Many couples in the midst of an acrimonious divorce toss around the term, parental alienation, to describe the effects of one parent badmouthing another. This often happens when one person seems particularly at fault in a divorce. I think everyone can agree that criticizing one parent to a child is unhealthy at best and abusive at worst. But this isn’t parental alienation. I recently heard about a four-year-old boy whose mother had left him and his father unexpectedly. Understandably both were devastated. Understandably the father felt a need to process this. He would launch into his rehearsal of the sudden separation and divorce and almost as if on cue, his…