A candid, experience-based guide for parents who need the truth without varnish or theatrics.
Not every case involves manipulation. Not every professional fails. But when these problems occur—and they do—the system’s structure makes them worse. This article addresses those situations.
When a Child Suddenly Says Something That Makes No Sense
If you are a thoughtful, responsible divorcing parent who suddenly sees a change in demeanor or you hear your child repeat something disturbing, out of character, or clearly inconsistent with reality, you are likely not imagining it. Children can be manipulated, and they often are when a child custody and/or parent-time dispute arises. When manipulation occurs, the legal system is slow to recognize it, poorly equipped to correct it, and occasionally unwilling to acknowledge it at all.
I have represented many Utah parents in these situations, and I have spoken with countless others who have lived through the same pattern. The details differ; the structure is identical. It begins with subtle pressure on the child and ends with the court struggling to separate fact from narrative.
This article explains how child manipulation works, why the system so often mishandles it, and what you—as the innocent parent—can do to protect your child and his/her relationship with you.
How Manipulation Actually Works
Popular culture imagines “coaching” as one parent instructing a child to make up a story. That happens, but rarely and rarely with long-term success. What I see more often is quieter and more effective. Manipulation usually sounds like this:
- “You don’t have to go if you’re scared.”
- “We’ll be thinking about you while we’re away at Disneyland.”
- “I’ll have no one here if you leave.”
- “I know you love piano, but [other parent] doesn’t care.”
- A heavy sigh when the child says anything positive about the other parent.
Children read emotional cues far more acutely than most adults recognize. They sense fear, fragility, anxiety, loneliness, resentment—and they adjust to stabilize the household. They say and do what they think stops the sighs, the tension, the guilt trips.
Over time, the emotional frame shifts. The child begins to feel responsible for one parent’s emotional survival. And yes, they also often start to accept the deception the manipulating parent has created. Once that happens, the truth becomes secondary. A child can internalize a coached narrative so completely that the child sincerely believes it. The sincerity is real; the basis for it is not.
Why Courts and Professionals Often Get It Wrong
It’s about system incentives, professional blind spots, and structural habits that reward caution over accuracy that permit mediocrity and discourage making the difficult calls.
Courts avoid interviewing children because it is administratively easier.
In Utah, judges have the authority to speak with children privately and directly. Very few will. Why?
Because interviewing a child requires scheduling, preparation, an official record (per recent reforms), and the courage to hear and then deal with something messy. It introduces work and responsibility that can be avoided—and so it is avoided more often than not. Declining to interview a child eliminates all the work and accountability that would come with it. That is not malice, but it’s still wrong and inexcusable.
GALs and evaluators often default to the “safe” narrative.
Guardian ad Litem attorneys and custody evaluators may (may) mean well, but they face a specific institutional pressure: If they downplay a risk and something later goes wrong, they can be blamed. If they “err on the side of caution” and take a “better safe than sorry” approach, they cannot be faulted.
“Erring on the side of caution” usually means accepting the most alarming-sounding narrative—even if it is false, coached, or distorted. It is not about evidence. It is about avoiding liability and saving face. To some, that may sound prudent, until you’re on the receiving end of the CYA policy. Taking the easy way out is how manipulation and rewarding the manipulators becomes policy, becomes institutionalized.
Relying on ambiguity instead of seeking clarity avoids accountability.
Ambiguity is the “useful idiot” of “evaluation”. It allows evaluators, GALs, and therapists:
- to be vague,
- to avoid staking out an unpopular or unusual position,
- to make advocating for “safety above all else” seem virtuous and noble,
- courts to rule however they want.
Clarity forces someone to say: “This is true and this is not.” And with that comes responsibility, scrutiny, and the risk of being wrong.
Ambiguity, by contrast, starts with so little of any substance and then spreads the responsibility so thin that no one is accountable for anything.
And so the system often protects the adults working in it more than the children subject to it.
You won’t find this truth published anywhere, but every experienced attorney has seen it.
