Co-Parenting Works!: Helping Your Children Thrive after Divorce

INTRODUCTION

Finding Your Heart in Love and War

Any Christmas Eve at 6:00 p.m. during Leslie’s childhood: sitting in the back seat of her mom’s car in the parking lot of the 7 – 11, weeping in grief and frustration to the sound of her parents’ enraged shouts at each other outside the car. Police sirens. Flashing red-and-blue lights. The sound of a policeman trying to calm her parents down, telling them he doesn’t want to run them in on Christmas Eve, but if they don’t stop disturbing the peace—

What peace?

Leslie would clutch her favorite teddy bear to her face, trying to shut it all out, make it go away …

Leslie’s parents, though they divorced when she was a baby, continued their personal war all through her growing-up years. When she looks back at childhood, the painful memories surface first: the arguing, the fighting over child support and who would pay for summer camp, the guilt trips each laid on her about spending too much time with the other parent, the heartache of driving away with her father while her mother wept because she was going to spend a holiday away.

Christmas was split down the middle at 6:00 p.m. on Christmas Eve, the handoff time to whichever parent had Leslie for Christmas Day that year. Parking lots were the neutral handoff spot where pillows, suitcases, teddy bears, and one very nervous little girl would be transferred from one car to another. Her parents couldn’t manage even that much without taking the opportunity to vent their rage at each other. The sad truth is that the two people Leslie loved the most were good at only one thing – putting her in the middle and trying to make her choose who she loved the most. And because of that, Leslie’s memories of childhood are memories of pain and crisis, chaos and confusion, anger and resentment.

Did Leslie’s parents want to inflict pain and chaos and frustration on her life? Of course not – they loved her just as she loved them. Why then did they make her childhood so unpleasant?

I believe they didn’t know how to handle the situation any better. They had no constructive and productive models for being the divorced co-parents of a sensitive and trusting child. How I wish someone had given them a road map to co-parenting – to working together, even though they were divorced, out of mutual love for the child they had brought into the world. How I wish someone could have helped them anticipate the monumental moments of Leslie’s life – graduations, recitals, prom – so they could have all enjoyed those occasions together instead of trying to avoid the countless emotional landmines. How I wish a book or seminar had been available to help them figure out how to communicate with each other, difficult though it may have sometimes been, in the effort to help their little girl thrive. How I wish someone had explained to them that it’s not about tearing down the other parent – it’s about building up the child.

This book is that road map. These stories are the directional signs. The mistakes and successes of others are the guardrails for the next generation of co-parents to follow.

As a parent who has now been co-parenting for ten years – and as someone who, like Leslie, grew up under divorced, warring parents – I have found it is possible to move beyond anger and pain to a positive and cooperative attitude in co-parenting. It is possible to work together, for the sake of the child. It is possible to have a strong parenting partnership even though you didn’t have a strong marriage, and to shield children from the ongoing hurts caused by divorce. Your child does not have to be another negative statistic. Your child can thrive, excel, adjust, and live life fully – in mom’s house, and also in dad’s.

Is co-parenting after divorce easy? No. Does positive co-parenting come naturally? No. Cooperating with the person with whom you had irreconcilable differences requires concentrated effort from both parties. And a whole lot of God-given grace.

Healthy co-parenting is critical for the sake and safety of your children, and can break the cycle of divorce and promote marriage and family in the future.

Are your kids worth the effort? You decide.

For years I have been hosting seminars that teach the principles and techniques of co-parenting. Do those principles work? Here are a few comments from people who’ve taken my co-parenting seminars:

I don’t want to pass the torch of brokenness to my kids. I sensed hope for them.

I learned that my son needs to celebrate his dad, too. I can’t be both parents.

I realized I am doing many things right, but I learned 100 more ideas I never knew to do!

I want to be a stable parent and this seminar showed me I am being insecure and childish. I need to get healthy so I can be a better model to my daughter.

I did not know how much damage I was doing when I talked bad about their dad.

Immediately after the co-parenting seminar I went to my son’s soccer game. For the first time in six years, I sat on the same side of the field as my ex-wife. I realized that part of co-parenting is getting out of my own comfort zone so my son won’t feel so divided. He came off the field and was able to high-five us both instead of having to choose which parent to go see first. I had no idea how much that was hurting him all those years. I have to admit, I was uncomfortable sitting on the same side as my ex but I had to remember – it’s not about me, it’s about my son!

After hearing about the importance of photos I asked my ex-husband if I could take a photo of him and our two children. I went to Walgreen’s and printed out one copy for my son’s room and one for my daughter’s Room. They each now have an area in their rooms to put important things that remind them of their dad. I am doing that for their good, so the holes in their hearts will be much smaller in the future.

I have seen lives changed by those seminars. I have seen families, even though they were no longer intact, regain wholeness and health, so that the children of divorce could thrive.

