice.
Andrew Folkler: Yeah. When I started in 2014, I was bobbing my head non-stop.
Ginger Gentile: How old are you?
Andrew Folkler: I’m 26. I’ll be 26 in a couple days, actually.
Ginger Gentile: So 2014, you were 20?
Andrew Folkler: Yeah.
Andrew Folkler: Let’s see.
Andrew Folkler: Right about 20, yep.
Andrew Folkler: So yeah, when I started this in 2014, circling back a little bit to what you were saying earlier about using the public as therapy, that was a mistake I made. I was turning my personal case into a public campaign in the attempt to try and garner attention, thinking that I was the only one experiencing this, and I wasn’t.
Andrew Folkler: There was tens of thousands of couples out there all in these different Facebook groups that were experiencing something either like mine or even more vicious, depending on where they were at in their circumstances. And at that point, there were a lot of people calling for children of alienation, but you were only really seeing, maybe some guest speakers in, like, Dr.
Andrew Folkler: Phil episodes. There wasn’t as many people speaking out today as there were then. And so I stepped into the fray thinking that this was the way to solve my personal issues. And very quickly, I just got swarmed by a lot of people. It did open a lot of opportunities for me where I could speak as a guest speaker on radio talks.
Andrew Folkler: I got to meet a lot of high-tier names up there like Thomas Fiddler from the Fathers Rights movement. I got to meet Jill Heggie from the Parental Alienation Awareness Organization, and I got the opportunity to talk to a lot of other people that are very active in this movement. And for the most part, my presentation was fairly decent, so it wasn’t like I was just coming there to air my dirty laundry.
Andrew Folkler: But at the same time... It was nonstop. It would come from all directions. And there were oftentimes during, especially holidays, I was trying to rebuild my relationship with my mother. I was maybe about a year or two into working on that, and it’s a very weird experience, just honestly speaking, when you spend 13 years of your life hating a specific parent, thinking that they left you, that they abandoned you, that they don’t care about you.
Andrew Folkler: And then now all of a sudden I have to own up to everything I’ve said to her in the past, and I have to look her in the eyes and try and build a relationship with her. And that was a very difficult process. But the thing was, I was willing to throw myself out there and give her my time and energy to do so.
Andrew Folkler: And to have that impeded because obviously I was only visiting her during holidays because of school and sometimes work. And so to have people calling me up on Christmas, for example, and I have to get away from the family, run upstairs and counsel somebody because they are really frustrated and they’re really either depressed or just emotional in general, and needing to vent their current struggles and everything that they’re going through.
Andrew Folkler: And I’m not a counselor. At best, I’m an enthusiast in psychology, but I am by no means qualified to really lead people through these things. And it was nonstop. Like you were saying before, I would get these really long essays on a person’s personal life, and I’d be reading through it and just so I can try and answer the questions.
Andrew Folkler: But again, there’s nothing I can do. I’m not somebody who can just snap my fingers and say, “Hey, your kid’s going to figure this out.” I can’t give the secret sauce. I can explain what the circumstances were for me to figure things out. But there’s nothing I can do to snap my fingers and say, “Your kid is fixed now.”
Ginger Gentile: Right. Right. And then they get frustrated by that.
Ginger Gentile: And then they sometimes get angry. Have they ever gotten angry with you?
Andrew Folkler: There have been times where they cut communication off, saying, “Okay, well, this is not working,” and then they go off somewhere else.
Andrew Folkler: I am very good at diffusing high-tension situations for obvious reasons. So it never really bothered me. For me, it was more of a, okay, at least I can move on with what I’m doing for the day. And unfortunately for them, they kinda just snowball into bigger and bigger frustrations, and sometimes even shoot themselves in the foot just because they get so emotionally tense and so worked up that they stop thinking rationally and then they make that impulsive decision and further alienate their kids. And that was just something I had to make sure that I didn’t hold myself accountable for. It’s something that happens a lot in that movement. And it reached a point where later in maybe mid-2015, that’s when I decided to step out simply because I was getting too sucked in, and it reached a point where I’d go on Facebook, for example, and all I would see is negative story after negative story after negative story.
Andrew Folkler: And it was so emotionally draining. You get all these people trying to come to you for counseling, and there’s really nothing you can do to help them. And then I pretty much said all the things I could say at that point. And then within my own personal life, I wasn’t getting the therapy I needed.
Andrew Folkler: And so I was reaching that point of complete and utter parental alienation burnout.
Andrew Folkler: And that’s when I pulled back, and I really had to do some internal work. And that’s where I’ve been for the last five years.
Ginger Gentile: Yeah. Yeah, that happened to me, yeah, where you just get burned out trying to help people, frustrated, or they ask for advice, they won’t take your advice, and then they complain about it.
Ginger Gentile: Or they just argue with you with it. I was at a call with a support group and I said, “Well, a lot of kids, they come back at 18 because that’s when they’re finally out of the home.” And he kept on arguing, like, “Where’d you get this 18 from?” I’m like, “Well, it’s just the age of majority in the US.
Ginger Gentile: I think in Canada it’s 19. In other cultures it might be less or more. But it’s when kids are out of the house.” So if the kid is not brainwashed, but just being kinda held hostage and being prevented, that’s a very common age to reunite. And then if it doesn’t happen at that age, it might take years, decades, or never happen because the child believes what they’ve been told.
