How Does Divorce Affect Children? The Lasting Toll of High-Conflict Co-Parenting

Is divorce a type of childhood trauma? 

Parental divorce isn’t automatically traumatic, but it can create trauma. You might be familiar with the term ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), a research framework that explores toxic stress in childhood. It links that toxic stress to both short- and long-term health and developmental outcomes.  

"Divorce is an ACE," says Robert A. Simon, Ph.D., a forensic psychologist specializing in family law and the best interests of children who has spent 40 years evaluating families in high-conflict custody cases. "And a dispute over custody makes that particular ACE likely to be more influential and compelling in the life of a child." 

Divorce-related stressors include hearing their parents fight or badmouth each other, major changes in their living situations and lifestyles, and sometimes even appearing in court to talk to the judge, which can be retraumatizing. 

Divorce makes it harder for children to feel secure and comfortable. When a divorce is high conflict, the intense stress distracts kids from enjoying their childhood. Even without high conflict, living in two separate homes shapes their experience.
 

What is high-conflict co-parenting? 

In high-conflict co-parenting, the parents engage in ongoing, intense conflict that affects their ability to work together in raising their children. This may include frequent arguments, hostility, poor communication, or involving children in parental disputes, creating a stressful environment that can negatively affect children's wellbeing. 

Not every difficult divorce is high conflict, and not every divorce has a negative impact on the kids. Most co-parents experience friction, especially early on, and manage to work through it. High-conflict co-parenting is something different: a sustained, entrenched pattern that seems to take on a life of its own. 

Christina McGhee, a co-parenting educator and coach who has worked with thousands of families, says co-parent conflict exists on a continuum. She often thinks about conflict like a radio dial. It’s expected that parents will have some conflict when they split up. After all, they are getting divorced for a reason. However, how much parents dial it up makes a huge difference for kids. When conflict gets turned up, the more toxic and impactful it is for kids, she says. On the low end of conflict, parents can still unify around their children's needs, even if they're hurt or struggling. On the high end, something shifts.  

Robin Deutsch, Ph.D., a psychologist and nationally recognized scholar in family court matters, puts it plainly: "High-conflict co-parenting is beyond issue-focused. The pattern of engaging conflictually with each other reflects a tendency to be unable to separate the other parent from whatever issue they're disputing." 

Matthew Sullivan, Ph.D., a psychologist, author, and trainer of parenting coordinators, identifies two distinct types of high conflict. The first involves domestic violence dynamics, where there's a power differential. The tools of control extend to litigation, finances, and even the children.  

The second is what Dr. Sullivan calls intractable conflict: a pattern where "conflict, over time, becomes entrenched in cognitive, affective, and social structural mechanisms." In other words, the conflict hardens into fixed beliefs ("They are evil,” “They are the enemy") and entrenched emotions. It’s also solidified by a social ecosystem that keeps reinforcing those beliefs (like friends, extended family, internet rabbit holes).  

Jennifer Joseph, a parenting coordinator and mediator who works with high-conflict families, describes high conflict as an inability to resolve the normal, routine issues of co-parenting without outside intervention. These parents often share a common set of complicating factors: mental health challenges, substance use issues, a history of family violence, or some combination.  

McGhee explains that parents in high conflict tend to externalize everything (in other words, focus entirely on what the other parent is doing wrong), which leaves them with no bandwidth to regulate themselves or tune into their kids’ wellbeing. "They simply cannot take in how their choices right now, in this moment, are impacting their children," she says. 

About 20% of divorcing parents are high conflict. But they account for the overwhelming majority of family court caseloads.
 

How high-conflict divorce affects children 

When parents battle virulently and the kids are aware of it, it has powerful short- and long-term effects. High-conflict co-parenting can cause emotional and psychological damage, setbacks in typical child development, and behavioral challenges. 

Emotional and psychological impact 

To understand why high-conflict co-parenting is so damaging to children, start with the brain. When children are exposed to chronic conflict between their parents, their nervous systems respond as if they're in constant danger.  

