Co-parenting by Design - Annette Burns, Nicole Siqueiros-Stoutner

Co-parenting by Design (eBook)

The Definitive Guide for Divorced or Separated Parents

Annette Burns, Nicole Siqueiros-Stoutner (Autoren)

eBook Download: EPUB

2024 | 1. Auflage
232 Seiten
High Conflict Institute Press (Verlag)
978-1-950057-43-6 (ISBN)

In Co-parenting by Design, family law experts Annette Burns and Nicole Siqueiros-Stoutner help divorced or separated parents agree on a plan that reduces conflict over the parenting schedule, holidays, vacations, medical decisions, education, and safety, and equips readers to deal with special situations like parental alienation and substance abuse. It's stressful to be a divorced or separated parent. You may feel that you're constantly being scrutinized by your co-parent and by the court system. You are expected to be superhuman: to forgive and forget, to be endlessly patient, to be a perfect parent, and to be calm and gracious no matter what. If you feel overwhelmed, you're not alone. In Co-parenting by Design, Annette Burns and Nicole Siqueiros-Stoutner offer their combined sixty-plus years of experience in family law to help you let go of these unrealistic expectations and successfully navigate the challenges of parenting after divorce or separation. With customizable sample language you can incorporate in your own document, this book makes it easy to draw up a thorough and effective parenting plan or evaluate a plan provided by a parenting coordinator or other court official. You'll learn how to: - come to an agreement about the parenting schedule, holidays, and vacations - address medical decisions, education, safety, your child's possessions, and more - deal with challenging situations like parental alienation, domestic violence, or your co-parent's substance abuse - disengage from conflict - communicate effectively - reduce stress - increase your child's sense of security by conveying solidarity - protect your child's well-being With a complete parenting plan in place, you'll be prepared manage everyday routines and handle the unexpected. Co-parenting by Design helps you overcome conflict and get back to what matters most: enjoying stress-free time with your child.

Nicole Siqueiros-Stoutner, JD, is a family law attorney, mediator, and court-appointed Parenting Coordinator. She previously worked with Child Protective Services and a domestic violence shelter before transitioning to legal practice. After managing a non-profit organization's legal department, Nicole immersed herself in family law as an associate attorney and later as a partner in a Phoenix, Arizona firm. As a judge pro tem and trained Parenting Coordinator, Nicole serves the legal community by facilitating Alternative Dispute Resolution conferences and conducting private mediations. She is an effective advocate for clients after her tenure as a judicial officer in the Maricopa County Superior Court and a participant on the Maricopa County Superior Court Mental Health Roster. She is an award-winning jurist with experience teaching family law courses at local institutions.

CHAPTER TWO

Obstacles to Co-parenting

Even under the best of circumstances, co-parenting is not easy, and for any number of reasons people may co-parent ineffectively. Ineffective co-parenting refers to situations in which separated or divorced parents are unable to work together to raise their child. It may involve a lack of communication, collaboration, and shared decision-making between parents, which is likely resulting in negative effects on the well-being and development of their child.

The following are just a few examples of poor co-parenting and the consequences for the child.

• Parents cannot agree on who will be the child’s dentist, so the child waits weeks in pain without dental care while the parents argue over the provider.

• At child exchanges, the parents engage in name-calling or become physical with each other while talking about each parent’s new significant other. As a result, the child develops anxiety about exchanges, mistrusts their parents’ new partners, and begins to name-call and hit a younger sibling.

• A parent sends over a dozen text messages a day to the other parent asking the same child-related question because they have not received an answer. The other parent is so overwhelmed or annoyed by the tremendous number of texts that they continue to be non-responsive, and the question posed by the texting parent goes unanswered. Both parents are so angry or stressed about the constant emailing that the child knows something is wrong and believes it to be their fault.

• One parent fails to include or notify the other parent about a meeting with the child’s teacher. At the meeting, the teacher gives important information about the child’s schoolwork and offers helpful information and tools to support the child in school. The parent who wasn’t told about the meeting doesn’t know of the problem and fails to give the child the support they need.

• One parent tells the child intimate details about the parents’ relationship, including telling the child about all the money the other parent wasted and spent. This parent tells the child to watch for and report the other parent’s expenses because so much money is wasted. The child then becomes a spy and aligns with the parent who made the accusation of wasted money. The child starts to mistrust one parent and becomes anxious that the family will run out of money.

• Because the parents don’t speak with each other, a parent fails to follow the Parenting Plan on a holiday, either by refusing to return the child or not taking the parenting time the child was entitled to. This creates anxiety and confusion for the child as they don’t know what the schedule is or when they will see one of their parents again.

There are many contributing factors that lead to ineffective co-parenting, like the examples described above. This chapter will address some of the worst situations that lead to long-term problems for the child.

