The ‘Mom Yells’ Playbook

How a two-word smear became a mother’s undoing — published on Parental Alienation Awareness Day

By Michael Phillips | Riptide

Today is Parental Alienation Awareness Day. Across the country, thousands of parents will mark it the same way Brenna Gano marks every day: without their child.

Brenna was the primary caregiver for her son Jacob from birth to age eleven. She attended his school events, managed his therapy, navigated his anxieties, and did the unglamorous work that primary parenting actually requires. Then her marriage ended — and two words began circulating through the family court system in San Mateo County.

Mom yells.

That’s it. That was the seed. Not abuse. Not neglect. Not any documented harm. A child said his mother raised her voice, and what followed was a seven-year systematic campaign that stripped Brenna of custody, her home, her finances, and eventually her relationship with her son altogether.

How a Narrative Gets Built

Parental alienation doesn’t require a villain twirling a mustache. It requires a system that rewards the construction of a story — and punishes the parent who can’t keep up with it.

Court records in Brenna’s case document how the “Mom yells” refrain first surfaced with Jacob’s therapist and was then picked up by a court social worker, who repeated it until it became, as Brenna describes it, “accepted as fact.” Meanwhile, documented concerns about the father’s behavior — Jacob himself telling a therapist that his father fell asleep at the wheel on Highway 101, and that the father had been holding him down and forcing him to watch needle videos as unsanctioned “exposure therapy” — were not elevated to the same level of scrutiny.

The 2018 Family Court Services report, conducted during the early divorce proceedings, captures a strikingly different picture of Brenna than what would later become the court’s operative narrative. Jacob’s own therapist at the time, Dr. Patrick Whalen, reported no concerns about Brenna’s relationship with her son. He noted she was “invested in communicating with Jacob” and would “be the first person to say ‘I need help’” if she needed one. He flagged the father as potentially possessive and noted a “history of inappropriate parenting” on the father’s part. He specifically worried the father might “block the mother out” of weekend time with Jacob.

None of that stopped what came next.

The Smear Escalates

As the litigation deepened, so did the characterization of Brenna. Her ex-husband alleged she had Borderline Personality Disorder. Her own attorneys — who she alleges had financial incentives to prolong the conflict — dismissed a favorable psychiatric evaluation that diagnosed her with PTSD, ADHD, and anxiety consistent with domestic violence exposure. Instead, she was pushed into a costly forensic evaluation using the MMPI test, an instrument not designed for domestic violence cases. Her documented, rational fears were flagged as “paranoia.”

By the time the 2024 FCS report was produced, the narrative had fully inverted. The same therapist who had vouched for Brenna’s relationship with Jacob in 2018 was now quoted describing her “stances” as “alarming and problematic.” The mother who had been described as caring and invested had become, in the court record, someone Jacob couldn’t trust.

Brenna has a theory for why. “My son was trained to attack,” she said. “He became like a mini version of his father. His dad, who had never really been present, suddenly became his best friend — Disneyland, a $10,000 gaming computer, every VR headset imaginable. And then mom, mom just yells.”

The pattern is not unique to Brenna’s case. Researchers and advocates who study high-conflict custody litigation have documented it extensively: one parent, typically the wealthier one with more access to legal resources, positions themselves as the permissive fun parent. The other parent — typically the primary caregiver, typically the one doing the hard work of discipline and routines — becomes the scapegoat. The child, caught between competing incentive structures and subjected to years of therapeutic framing, begins to internalize the narrative.

“Once a child hears it repeated over and over,” Renata DeMello, a family court advocate who has worked alongside Brenna, explained in a conversation, “it becomes their truth. That’s not the child’s fault. That’s how alienation works.”

The Cost

Brenna spent over $300,000 fighting for her son. She was removed from her home. She relocated to a rat-infested rental in Redwood City; Jacob suffered bites from rodents in the walls. Her attorney’s response, per Brenna, was: “Well, you better do something about that.”

Jacob is now 18 — he turns 19 in May. He and his mother are estranged.

On this Parental Alienation Awareness Day, that is the outcome the system produced: a mother who was every professional’s model parent in 2018 has no relationship with her child in 2026. A two-word phrase — repeated enough times, by enough credentialed professionals, in enough court documents — became the wall between them.

What Awareness Actually Requires

Awareness days can feel hollow when the systems that create the harm remain unchanged. But they matter if they do one thing: help people recognize what they’re looking at.

Parental alienation doesn’t always look like a parent coaching a child to say hateful things. Sometimes it looks like a gifting campaign and a “best friends” dynamic with a previously distant parent. Sometimes it looks like a minor, relatable complaint — mom yells — being elevated into a clinical finding. Sometimes it looks like a court system that, year by year, adds another layer of documentation until the original truth is buried under enough paper that no one goes looking for it.

Brenna Gano went looking. She is still looking. And she is still without her son.

Court documents cited in this article are part of the public case record in San Mateo County.

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