The principles and techniques from that seminar are distilled into this book. The information and advice you need to navigate the co-parenting path, and do it well, is here, in your hands. You will hear the comments of co-parents about their obstacles and their efforts to find solutions. You will hear from adult children of divorce about what their parents did right – and what they wish their parents had done differently. You will also hear from young children currently being raised between two homes – and you will learn from their hurts and their happiness.

Friends, with strength and with a focus on your children’s heart, you can become an amazing co-parenting team with your former spouse – including when stepparents come into the picture. I know that you love your children, or you wouldn’t have picked up this book. Let that love motivate you to do whatever it takes to facilitate a healthy childhood for your children. Determine to focus fully on what is best for your children’s future. Be the one who leads the way with quiet strength that is more concerned about your children’s heart and your children’s future than about who is to blame for the past.

Your children were given to you on purpose! Out of the millions of parents on the planet, God gave them to you. And when he did, he presented you with an amazing job. Your influence on your children now is forming a family legacy that will live on long after you are gone. What will your kids say as they reflect on their childhood? Will they remember smiles and high fives at their athletic events – or unspoken hostility and cold wars? Will they remember destructive anger – or that you chose peace? Will they remember a happy good-bye at their handoff time to the other parent, or will they remember tears, insecurity, and sadness?

The answers to those questions lie in the choices that you make and in the way you and your ex conduct yourselves as co-parents.

Your ability to co-parent well is the most critical aspect of life after divorce for your children. It is the foundation to all of the details lived out in your everyday lives. Having lived it for several years now, I know firsthand that co-parenting is not easy; but I also know that it is worth every ounce of effort – because it is through that effort that our children can have the healthiest foundation on which to build their futures.

CHAPTER 1

Getting Started in Co-Parenting

Though you have made me see troubles,

many and bitter, you will restore my life again;

from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up.

You will increase my honor and comfort me once again.

Psalm 71:20 – 21

Weeping may remain for a night,

but rejoicing comes in the morning.

Psalm 30:5

Isat at my kitchen table, crying. I stared through my tears at the blurry neighborhood outside. God, do you even see me sitting here right now? I prayed. "Do you see my tears? Do you know how much I’m hurting? Do you sense how terrified I am about the future? I’m a single parent now! How can I raise a child alone? How will I pay the bills? Where will I live? How will I ever face the judgment of the people around me, people I love, who judge us because we’re getting divorced? I know you hate divorce. I know you hate what it does to your children. I know you hate what it will do to my child …"

I wiped my eyes with a tissue. The details of my life on that morning seemed like a knotted, tangled mess that I couldn’t unravel, couldn’t make sense of.

I begin this story here, at this memory of a place of pain in my life, because although I have journeyed years beyond those overwhelming moments and the haunting questions, I will never forget them. I will never forget how I felt during those dark days: as if I were in a thick fog. I had no idea what was on the other side of that fog, or even when I would get through it. My past was a sea of regrets, and I was completely disillusioned about the future.

My emotions after the divorce were intense and painful – hard for even me to understand, and even harder to describe to my friends. Their words of encouragement sometimes seemed to be half judgment and condemnation, as if they couldn’t speak to me without first making clear where they stood on the issue of divorce. Their unasked questions about why and who was to blame made every conversation awkward and uncomfortable.

I thought it odd at the time that they felt the need to express their moral objection to divorce. Did they really think anyone was more uncomfortable with the idea of divorce than I was at that time? I was experiencing firsthand the pain divorce caused! Watching my marriage deteriorate and crumble was not what I dreamed about as a child. I’m sure none of us grew up imagining we would find our princess or prince charming, get married (in a castle), have babies – and then end up divorced. That’s not the happily ever after we imagined. Our wedding day with rice and flowers and kisses wasn’t supposed to lead to a war that resulted in your children growing up in two separate houses, or in only one with another parent they never see.

Success isn’t measured by the things you achieve, but by the obstacles you overcome. ETHAN HAWKE

Not all of us down the path of divorce have come to the threshold of co-parenting. To many readers, this picture of the newly divorced, grieving mother may seem beside the point. Perhaps you’ve never been married, and are looking for ways to keep your children’s other biological parent involved in their life. Perhaps you lost a spouse or partner to illness or war or an accident, and you’re looking for guidance in managing other relatives, perhaps grandparents, who want to be involved in your children’s lives. In any of these cases, our circumstances are similar: you’re now a single parent, and another caregiver or parent has a presence in your children’s life; you’re looking for ways to facilitate that presence in a way that’s fair and helpful for all parties.

That’s what we hope to guide in this book. Not so much for your sake, although in the end you’ll find parenting to be better with a committed co-parent. And not so much for your co-parent’s sake, although, in the end, he or she will be glad to be involved in raising and loving that precious child. We do all of this for the sake of the children we love. Keep that in mind; when things gets tough, as it will at times, you’ll remember why it’s worth it.

Whatever circumstances set you on this course – especially if you’re just beginning and your heart is hurting so badly that the word heartache makes sense to you for the first time – in this book you have found a place of grace. No one is judging you here, and you share this experience with many others. Welcome.