Ginger Gentile: And he just kept on saying, “Well, why not 17? Why not 19?” I’m like...
Andrew Folkler: Oh, man.
Ginger Gentile: You wanna do a study on this? I don’t know.” “It’s what I found. Take it or leave it. But why are you gonna argue with me?” Or people get very upset when I don’t parrot back what they wanna hear. But what they think and what they wanna hear hasn’t been working.
Andrew Folkler: Yeah, absolutely. So yeah. And I can definitely relate to all of that. It’s very frustrating. And it’s one of the big reasons why I’m only in a very select few parental alienation groups on Facebook, just because that’s all you see nonstop. And it’s emotionally taxing. And it’s taxing for them too because they’re hoping to find help, and they’re not going to be able to find that simply because they’re approaching the situation the wrong way. A lot of people would ask me, “What do you do to reunite with a kid that’s been alienated?” And ironically they all take the same approach, which is the “I’m your mom, I’m your dad.
Andrew Folkler: I always love you, and I wanna spend time with you. I don’t know why you’re talking to me this way.” They’re texting in this way where they’re trying to be an authority figure, but they, like you said before, they have no power.
Andrew Folkler: And so they’re timidly trying to take back their power, and they’re not getting it.
Ginger Gentile: Yeah, they say, “How dare you talk to me like that?” And it’s very frustrating, and then they put these texts up, and then some people say, “Well, I no longer talk to my kids. They’re dead to me.”
Ginger Gentile: It’s just like this whole thing. What would you say, what is a better approach in your opinion for a parent who gets the kid on the phone who’s texting? So not just to you, but what general advice would you give to a parent who says, “My kid responded.
Ginger Gentile: I said, ‘Hey.’ They said, ‘Hey, mom’”?
Andrew Folkler: Okay. So what I tell people is to treat it like dating, where when you meet someone new and you’re trying to build a relationship with somebody new, you’re not gonna be, “Hi, my name’s Andrew. Let’s get married.” That it doesn’t work.
Andrew Folkler: It will never work. And anyone who says, “Yes, let’s get married,” is going to get you probably in a lot of trouble. So you’re walking up to your kid, “Hi, I’m your dad. Let’s have a relationship.” Doesn’t work. Why? Because there’s no trust. There’s no previous lines of communication.
Andrew Folkler: Yeah. So if you treat it like dating where what you do is you find out what their other interests are, then maybe you dabble in their interests. Ask them a few questions that they would know. Just get their opinions on things. Try and build that dialogue going up, and then from there you can try and get that relationship.
Andrew Folkler: You don’t want to send a good morning text, how are you, because everyone gets those texts all the time. No one cares.
Andrew Folkler: And it’s not a conversation starter. But if I were to, say for example, your alienated child is really big into superhero movies and this is something you know about them.
Andrew Folkler: This is something you know that will work. You can just text them and say, “Hey, there’s this new superhero TV show that Disney Plus has got. I’ve been thinking about checking it out. What do you think?” And then it’s impersonal. It’s not going to be related to the family or the divorce or the relationship in general.
Andrew Folkler: And all you’re doing is just asking them for their opinion, showing them that you validate their opinion. And it gives you that chance to build a relationship, a talking relationship with them. You don’t want to talk about these high emotional points. You want to just have these shorter conversations with these kids, so that way they feel safer to then bring up their either their school life or their emotional and relationship life, or anything else that would be normal in, say, a regular parent-child relationship. And so with the dating analogy, it seems to help more people in general, just because it’s easy for them to switch gears and be like, “Okay.”
Andrew Folkler: And...
Ginger Gentile: Online dating is so much fun. Everybody loves it. But you’re right. I even posted something that was like, “I refused to date a guy who says, ‘How are you? What’s up?’” And a lot of people acted very angrily to this, but I’m like, there’s no information there.
Ginger Gentile: Every day I’m gonna say, “I’m fine, I’m busy, I’m stressed,” and like, “What are you learning?”
Ginger Gentile: But ask me opinions. And just to bring it back to the Erasing Family film, so a lot of people say, “Well, how can I get my kid to watch this film?” And I’m hoping to get research that proves this, but anecdotally I’ve had people, kids, adult kids reach out to me and saying, “I found your film.
Ginger Gentile: I saw it, and it really helped rebuild my relationship with my dad. This really helped me explain what was going on in a way that doesn’t blame a parent. There’s no parent in the film that’s the bad alienator and the victim. It’s all very complicated and messy.” And a lot of parents are like, “Well, how can I send this to my kid?”
Ginger Gentile: And I’m like, “Ideally, they don’t get it from you.”
Ginger Gentile: So send the film to other kids and young adults, even if they’re not from divorced households, because then they will share it with somebody who is. And then always say, “I found this film. What do you think about it?” And that’s it. And don’t send an article about parental alienation or I’m alienated or I think this film is about you, ‘cause people love to give their opinions.
Ginger Gentile: And it’s very low stakes. It’s a film. And I would even suggest if you do feel comfortable sending this to your kid, make it the third, fourth, or fifth film that you send, and then if they wanna talk about it, they will. And they might watch it and not wanna talk about it, but then don’t press them. Just let the film sit there, ‘cause they also might not wanna watch it with you.
