What is Your Co-parenting Relationship Vision?

Cooperative means, at minimum, a cordial and respectful relationship - like the United States and Canada - those Canadians are just a little bit too nice to fully trust! Conflicted means one or both of you - at least some of the time - are reactive, controlling, and/or intrusive - like the relationship between Israel and Palestine. Parallel means there is a clear line of demarcation - like the line between North and South Korea - between the two homes with separate rules and little communication and no mutual cooperation. For those of you caught up in battle or stranded on the other side of the great divide, where you start and where you end up CAN be different. It requires one co-parent who is willing to be proactive, trust in the love the other parent has for the child, and share control of the situation. A personal example: My ex and I got through our divorce with the usual emotional bumps and bruises and were doing 'okay' within about six months in terms of the emotional, economic and community divorce aspects -- refers to Bohannan's Six Stations of Divorce, for those of you are interested. Our co-parenting divorce was a disaster. It was clear that we were not able to develop new patterns of childcare and living arrangements that adequately supported our child. So, I called my ex and made a proposal. Would he be willing to meet with me with a neutral third party knowledgeable about divorce, co-parenting and the needs of a 3 year old to help us make some positive changes? And, before he could say NO, would he be willing to find the neutral third party? He said yes. The director of our child's preschool was willing to sit down with us. We were able to negotiate a schedule and, most importantly, a process for co-parenting that worked well for the next 8 years. It broke down when he got engaged but that's another story not pertinent here. What matters is that our son had 8 years of calm, peace, respect, and routine because his Dad and I were able to care more about him than we did about our own sense of control. The deep-down, super-serious question you need to soul-searchingly ask yourself is "does my co-parent love OUR child?" And the second question . . . "Do I love OUR child?" Obviously not that simple because there is more to the question, ". . . enough to trust in that love for the sake of OUR child?" You are the only one who can make a difference in the co-parenting relationship. If you make the decision that the other parent is in charge, that you are helpless and powerless, that you have no responsibility, then you are teaching your child and modeling for your child what it means to you to be a parent, to be a grown-up, and to be a co-parent. What is your co-parenting relationship vision? Look at it from the eyes of your child, then answer that question. NOTE: There are grown-up issues that can block healthy adjustment, for some co-parents: domestic violence, substance abuse/addiction, mental illness. If you are in a relationship with these kinds of issues, then seek support and education and counseling to do the very best you can, whether you are the one with the problem or the one trying to co-parent with the person with the problem.

Self Care in the Midst of Chaos

Most of us have either given or received this advice: "you need to take care of yourself first or you are no good to anybody else!" Makes sense. It's good advice. The only problem? If someone is saying that to me, or I am saying that to someone else...it's probably obvious to everyone that there is a problem with self-care. After all, most of us tend to cycle through periods of adequate to great self care and periods of slips, relapses, indulgences, too-tired-to-care-about-much-of-anything!

Self-care is one of the greatest challenges of family break-up and family conflict. Self-care by the parents is one of the protective factors essential to the long term positive adjustment and well-being of the little ones. Children need to be cared for and protected from adult concerns to the greatest extent possible and that responsibility lies with the parents. Unfortunately, some parents care for themselves by placing the burden and responsibility for adult worries squarely on the shoulders of the children. Directly: "tell your Mom/Dad that I need the child support or I can't pay for your school pictures." Indirectly: "Oh, sweetie, I wish we could afford to do that, but your Mom/Dad isn't paying his/her child support so we just can't afford it."

We know that inter-parental hostility creates a negative home environment and results in children who experience stress, unhappiness, and feelings of insecurity and vulnerability. Research informs us that that parents who go through a high conflict family break-up are more likely to devalue the importance of the other parent in the life of the child and interfere with the other parent's relationship with the child. Research also informs us that an ongoing relationship with both parents serves a protective function and predicts a child's overall well being. In fact, several studies have found that children in joint custody situations fare better after divorce than children who are in sole custody situations.

Let's look more closely at inter-parental hostility and its affect on self-care and care for the other. It's perhaps the clearest example of a parent putting his or her own emotional needs far ahead of the needs of the child for warmth, care, nurturing, and protection. Hostile parents are stuck in an attitude of opposition, negativity, hatred and loathing toward the other parent and, therefore, toward important aspects of who his or her child is! Hostile parents are not able to love, accept and nurture ALL of who the child is, but only a part. Hostility/negativity as a stuck position for a coparent makes self-care an impossibility, which means that care for the child will be impaired long term and the child lives in a state of vulnerability and insecurity rather than stability and security.

For many parents who survive the earthquake of a family break-up, accepting personal responsibility for the quality of our life and that of our children moving forwards is the key to peace in the family and is at the core of self-care. This doesn't mean that all is forgiven but it definitely means that I take responsibility for my own choices on a daily basis and move toward my own healing and wholeness. Some parents are not able to make the changes needed to truly move forward; mental illness including trauma histories, substance abuse, poverty and other fundamental challenges interfere. The good news for the child is that a stable, loving, healthy parental relationship with just one of their parents can compensate for the impairments of the other parent.

What's Age Got to Do With It?

Children who get caught in the middle during family break-up are at risk for mental, emotional, and even physical health compromise depending on several important factors. Age at the time of the trauma, co-parents ability to get the child out of the middle and keep them out of the middle, and protective factors in the child's life are critical to long-term healthy adjustment.

Younger children, in general, tend to fare better if the parents are able to act like grown ups and take responsibility for the decisions they made that placed their child in a difficult family situation. If a parent continues to blame the other parent and hold themselves faultless beyond a year after the break-up, the child is less likely to make an adequate adjustment. Parents are role models and most want to teach their child to be fair and responsible in relationships. "Do as I say and not as I do" is a sure way to breed confusion, resentment, and acting-out or acting-in for children; especially when the negativity is directed at the child's Mom or Dad. A simple question for a young child: How can you hate that person so much and not hate me? That's my Mom! That's my Dad! If you can quit loving him/her, can you quit loving me?

If a parent is too immature, too cutoff from a support system, or troubled by undiagnosed/untreated mental health problems to provide adequate care and protection for the young child, that child may have no escape from the emotional war zone. And children who grow up in a war zone suffer long term emotional, mental and physical health consequences because there is no break from the tumult and the stress.

Pre-teens and teens are often more compromised than young children by the family break-up. Parents in the midst of intense emotional upheaval tend to treat the older child as a sounding board or a confidante and are more likely to pressure them to take sides in the conflict. It's easier for a parent to justify or even ignore the burden of putting a teen the position of an adult than it is with a young child. The good news for the older child? He or she is much more likely to have protective factors that can mediate the negative effect of a toxic parent, because they often have relationships with caring adults outside the family at school and in the larger community!

Parents with children who are in a relationship that is troubled owe it to themselves and owe it to their children to learn as much as possible about how to make the transition from a family who lives together to a family who lives apart in an informed and thoughtful way. Sometimes that doesn't seem possible because a specific problem like domestic violence, substance abuse, or mental illness is at the root of the break-up.

If you are a parent facing the transition of a family break-up, whatever the situation, reach out for support and information! You do not have to do it alone. There are many people who have done it successfully, and many people working on making the same transition. Learn what helps and hurts children who are the age of yours. Find out what kind of co-parenting relationship might work best in your situation. Investigate all of the alternatives available to avoid the trauma of Family Court litigation. The resources are there for you and for your children.