To address co-parenting tips for divorced parents, I've invited Sid Unrau.
A family attorney to help us with this. Sid Unrau is back in the Live On
Purpose TV studios today. Welcome Sid. As an attorney who has done a lot in the
area of custody and family law, you and I have talked before about co-parenting.
And I think we should dive into some tips for what makes that work well. In
another episode, Sid, we talked about having a peaceful joint custody
arrangement. And you pointed out that co-parenting happens even in families
where there has not been a divorce. -Absolutely. Yeah. I co-parent with my wife.
And we're not divoced.
-And you're not the same
either. -That's right. -You have different ideas. You have different strengths. You
have different weaknesses. And that's true of parents who are married to each
other. And that's true of parents who are not married to each other. So, some of
these tips are going to apply no matter what. -Absolutely. One of the first things
I like to point out is that we all co-parent. Whether we're single parents
or married parents. We co-parent with a lot of other people. We co-parent with
teachers, we co-parent with doctors, we co-parent with church
organizations. We compare with a lot of people who have influence over our
children. And some of that influence we really appreciate. Some of it we think....
-Not so much. -Yeah. And so, it's sort of interesting because we do this. But for
some reason, when we have the divorce word in there, then we think it's us
versus them instead of us with them. And co-parenting is something that we can do
with. And that's what I think we should do. And my wife is a teacher. And so she
has to deal with parents all the time who don't agree with something that she
did. Or my wife sometimes does to grieve the way the parents handle things. -Right.
-It's interesting because she's had to learn to negotiate and be happy and
co-parent with those parents. Now, of course, they don't call it co-parenting.
So, I realized this is a analogy. In a depressed situation, you
really are co-parenting. And what I think that would be a good focus for our
parents who are focusing on co-parenting, realizing that this is a cooperation,
focusing on the children. Is to focus on the outcomes. What are successful
outcomes that people want and that you want for your own children? And this
might seem like a silly question. But a lot of people they need would think
about this. I ask a lot of my clients certain questions about what they want
as far as outcomes are concerned for their co-parenting. And some people don't
think about this. But it's the same for parents. I asked my clients, "What do you
want for your kids?" And they say, "To be happy." Okay, I get that. Everyone wants
their kids to be... -That's the universal answer. -But we also want our kids to be
successful. I was with a bunch of psychologists one time. I don't even
remember if you were one of them. This was early on in my career. And a
psychologist asked us, what is the most important thing in your life? And he had
on the board written some things so that we would be sort of focused on what he
had written. And he pointed to kids and he said, "Raising your kids." And almost all
of us raised our hands. And he said, "That's great. But that's not it."
And he pointed to another one which was get your kids ready to be on their own.
In other words, he was trying to point out to that one our main focus in our
lives as far as being parents is concerned is to get rid of our kids and
make them good people. -So, work our way out of a job. -Right. Work our way out
of a job. Now, that might not seem right because of course, we focus on our kids.
But really, we're focusing on the outcomes we want our kids to have. I
think that's a very important shift. And so sometimes when my clients are asking
me about how hard it is to be a co-parent and what they can do about it
legally to make the other person do what they think is right and all those kinds
of things. I say, "Wait a minute. Let's focus on what do you want. Do you want
your kids to graduate from high school?" That seems pretty basic. That's a pretty
good thing. "Do you want your kids to be out of jail? Or do you want your kids to
be in detention all the time? Do you want your kids to have successful marriages
themselves?" Once upon a time or our other relationships. "Do you want your
kids to be successful in their church callings and things like that?" If that's
what you want, focus on what gets them there. Instead of what the other party is
doing and what they're doing wrong or things like that.
And then what you want the outcomes to be, it's way easier to talk to the other
side. "Hey, we need to make sure homework gets done. We need to make sure that our
child is applying to college." This is one thing that that just baffles me.
Sometimes when people are divorced and even when they're married, they think,
"Well the other parent will take care of that." But you've got to have a
conversation about it. We have a child right now who's applying for college and
it's just fascinating. My wife and I are coordinating and figuring out all the
time what I can do, what she can do. So that we can have our child and have the
best opportunity to be successful and applying for college getting
scholarships. Those kinds of things. That takes coordination when you're living
together in a married. When you're further apart, it takes even more
coordination. So focusing on the outcome, having some kind of meeting on the minds,
meaning of the minds. That is a perfect thing to do.
And again, if your child started to get in trouble, things like that then it's
really awesome if both parents are focused on how do we get our child not
in trouble? Instead of one parent. And I see this all the time. One parent. You're
just being too harsh. No wonder our child's in trouble.Bbecause you're just
being too harsh. -The blame game. -And you're being the soft landing where no
matter what the child does, it's okay. Let's see if we can focus on we want the
child to not be acting up in school. And why is the child acting up in school?