Ginger Gentile: They might wanna watch on their own and then need to process. But just like that, ‘cause a lot of people say, “I’m gonna craft a letter and put in all these studies,” I’m like, “No, no, no, no. This is just a film. It’s like, ‘Hey, I saw Tiger King. It’s about tigers. You should check it out.’ ‘Oh, I saw this film. It’s about divorce.
Ginger Gentile: Let me know what you think.’”
Ginger Gentile: That’s it.
Andrew Folkler: Absolutely. One way I try and put it to people is, because you always see these same posts of “I wanna tell my kid that they’re being brainwashed,” and it never goes well, and I try and use the analogy of what...
Ginger Gentile: Or they want me someone who doesn’t know them, to call them up and like “Do you know how crazy it’s gonna sound if some random person called you and be like, ‘Hey, you don’t know me, but I think you’re being brainwashed?’”
Ginger Gentile: Is this gonna work?
Andrew Folkler: I’ve had the same exact thing happen to me. It’s just ridiculous.
Andrew Folkler: “Can you...
Ginger Gentile: Talk to my kids?” No, they don’t know me. If someone called you up and was like, the example I always give is veganism. I’m 95% vegan, and I was like, what if someone random called you up, you’re a meat eater, and said, “You know what’s really bad? The hamburger you had for lunch.
Ginger Gentile: Why don’t you become vegan?” You’d hang up the phone. You’d curse them out and be like, “Dude, what’s wrong with you?” So thinking about these examples I think can help people. And that it’s about seduction, that it’s about taking your time, getting to know where the kid is now and not where they were 10 years ago, that their interests if they’re 18 and it’s been a few years, they might not like the same stuff they did when they were 14 or 13.
Ginger Gentile: Newsflash. I’ve seen parents do that too, send stuff where I’m like, “This is for an 18-year-old girl. Is she,” I’m like, “Is she into this?” They’re like, “Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.” I’m like, “Okay.”
Barbara La Pointe: So I also feel there might be some value in just backing up, because you two have such experience and deep rapport on the subject. But I have kind of an intuitive feeling that the people who are gonna watch this podcast might not know anything about parental alienation.
Barbara La Pointe: And I thought maybe a really clean definition of that might be valuable. And even about your film. And then I was also wondering if Andrew’s experience as an alienated child is unique, ‘cause you’ve talked to hundreds, thousands maybe, Ginger?
Ginger Gentile: Sure. Yeah. So when we use the term parental alienation, I think the first thing to say is that this is a pop culture term.
Ginger Gentile: It’s not necessarily a scientific term, and we can refer to it by a lot of different ways. Sometimes it’s called parental gatekeeping, family bond obstruction, attachment disorder. But basically what it is is a set of behaviors that one parent does to damage the relationship or exclude the other parent, and sometimes their extended family, out of the child’s life.
Ginger Gentile: And it’s important to note that also grandparents can do this, stepparents can do this. In Erasing Family we have a situation where it’s the stepparent who’s really driving the alienation, who’s very active. And also that there are situations, and a lot of them, where both parents are acting badly, and this I think is more complicated.
Ginger Gentile: We like to think of it there’s who’s the bad parent, and often it’s two parents who are responding from their hurt little child selves. And one way to look at it is that when a parent wants to harm the relationship between a child and the other parent, they’re using the child because it’s the most precious thing that parent has.
Ginger Gentile: So it’s a form of domestic violence by proxy, because the child becomes damaged as collateral, but really they wanna hurt the other parent by removing that relationship, that love, that sense of being. For a lot of parents, becoming a mom or a dad was the most important thing of their life. For some people, that’s how they define themselves, so that’s taking away someone’s definition.
Ginger Gentile: And also, it will make the other person act irrationally. But I think what’s also important to note is that there’s varying degrees of this, and the most common form and the most subtle form, but very effective, is telling your child, “It’s okay if you don’t wanna see mom. You don’t like going over there, right?”
Ginger Gentile: Or, “When you see Dad, Mommy gets really sad ‘cause she’s all alone and it makes Mommy cry. Do you wanna stay with Mommy?” So stuff like that, which isn’t creating, ‘cause I think a lot of people think this is all about false accusations and court cases. But in Erasing Family, we have one kid who just says, “It was so stressful to see my mom, I just decided it was easier not to have her in my life and I made a decision to no longer communicate with my mom.”
Ginger Gentile: And he eventually became adopted by his stepmom. He chose this because it was just simply less stressful. So little things that parents do can really influence their kid, and the kid then says things to themselves. If they’re older and very smart, this might be a rational, protective decision, or it might be a decision that they make from their subconscious, which is, “Okay, if I want the love of the parent who I live with, I need to get with their program, and that program means rejecting the other parent.”
Ginger Gentile: And some parents, and this is, I think, also the most surprising thing that I found, is that it’s actually easier to alienate a teenage kid than a young kid. And that’s because young children are very bad at lying. So they will break down very easily. It’s funny that we have a clip of this in the film, a little girl who says, the mom is coaching her, “You don’t wanna see Daddy.”
Ginger Gentile: And she goes, “No, I don’t wanna see Daddy.” “Why don’t you?” And she just begins to cry, “Because I don’t” And she doesn’t have a good reason, and she’s heartbroken. But teenagers, one, they can be bribed. You stay with me, you get a car. You stay with me, you can go out as much as you want. There’s no curfew at my house.
