The Key to Successful Co-Parenting During Divorce

One of the trickiest parts of a divorce is continuing to raise children with a partner we are no longer linked to romantically.

For many people, it is also a partner that we don’t like much anymore, or that we downright can’t stand.

No matter how badly a partner may have treated us, they are a parent to our children, and if the custody arrangement allows for time with that parent – we need to get used to it.

I have vivid memories of my mother teaching me that the only person whose behavior I can control is my own. I have repeated this wisdom to my own children as they have been begging me to get their siblings to stop doing something.

But, it’s recently occurred to me that this advice is not just useful to children, it continues to be useful to us as adults, especially as we navigate divorce.

The only person whose actions we can control are our own. Our exes are going to do whatever they are going to do with our children, and they have as much right to do it as we do.

To the extent that we can settle on some ground rules – things like homework routine, screen time, etc – do that. But, if their other parent feeds them foods we’d never feed them, or if they take our kids to see movies we’d never take them to, we need to find a way to take a deep breath and move on. 

All we can do is make the choices we want for our kids when they are with us. And, we can model behavior that we want them to see. We can take the high road, and we can avoid taking the bait when our exes are doing things that feel designed to make us angry.

If our children report riding in their other parent’s car with no seat belt, or being left unattended for hours on end, then safety becomes a concern and taking the high road is no longer the right plan.

But outside of that, the best way to a smooth co-parenting scenario is to let go of the desire to control our co-parent and focus on doing the best we can when our kids are with us.

This might mean being the ‘less fun’ parent, or getting resentment from our kids about the rules we implement that are not implemented in the same way with their other parent. It sucks, there’s no way around it.

But our job is to raise our children the way we believe they should be raised, and allow them to have whatever other experiences they are going to have with their other parent.

Eventually, they won’t be children anymore. They will have more perspective on how each of us behaved.

What do we want our kids to remember about how we conducted ourselves through this time? What kinds of interactions between their parents do we want them to see? These are the questions to ask ourselves when things get tough.

This period is just a moment in time. Our goal is to get through it with our integrity and to remember that our children deserve to be loved by as many people who are willing to love them.

Regardless of how we may feel about those people.