"The limbic system of the brain is always sort of activated," says Dr. Deutsch. "They are ready to be in fight-or-flight mode at any moment. There's often a cortisol release that doesn't stop dripping, because they are always waiting for the next conflict they will be exposed to." 

Child development setbacks 

The constant flood of stress hormones actively shapes the developing brain. Dr. Deutsch describes the pattern: "Toxic stress affects children’s concentration, problem solving, and decision making. We see both more internalizing disorders, like anxiety and depression, and sometimes externalizing disorders, like aggression." 

Dr. Simon frames it through the ACEs lens. "The more a person is surrounded by and flooded by these challenges," he says, "it's like they're constantly having to swat flies, and they can't get to their meal."  

Social, emotional, and cognitive development requires bandwidth. When a child is in survival mode, normal development stalls, Dr. Simon explains. "They're not developing their social skills, their self-control, their affective control, their behavioral controls, their ability to observe and reflect on themselves, or their ability to have trust and safety in their relationships with others." 

Without developing those skills, children continue to struggle with emotions, behavior, and relationships throughout their adulthood.  

How those changes show up in day-to-day life

One of the most poignant findings in the research Dr. Deutsch cites comes from a study of 9- to 12-year-olds exposed to chronic high conflict (as published in In the Name of the Child by Johnston & Roseby). On projective testing, these children showed a striking pattern of self-reliance.  

"’There's no one out there I can rely on,’" Dr. Deutsch paraphrases their internal experience. "’The people I trust the most in the world are telling me opposite things. So I have to rely on my 9-year-old self.’ And 9-year-olds don't have fully developed brains, so they're not always able to make the best decisions." 

McGhee notes that even children who seem fine may be struggling internally. "Kids grow up walking on eggshells," she says. "In many ways, they feel like they're constantly having to transition between two different worlds, two different ways of doing things, constantly worrying about saying the wrong thing that might set a parent off.”  

She adds, “And it’s more than changing houses: kids are actually changing identities. Many are evaluating, ‘Who do I have to become to fit into this environment, and who do I have to transform into to keep my connection to this parent and this household?’” 

Those internal shifts don't always show up as obvious distress. Some children become highly perfectionistic. Others become anxiously compliant. "The invisible effects," Joseph says, "can still have a lasting impact on brain formation, and on how the child  builds their view of the world." 

As an adult, they often still see the world through that lens.  

Case study: One child exposed to severe conflict

Joseph witnessed its most extreme effects in a devastating case: a baby had been adopted into a family where both parents had serious mental health challenges and were in near-constant conflict. A neuropsychological evaluation later in his childhood revealed that the boy had extremely impaired executive function.  

"His developing brain was bathed in the stress hormones, and as a result his brain developed differently," Joseph recalls. "He didn't develop the underlying brain structures to support growth of his executive function. The neuropsychologist working with the family explained his prefrontal lobe looks different than other kids who have not been exposed to that toxic stress."  

The child, who had spent much of his infancy sitting alone in a baby seat while his parents battled, struggled with mental health and behavioral issues throughout his adolescence, and is now in prison .  

The consequences are not always this severe, of course, but the power of toxic stress in childhood is intense.  

Behavioral challenges

The behavioral signs of high-conflict exposure look different depending on the child's age, temperament, and what exactly they've been exposed to. But certain patterns appear. 

In younger children experiencing stress, regression is common: losing potty training, developing sleep problems, struggling with skills they'd already mastered. In school-age kids, it tends to show up as trouble focusing, emotional dysregulation, and big reactions to small triggers.  

"It may show up like a behavioral problem, or it may show up like an attention problem," Joseph notes.  

Dr. Deutsch describes a range of problems that include separation anxiety, loss of interest in activities, concentration difficulties, and bullying. “These things happen when children don't have the coping skills to manage their feelings. They just know that they're always sort of triggered and emotionally dysregulated." 

