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According to the authors of Influencer: The New Science of Leading Change (Joseph Grenny et al, 2013), there are 6 sources of influence: personal motivation, personal ability, social motivation, social ability, structural motivation, and structural ability.

I will explore these sources of influence as they relate to vital behaviors for co-parenting with less stress and more peace.

  1. Personal Motivation – Why does someone want to do something? Does it make them feel better? Many people experience overwhelming stress in high conflict co-parenting. This kind of chronic stress impacts health, work, and relationships. It definitely feels better to have less stress in one’s life!
  2. Personal Ability – Can they do it? Do they have to the skills? Communication and conflict resolution skills taught in our monthly co-parenting webinars can make communication less triggering between parents and provide new ways to successfully defuse conflict. We encourage parents to focus on working together to raise whole, healthy, happy children. Being in one’s own integrity with regard to respecting the child’s other parent and honoring one’s word to respect the parenting time schedule (which includes being proactive to communicate when a commitment can’t be met – running late at a meeting at work, or weather / or traffic interfere) helps parenting time transitions go more smoothly.
  3. Social Motivation – What are your peers doing? Are they fighting with their children’s other parent or are they getting along? In many northern European countries, it is the cultural norm that parents share parenting after separation or divorce. There is also a higher percentage of people having children who were never married. Though if they split up, they still commit to raising their children together.
  4. Social Ability is the way we enable these vital behaviors. In the area of co-parenting, this is where peer to peer groups can be so valuable. When people see other parents successfully navigating daily co-parenting, they are motivated to do what these others are doing. Children do not want to be caught in the middle of their parents’ conflict. That actually feels terrible for children. Some get aggressive and bully others because they themselves are hurting. Some become withdrawn and drop out of activities they used to enjoy with friends. Others turn their hurt inward and get into cutting, or experience eating disorders. It’s important that court-ordered therapy to address the child’s situation also include the parents so that family dynamics can be addressed and tools provided to the parents to improve communication and resolve conflicts.
  5. Structural Motivation – CLI is working to share collaborative practices across Minnesota so that more families can benefit from having less costly, less difficult separations. Collaborative services are available in all areas to support families – family law, mediation, finance, therapy, and on-going support through parent coaching to enable Dads & Moms to co-parent with less stress and more peace. This collaborative approach reduces post-divorce conflict.
  6. Structural Ability – Do you have the tools to SUCCEED with co-parenting?a. First and foremost, sign a Commitment to Co-parenting at the time of separation/divorce. As parents, it’s in your hands – you and the other parent of your children – to move beyond the bitterness of your separation or divorce and find the courage to mutually support your children in maintaining healthy, loving relationships with BOTH parents and the children’s entire extended family.

Here’s some sample language you can use:
Commitment to Care – I am committed to the long-term well-being of our children. I understand that continued conflict with my ex-spouse/partner is destructive. I will agree to reasonable boundaries and interact with our children’s other parent in a respectful business-like manner so that we can BOTH continue to love our children and remain actively involved in their lives. While our intimate, romantic relationship has ended, co-parenting is forever.

If there isn’t a commitment by both parents, what’s getting in the way? Recognize mental health issues, substance abuse, and domestic violence. Provide treatment and support during recovery.

Otherwise look at social motivation – What are your peers doing? It’s time to create a NEW cultural norm of Shared Parenting! The best way to have the court order Shared Parenting is to have been sharing parenting all along since the day the children were born.

b. Another vital behavior for successful co-parenting is that information is shared. BOTH parents receive communications about schedules, appointments, practices, and events from schools, doctors, therapists, youth directors, and sports coaches. Know a provider or organization that isn’t set up to easily share information with both parents? Let CLI know if you would like to participate in our outreach across Minnesota.

Peaceful co-parenting is possible and our kids are worth it!

 

Adina Lebowitz, MA is a family mediator, parenting educator, and wellness coach. Her primary goal is to help families find less stress and more peace in their co-parenting. She supports parents as they are adjusting to a new separation or divorce, and continues to support them as co-parents whether they are facing day to day parenting challenges, or dealing with the impacts of stress on their lives. She is available to mediate bigger issues that impact their parenting plans like a move, job change, new relationship, or a child’s health challenge.

EHTC Family Mediation | Elan Health Twin Cities LLC
Phone: 612-499-8418
Email: adina@elanhealthtc.org
Website: https://www.elanhealthtc.org/mediation
Facebook: Co-parenting with Less Stress and More Peace https://www.facebook.com/groups/coparentingmorepeace

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When the Co-Parenting Issue is Safety

Safety is close to the bottom of Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  It is core to children’s ability to become resilient.  It can also be a very difficult topic to address during a divorce.  Here’s how the issue can arise during a discussion of parenting time arrangements:

Parent A:   You want equal parenting time, but I’m worried sick about you being able to take care of the kids, especially at night and also after your softball games when you’d be driving them home after partying with your team.

