I love sharing new resources as I come across them. I read a book about co-parenting recently that will be an excellent resource for divorced and divorcing parents as well as the professionals that work with them. In Karen Bonnell and Kristin Little’s book The Co-Parents’ Handbook: Raising Well-Adjusted, Resilient and Resourceful Kids in a Two-Home Family from Little Ones to Young Adults, they describe key ingredients for a successful co-parenting relationship. These ingredients include a child-centered focus, good boundaries, clear communication, respect, creativity, and flexibility.
“Child-centered” is the values based purpose for co-parenting. Why work cooperatively with the other parent? Why do this challenging, frustrating, sometimes painful think? Because you want what’s best for your children and to help them adjust well to the divorce. Remaining child-centered means you try to see things form your child’s perspective; their concerns, their feelings, their needs. And you make decisions from their best interest. As parents, we like to believe we are thinking about our children’s interests at all times, but if we are truly honest, our own feelings and needs often influence how we view our children, what we want for them, and what we believe is best for them. Perhaps there is no time this is more true than during a divorce. Bonnell and Little do a great job of acknowledging and compassionately understanding the strong feelings affecting parents during a divorce. They encourage parents to be aware of their thinking as either in “spouse mind” or “parent mind”. This is a helpful way for a parent to ask themselves if their current perspective is from the position of a spouse in the midst of divorce or from the position of a parent considering what is best for their children.
Good boundaries provides the container from which to operate as parents. They give some great practical guidance and protocols for creating new boundaries as adults parenting in two households. One way that I encourage parents to move out of “spouse mind” and into “parent mind” is by viewing their new relationship as that of business partners in the business of raising their children. Bonnell and Little take the idea of being business partners one step further, defining the parenting roles as “CEOs” (Co-Parent Executive Officers) and “CFOs” (Co-Parent Financial Officers). I love this! Both parents are the leaders of their family and in charge of the business of raising their children well. Parents lead with decision making and also by example. Bonnell and Little remind parents that coping effectively with feelings and grief not only helps parents have less distorted views and more clarity on what is best for kids, but also allows parents to model appropriate behavior to their children because, of course, they are watching parents carefully and learning how to handle stress, conflicts, and communicate well.
I really appreciated the section Bonnell and Little add on parents as “Co-Parent Financial Officers”. Few books on the topic of co-parenting tackle the tough subject of how parents share financing the cost of raising children. How to make decisions regarding spending on children and share costs is a common source of conflict for divorced parents. How to manage financial discussions with clarity and grace, and keep the children out of it, can be a challenge. The authors encourage parents to consider how they deal with the tough money issues as an opportunity to model for their children respect, planning ahead, fiscal responsibility and acting with integrity. From this philosophy, they recommend planning ahead and developing a very specific protocol for what is paid for separately and what is a shared expense and how shared expenses will be handled.
Communication skills provide the means for getting the job of parenting done and done well. They offer specific models for communication that add structure to the topics to be addressed as well as examples of how to communicate. I agree that structure can help parents remain child-focused. To convey a united front to children, which is effective parenting, the authors recommend communicating “your Mom/Dad and I” need to discuss it or decided. This gives children less room to manipulate and the security of knowing their parents are in charge. This phrasing also signals a parent’s commitment to working as a team and respecting their co-parent.
Respect, creativity, and flexibility provide the map for how to share information and make decisions. Respectful interaction is polite and civil. Creative decision making looks for solutions that work for everyone and minimize win-lose combativeness. Flexibility accepts the differences between yourself and your co-parent, resists assuming ill intent, doesn’t sweat the small stuff, picks battles, and remains open to the possibility of learning new approaches and co-parenting getting better and easier over time.
At the heart of The Co-Parents’ Handbook is compassion for the challenge of co-parenting after divorce and genuine hopefulness about the possibility of healing, growth, and change inspired by parents’ love for their children. If parents are committed to consistently following the guidance in this book, the future for their children will be hopeful, indeed.
