Do a quick Google search, and you’ll find countless articles and suggestions for co-parenting after a divorce… but what if co-parenting won’t work in your situation due to high-conflict topics, messy custody cases, or abusive co-parent behavior? It is time to try parallel parenting methods instead to protect yourself and your child throughout your shared custody.
In volatile or difficult custody situations, such as those with narcissistic or coercive co-parents, parallel parenting allows parents who are at odds with each other to still find a way to safely and respectfully share parenting responsibilities and tasks. Keep reading to learn more about this parenting tool and how Pathways can help you develop a parallel parenting plan to succeed.
How Does Parallel Parenting Work?
Unlike co-parenting, where both parents actively collaborate on their parenting plan and roles, parallel parenting gives caregivers the chance to perform their roles and tasks without direct interaction and minimizing the possibility of conflict. In essence, this allows parents to disengage from each other while still showing up for their child.
Parallel parenting allows you to disengage from the volatile party while still allowing your child the opportunity to continue feeling safe and cared for rather than being forced to ‘decide’ between contentious parents.
What You Need for Effective Parallel Parenting
Create a plan that allows you to completely disengage from the narcissistic, abusive, or manipulative partner outside of agreed-upon communication checkpoints, like child handoff or legal appointments. This plan should include an extremely detailed schedule, parenting framework, and communication channels; the team at Pathways Family Coaching can help you design this plan and support you in getting it approved by your legal team, co-parent, and other relevant parties.
After planning approval, any and all communication should then be restricted solely to the child’s well-being, schedule, and needs and never take place in person or via ‘immediate response’ channels like texts or phone calls. Effective parallel parenting with a manipulative, dangerous, or coercive partner relies on a parenting app such as Our Family Wizard or Talking Parents and a shared parenting notebook so that all communication is recorded and there are no opportunities for conflict, miscommunication, or contention later on.
Tips for Successful Parallel Parenting
- Don’t Engage in Dysfunction: You can’t control your ex, but you can control how you let their behavior impact you and the relationship with your child. By taking the “hands-off” approach to another person that comes with parallel parenting, you help reduce your reactivity to their dysfunction. When situations do arise, choose to disengage while still documenting their breach of the plan.
- Prepare a Solid Plan: A parallel parenting plan relies on setting foundations focused on the wellbeing of the child: the start and end of each parent’s custody period, transportation, exchange times and places, and when each parent has decision-making power. These details should be recorded in the pass-off book, which always stays in the child’s possession.
- Make it Legally Binding: Once you have set the details of your plan with your co-parent and your Pathways team (and possibly with your legal counsel), treat it like a legally binding contract. Don’t deviate from the plan unless it’s completely unavoidable, and give your parenting partner the same polite, distant respect that you’d give to an employer or business contract partner.
- Set Clear Boundaries: Dictating clear boundaries for interactions and decision-making for all parties makes all communication easier to approach. Only discuss matters related to your child with your counterpart, and avoid any discussion of personal issues or legal matters, like divorce proceedings. The less ammunition you give this person, the better.
- Document Everything: Successful parallel parenting means consistently documenting the child’s activities and needs to circumvent accusations of withholding information. For small children, this includes sleeping and feeding schedules, potty training updates, and developmental milestones. Older children need pass-off of extracurricular activities and appointments, behavioral issues, school progress and reports, and social activities.
- Minimize Extraneous Communication: In a parallel parenting plan, you should have zero contact with the other party other than documentation for your child’s success. Questions or concerns that are not time-sensitive should only be addressed in the pass-off book, and anything time-sensitive should be communicated via email- either way, it creates a buffer between you and your co-parent to minimize unrecorded contact.
- Protect Your Interests: The rigorous documentation routines of parallel parenting can help protect you in a contentious custody battle since you aren’t engaging with the other party in any capacity other than recording child-related information in the pass-off book. This allows you to avoid situations where your ex may try to bait, belittle, or harm you.
- Focus on Your Child, Not Chaos: Your child’s health and happiness are paramount. If you’re fulfilling your parental obligations and striving to create an environment that allows your children to thrive, then you are on a positive trajectory.
Contact Pathways Family Coaching to Help You Navigate Parallel Parenting!
Whether your parenting plans are being derailed by an inconsistent, narcissistic, volatile, or coercive counterpart, you can find a way out with a parallel parenting plan. No matter what your end custody goal is, the team at Pathways Family Coaching can help you build a plan that will satisfy you, your child, your problematic ex, and even your legal team. Their highest priority is always the well-being of the children, and they’ll go above and beyond to help. Contact their team today or check out available services and courses, and start taking the headache out of your parenting strategy so you can enjoy being present for your child!
Share this Post 1