Dr. Sullivan observes that kids with underlying executive functioning challenges, like children with ADHD, are particularly vulnerable when there aren't consistent routines and frequent communication about the child’s day-to-day wellbeing. “Kids who have executive functioning issues are going to start doing poorly in school,” he notes.  

Children in high-conflict households absorb stress, but they also absorb a model for relating to people. "You're the prototypical relationship," Joseph tells the parents she works with.  

"These kids are imprinted on this idea of how adult relationships work, and the way you treat each other really informs them. Even before they are old enough to form words, they are observing you, and they are learning from your actions what to expect from relationships.  Your co-parenting relationship is the answer to ‘How can I expect to treat my partner, and how can I expect to be treated?’"
 

How children cope with the stress of divorce 

Divorce is stressful for kids, but the behavioral signs triggered by these stressors don't look the same in every child. Temperament, age, the family dynamic, and the consistency of the conflict all shape how the stress gets expressed, and how visible it is to the adults around them.

There are three broad coping patterns.  

Coping and compartmentalizing 

Dr. Sullivan notes that some children respond by avoiding and compartmentalizing: they keep the conflict in a separate mental box, focus on their own lives, and don't allow themselves to get pulled into the dynamic between their parents.  

These children tend to absorb less damage, at least in the short term. The stress is still there, but they've found a way to contain it. "They're going to school, they're engaged with their friends," Dr. Sullivan says. "They find other adults they can rely on." 

Getting involved in the conflict

Other children appoint themselves as managers of the parental relationship. They mediate, placate, monitor the emotional weather, and try to prevent the next conflict before it starts.  

Joseph describes what this costs: "Kids learn to sublimate their own needs to the needs of others. From very early on, they learn that their needs are less important than managing the emotional state of the adults around them." These children often look responsible, mature, even impressive. What they're actually doing is carrying a weight that was never theirs to carry. 

Blending in like a chameleon

Dr. Simon describes a pattern he encountered frequently in his forensic evaluations: children who become "chameleon-like.” They’ve learned to adjust their presentation depending on which parent they're with, and which emotional climate they're navigating.  

"They don't stand in their own truth," Dr. Simon says. "They've learned to read the room and perform accordingly rather than to simply exist. These children may be socially adept, and their struggles may be easy for adults to overlook. But their inner sense of identity is often considerably more fragile than they appear.” 

What all three patterns share is that none of them look, from the outside, like trauma. The avoider seems fine. The caretaker seems mature. The chameleon seems flexible and agreeable. This is what Joseph means when she describes "invisible effects." The damage doesn't always announce itself. Sometimes it waits.”  

"You're not going to see it necessarily until they get into their own relationships," Joseph says, "or until they're put in a position where they actually have to know who they are."
 

Warning signs your child is struggling with toxic stress caused by divorce 

It can be difficult to identify divorce-related toxic stress in children because it can resemble a lot of things: developmental phases, individual temperament, unrelated diagnoses. You have to know what to look for, and at what age. 

Warning signs of toxic stress in babies & toddlers

In the earliest years, the signals of stress are physiological. Infants and toddlers don't have language for what they're experiencing, but their bodies register the emotional state of their caregivers with remarkable precision. "Their little bodies know when their caregivers are okay and when they're not," Joseph says. "When their caregivers are on high alert, they're on high alert."  

At this stage, warning signs include disrupted sleep and feeding, persistent fussiness that's difficult to console, regression in developmental milestones, and a withdrawal from engagement. To a tired parent, that can look like a phase. 

Warning signs of toxic stress in school-aged children

As children enter preschool and elementary school, the signs shift. It’s common for children under stress to experience physical complaints like stomachaches, headaches, and other physical symptoms without a clear medical cause. You may also see changes in appetite and sleep, a sudden reluctance to go to school, and a quality of anxious hypervigilance that can look like shyness or introversion.  

Some children this age, Joseph notes, become unusually compliant and people-pleasing. They’re careful never to be a source of additional stress. It is a coping strategy that looks, to many parents, like good behavior. 