Parent B:  What are you talking about?

Parent A:  Don’t pretend you don’t know what I mean.   It’s how much you drink.  You drink every night.  I find you passed out in the chair in front of the TV half the time.

Parent B:  I knew you’d pull this.  Have I had a DWI?  Lost my job?  No!  It’s you who has the problem, not me.  Quit comparing me to your alcoholic dad.  I think you just want the kids more to get more child support.

Parent A:  This has nothing to do with child support, and you know it.  Besides, you did get a DWI.

Parent B:  If you’re gonna go back 15 years, then let’s talk about the time you passed out at your best friend’s wedding reception.

Parent A:  Yeah, one time.  And I basically quit drinking after that. 

Parent B:  Right, and now you have a panic attack any time I want a beer.  Quit trying to control me.

Sound a bit familiar?  Sound a bit challenging?  Sound like the children in this family could easily find themselves in the middle of escalating parental conflict, if they aren’t already?

Substance abuse or misuse is best understood as a systemic issue in a family because it impacts everyone.  And each family member has his or her story about it.  Denial, minimalization and sometimes projection are very likely to be part of one parent’s story, especially if they are dealing with the disease of chemical dependency.  Anxiety, frustration and co-dependence are very likely to be woven into the other side of the story.   Each parent is likely to show anger, because anger is hardwired and is a protective response to vulnerability.

In addition, each parent is likely experiencing fear.  The parent identified as having a problem may be fearful of consequences like losing access to their kids, or even their parental rights.  The parent raising the issue is fearful of something bad happening to the kids that might have been prevented by speaking out and setting firm boundaries.

And what are the children’s stories?  Might a skilled child-inclusive process be helpful?

As a neutral child and family specialist, I believe that a family law response to situations like this must have a laser- focus on what the children in the family need and deserve:  the best safe relationship they can have with both parents.   As a neutral, it is imperative to stay in a place of empathy and also be willing to calmly ask hard questions and to name the issues that arise, not with judgment but with clarity.

If a neutral professional has earned the trust of both parents, it is possible to engage with them in a voluntary process of creating a Confidential Safety Plan that is:

    1. designed to preserve parent-child attachment as much as possible; and
    2. identifies mutually agreed-upon “trust but verify” safety strategies, and
    3. specifies clear consequences and steps to be taken if a parent will not or is not able to honor their commitment to safety during parenting time as identified in the Safety Plan.

Because divorce decrees and Parenting Plans are online public documents, and given the sensitivity of issues addressed in a Safety Plan, it is important that the Safety Plan be filed with other confidential divorce documents where it can be accessed as needed, but will not be available to the public.

As with all out-of-court dispute resolution, the *Confidential Voluntary Safety Plan is not an appropriate option for all families, particularly if coercive control, domestic violence or child abuse are part of a family’s dynamic.  But for those parents generally able to engage in good faith negotiation, this option can be a safe way for them to address a difficult issue with dignity, clarity and respect.

About the Author
Deborah Clemmensen has devoted her professional life to the well-being of children and families.

She is a licensed psychologist with decades of experience as a psychologist working with children, adolescents, families and adults.  She been a Neutral Child and Family Specialist in family law for twenty-three years, participating in Collaborative Practice teams, traditional divorce processes and child-inclusive mediation, helping parents create Parenting Plans, We Statements and Confidential Collaborative Safety Plans.

Deborah has extensive experience as a consultant and trainer on child mental health issues and Collaborative Practice and has done research and published articles on a variety of topics.

Deborah has twice been co-President of the Collaborative Law Institute of Minnesota.  She has served two terms on the CLI Board.  She continues to participate on several committees of the Collaborative Law Institute of Minnesota, including the Training Committee and is currently a member of the Hague Convention Task Force of the International Academy of Collaborative Professionals.

As a Collaborative professional, Deborah coined the phrase, “keeping children at the center and out of the middle.”  This principle guides her work with families in Collaborative Practice and family law.

