Co-Parenting
After the Divorce
Having gone through the exhausting and emotionally painful demands of divorce, parents with children then face the necessity of forming a new relationship, the Co-parenting Relationship. Forming healthy co-parenting relationships is difficult for most divorced parents, but it is much more difficult for children when they don’t.
This relationship focuses exclusively on the best interests of the children and requires parents to place their children’s needs ahead of their own. Divorced and divorcing couples that seek counseling to form a co-parenting relationship are taking control and providing themselves with a structure to design and maintain their own co-parenting agreement.
Parents who are successful in forming a healthy co-parenting relationships assist their children in stabilizing their feelings and in making the difficult transition from living at home with both parents to living and visiting with parents who now have separate and different lives.
Parents who are successful at forming strong co-parenting relationships comfort and calm the fears and uncertainties of their children by allowing them to witness the commitment of their parents as they now communicate respectfully on their behalf without fighting, arguing and attacking each other.
What is Counseling and Coaching for Co-Parenting?
Creating a new co-parenting agreement improves skills in communicating about the essential needs and best interests of children without the influences of a failed marriage. Regular coaching allows parents to reinforce their commitment to co-parenting in the emotional interests of their children. Here’s what you can expect if you opt for co-parenting counseling or coaching:
- Joint sessions for discussing and designing the co-parenting relationship
- Setting boundaries that contain past relationship conflicts
- Identifying and focusing on needs of children
- Re-directing conflicts of the marriage into individual counseling
- Building communication skills to engender good will and mutual respect
- Identifying needs and procedures regarding medical care and medical emergencies
- Standardizing the visitation schedule to avoid conflict and misunderstandings
- Developing habits that support expressed expectations
- Establishing similar and consistent disciplinary responses
- Discussing financial matters to plan for higher education
- Creating strategies for managing disagreements
- Taking the “Co-Parenting Pledge,” and more