Joseph describes a critical window that parents and clinicians often miss: the years between roughly age seven and early adolescence. "If they're seven and they start having these really uncomfortable feelings, and nobody's helping them, by the time they're 13, 14, or 15, they're going to start to look for other ways to soothe themselves."  

Warning signs of toxic stress in teens

This is the developmental pivot point where unexpressed childhood stress transforms into the risky behaviors that are much harder to address. Early intervention, i.e., getting a child mental health support before they reach adolescence, can interrupt that trajectory. 

In adolescence, the warning signs of toxic stress center around risky behaviors. They can include substance use, early sexual activity, compulsive gaming or social media use, disordered eating, withdrawal from sports or activities they used to love, withdrawing from social engagement, or simply a performance of "fine" that feels somehow hollow.  

The mechanism, as Joseph explains it, is a failure to develop self-regulation. Children learn from what they see, and if they don’t know how to cope with that stress, they look for anything that produces a feeling of relief. "Sex, drugs, food, shopping, doom scrolling — all the things that people use to numb themselves out," Joseph says. "Kids start looking for that because they don't have the internal structure to self-soothe." 

This developmental issue has serious and long-lasting consequences. "It's not just that you don't want your kid having sex," Joseph says. "Teenage pregnancy, or your teenager smoking weed every day while their brain is still developing, sets them up for more risky behavior, which sets them up for more risk. That's the nature of ACEs." 

The through-line, at every age, is the same: when a young person is flooded by stress they were never given adequate tools to manage, they will find whatever outlet they can.
 

How high-conflict co-parenting affects a child’s relationships with their parents

High conflict in divorce can seriously distort the parent-child bond. One of the most well-documented phenomena is a loyalty conflict, the agonizing experience where a child feels that loving one parent means betraying the other.  

Some children align with the parent they perceive as stronger or more powerful, particularly in cases involving domestic violence, which can be confusing and devastating to the victimized parent. Others align with the parent they perceive as the victim, out of a sense of protection or fairness.  

Either way, "Putting the kids in a position where they have to choose a parent is just in and of itself terrible," Joseph says. "We know, and it's written into the best interest factors in Minnesota, that kids do best when they have safe, stable, and nurturing relationships with both of their parents." 

Joseph adds, “High conflict creates a fertile breeding ground for all kinds of parent-child contact problems” (an issue related to the outdated term parental alienation). "The volume is turned up so high in some of these cases that kids have to make impossible choices.”” 

Dr. Deutsch describes what this looks like in practice: "Sometimes it leads to kids resisting or rejecting contact with another parent. Sometimes it leads to a child doing that parent's bidding and trying to protect them."  

How these relationship changes shape childhoods

Holidays and milestones — events that most people remember fondly — become sources of dread. "They didn't look forward to holidays, their birthdays," Dr. Deutsch says of one pair of teenage sisters she encountered. "It was like they almost wanted to avoid those things, because they were a source of conflict." 

Dr. Deutsch adds that the unpredictability of parents' emotional states in high-conflict situations creates a kind of anxious or ambivalent attachment: "The child's on tiptoe. ‘When are my parents available? When are they not available? When are they reasonable? When can I do anything I want? When will I be punished?’ There’s a sense of unpredictability and instability." 

Joseph points to something even deeper: a child’s sense of identity. If the child shares a parent's physical features or personality traits, seeing that parent treated with contempt creates a deeply uncomfortable question. "There are ways in which I am just like that person you hate. Do you hate me?"  

McGhee puts it simply: "When the conflict is present and we're making critical, judgmental, cutting statements about one another, kids internalize that as something about undesirable about themselves. And so, their self-esteem suffers." 

The long-term picture, for children who don't receive support, is sobering. Dr. Deutsch describes adults who grew up in high-conflict households as frequently experiencing "poor problem-solving skills, poor concentration, mistrust in intimate relationships, poor coping skills in general."
 