Contact:
Deborah Clemmensen, M.Eq., Licensed Psychologist, Neutral Child and Family Specialist
deborah.clemmensen@gmail.com
www.deborahclemmensen.com

*Deb Clemmensen will be presenting “Confidential Voluntary Safety Plans” on November 9, 2023 from 9 AM – 11AM at the Neighborhood House at Wellstone Center | 179 Robie Street East, St. Paul, MN 55107 Hosted by the Collaborative Law Institute of Minnesota. Details and Registration https://collaborativelaw.org/events/

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The best way to transition to Shared Parenting after separation or divorce is to have been sharing parenting and housework all along – from the day the kids were born. When we establish a new cultural norm that both parents are involved in caring for the children, then the courts have no problem dividing time equally. Some of my clients have been married 2-5 years, some 10-20 years, some never married, and some same sex couples. What they have in common is they share kids whom they love.

When parents split up, the most important thing is that they shift their relationship from an intimate, romantic one to a more business-like relationship with the common goal of raising whole, healthy, happy children. Studies show that it is the intensity and duration of the conflict that is so harmful to children of divorce.

Parents are taking a more active role these days in deciding their parenting plans. Did you know there are many ways to slice’n’dice 50/50 and still call it equal?

Some parenting time schedules are more prone to conflict than others. One day ‘ping pongs’ such as in a typical non-custodial schedule of one night a week and every other weekend are particularly hard on children. Kids need some time to settle in when they go back and forth between one parent’s home and the other.

No one ever said it’s easy for kids to have two homes. Let’s not make it harder with these one day transitions in the schedule. Some parents split the school week with Mon/Tues for one parent and Wed/Thurs for the other and then alternate weekends.

We can learn from what other states are doing. I think Arizona has one of the best guides to appropriate parenting time schedules for different ages and stages of child development. https://www.azcourts.gov/portals/31/parentingTime/PPWguidelines.pdf

Toddlers and preschoolers do better with transitions every few days, school age kids may do well with a 5-2-2-5 schedule, while teens often prefer as few transitions as possible – preferably week on / week off if the parents live close enough to the child’s school to make that possible.

Even a simple change in dropoff time – like Sunday 4pm instead of 6pm can make things go a little easier. With a 6pm dropoff right in the middle of dinner, if the parent dropping off is late, that can create stress all around. 4pm allows a ‘cushion’ so that the transition can go more smoothly. It also gives the child time to settle in so meal time can be a more welcoming, less stressed time.

Some things to consider when deciding on a parenting plan:

1) Can the parents communicate with each other about the kids’ needs without conflict?
2) How close do the parents live to each other – within 5 miles, less than 20 miles, in another city or state?
3) How old are the kids? Toddlers may need different schedules than teens.
4) Where is the children’s school? Are all the children at the same school?
5) Do the parents work outside the home – days/nights/weekends? Does their work involve overnight travel to other cities or states?
6) Do any of the kids have special needs – behavior, learning, dietary, frequent medical care?

Here are some parenting time schedules to consider and some of the pros & cons.

PARENTING TIME EXAMPLES

It’s good to include some language in your decree that says you will revisit your parenting time schedule every 3-5 years as circumstances change – people move, change jobs, get into new relationships, and their kids mature so the schedule they agreed upon years ago may need some updating.

EHTC offers monthly co-parenting workshops. In these workshops we cover communication and conflict resolution skills and there’s plenty of time for talking about real-life co-parenting scenarios with other parents. These groups are ONLINE via Zoom so people can log in from anywhere!

For those who need more support than what is offered in these monthly workshops, parents can purchase individual coaching sessions (packages of 6, 12, or 20 sessions which expire one year from date of purchase).

Hopefully in the classes and coachings, parents gain the communication, conflict resolution, and stress management skills they need for resolving day to day challenges. When facing a bigger issue such as    re-arranging a parenting schedule due to a move or job change, finding a care provider to address a child’s health challenge, or seeking help for a child struggling in school, consider mediation – a safe space where the parties are empowered to express what is deep in their hearts, really listen to what the other side is saying, and be open to considering options with a focus on what’s best for the child.

Adina Lebowitz, MA is a family mediator, parenting educator, and wellness coach.
Adina’s primary goal is to help families find less stress and more peace in their co-parenting. She supports parents as they are adjusting to a new separation or divorce, and continues to support them as co-parents whether they are facing day to day parenting challenges, or dealing with the impacts of stress on their lives. She is available to mediate bigger issues that impact their parenting plans like a move, job change, new relationship, or a child’s health challenge.

In partnership with the Minnesota Shared Parenting Action Group #MNSPAG she encourages schools, worship congregations, doctors/dentists/therapists, and youth activity & sports directors to communicate schedules & appointments to BOTH parents. Sharing information goes a long way towards reducing conflict and enabling co-parents to find less stress and more peace. #kidsneedboth #doit4MNkids

Elan Health Twin Cities LLC (Minnetonka, MN)
612-499-8418
adina@elanhealthtc.org
www.elanhealthtc.org/mediation