Ginger Gentile: The other house is stricter. Or they just know that this is the game they have to play, so then it’s easier for them to give testimony or tell other people, “I really don’t wanna see that parent,” because they realize they have to play this game. Because what alienation does is says, “My love is not unconditional.
Ginger Gentile: My love is conditional, and my love is conditional on you being loyal to me and not to the other parent.” So it creates a huge loyalty conflict for the child. It forces them to choose, and it also teaches them in the future that if somebody’s difficult, you can just erase them. And in the most tragic cases, and we see this in the film Erasing Family, is you have kids who will say, “My birth mom, my egg donor, my sperm donor.”
Ginger Gentile: But these are parents who they’ve lived with for many years, who were part of a family. Their mom wasn’t an egg donor. The mother raised them for 16 years. But they say, “That’s not my mom.” We have a letter in the film where a girl says to her dad, “It’s just blood and DNA.”
Ginger Gentile: You’re not my dad. My stepfather raised me. He’s my dad. I know. You’re not. We have nothing. We are strangers, she says. We are strangers. Now what’s also interesting that we see in the film in a lot of cases is that dad, like a lot of people, doesn’t always respond in the best way. And this is actually in response to a Facebook post where a lot of parents would think it’s not that bad what he posted, and very general about laws and the mom.
Ginger Gentile: But she saw it as an attack on her mom, and now she’s like, “I have the justification to never talk to you ever again, ‘cause you’re attacking my mom.” And the problem that we get with the family courts is that these cases get rated high-conflict. The courts don’t wanna deal with them. A lot of professionals don’t know what to do.
Ginger Gentile: They don’t wanna put a lot of consequences on the parents for these behaviors. So these cases they get worse, ‘cause most divorces there’s a lot of conflict, ‘cause you’re getting divorced for a reason, and then over the years the conflict subsides. And these cases we see the conflict and the animosity increasing over time.
Ginger Gentile: Stuff gets more violent, and recently, I’m not sure when this podcast will air, but we had another tragic example of a father was unable to see his kids for three years. He was very active in the parental alienation community. He went on some podcasts. He was writing letters to his kids. And finally, he gets to see his two daughters.
Ginger Gentile: Goes to the parking lot where the custody exchange is gonna happen. Stepfather gets out of the car, shoots him dead And confesses to the police right away, “Oh, I shot him.” Because for people who are in this sick alienation mindset, and this is different from another more subtle form of alienation, which is, “I want more custody time, so I win, so I punish you, and I get more money from child support.”
Ginger Gentile: ‘Cause that’s a logical person, a mean person, but logical. But when someone is sick, and, “I have to erase you at all costs,” this can lead to murder and suicide. There’s been cases where people say, “If you can’t have my kid, if I can’t have my child...” I’m gonna kill the child, I’m gonna kill me. So these are the most tragic cases, and right now the legal community and the psychological community, a lot of times they don’t wanna treat these cases ‘cause they’re so volatile because people who are actively alienating and who have psychological problems behind this, they will report the psychologist, they will harass them, they will.
Ginger Gentile: So a lot of people are just like, “It’s not worth it to do this.” Which is why awareness and prevention is so important, because if we can prevent these cases from escalating, we can save a lot of heartache. Because when they get really bad, there are ways to stop it and to cure it, but it is very, very difficult.
Ginger Gentile: It is very difficult and it’s very time-consuming, very expensive, so the emphasis has to be on prevention.
Barbara La Pointe: Ginger, there’s change-makers like you trying to bring positive change and solutions.
Barbara La Pointe: But when you’re in a conflict for a long, long time, like in family court, and you’re writing affidavits and you can’t use those fifth statements abilities, and it gets to that point that you were just describing where you’re murderous or suicidal. Why aren’t the family courts able, why aren’t they helping? Why does that system make the problem worse?
Ginger Gentile: Well, I think the reason why the family court system makes the problem of parental alienation worse is because most people who are working in the family court system have very little or no training in family dynamics and child psychology.
Ginger Gentile: So judges, and this depends on jurisdiction, but for the most part are not required to have any training, advanced degrees, continuing education. You require lawyers and psychologists to do that, but not judges. A lot of them have said, “I don’t wanna read studies because I don’t wanna be biased.” So they’re not up on their research.
Ginger Gentile: Lawyers are trained to be lawyers, and a lot of lawyers, they do family law and they do civil law. So they’ll write a contract, a will, and do a parental alienation case. And even in the psychological community and social work community, you have a lot of people who, I think in general there’s a lot of psychologists that shy away from real problems, and I have a lot of anecdotal evidence where people are like, they have a real problem, the psychologist is like, “Whoa, this is too much.
Ginger Gentile: I wanna deal with your psychological problems, not your real problems.” And that being said, you can always deescalate the conflict. You can always stop fighting. And I always tell parents it’s an option to remove yourself from family court, because if you see that family court isn’t giving you a solution, I always say file something so you feel well, like a letter saying why you’re leaving so it feels like you closed.
Ginger Gentile: And you say, “I love my kids, I just can’t afford this. This isn’t working,” blah, blah, blah, whatever. ‘.
