“If you want your children to turn out well, spend twice as much time with them, and half as much money.“ – Abigail Van Buren

Divorce or Separation?

Divorce or separation can be difficult enough for the adults to comprehend before, during and after the split. The range of emotions during these times are too many to list, but can be totally overwhelming.

Now as an adult, stop for a moment and ask yourself, if you are finding this all too much, how is your child coping? How are their heads and hearts dealing with the emotional chaos and confusion?

As a parent it is normal to want the best opportunities and experiences possible for your family. When the family dynamic no longer works between you and your partner, co-parenting can be an option for you.

Co-parenting with your ex is obviously not always possible. Sadly, in some cases not safe if there is domestic violence or child abuse involved. However, if you or your ex are slogging it out, mediation or counselling may be your first port of call. It’s very important to gain a balanced perspective to a situation that may still be very raw.

What is Co-parenting?

Co-parenting allows both you and your ex the opportunity to work together in the raising of your child. It allows you both to be an active and positive influence in your child’s life. It’s also important to equally share the responsibility of raising your child to the best of your ability. This will probably require you to sometimes put your own personal relationship issues aside.

What does Co-parenting involve?

Basically the first step to being able to co-parent successfully is being mature. This means wanting the best for your child above all else. Co-parenting works best when past relationship problems between you and your ex can be healed. Or at the very least, be put aside. The child’s best interest can then be at the forefront of your interaction.

Co-parenting may seem a little overwhelming in its initial stages.  To be successful, there will need to be consistency from pick up and drop off times to discipline, education, bedtimes and everything else in between!!

Organising your child’s future when they live between two separate households is not an easy task, but once again, parents who are able to put their child’s best interest first and choose to work at maintaining the goal of supporting and teaching your child in a mature fashion, are sure to successfully navigate their way through it all with maturity and flexibility.

Navigating your Way Through

I mentioned earlier that maturity and flexibility will enable you and your ex to raise your child to adulthood and feel that you have both been successful in your combined efforts.  Maturity is key to putting your personal relationship problems aside and focusing on the child.  This does not mean that your issues between you and your ex aren’t going to be challenging at times.  It does mean that when these challenges arise, if they aren’t child related, then make the mature decision to discuss your personal relationship issues away from the child as often as possible.

Successful co-parenting also requires maturity around how you and your ex speak about each other to your child. Your personal relationship issues are not your child’s responsibility. Do not over burden your child with negative talk regarding the other parent, or relationship issues that they aren’t responsible for. Do not try to win points against your ex by making them look bad either through your words or actions when your children are involved.

If you pick up your child and they excitedly want to show you something special your ex gave them, fobbing them off or complaining that you don’t want to hear them talking about their Mum or Dad is heartbreaking to your child.  This is not balanced parenting and far from encouraging for the child caught between hostilities.

The Importance of Flexibility

Flexibility is another key to successful co-parenting. Remembering this when you are working together for your child. Be open to reassessing certain areas of your co-parenting agreement as your child gets older. Also remember that your child is not a pawn in the separation. Sadly many split families experience this ‘he said she said’ type of behaviour between the parents, and the child becomes unsettled and anxious.

With flexibility comes some proactive ideas – offering suggestions that you feel may be important for you and your ex – like how to share birthdays, Mother’s and Father’s Day, Christmas, School holidays etc. This is not a time to try to prove a point to you ex. This is a time to sit and work out the best possible choices for your child’s future and for the success for you and your ex as parents who chose to look past their personal problems and put their child first.

Good communication and organisation can be the make or break of your Co-parenting plan, so keep the lines of communication as open and clear as possible. Failing to communicate about issues or concerns as they arise can lead to resentment and situations spiralling out of control very quickly. Like anything, you are better to maintain something that is successfully working rather than to try to rebuild it from the ground up again.

Stay Positive and Keep it Real

Stay as positive as possible when needing to communicate with your ex. A positive attitude will help minimise certain issues when raising children. There will be the usual, age appropriate child behaviour. This can either be blown out of proportion or it can be worked through in a positive way. This brings continuity to this particular issue and future ones, because there will be future issues!

Keep it Real – Now that you and your ex have separate lives, it is difficult to say what can and can’t be brought for the child and by whom, however it is important to keep life as real for your child as possible. If you and your ex try to out-do each other, and spoil your child with carefree parenting such as buying them everything they want, letting them eat a poor diet of junk food and stay up late….basically trying to be your child’s friend instead of their parent, then you are distorting reality for your child. In turn defeating the purpose of co-parenting in the first place.

This all sounds like a lot to take in at once, but remember it is totally possible to co-parent successfully with your ex. If you are contemplating co-parenting or find yourself trying to balance your new lifestyle, please book an all inspiring psychic phone reading today. You will find clarity and direction through some simple areas of understanding yourself better and find ways not to react to some of the problems you and your ex may run into along the way.

Many Blessings on your new future, Psychic Clairvoyant Chris x

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