Working together with your co-parent after a divorce may seem like a distant and far-off goal, especially if the divorce went rockier than you had hoped for. Fortunately, there are ways to work toward cooperative parenting.
Parallel parenting serves as a potential stepping stone to span between your divorce and a healthy co-parenting relationship. But exactly how does it facilitate this transition?
Keeping your space while you recover
Psychology Today examines parallel parenting. This is a co-parenting option that allows you and your co-parent to keep a distance for some time, hopefully giving you the space you need to recover somewhat and work toward more interactive forms of cooperative co-parenting.
Parallel parenting does this by disallowing in-person communication. In short, instead of meeting face to face to discuss matters or hold conversations in the same space, you will communicate strictly through text. This means you can talk via email, handwritten letters and notes, text messages and instant messaging services.
If you wish to avoid conversations entirely for a while, you can simply record pertinent information in a notebook and pass that between each other when your child goes from one home to another. This lets you stay up to date on the happenings in your child’s life without ever having to exchange a direct word with your co-parent.
Getting a court reevaluation
Over time, the court will reevaluate your situation until you get to the point where you no longer need parallel parenting, which could take months or years depending on your individual progress. After that point, you will move toward the goal: cooperative parenting that actively incorporates the entire post-divorce family.