One Heart, Two Homes

Before your divorce, even though one parent may have assumed most child-rearing duties, your children relied on both of you to bring stability and security to their world. The things about your spouse, now ex-spouse, that drove you crazy were not lost on your kids either, but kids have a wonderful and immediate forgiveness response. And they have that response because they sensed an important and crucial truth: they need both of you. I have almost never heard of young children who wanted their parents to divorce. For the vast majority of children, their parents’ divorce was that unthinkable disaster that would bring their whole world crashing into incurable disaster. It was the monster under the bed.

As a result, kids of divorce can’t imagine a world in which both parents won’t continue to love them and be involved in their lives. That would be the realization of their worst fears.

Children of divorce have one heart, but they live in two homes. What co-parents do to protect their children’s hearts is the key to an enjoyable childhood and healthy upbringing for them – even when they have two families, two bedrooms, and two very different lives. Creating a co-parenting team with your ex, working together for the sake of your children, will reap rewards for your children that are far more valuable than anything tangible you could give them.

It’s not about you; it’s about your kids.

It’s not about the past; it’s about your kids’ future.

For their long-term well-being, your kids need you to take the sometimes difficult step of creating a co-parenting team with your ex. Right now you may have serious doubts that such a thing could ever be; and even if the two of you agreed to do it, you have doubts about how well it would work. That’s what we’ll be discussing in the rest of this book. I’ll try to anticipate and deal with each question and doubt you have – which are probably the same ones the participants in my seminars raise over and over again.

The End Adult Matters Most

If I’m your co-parenting coach, then like any good coach I want to give you an overview of where we’re going and what our goals are. Even if all you do is just read through this book, you’ll still pick up some helpful takeaways. By also digesting and implementing these ideas, you can radically change your life and the lives of your children, now and far into the future – which means you’ll also be affecting the lives of your unborn grandchildren. Quite a return on your investment of time and effort!

What will you accomplish? With sincere commitment to excellent co-parenting, you will be able to:

• Communicate with your co-parent calmly, with purpose and clarity.

• Intentionally schedule time with your co-parent to discuss important issues related to your child – and, yes, even find solutions.

• Focus on the positive aspects of giving your children the freedom to love both parents.

• Attend—along with your co-parent and any stepparents – your children’s school functions, athletic events, and all extracurricular events with peace and anticipated enjoyment.

• Speak words of life and hope to your children about their other parent.

• Celebrate the love and the time your children share with their other parent.

• Exercise emotional maturity when something hurtful happens.

• Choose to leave some things unsaid for the best interest of your children.

• Co-parent forward – make co-parenting decisions today that will affect your children positively five years and ten years from now.

• Be a positive first filter to all outside influences to your children’s lives.

• Plan ahead what you will do when your children are away during holidays – to avoid loneliness and depression. Create a fun plan for yourself.

• Create a support system to help you process difficulties with your co-parent.

• Anticipate your children’s monumental moments in life and create a game plan that allows all family members – from both sides of your children’s family – to participate amiably and enjoyably.

• Prepare for your children’s adulthood: graduations, weddings, and future grandchildren.

• Understand fully what is at stake—the heart of your children and their future.

• Begin with the end in mind: What will your children say twenty years from now? What will their lives be like, and how will your decisions today affect that future?

• Commit to a positive co-parenting TEAMM mentality – because, as the TEAMM acronym denotes: The End Adult Matters Most!

Memories …

Before we dive into the rest of the book, I want you to write down your top childhood memories – good, bad, or otherwise. Don’t worry about being exhaustive; this isn’t a test. No pressure. Just write down the first memories that come to mind. After all, there’s a reason they’re the first memories you think of. Spend a few minutes to reflect, and be honest, even if some of these memories are painful. If, in fact, some of them are so painful you don’t want to commit them to writing here, just use code words that only you would understand – the day, or the place, or some detail that you connect with the event.

Why did I ask you to complete this exercise, even though it may, for some of you, have dredged up unpleasant thoughts? Two reasons. First, understanding your past can strengthen your future. You may have sad memories of hurts inflicted upon you by people you love. Unresolved issues may still fill you with anger or sadness. On the other hand, many memories probably make you smile, even laugh out loud. You may feel pride and a sense of accomplishment to have been part of your family’s legacy, a legacy that still lives on inside of you.

When I look back, some of my best memories connect me to my grandparents, both the Gallegos and Grasmick families. I am grateful to be an extension of those individuals – a fun mix of German and Spanish influences, beliefs, values, and family traditions. I still get choked up at the sound of upbeat Spanish music as I remember the weddings and wedding marches of our family heritage, and how I loved to dance across the floor with my Grandpa Gallegos. These days, when I smell coffee early in the morning, I think of my Grasmick grandparents. As a child, I would roll over in the morning at first awakening, hearing the coffee percolate, and know that they were up and waiting for me. How I wish I could still wander, sleepy-eyed, to their kitchen table and read the Rocky Ford newspaper and plan for the Saturday yard sales.

These memories linger, and I am so grateful for