A. Poor Parent Communication

The way parents communicate with each other, or don’t, can negatively affect co-parenting. Co-parents may have various types of ineffective communication styles. Generally, when co-parents allow their own feelings and bitterness to inform their communications, communication suffers.

Some parents communicate as if they are the child’s sole parent and subsequently fail to collaborate or engage with the other parent. As an example, one parent may schedule to take a child to a doctor’s appointment without telling the other parent or even considering that the other parent should have been told about the appointment. Or a parent may purposely fail to give the other parent’s contact information to a medical or psychological provider, resulting in one parent being essentially “left out in the cold” when it comes to the child’s medical information.

A parent may fail to answer questions asked of them or intentionally or unintentionally delay the process of making decisions, both of which will be detrimental to the child. As an example, if one co-parent would like to register the child for summer school and asks the other parent about it, but the other parent fails to respond, the result is often that the child cannot attend because the program has filled up by the time the parents address the issue.

Parents may also communicate regularly, but ineffectively. Examples of this type of communication include a barrage of multiple emails in a short period of time, catastrophizing language (use of “always,” “never”), bringing up the past, bad language, blaming, name-calling, criticizing, and bringing up topics not related to parenting.

To communicate effectively, co-parents need to come to some resolution of their differing communication styles, set up boundaries and rules for communication, and learn to conduct co-parenting communication in a businesslike manner, which includes the prompt exchange of information about the child.

B. Gatekeeping Issues

Co-parenting can’t be discussed without discussing the concept of “gatekeeping,” which means that one parent or the other is more in possession or control of information about the child or has more control of the child himself.6 How that parent (the “gatekeeper”) controls or manages the child’s relationship with the other parent can be a big point of conflict between parents.

With intact relationships, gatekeeping is often intentionally practiced by the family. You may recall that your mother was always “in charge” of scheduling and attending doctor’s appointments or that your father was the parent who always attended parent-teacher conferences. In this way, your parents were gatekeepers. The gatekeeping parent may be the one who knows all the child’s teachers and medical providers, is responsible for all the phone calls to caretakers, and takes the children to all their appointments and activities. That gatekeeper parent may report to the other parent about what’s going on (or the other parent may not need or want a report), and the parents may be perfectly happy with their unequal status when it comes to the children because the family is still together, and that arrangement works for the family.

Gatekeeping, when not restrictive, can be a typical and even valuable aspect of parenting. It is a form of specialization that couples arrange when they’re together to best get things done. In the couples’ relationship, one parent may have flexibility with their work schedule while the other is required to be at work for specific hours each week. Gatekeeping can be viewed on a continuum running from facilitative (helpful), cooperative (parents working together), disengaged (parents keeping away from each other), protective (one parent acting as a buffer or guard for the child), and ultimately to restrictive or very restrictive (one parent actively keeping the child away from the other parent).

Gatekeeping can be justified or unjustified.7 Gatekeeping is certainly justified when one parent has more time and flexibility to handle the child’s schedule and transportation. It is when gatekeeping becomes restrictive, intended to actively and intentionally prevent the other parent from obtaining information and making decisions about the child, that gatekeeping becomes a problem and may require parent education or co-parenting counseling or, worst case, takes the parents to court to argue about the issue.

When parents separate, an unequal gatekeeping arrangement can suddenly feel harsh and unfair to the non-controlling parent. The gate-keeper parent may feel the status quo should be maintained for the benefit of the child, and they should remain in charge of all information. This tension in post-separation gatekeeping often leads to difficult co-parenting situations. Both the former gatekeeper and the former non-gate-keeper need to be aware of the changes they both must make because of their separation/divorce. Changing the nature of what was a long-standing parenting relationship is often very difficult and doesn’t happen immediately.

After separation, when a parent intentionally withholds time and information about the child from the other parent, it is considered “restrictive gatekeeping,” which is problematic when parents are trying to co-parent. Restrictive gatekeeping can be a pathway to a child’s estrangement from one parent.8 While gatekeeping is often a normal relationship that the parents created and agreed on during their relationship, restrictive gatekeeping after the parents separate is harmful to the child and to each parent’s relationship with the child.

C. Exposing the Child to Parental Conflict

A child may be exposed to numerous forms of parental conflict. This may be directly expressed (e.g., yelling, threatening, bad-mouthing, or asking the child to spy on the other parent), or it may take the form of passive parental conflict (e.g., a parent’s refusal to allow the child to have a picture of the other parent in their room, or a parent acting sad when the child speaks about the other parent). No matter how the child is involved in the parents’ disputes, the child will suffer. Repeated studies have shown that the parents’ relationship and interactions affect a child’s...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	13.12.2024
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Partnerschaft / Sexualität
ISBN-10	1-950057-43-7 / 1950057437
ISBN-13	978-1-950057-43-6 / 9781950057436

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