Co-parenting is the sharing of rights and duties between parents, grandparents, family members, or any other person who may have custody of a child. That experience is very positive for some people, and horribly negative for others. It depends greatly on each parent’s interactions with the other parent, and the child.
If one parent, for example, is communicating about the child, and the other parent refuses to do so, that’s likely to make for an unhealthy parenting relationship. It’s also likely to hurt the child stuck in the middle of two parents who just don’t get along.
Between the three authors of this article are more than 40 years of combined experience helping parents deal with the stresses and anxieties that come with raising children in two-family households. To say we have “seen it all” is probably an understatement.
We want to share with you some of our top tips to help you co-parent more effectively, and to help you maintain a healthy relationship with your child.
Create a New Relationship—A Business Relationship.
We know that transitioning from a toxic marriage and high-conflict divorce can be legitimately challenging on the way to a healthy co-parenting relationship. We also know that, many times, it’s hard to put aside anger and hurt feelings when going through divorce or a custody situation. One of the most common issues we work on with our clients is how to set aside emotions and focus solely on the decisions at hand--just like you would in making a business deal.
Your co-parenting relationship is now a completely new relationship. You’re transitioning from what was once a partnership with emotional attachment into essentially a business relationship. It’s helpful if parents can see their new co-parenting relationship as a business partnership with a colleague that they struggle to get along with.
If they can envision their co-parent as a team member at work with a shared goal of raising happy, healthy children, and can learn to treat that co-worker professionally (with as little emotion as possible), they can be successful. We find that parents are most successful in their co-parenting if they can find closure with their romantic relationship and see this as a new relationship with a new set of boundaries, communication style, and goals.
Ask For Help—It’s There If You Need It.
It’s OK to ask for help. In fact, we have not seen a case yet where parents did not need guidance in some direction. The authors of this article have all raised, or are raising, children, and even as professionals, we seek out help when we need it. Unfortunately, our kids never came with a “how-to” manual, so many of us parent our children the best way we can, hoping that we are doing the right thing.
The good news is that when it comes to going through litigation and co-parenting in a two-family household, there are tons of resources for parents sharing possession of their children. Just like any other skill, it is important to hone your co-parenting abilities.
Just a few of the resources at your disposal include:
- Co-parenting applications that allow parents to use a built-in messenger and calendar to help them communicate more effectively
- Books about the divorce or custody process in Texas, and how to better the co-parenting relationship
- Podcasts about co-parenting
- Websites designed to help parents communicate most effectively
- Parenting classes (online and live) that teach parents the dos and don’ts of co-parenting
- Mental health professionals (like parent facilitators/coordinators) whose job is to help parents resolve parenting issues and provide ongoing support for parents, even when litigation is over.
With technology, there’s an enormous amount of resources for parents trying to transition into their new co-parenting role. We highly recommend that these tools are utilized. They will make your life, and the work you are doing as a co-parent, much easier.
Encourage Your Child’s Relationship With The Other Parent.
Children interpret and process their parents' divorce in a variety of ways, depending on their personality, developmental level, relationship with their parents, and how their parents choose to shield or involve them in the adult issues at hand.
It’s our experience that parents should insulate their children as much as humanly possible from the drama of the divorce and fighting. Often, a parent who has been wronged in the relationship might feel compelled to share the offenses their spouse committed, as they want the kids to know “the truth” and also not blame them personally for the dissolution of the relationship. However, before you do this, it’s important to ask yourself, “How does hearing these terrible remarks about the other parent help your child?”
We can tell you that it doesn’t help. In fact, it will hurt your child. We can also tell you that, if you’re in the middle of litigation, a court will consider this behavior negatively. You could lose much - if not all - credibility with the judge.
The authors of this article are all grown women. But we can tell you that if our parents divorced today, we still would not want to hear the details of the divorce. We’d want to continue to love our moms and dads and not think about any of the bad things our parents might have done. With that said, one of the most positive things you can do for your child is to encourage them to have a relationship with the other parent.
We see so many cases where parents have, many times unintentionally, damaged a child’s view of the other parent, damaging that child’s relationship with one (and sometimes both) of their parents. Remember that children are pleasers; they want their parents to be happy. If a child believes that visiting
one parent is hurting the other parent, that child may have a much harder time transitioning to a new schedule.