Barbara La Pointe: ‘Cause to Ginger’s story, but sometimes people feel like once they’re in they can’t get out. They...
Ginger Gentile: You can always get out get out. There’s a great scene in Game of Thrones where they’re on a cliff or no, a battle rampart, and there’s people fighting over there, and they can jump and kill themselves. And they go, “Well, we always have a choice.” Now this isn’t so tragic, because here’s the thing. People think family court will solve their issue, but when I talk to people, say, “I’ve been in family court for now 10, 20 years, and the judge hates me,” I’m like, “Well, why are you there?
Barbara La Pointe: You can always...
Ginger Gentile: Save those resources. Put yourself in a good, healthy place, and then begin to communicate with your child.” And a lot of people say, “Well, I can’t communicate with my child.” And I say, “Yes, you can. You can close your eyes and talk to your child. People talk to dead people all the time. People send messages to people all the time.
Ginger Gentile: You can start there. You can start on your social media feed, cleaning it up and sending only messages of love, showing how wonderful your life is but you wish your kid was there with you instead of I’m alienated, I’m being sick. You can start a blog and start posting videos, talking to your child.
Ginger Gentile: You can also, for me, what blows my mind is I talk to a lot of parents and say, “Do you have a restraining order?” “No.” “Can you go to the school?” “Oh, yeah, I have a great relationship with the school.” “How often do you go?” “Oh, I never go.” Volunteer at the kid’s school with no expectation that you’ll see the kid.
Ginger Gentile: Bring cupcakes. Be there. Develop a good relationship there. Build yourself some credentials. And every case is different, but find the ways you can enter and develop a life that’s so wonderful that when your kid at some point, and most kids do at some point reconnect, they, as Andrew said, want to be with you, and they don’t see someone who’s bitter, angry, sad, traumatized.
Ginger Gentile: Because on a child who’s being alienated, a lot of parents say, “Well, I want them to come back, but I’m not willing to do any of the work, and I want the kid to come back, but if they come back to me, they’re by essence rejecting that whole side, that alienating side.” Well, you better be able to provide love and resources to that kid, because you’re asking them to jump off a cliff.
Ginger Gentile: You have to be ready to catch them. And now I do know people who do have success with the family court. They’re very few and far in between, and the ones who are are the people who are... It’s not that they have a great case. It’s not that they have expert witnesses and understand the problem.
Ginger Gentile: They are parents who understand that family court isn’t about justice, and they’re able to get their cases decided on technicalities. They find the loophole. But that is not an emotional person going to family court That is a person who understands, and I know this coming from a family of lawyers, court is not about justice.
Ginger Gentile: So when you go to court asking for justice, you are screwed. You have to go to family court knowing what you can get, what you can’t get, where you can navigate and negotiate where it makes sense, and you have to be a very rational place. And the people who I know who win, they’re like, “Oh, I found an 1876 statute from my state that rules about papers can’t be served on Tuesdays, and I was served on a Tuesday, which is illegal in the state of Kentucky, ‘cause that used to be market day.”
Ginger Gentile: And it’s weird stuff like that, and that’s an extreme example. But it’s where constitutional stuff with these drawn-out cases, which is different from a case that’s starting. When people say, “What should I do with my court case?” I say stop.
Ginger Gentile: Also, if everybody stopped, family court would be robbed of money, and it would start to reform itself, but we keep feeding the beast. And the best thing is to say, “This is the money and time I’m willing to spend in family court.” Whatever you put, you will spend that money and that time.
Ginger Gentile: I knew someone who said, “I’m willing to spend $400,000 to see my kids, but not a penny more.” Filing one motion cost him 110,000, and he lost. Judge looked at it, denied, boom, so that’s a third of his budget spent on one motion that the judge didn’t even bring to procedure, just said denied. But at the very least, he wasn’t gonna lose everything he had.
Ginger Gentile: He was only gonna lose part of what he had. He was a wealthy person. So always to be very clear, and whatever you have, appreciate it. If you have a Skype call with your kid, make it the best damn Skype call the kid has ever seen, and then hopefully things will dissipate over time. And if not, that’s awful, but the courts, I wish I could say, “Yeah, go to court,” like the courts will solve it.
Ginger Gentile: But I don’t know of any success cases really.
Barbara La Pointe: So what’s...
Andrew Folkler: Yeah, I think...
Barbara La Pointe: Go ahead, Andrew.
Andrew Folkler: Oh, well I think I really love the idea of how you were talking about getting involved in the school and just being that cool parent. You bring in some cupcakes, and especially if the kids are younger, they’ll never forget you.
Andrew Folkler: They’ll always be ready for more cupcakes. They will always be more excited just to see you. And it doesn’t have to be...
Ginger Gentile: In their classroom, if that’s a problem. You can just be in the school. And then don’t go up to the kids and be like, “I missed you.” Just be there and be helping the school, ‘cause a lot of people say that they have problems with the school.
Ginger Gentile: But if you’re always there and you’re supporting, then maybe the bad information that the other parents have about you, it’ll eventually fade. And I’ve seen parents reunite with their kids, and they’ll say, “It was tough for the first six months, ‘cause I’d walk in and everyone would look at me and be like, ‘Oh, you’re the abusive ex-husband.’”