Long-term physical and psychological effects of divorce on children 

Childhood exposure to high conflict doesn't stop shaping people when they turn 18. In the long term, divorce-related stress can increase risky behaviors, trigger a struggle with identity, create relationship problems, and cause lifelong physical health problems.  

Risky behaviors

Dr. Simon describes what happens when a child experiencing toxic stress grows up: They have elevated rates of depressive disorders, a susceptibility to compulsive behaviors (compulsive shopping, gambling, hypersexuality, substance dependence, even excessive exercise), and a chronic underlying sense of anxiety. "The compulsions stave off the anxiety," he explains, "and create a sense, at least, of stability."  

The compulsion itself may shift over time, with one form of numbing replacing another, but the function is consistent: The adult learned those behavioral inclinations in childhood as a response to chronic, unmanageable stress. 

Identity fragmentation

Identity fragmentation is another through-line. Dr. Simon describes adults from high-conflict households who have become adept at reading social situations and adjusting to the emotional environment around them.  

"They've learned to perform identity rather than inhabit one that’s authentic," Dr. Simon says. "As children they became chameleon-like, and their identity becomes more fractured." They may move through life seeming adaptable, even charming. But forming deep, stable relationships (romantic, professional, or personal) is difficult when you’re not grounded in who you are as a person.” 

Relationship problems

In intimate relationships particularly, the effects tend to surface strongly. Adults who grew up amid parental conflict often carry anxious or ambivalent attachment patterns. They are always waiting for the other shoe to drop. They’re hypervigilant about conflict, either avoiding closeness to avoid pain or falling into the same cycles they watched as children.  

Dr. Deutsch cites mistrust as one of the most durable long-term effects. "They've learned that the people closest to them are simultaneously the most dangerous to them, because those are the people in whose hands their wellbeing actually rests," she explains. "That's a very hard thing to unlearn." 

None of this is deterministic. Resilience is real, and therapy can influence a child or adult’s mental health. And every expert in this article notes an important caveat: The presence of even one grounded adult in childhood can significantly alter the child’s mental health trajectory.  

But the effects don't evaporate with adulthood. A child who experienced a custody dispute may still be sorting through its effects decades later. This is important context for anyone trying to understand the true stakes of what happens when co-parents can't stop fighting. 

Lifelong physical health problems

Childhood adversity is one of the strongest predictors of adult physical illness.  

The original research on ACEs (adverse childhood experiences, or childhood trauma) was a landmark study of more than 17,000 adults conducted by Kaiser Permanente and the CDC in the 1990s.  

The relationship follows what researchers call a dose-response pattern. The more ACEs a person experienced in childhood, the higher their risk of major chronic disease in adulthood. Compared to someone with no ACEs, a person with four or more ACEs is roughly twice as likely to develop cancer. They are seven times more likely to develop alcohol dependence. Their risk of attempting suicide is twelve times higher.
 

The mechanism is the same toxic stress response that damages the developing brain. Chronic activation of the body's stress systems (the sustained cortisol flood, the dysregulated immune response) produces systemic inflammation over time. That inflammation is the common thread connecting conditions that otherwise look unrelated: diabetes, stroke, autoimmune disorders, chronic lung disease, and liver disease. 

The CDC estimates that eliminating ACEs would reduce the prevalence of depression in the U.S. by more than half and cut cases of heart disease and cancer by nearly a third. 

Divorce, on its own, is one ACE. A high-conflict divorce is an ACE that keeps generating stress. This family court matter is also a public health problem.
 

The long-term effects of high-conflict co-parenting on parents 

The children aren't the only ones taking damage. High-conflict co-parenting is also profoundly, chronically stressful for the adults. It can cause mental and emotional burnout, financial strain, legal problems, stressful legal problems, and difficulty moving on.

