“Coparenting” is the act of coordinated parenting by two or more adults who share legal, financial, and/or emotional responsibility for raising children. When parents are able to safely collaborate and coordinate without significant conflict, a child’s well-being is optimally supported.
The ability to coordinate, collaborate and keep conflict low is made more challenging when parents are divorced and living in two separate households. However, the benefits children gain from parents’ coparenting remain the same. Let’s look at the benefits to children and why it’s so important for parents to learn the skills and make the efforts to effectively coparent.
There is strong research to suggest that high conflict between parents is associated with disrupted development and maladjustment in children. Children exposed to chronic parental conflict divert attention and energy away from the business of being a child and developing their own emotion regulation, empathy, executive functions, and problem solving to coping with the conflict. Common behavioral outcomes for children include a host of mental, emotional and behavioral problems such as distractibility, impulsivity, anger, anxiety, and underdeveloped empathy, to name a few.
This makes a strong case for the importance of effective coparenting and keeping conflict low between parents. There are a variety of skills necessary for parents to communicate, coordinate, and make decisions on behalf of their children.
It is important for parents to remain focused on their children’s needs and their common goals for raising their child. Focusing on common purpose and goals directs parents toward agreement rather than disagreement and keeps their child at the center of their concern.
Parents also need the ability to manage their strong emotions and reactions so that they can communicate effectively, without animosity and blame. Calm and predictable interactions creates safety between coparents and for the child. Effective communication relies upon the ability to manage emotion.
Communication and negotiation skills are also essential to effective co-parenting. Effective parenting includes sharing relevant information about the child with each other. Parents also need to communicate about parenting decisions and which decisions will be separate and which to make together.
This may sound like a very tall order. Parenting is tough enough; it’s even more challenging to coordinate with another parent. Your child is worth the effort! If you would benefit from help developing these skills, there are books and classes that can help. You can also contact a coparenting coach for more specific skill building. Your child’s well-being will benefit from your efforts, and so will you! These are excellent general relationship skills to develop that will serve you beyond coparenting.