Ginger Gentile: You know, and they get this. And then they would be there, they would do stuff, they would help raise money. And then after six months, people were like, “Well, he doesn’t seem like a bad guy. He hasn’t yelled or anything. He seems very nice.” And then eventually, this is very hard, after six, seven months, his daughters came up to him and would be like, “Hey, Dad, what’s up?”
Ginger Gentile: But he never went to them and said, “Oh, where have you been?” So it has to be very gradual. But, you know, I’m like, you see, you can go but you don’t take the opportunity. Or parents say, “Well, I don’t wanna stress the kids out, so I’m not gonna go. I’m not gonna talk to the parents at a parent-teachers conference.”
Ginger Gentile: As an alienated parent, every place you can go, even if it’s tense, be there. Don’t add to the tension, but don’t back off. So that means go to a school event. Maybe it means hang in the back and don’t run up and give a bouquet of flowers. But hang in the back and be there. Don’t get into a fight and don’t but be there. Show up. And most kids will say in the long run they appreciated it.
Andrew Folkler: Absolutely. And being in a public setting, it gives you the opportunity to not only show your kid just how good of a person you are, but also to the entire community. Their friends are gonna see it, their friends’ parents, their teachers, and the rest of the staff.
Andrew Folkler: It’s kinda going back to that dating analogy. You take your first few dates out to a public setting, show that you’re not a creeper, you’re not somebody who’s gonna try and turn that potential partner into a therapist. You’re not gonna, “Hi, my name’s Andrew, and I’ve got baggage.”
Andrew Folkler: And so it’s just being able to be a human being, just in general. Since we’re starting at ground level, you don’t have a relationship with that kid. What’s gonna happen? You’re not gonna have a worse relationship with them. You’re just going to show them who as an individual you are and what positive changes you can bring to the community. And so I think that’s a, that’s a brilliant, brilliant suggestion, and it definitely takes things a lot farther than I ever have recommended in the past
Ginger Gentile: Yeah, it’s about showing up, it’s about stepping into your power, ‘cause a lot of parents who are going through this, they even say, “Well, I don’t wanna go.
Ginger Gentile: I’m not gonna show up because it’s tense.” But you have to find a way to make the situation less tense, if that’s bringing a friend as a witness, if it’s arranging the custody exchanges so they’re not at the house, but they’re at the school so you’re not interacting with the other parent. And also, mileage will vary, and I also tell parents always, “You might do everything right and things still might not go your way, but you’re mirroring to your kids the behavior you want.”
Ginger Gentile: So if you say, “I don’t want my child’s other parent to talk badly about me,” don’t talk badly about the other parent. If you want your child to come back to you, take a leap of faith, even though it’s uncomfortable, show up at the school and show them that being uncomfortable or being stared at by other people, like the other parents are gonna be like, “Oh, who’s that guy?
Ginger Gentile: Oh, that’s the nasty ex,” that you’re willing to do that. But sometimes people want their kids to do stuff that they’re not willing to do. And I’m always like, you can never ask somebody... I’ve raised a lot of money in non-profits for Erasing Family, and the first rule is you can’t ask somebody for money if you haven’t donated.
Ginger Gentile: So for me, it was donating my time and my equipment, but other people say, “Oh, I wanna solicit donations.” I’m like, “Well, you need to donate first. It can be 50 bucks, but you can’t go ask people for their money if you haven’t donated 50 bucks.” It just doesn’t work. And you can’t ask your kid to do certain things if you’re not doing them.
Ginger Gentile: It won’t work.
Ginger Gentile: Not anything like that. Yeah.
Andrew Folkler: And just being a positive environment to be around. Nobody wants to be around something that’s angry, or tense or negative. Or depressed, for that matter.
Andrew Folkler: And so if you’re the fun dad or you’re the fun mom who’s either at church or at school or even just in the community in general, it’s a it makes you want to spend time with them, whether you’re the alienated child or you’re just some random stranger on the street.
Barbara La Pointe: Yeah. Do moms get erased? Do mothers get erased?
Ginger Gentile: Oh, yeah. Of course. In our film Erasing Family, we focus on three families. Two of the families, it’s the mother who’s been erased.
Ginger Gentile: The thing is that custody is most likely won by women, but parental alienation is not a gendered issue So it’s also important to see how they’re connected, but that a court or legal bias towards mothers does not mean that mothers don’t lose custody due to parental alienation. So it’s very clear if we look at the statistics, most sole custody in the US and in Canada is held by mothers.
Ginger Gentile: Now, that could be the result of both parents deciding that, them knowing that’s how the court’s gonna decide, so why fight it, the result of a lot of things. But when you look at parental alienation cases, all the research shows that it’s half moms and half dads. So there’s also a lot of dynamics, and also that’s why I think the messaging always has to be, how can we make divorce healthier?
Ginger Gentile: Because there’s a lot of cases that would also be improved if the family court system was less adversarial, that aren’t parental alienation cases, or they’re cases where both parents are fighting a lot, which also results in something that happened to me that I don’t think we talk about, is when the kid gets older and says, “I want nothing to do with either of you two.”
Ginger Gentile: And then you’re not alienated, or you’re alienated from both. I remember from a very young age, when I was six, I looked at both of my parents and I said, “I’m not taking care of either of you when you get old. Make other plans.” I was just very clear. I remember that when I was six.