Maybe the child's acting up in school because the parents are fighting all the
time. What child is seeing is, "Oh, this is how I
get along in life. I just fight. And I just rebelled. But I don't like something
or about." But if the parents are like a kid, we're going to focus on you. You need to
cut this out and both of them. -I love the ideas. And it seems that at the core
of everything that you've shared so far is shifting the focus. So, we're getting
it out of the fighting divorce mentality back into the parenting mentality which
is not even about you. -Exactly. -It's about your kids. -Yes. -Give
up the fight long enough to do the right thing. -Exactly. That is perfect. And
that's a perfect segue to my next point. Which is think about the future. You're
going to be parents of these kids forever. One of the finest experiences
I've had. And I've shared this in other videos that we've done is that I was the
photographer at a wedding one time where the bride's father could not be in the
same picture as the bride's mother. Because they have been divorced years
before and they'd had a horrible divorce they had just been at war the
entire time. These are people who had just been in
the same church building together for the marriage for that few moments of the
marriage. But in the pictures afterwards, they did not want to have that memory of
them together. -How tragic. It's not about them. -Right. But
we're going to have graduations. We're going to have babies, grandchildren, we're
going to have marriages. We're going to have reunions. Things like that. Wouldn't it be
horrible if the child has to focus on which parent can I invite to this thing?
And which compare can I invite to that thing? Or which side of the family can
come and all that? How sad. So co-parenting a lot has to do with
thinking about what patterns do we want to establish now so that in the future,
we aren't going to have this kind of division. And that's just beautiful.
And if you think about it now when the kids are young right after you're
divorced or the youngest are going to because some people don't divorce of
course until the kids are older. But the sooner you get into good habits of
thinking of the outcomes that you want and thinking of the future and how you
want your children to be comfortable with all sides in the family and with
both of you, the better things are going to be. -You know what? As a psychologist,
I'm seeing a hidden benefit here. We're talking obviously about co-parenting,
doing the right thing for our kids. This makes your life better too. -Yes. -What if you
could let go of some of those grievances and show up joyfully to the family event
regardless of who's there. -Exactly. -And and you might have a barrier in your
mind right now saying, "But I can't be with that person."
Or in the same room with a person. -How limiting is that to your life? What
if you could get past that in your own psyche so that your life now is better
and you're able to show up more joyfully for your kids. -That would be awesome.
The last point I want to make in this is probably it's also the first point. But I
even bringing it up last. And that is you've got to support each other. It
would be horrible as parent... And this of course, as
divorced parents, is even more important. But even as married parents. I remember
the first time when my kids came to me and said, "Hey, Dad. Can I could do blah,
blah, blah?" And I was thinking "-Hmm. And my first thought was I wonder what mom
would think about that." And I said, "Did you ask your mom?" And he said, "Do I
have to?" And I said, "Yeah." -Maybe he already did. -Yeah. Maybe. Not sure. But the
point is if you're always giving different answers without consulting... And
I mean sometimes somethings are truly trivial and that's okay. You don't
have to give different answers about everything. But people find things to
fight about... One of the... I don't know. I did not just paint this when I was a
younger attorney. But someone comes home from visitation and all of a sudden, the
children's hairs are all cut and they're just different. I remember one of
my female clients came to me and her son had gotten a mohawk. When he was with dad.
And she just could not believe that. and I'm like, "Is that really something to
fight about?" Well, I'm the custodian parent so I should..." Well, it would be nice
a dad consulted mom. -Can we uncut the child's hair? -You think about it now. But
we can in the future, we can talk about these kinds of things. And we can decide.
Some things are trivial. Like kids are gonna go through different phases about
what color they want their hair or what style they want their hair. What
going to have earrings or no strings or whatever. Or henna tattoos. And I only
recommend henna tattoos. But anyway, we have to realize that there's different
categories. Things that are super important to worry about. Things that
aren't super important to worry about. But the things are very important, it's
important to support each other. And so, the child isn't getting 2 completely
different ideas. Now, it's okay to have different ideas. And for example, "Which
college should I go to? What should i major?" And things like that. Parents can
have completely different ideas based on their understanding of the child. That's
not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about more things like, what about how do
you give consequences? Are the consequences even in one house in
another house? When children are young, do we use time out? Do we use, "Okay, you can't
have time on online for a while." Or something like. That it's important for
parents to have similar consequences so that the child can't get away with
something at one house and not get away with it at the other house or or take
advantage of that. So, that the parents are supporting each other. And for
example, this comes up all the time. If a child has done something and in one
household that means, "Okay, you can't be online playing your games for 2 days."
And then they go home to mom and their mom doesn't know that or doesn't care.
Then the child knows, "It's just pretty words. I can go home to mom and I can
play my game all I want." And so, but if you coordinate those kinds of things so
the child knows, "Okay. I did something that's a violation of the house rules."
Even if the house rules in one house are different than the other household. I
mean, sometimes chores are different in different households. And one parent
thinks as wrong. "I don't care if a kid did the dishes of your house. Doesn't know
it's getting off my nose. But the point is disobedience, is disobedience. Or
consequences or consequences. And sometimes it's not a disobedience thing.
It's like, "Did you get your homework done?" You can't want to do this thing until
you get your homework done. Things like that. So, it's important to coordinate and
support each other in your comparing. I found that in my own marriage. Awesome. As
soon as... I mean I'm glad I gave that example in the beginning. But my kids
always know if they ask me something I always say, "What does your mom say about?"
Or... -I know you're going to support mom. -Exactly.
And that's a beautiful thing. -Yeah. -That way, it strengthens my relationship with
her. And the divorce situation, it can also strengthen the cooperation that you
have instead of the focus on what the other person is doing wrong. -Right. There
are so many things to think about. And we know this here at lLve On Purpose TV.
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