Your ex may have done terrible things, but your children will not see your ex in that same light. They will continue to see them as a parent who they love.
Your child is already learning to live in a two-household family. To keep that child’s relationship as stable as possible with both parents is one of the healthiest things you can do both for co-parenting and for your children.
Keep your children out of the middle.
We’ve already touched on this a little, but it’s so important we want to discuss it in a different light. The children should always stay out of the legal process.
Children, regardless of age, deserve to be insulated from their parents’ conflict. There is a direct correlation between a child’s resiliency through a divorce and the extent their parents are able to keep them out of the middle of the parental conflict. Remember, your children are innately connected to their parents. Hearing something negative about a parent is a direct wound to their spirit, and they often don’t have the skills to be able to adequately process it.
This is one of the major reasons why whenever litigation involves children, injunctions are almost always immediately put in place that prohibit parents from disparaging or talking negatively about the other parent or the other parent’s family. Not only are these put in place to protect the child, but the court is always looking to see which parent has the ability to follow court orders and the ability to promote the positives of the other parent.
On another note, we litigate for moms, dads, grandparents, and many other people. We’ve also served as amicus attorneys. An amicus attorney is a lawyer that represents the best interest of the child, like an arm of the court that gets to interview the parents, the children, and any other relevant people that might help the court make a determination as to what is in the child’s best interest.
Based on our experience, one of the biggest complaints from the children involved is that their parents put them in the middle of these cases. These kids feel obligated to choose between one parent or the other. In our experience, kids do not want to make those decisions. We understand there are some cases and some situations that children ultimately have to be involved, but if possible, children should stay out of their parents’ litigation.
Communication is Key.
As you can see, the central theme of all of these tips is to improve the communication between you and your co-parent. If the two of you can communicate together effectively, it will reduce stress, facilitate requests, and have an overall positive impact on your children and yourself.
A few communication tips:
- Don’t demand. When you make a demand of the other parent, the first inclination is to become defensive. Ask a question, make a request, but don’t require or demand action. Put yourself in the requesting party’s shoes to see how you would react to a demand. For example, let’s say the other parent sends you this message: “I have to work on Friday, so I need to switch weekends with you. I will be at your house next Friday at 6 p.m.” We know that if we got that message, our first inclination would be to delete it and not to go out of our way for the other person to facilitate their demand. Instead, think of how you would respond to this: “I just found out I have to work on Friday. Would you be OK if we switched weekends? If that’s OK, please let me know what would work best for you. I really hate to miss my weekend.” Not only does this open the lines of communication to work together, it doesn’t immediately make you feel like the other side just expects you to do anything.
- Be reasonably flexible. If your co-parent requests to switch a weekend of possession time with the children, and the switch does not impact your plans, do not just say no to say no. Of course, you don’t ever have to switch weekends or deviate from the court-ordered schedule. However, as a practical matter, there will likely be times in the future where a set, court-ordered schedule just does not work for your family. Maybe there is a family reunion, or a birthday party, or even a once-in-a-lifetime trip that you want to take the child to, and part of it falls on the other parent’s time. It is far more likely that if you remain flexible, that same courtesy will be returned.
- Keep the emotion out of it. Speak to your co-parent as you would the bank teller or barista: simple, succinct, kind, positive, respectful. Co-parenting relationships, especially those with higher levels of conflict, do best with as little emotion involved as possible.
- Share information. The reality is that every parent has a different parenting style. You may be the parent that is on every email list and has calendared every school function while your co-parent can’t remember the name of your child’s teacher. We see that every day. While you may not be court-ordered to share this information with the other parent, if it helps your child, then do it.
Co-parenting is a tough job, maybe one of the toughest parenting gigs there is. Many people have completely different parenting styles, which is one of the many contributing factors we see to the demise of the marriage relationship. Not surprisingly, separating into two households does not make this task any easier.
However, with some hard work and commitment to working together, we believe that any two parents can become better co-parents. And, with the new school year starting next month, there is no better time than now to take action and make a change.
MORE INFORMATION: From KoonsFuller Family Law
By Heather King, Jessica Hall Janicek, and Jenny Gomez