The Outcomes Courts Produce—but Rarely Acknowledge
Judges and court commissioners are human beings working under pressure, with crowded dockets and limited time. That combination of factors produces predictable behaviors.
Courts maintain a manipulated status quo because it keeps the docket quiet.
If a child refuses parent-time—whether from genuine distress or manufactured fear—the court may freeze the schedule: “Let’s keep things stable until we have more information.”
Meanwhile, the parent who created the resistance now benefits from it.
Maintaining the status quo reduces open conflict.
Judges and commissioners can’t have their time monopolized by domestic relations disputes. The more conflict a child custody case generates, the more pressure the court feels to triage cases, to “calm it down.” Freezing things in place feels safer than making a decisive change.
Avoiding decisive action reduces appellate risk.
A bold or unusual ruling can be appealed (and can make the news). Garden-variety, plain vanilla rulings don’t attract attention. Things move along. That is an incentive—conscious or not—to avoid clarity.
The Misuse of “Trauma” as a Blanket Excuse
One of the most corrosive habits in modern custody litigation is the inappropriate use of the word “trauma.” It is applied to:
- ordinary discomfort,
- momentary anxiety,
- confusion caused by adult behavior,
- normal emotional growing pains of divorce.
Courts and professionals frequently treat mere discomfort as danger. They treat truth-seeking—asking a child an honest, neutral question—as if it is harmful (even “irreparably” harmful). This infantilizes the child and empowers the manipulator.
And there is another problem: labeling anything difficult as “traumatic” is a convenient way to avoid dealing with it. Once the word enters the discussion, it becomes a shield that shuts down inquiry. If an issue is “traumatic,” then it is to be avoided in the name of “preventing harm.” Thus, no one has to confront it, no one has to ask the hard questions, and no one has to do the work required to resolve the conflict. It allows adults to sidestep responsibility under the guise of compassion and protection.
Children are not that fragile. Utah judges know this when they see children testify in delinquency proceedings, criminal cases, or child-protective matters. But in domestic cases, suddenly the same child becomes too delicate to be questioned. It is inconsistent and self-defeating. Willful ignorance benefits no one.
The “Therapeutic Industrial Complex” and Why It So Often Misfires
Therapists, evaluators, and related professionals can be helpful—if they are competent, trained, and objective. Unfortunately, many are not. Most that I have encountered are poorly educated (a diploma from a reputable university means little), lack genuine forensic skill, take the path of least resistance when doing the work, and then hide behind the newest jargon, trends, and professional buzzwords.
There is also the structural flaw: Most therapy is designed to support the client’s subjective experience—not to determine what actually happened. Courts too often forget this. When courts outsource truth-seeking to professionals untrained in truth-seeking, predictable errors follow.
Parents Need to Hear This—Even if It’s Hard
When you’re the rational parent in a case involving manipulation, here is what you must face squarely:
Your conduct is the only thing you control. Perfect it.
Your behavior is under a microscope. You cannot give the court or the professionals even a trivial reason to doubt your stability, honesty, or restraint.
Your credibility is your only real weapon. Guard it like evidence.
Once your credibility is damaged, even unfairly, it is nearly impossible to restore.
If you want the court to see manipulation, you must give it no excuse to doubt you.
If your conduct is consistently calm, steady, and transparent, the manipulator’s behavior eventually stands in relief against your stability. This is not “be perfect to please the court.” This is “eliminate the system’s excuses for misunderstanding you and your case.”
The False Symmetry Problem: When Courts Pretend Both Parents Are Equally to Blame
One of the most persistent failures in Utah custody cases is the assumption that if there is conflict, both parents must be contributing to it.
This is wrong. Conflict does not imply mutual fault. Sometimes only one parent is manipulating, and pretending otherwise enables the behavior.
Why do courts fall into this trap?
- Apathy: It is easier to assume both sides share blame than to sort out who is actually at fault.