Mental and emotional burnout around divorce

McGhee draws on physician Gabor Maté's framework to explain why divorce is such a uniquely intense stressor. "There are four key stressors that catapult us into high and sustained levels of stress," she explains: "lack of information, lack of control, uncertainty, and conflict. Now, think about divorce. It's got all of those, and it's got all of those for a potentially extended period of time." 

The result is that parents in high-conflict situations are often operating at the very limits of their capacity, making it nearly impossible to show up well for their children. "The expectation," McGhee says, "is that they're going to show up as their best selves when they're going through the worst time in their lives. That is a very tall ask." 

Many of the parents Joseph sees in high-conflict situations have significant ACE histories of their own. "I rarely get two zeros," she says (a zero meaning someone who hasn’t experienced even one adverse childhood experience).  

"They're perpetuating what they learned. Even if they're trying, even if they're reacting against the model they were given, it is still present. It is manifesting in some way."  

Financial and legal strain around divorce

High conflict also has a financial cost that can be staggering, and that cost then feeds back into the stress that drives the conflict. 

"Some high-conflict parents are always in litigation, or threatening litigation, so there's a lot of money spent," says Dr. Deutsch. "If there are limited resources to begin with, it puts a huge strain on day-to-day living."  

The legal system, Dr. Deutsch points out, is not structured to reduce conflict. In fact, it tends to amplify it. "In order to win, you have to present a really compelling case. How do you do that? You polarize as much as possible. You make things all bad or all good. That then becomes the believed narrative. ‘This is the narrative that's in my motion. This is the narrative in my pleadings. So I believe it.’" 

Dr. Sullivan is direct: "Conflict escalation is the most damaging process on the planet, whether it's politics and what happens between countries, or whether it's between co-parents."  

His strong advice is to avoid court involvement whenever possible. "Court involvement is actually necessary far less often than it’s utilized. And it always has a cost to the co-parenting relationship. It might resolve the specific conflict, but it doesn't teach you any problem-solving skills. It leaves everybody feeling worse than before court involvement, in terms of their relationship with the other parent." 

For some parents, the financial and emotional weight eventually becomes too much. They effectively give up, accepting whatever terms are demanded just to stop the fighting. That scenario is also damaging.  

If the parent withdraws from the child's life, the child can feel abandoned. Even if the parent gives a lot of ground on legal terms but stays present, it can weaken the parent-child bond. "You want to know that your parent will do anything for you," Dr. Deutsch says. "That helps give a sense of security." 

Difficulty moving on after divorce

One of the most counterintuitive features of high-conflict co-parenting is how binding it is. The conflict itself becomes a form of connection. "The people who are in high conflict are still in this intimate kind of relationship," Dr. Deutsch observes, "because they're so connected to each other through disdain."  

Even re-partnered parents often keep fighting. Sometimes the new partner becomes a voice of reason. Other times, Dr. Deutsch says, they become part of the conflict: "They've formed an alliance against the co-parent: ‘We hate him or her, we think he or she is doing terrible damage!’ That shared contempt becomes the adhesive to the new relationship." 

The four types of co-parenting dynamics

Dr. Sullivan describes the difficulty of breaking through the high-conflict dynamic, even with professional help. Parents don't move from high conflict to cooperative in one step. What he and many other professionals aim for is a shift to parallel parenting. In this lower-engagement model, conflict is managed by reducing contact rather than improving the relationship.
 

Dr. Sullivan shares a diagram with four quadrants, contrasting different levels of communication and conflict. Most high-conflict parents into the “high conflict co-parenting” section, with lots of communication and lots of conflict. In an ideal world, all co-parents would be in the “cooperative co-parenting” section, with lots of communication and low conflict, but it’s not always feasible.  

Instead of shooting for the stars, "You move them into the ‘parallel parenting’ quadrant," Dr. Sullivan says. It’s the one with high conflict but low communication. "They don't go from high conflict to cooperative. They keep fighting if you try to get the gold standard. So you go from high conflict to parallel, and stabilize them there. Over time, many co-parents re-engage in some manner."  