Ginger Gentile: I was like, “Don’t...” And they didn’t say anything. They were kind of shocked. But I’m just like, “I’m not dealing with this. I’m not dealing with this fighting,” because the fighting happened way before the divorce, ‘cause the divorce happened eight years later. But from a young age, I was like, “I’m not i’m out of here. As soon as I can get out of here, I am gone,” And it wasn’t so much about the loyalty of one or the other, which was there, but that can also happen a lot in divorce. So I think it’s just being very conscious that we need to... And I think also it’s better messaging to say we need to ensure that kids are not exposed to trauma during divorce, as opposed to we need to stop parental alienation.
Ginger Gentile: It’s like, no, because if we make the system better, if we look at this from a public health perspective, then a lot of cases will not exist. And in a public health perspective, you always go after the easier cases first, right? You don’t say, “How can we solve the hardest cases?” You say, “If there’s 25 million parents in North America who can’t see their kids, how can in five years we get that number down to 18 million?”
Ginger Gentile: And you do that by treating the easier cases first. I know a lot of parents don’t wanna hear that, but that’s the reality of how we actually begin to solve a problem.
Andrew Folkler: Right on. And running on that thought, ‘cause we’re closing up pretty close to that hour mark. Ginger, if somebody wanted to set up a screening for a racing family, be it in their church or their school or just in a university or wherever, how would they go about doing that so that way they can start working on that 25 not pegging down that 25 million...
Ginger Gentile: Yeah. So I would say the first thing is, go to erasingfamily.org. You can watch the trailer. We also have a new bill of rights for children of divorce, separated, never married households, and it’s all about the right to not be put in the middle of conflict, to be able to love whoever you want in your family.
Ginger Gentile: We also have a text line, 8654FAMILY. You gotta text, not call. And a trained professional will text you back with resources and emotional support. Kids can use this. Parents can use this. And we really wanna make all the resources on our website and also our 30,000 strong Facebook community available.
Ginger Gentile: I’ve done a lot of Facebook Lives where I talk to parents and give them practical advice. But for setting up a screening, they should go to our website or email us, info@erasingfamily.org. And right now the film is streaming on Amazon Prime, so it’s free if you’re a Prime member, Tubi, which is a new app.
Ginger Gentile: You don’t have to download or sign up. It’s free, to watch with ads. It’s on YouTube, iTunes, and Google Play, and Vimeo. And if you wanna set up a screening and have a Q&A, and besides churches, it’s also great for schools, universities, legal societies, legislatures who are working on shared parenting legislation.
Ginger Gentile: Contact us and we can also put you in touch with somebody who can speak at the event, myself or someone else on our team. And depending on the event, we do charge a fee if you want a speaker there because it is their time. But other than that, the film is free for anybody to stream. And people often say, “This should be in law schools.”
Ginger Gentile: And I say, “Is there a law school near you that you can email and offer to sponsor a screening? Social workers should see it. Can you get in touch with...” Parents, be proactive. Send an email. Do not mention your case, and just say, “Hey, here’s the trailer. Would you be interested in showing this in a virtual or post-COVID, in-person screening?
Ginger Gentile: I can put you in touch with the team. That’s it. Don’t say, “And I’m suffering this.” Keep it simple, but be the change ‘cause so many people are like, “Well, I could never do that.” I’m like, “What, you can’t call up your local high school and say, ‘Hey, can I host a pizza night after school, and I’ll show this film, and it’s open to the community?’”
Ginger Gentile: And what’s the school gonna say? “Sure, it’s a $25 fee for the auditorium.” And the parent’s like, “Oh, well, how can I pay that?” It’s like, come on. Be proactive. No, but that’s what people say all the time. It’s like, get some pizzas, some snacks, and say... And then it’s not even a school-sponsored event.
Ginger Gentile: You don’t have to go through channels. You’re just offering an after-school activity that anybody can show up to.
Barbara La Pointe: Ginger, what are your main objectives with this film? What is your biggest hope? Reunification, changing the system? What’s your most profound hope with your film?
Ginger Gentile: Yeah, so I think my hope with The Erasing Family, there’s only so much a film can do, films aren’t magic, is the main thing that the film was designed to do, and we know that it does, is create an aha moment for erased kids to say, “Maybe I should accept the phone call, the text if my parent, when they reach out.”
Ginger Gentile: That is the main thing, and then also it’s opening up the hearts of people who work in the family court system, people who design the laws, so they understand the actual pain that goes on because there’s a lot of training videos and manuals and stats and books and studies, and those are great. Film opens up the heart.
Ginger Gentile: So that is what I really see it working in conjunction with all of the activists out there who are working on laws. This opens the heart, helps people understand. It reminds them what it’s like to be a kid going through this. But a film isn’t magic, but also it’s even less magical if people don’t share it and set up screenings.
Ginger Gentile: So that’s a great question, Andrew. And the worst they’ll say is no. The worst they will say is, “You can’t show,” and then we say, “Well, I will go to another high school in my community. I will set something up in the library. I will go to the local law school.” And if you’re worried about them sponsoring it, you make it an extracurricular event that no one’s required to be at, and then nobody has to sign off on it, and you pay the rental fee, which is usually quite low, get some snacks.
