Avoid Drama Triangles in the PC Process: Parent Child Contact Problems

Jul 29, 2025·By Cori McGuire

This article provides general parenting information intended to support parents in understanding common dynamics that can arise after separation. Parenting Coordinator determinations are limited to implementing the terms of an existing court order or parenting agreement, as authorized. Parenting Coordinators remain neutral and do not assess fault or diagnose family dynamics, although they may provide general parenting information as part of the Parenting Coordination process. Readers seeking support for emotional, relational, or therapeutic concerns should consult appropriate mental health professionals, as is supported and encouraged within the Parenting Coordination process.

When Parent-Child Contact Becomes Difficult

Few situations create more anxiety for parents than watching a child become resistant to spending time with a parent. Whether the child is expressing reluctance, refusing contact, avoiding communication, or simply becoming increasingly distant, parents naturally want to understand what is happening and how to help.

Unfortunately, once a parent-child contact problem develops, families can become trapped in patterns that unintentionally make the situation worse. Parents become focused on proving what happened. Family members take sides. Professionals are asked to validate one perspective or another. Attention shifts from helping the child move forward to determining who is responsible for the problem.

When this happens, adults can become caught in what is sometimes called a drama triangle. The term does not mean anyone is deliberately creating drama. It refers to a common human tendency to become organized around blame, protection, and opposition when relationships become strained and emotions run high.

What Is a Drama Triangle?

In family conflict, people often drift into predictable positions. Someone becomes viewed as struggling, hurt, rejected, or overwhelmed. Someone else feels compelled to protect, rescue, advocate, or solve the problem. Another person gradually becomes identified as the source of the difficulty.

These positions may shift over time. A person who feels misunderstood today may become defensive tomorrow. Someone who is protecting one family member may later feel attacked and become focused on defending themselves. The problem is not the particular role.

The problem is that once families become organized around these positions, the focus often shifts away from the child's needs and toward adult conflict. Instead of asking: "What will help this child maintain healthy relationships and develop resilience?" people begin asking: "Who is right?""Who is wrong?""Who is to blame?""Who should be protected?" Those questions rarely help a child rebuild relationships.

Why Parent-Child Contact Problems Are Different

Children are not miniature adults. A child who resists contact with a parent may be experiencing many things at once: confusion, anxiety, divided loyalties, sadness, anger, disappointment, fear of conflict, and developmental struggles. Children often lack the maturity and life experience needed to understand these emotions fully.

Adults can unintentionally make matters worse when they assume a child's stated reason is the whole explanation or when they rush to validate one interpretation without considering broader influences. Parent-child contact problems are usually complex. The solution is rarely found through blame.

The Long-Term Risk for Children

The concern is not simply whether a child spends time with a parent this month or next month. The larger concern is the child's long-term emotional development. Attachment research has consistently demonstrated that children's relationships with primary caregivers influence their understanding of trust, security, relationships, and belonging throughout life.

Children learn from experience what relationships mean. When children experience ongoing pressure to reject, fear, or devalue a parent, they may begin to internalize broader messages about relationships themselves.

Some children come to believe: relationships are fragile; conflict means abandonment; people can be discarded when they disappoint us; loyalty requires choosing sides; and love is conditional. These lessons can follow children into adolescence and adulthood.

Loyalty Conflicts and Emotional Burden

One of the greatest risks in parent-child contact cases is the creation of loyalty conflicts. Most children love both parents. Even when relationships are strained, children generally benefit from knowing that it is safe to care about both parents.

When a child feels pressure—directly or indirectly—to align with one parent against the other, the child is placed in an impossible position. The child may feel guilty for loving one parent; responsible for protecting a parent; anxious about disappointing a parent; and fearful of expressing affection for the other parent. These experiences are emotionally exhausting for children. Over time, loyalty conflicts can become more harmful than the original dispute itself.

What Successful Parents Do Differently

Parents who successfully navigate parent-child contact problems often share several characteristics. They remain focused on the child's future rather than relitigating the past. They recognize that helping a child maintain healthy relationships is usually more important than winning an argument. They avoid recruiting the child into adult disputes. They resist the urge to use the child as evidence, a messenger, a confidant, or a source of validation. Most importantly, they separate their own relationship history from their child's relationship needs.

Practical Steps for Parents

Protect the child from adult conflict. Children should not be responsible for carrying adult grievances.
Avoid discussing legal disputes, parenting disagreements, finances, or professional involvement with the child.
Validate feelings without reinforcing rejection. A child may feel angry, scared, disappointed, or confused. Those feelings are real and deserve acknowledgment. However, validating feelings is not the same thing as validating the rejection of a parent. Parents can support emotional expression while still encouraging healthy relationships.
Encourage curiosity rather than judgment. Children benefit when adults encourage empathy and understanding. Questions such as: "I wonder how Dad might be feeling about that?" or "What do you think Mom's perspective might be?" can help children develop emotional flexibility rather than rigid positions.
Support healthy parent-child relationships. Children generally benefit when parents actively support the child's relationship with the other parent, even when doing so is difficult. This does not mean ignoring genuine safety concerns. It means recognizing that children benefit from maintaining meaningful family relationships whenever safely possible.
Focus on skills, not sides. The question is not: "Which parent should win?" The question is: "What skills does this child need to develop healthy relationships throughout life?" Those skills include: empathy; communication; resilience; forgiveness; emotional regulation; and perspective-taking.

The Parenting Coordinator's Role

When parent-child contact problems arise, it is common for parents to hope that a Parenting Coordinator will determine who is to blame. That is not the Parenting Coordinator's role. Parenting Coordinators remain neutral. They do not diagnose children or parents. They do not determine which parent is morally superior.

Their role is limited to assisting with implementation of existing parenting arrangements and facilitating consultation, communication, and problem-solving within the authority granted by a court order or agreement. Parenting Coordination works best when the focus remains on implementation and the child's needs rather than blame and fault.

The Bigger Picture

The ultimate goal is not simply increasing parenting time or resolving a current disagreement. The larger goal is helping children become adults who can form healthy, stable, loving relationships. Children learn how relationships work by watching the adults around them. When adults model respect, empathy, accountability, and resilience, children learn those skills as well. When adults become trapped in blame, protection, and opposition, children often learn those patterns too.

Parent-child contact problems are difficult. They create fear, grief, frustration, and uncertainty for everyone involved. Yet they also present an opportunity.

They invite parents to focus on the future rather than the past, on relationships rather than positions, and on the long-term well-being of the child rather than the short-term satisfaction of being right. That shift may be one of the most important gifts a parent can offer a child.

Written by Cori McGuire, a Parenting Coordinator since 2008, and a family law lawyer since 1998 in British Columbia. Read the Neuroscience of Conflict, and Loyalty Conflicts and other articles in our extensive Resource Library. For further reading try: When Children Refuse Parenting Time, Child Contact/ Alienation Problems, and Child Contact/ Alienation Problems.