Archive for category: Healthy Co-parenting Skills

Introduction: Successful co-parenting painters (CPP’s) demonstrate skills that parents in problem co-parenting relationships lag in, or lack altogether.  The former leads to an amicable and effective co-parenting relationship whereas the latter leads to unpleasant conflict, cold wars in which CPP’s ignore one another, and failed efforts to raise healthy children.  Again, the difference is skills, not bad people.  Research has identified ten skills that make the difference.  This blog very briefly describes each of these skills.  For a more thorough discussion of the skills, including exercises and drills to learn the skills, see our upcoming book: Planning a Sensible Divorce.

Skill 1. Overcoming personal bias. In order to survive in prehistoric times, humans developed personal biases, including: overconfidence bias, feeling more “right” than others with whom we disagree; tribal warfare bias, joining with people who agree with us and trying to get others to join us and our beliefs; and judgment bias, where we judge others by their actions but ourselves by our motives.  In modern times, these biases often lead to conflict with others.  To have a cooperative relationship with a co-parent, it is critical to overcome these biases, giving the CCP respect for his or her opinions, avoiding escalating conflicts (e.g., getting attorneys to duke it out), and judging themselves by their actions, not their motives.

Skill 2. Do not take cheriticisms personally, but always listen for useful information.  Criticisms feel like threats to people and stir up negative emotions.  However, this only happens if a person takes the criticism personally.  Taking a criticism personally is a mistake: criticisms say something about the person doing the criticism, not the person being criticized.

However, criticisms often contain useful information.  For example, “You are late and the kids were very upset.”  “You are late” is not personal, but that the kids were upset is useful information.  The response might be, “Thanks for telling me, I will talk to the kids.”

Skill 3. Bridging the gap between two worlds.  Because everybody has different backgrounds, things that have different meanings, different things to which people pay attending and so on, the gap between experiences, even of exactly the same event, people jump to conclusions and think that they share the same reality.  They don’t.  Too often, people say, “That’s not what. happened,” thinking the other person is lying.

Communication is the solution, that is, sharing information from both realities in order to get the whole picture.

Skill 4. Getting different perspectives.  In problematic co-parenting relationships, the focus is often on what one parent wants to get across to the other parent.  In functional co-parenting relationships, parents ask questions and try to understand the other parent’s perspective, or the children’s perspectives.  By understanding the perspectives of the others in the family, a parent can make good choices.

Skill 5.  Resolving core emotions.  Problematic co-parenting relationships tend to be filled with anger and blame.  The parents, and often the children, are suffering and unskilled parents focus on blaming the other parent for the pain.  The better question is not, “Why are you doing this,” it is “Why am I reacting that way that I am.”  Almost always, reactions to the behavior of the other parent come from unresolved core emotions, like sadness, guilt, insecurity, fear, and shame.  Anger and blame do not resolve core emotions – focusing on the underlying core emotions leads to resolution.

Skill 6.  Part of resolving core emotions includes learning to be vulnerable.

Being vulnerable is simple, but emotionally challenging.  Being vulnerable includes: always being completely honest; admitting to mistakes or other negative behaviors; apologizing and making amends; forgiving and forgetting wrongs; and making polite requests, instead of demands.  When practicing being vulnerable, people become increasingly confident and can turn around a problem relationship.

Skill 7. Making joint decisions; Skill 8. Identifying a problem that can lead to a solution; Skill 9. Resolving disagreements when both parents are right  In our Communication Series, we present the skills for making decisions and solving problems.

Skill 10. Recovering quickly from disagreements.  It is important to recover quickly by showing respect for one another, apologizing when appropriate, and recovering from hard feelings.  By ending a disagreement and recovering quickly, parents keep the difficult side of coparenting limited so that they can most enjoy it.