Ginger Gentile: Also another thing, all cities and states and provinces have a chapter of the AFCC, which is the Association of Family and Conciliatory Courts. Ask them to screen it. Local associations of matrimonial lawyers, local associations of mediators, collaborative lawyers, police departments. We got the police department in Vancouver to require this as training material for all recruits.
Ginger Gentile: It’s gonna be required as training for all social workers in North Carolina. And the magic behind this is that someone who knew these people or is from that state, who’s local, not me, ‘cause it comes off as self-promotion if I do it, said, “Hey, would you be willing to show this?” And they said, “Yeah, sure.”
Ginger Gentile: It’s not rocket science, and if people say no, you just dust yourself off. If people are saying, “Hey Ginger, can you contact these people?” It’s like, “Hey, why don’t you set up a screening?” So I absolutely feel that. And then you’re showing your kids, you’re sending out that positive energy of being proactive, of doing something and showing love, and that energy comes back like a boomerang.
Andrew Folkler: Definitely does. A lot of people forget that they have a lot of power, and they have the ability to enact change, and maybe they’ve allowed themselves to believe that they don’t have that power simply with everything that’s happened, or worse, they’ve grown up their entire life believing that.
Andrew Folkler: But like you said, that power is in your hands.
Barbara La Pointe: So just to confirm, you wrote this from the perspective of the child, right?
Ginger Gentile: Exactly, yeah. So Erasing Family is made from the perspective of the child.
Barbara La Pointe: And children really do have the most to teach us, I’ve always thought that.
Barbara La Pointe: Exactly. We learn the most from children, so it’s very inspiring. Very inspiring practice, and very inspiring film.
Ginger Gentile: Thank you. Thank you, I appreciate it.
Andrew Folkler: Yeah, definitely. And so I got one last question for you before we wrap up, and is what can we expect moving forward from Ginger?
Andrew Folkler: I guess with the Erasing Family and the books now, it has been about a year and a few months it looks like, what can we expect moving forward?
Ginger Gentile: So coming out of the post... Well, we’re still in COVID, but like a lot of people I was exhausted, and stuff with the pandemic. So I’ve been doing a lot more press, just in the past week including this interview.
Ginger Gentile: I’ve been talking about I think about seven or eight press outlets. We also are doing a lot in that I wanna take this message to corporate America, and corporate Canada. Because lost productivity due to custody battles is a huge problem, and HR departments always talk about mental health.
Ginger Gentile: This is part of mental health. I also want to take all of what I have distilled from talking to families, and making practical short course content for parents, which is very much like what you can do to be positive and reunite. I also have an idea to even get people before they divorce, so what you should know before you divorce.
Ginger Gentile: And also just offering myself out there for anybody who wants a speaker at their conferences, virtual or live, to talk about this. And then also I am beginning to take on some limiting consulting clients. But I always say I am not a coach, I am not a therapist, I’m not a lawyer. I consult on messaging, so that’s cleaning up your social media timelines.
Ginger Gentile: A lot of people wanna talk to the press, they don’t know how, and that’s also how to talk to the people in your own life, including your children, but just very positive. And it’s very different from coaching or therapy, which is very needed. This is very laser-focused on a specific... ‘Cause I’m a storyteller.
Ginger Gentile: So I always say, “You need a coach and you need a therapist. I’m consulting on how to message.” So how to use social media to your advantage, and I started working with a few parents, but I think a course is gonna be much more expansive. And I’m also in my day job, working on a film about Ivy League universities and their admissions practices.
Ginger Gentile: So that’s what I do during the day. Nothing to do with this, but that’s a refreshing change.
Andrew Folkler: It’s definitely good to have a refreshing change, and I’m looking forward to seeing that one, too. So.
Ginger Gentile: And I’m looking forward to seeing everything wonderful that you, Barbara, and Andrew do with this podcast and all the families you can help.
Andrew Folkler: Thank you...
Barbara La Pointe: Ginger. Thank you. Thanks for that. It was a great conversation.
Andrew Folkler: Thank you. Yeah, this was really fun. Thank you, everyone, and I think that’s everything we’ve got for today. Once again, if you’ve enjoyed this episode, be sure to subscribe to our channel either on YouTube or through our podcast.
Andrew Folkler: If you would like to know more about Ginger Gentile and her work at Erasing Family, feel free to reach out to her at her website at erasingfamily.org, as well as like and subscribe on Erasing Family on Facebook and YouTube. Don’t forget, we’re gonna have a downloadable document summarizing everything that we’ve talked about today, as well as how to set up a Erasing Family screening.
Andrew Folkler: I think the corporations bit was a pretty interesting take on that, so I would definitely include that there. If you have any further questions, comments, concerns, anything you wanna suggest as far as future podcast ideas, do not hesitate to reach us at Barbara’s website at barbaralapointe.com.
Andrew Folkler: If you prefer to email us directly, Barbara can be reached at barbaralapointe@gmail.com, and you can reach me at startnow@andrewfolkler.com. As always, thank you for taking the time to be with us at the Broken Family Podcast where we discuss and help you find solutions to divorce, parental alienation, and high-conflict relationships.
Andrew Folkler: Have a wonderful day, everyone.
Barbara La Pointe: Bye, Ginger.
Andrew Folkler: Bye.
Ginger Gentile: Thank you. Bye. Thank you.