- Pride: Judges often resist acknowledging that they may have misunderstood earlier events or misjudged a parent’s behavior.
- Path of least resistance: Treating both parents as “half right, half wrong” reduces immediate tension and avoids difficult rulings.
- Delegate the work: By blaming both parties, the court can order both of them to take corrective measures, rather than just the culpable party, which usually ends up with the innocent party taking the laboring oar.
This false symmetry rewards the manipulator, punishes the innocent parent, and does little, if anything, to help the child.
The Hardest Truth: Courts Often Reward Performance, Not Parenting
Manipulators are frequently charming in the courtroom. They appear polite, composed, cooperative, deeply concerned, even self-sacrificing. Anyone is going to respond positively to these performances many times. Judges and commissioners are no exception.
Meanwhile, the honest but distressed parent—the one carrying the real weight—may appear less polished.
This is not intentional bias. It is human nature.
But parents need to understand: Manipulators often present exceptionally well in the courtroom. Judges sometimes mistake this for fitness and stability. They shouldn’t—but they do.
Part of your job is to keep your own presentation steady and grounded so the contrast becomes clear.
What You Can Actually Do to Protect Your Child
The system has flaws, but it is not hopeless. Here is what works.
- Give your child emotional freedom. The child must know—through your conduct, not speeches—that your emotional well-being is not his/her responsibility.
- Be transparent in everything. Calm communication, honest disclosures, predictable routines. The parent with nothing to hide eventually earns trust.
- Seek a competent forensic interview, and seek it early, and get it on the record. Not a general therapist. Not a self-proclaimed “custody evaluator.” A well-educate, skilled forensic interviewer who understands Utah’s evidentiary expectations.
- Surround the child with neutral adult help. Teachers, coaches, extended family, religious leaders—these adults provide emotional support and positive examples for the child. This creates a reality check that a manipulated narrative cannot survive. These people break a manipulative parent’s monopsony[1] of influence.
- Use communication tools that create a reliable record. Email, text, or a parenting app.[2] The platform matters less than accuracy and permanence.
- Eliminate ambiguity where you can. Neutral exchange locations, written instructions, predictable schedules. Manipulation thrives in uncertainty.
- Maintain consistent dependability. Your steadiness becomes the child’s internal reference point. That matters more than anything you can say.
Final Reflection: Children Are Not Fragile—The System Is
Courts bend over backward to avoid making children uncomfortable. But discomfort is not the problem.
Confusion is.
Pressure is.
Loyalty conflicts are.
False narratives are.
Children do not break when adults ask honest questions. They break when adults avoid their plight.
You cannot control the other parent.
You cannot control the system’s pace.
You cannot control the professionals assigned to your case.
But you can control your conduct, your clarity, and your consistency. These qualities give your child the best chance to resist manipulation and eventually tell the truth—in whatever forum finally asks for it.
This is how children escape manipulation:
Not through conflict, but through clarity.
Not through pressure, but through stability.
Not through fear, but through truth.
This approach works—and it endures.
Utah Family Law, LC | divorceutah.com | 801-466-9277
[1] A monopsony is a market situation where there is only one buyer but many sellers. Because that single buyer has all the purchasing power, they can control prices and terms in ways that wouldn’t be possible if there were competition.
When one parent tries to become the child’s only acceptable source of emotional information, approval, and truth. The parent tries to dominate the “market” of influence so completely that the child has no competing perspectives—only one narrative to believe and one parent to please.
[2] “Parenting apps” like OurFamilyWizard, TalkingParents, and others aren’t inherently bad. They can be helpful for parents who struggle to keep communication organized or who need structure imposed from the outside. But they’re also a bit of a trend, and they’re not essential (and many of them require you to pay to access all their features). Everything those apps do—creating a record, timestamping messages, storing documents, tracking exchanges—can be done with tools you already have on your smartphone: email, text messages saved to the cloud, shared calendars, scanned documents, and even a simple running log kept in a notebook or digital file. The key is consistency and documentation, not the novelty of the platform.