Establishing an effective co-parenting relationship with your child’s other parent can be challenging, even when you’re directed by a child custody order. For example, you and the other parent might have different ideas about how to raise your child, including disagreements over issues like discipline, participation in extracurricular activities, religious practices, and household rules. This conflict can make life stressful, and it can leave your child caught in the middle, potentially subjecting them to emotional and psychological harm.
How can you create an effective co-parenting relationship?
Even though it might not seem possible, you can strengthen your co-parenting relationship. Here are some ways to do that:
- Ensure that all decisions are focused on your child’s best interests.
- Find an effective form of communication that reduces conflict and ensures clarity.
- Refrain from making big decisions, like those pertaining to medical care, schooling, and religion, without discussing it with the other parent.
- Create a fair and balanced parenting schedule and stick to it as much as possible.
- Don’t talk poorly about the other parent when you’re in your child’s presence.
- Try to be positive about the time that your child spends with their other parent.
- Try to forgive the other parent for anything that may have gone wrong in your relationship with them.
- Be flexible when needed.
- Leave your children out of decisions that should be made by you and the other parent.
What if your co-parenting relationship remains strained?
Hopefully the tips mentioned above will help ease any strain you’re experiencing in your co-parenting relationship. But if your relationship continues to devolve for whatever reason, then you might need to consider a child custody modification that restructures parenting time.
To successfully modify custody, though, you’ll need evidence and strong legal arguments. So, if you need to seek modification, now is the time to start thinking about how to frame your arguments.