For some families, it takes two to three years. For intractable cases, parallel parenting may be the best end result.

When parents carry their own ACEs

Most of the parents locked in sustained, damaging conflict are not people who want to harm their children. Many of them are managing the situation and coping with their emotions in the only way they know how. 

In Joseph’s practice, most high-conflict parents have a significant ACEs history of their own. The conflict they're generating isn't arising in a vacuum. It's arising from unresolved pain, originating from childhood environments where conflict was the norm, where emotional regulation was never modeled, where love and chaos were inseparable. They are perpetuating patterns they may not even be fully conscious of. 

"Even when they're trying to do the opposite," Joseph says, "it's manifesting in some way." She describes a father who had grown up with an absent dad and was determined to break that pattern. He was present, engaged, and deeply invested in his children.  

But he expressed that determination through rigidity, demands for equality in even small decisions, an inability to let mom parent differently, and a zero-sum accounting of every hour of parenting time. He had traded one form of harm for another. "You're using different ingredients," Joseph told him, "but it's the same essential recipe." 

Dr. Simon describes this intergenerational dynamic through the lens of a concept known as developmental arrest. The adults who couldn't learn to self-regulate during their own childhoods often grew up without developing the emotional tools that effective co-parenting requires, things like affect regulation, self-reflection, and the ability to separate their own feelings from the situation at hand.  

When the stress of divorce hits, they revert to the only templates they have. "They're not bad people," Dr. Simon says. "They're overwhelmed people who are out of runway." 

The impact on children is real regardless of the source of the parent's pain. But it does change what intervention needs to look like. McGhee is emphatic on this point: working on yourself (by understanding your own history and building your own emotional capacity) isn't just self-care. It is an act of loving parenting.  

"You can't pour from an empty cup," she says, "and you can't give your kids what you don’t have, unless you do the work to find it yourself."
 

How to break the cycle of high-conflict co-parenting 

To break the cycle of high-conflict co-parenting, parents can consider parallel parenting, use a co-parenting app, remember self-care, seek professional help (like a therapist or parenting coordinator), and do their best to be emotionally present for their kids.  

There's no easy switch to flip. Reducing high conflict is slow, imperfect work, and it's harder when only one parent is willing to try. But every expert we spoke with emphasized the same thing: Meaningful change is possible, and even partial progress makes a big difference.

Consider parallel parenting for high-conflict divorce

If cooperative co-parenting isn't possible right now, parallel parenting is a legitimate and valuable step. In this model, both parents run their households independently, with minimal direct communication, and focus on shielding children from conflict rather than resolving differences between themselves. 

Dr. Sullivan explains, "The social science suggests that the parallel model works for kids about as well as the cooperative model in the larger scheme of things. What that tells us is that conflict is the toxic factor. As long as kids get their needs met and it's free of conflict, kids do okay. So what you're really trying to avoid is the child being exposed to interparental conflict. That's the most robust finding in the social science literature for 50 years." 

Joseph is realistic about what parallel parenting offers. "Cold conflict is an improvement over hot conflict. But the kids still aren't seeing or learning good conflict management skills or effective communication. They're just seeing an absence of the most negative. So I don't think of parallel parenting as an answer; I think of it as a step toward something better." 

The key to making parallel parenting work is structure: clear, agreed-upon rules about handoffs, schedules, and decisions, along with minimal direct engagement at exchanges and events.  

"What I do with parents," Joseph says, "is say, ‘let's just get a set of shared expectations. Let's just say what the rules are.’ And then it's not about mom being right or dad being right. It's about making sure this kid gets picked up at 3:45. That's not a thing to win, it's a problem to solve." 

Use a co-parenting app

One practical way to reduce conflict is by moving as much co-parenting communication as possible into a structured platform designed for exactly this purpose. When everything is automatically documented, there’s less to argue over, and some people tend to communicate more calmly when it’s obvious they’re on the record.  

Joseph uses OurFamilyWizard, a co-parenting app, in virtually every case she handles. "The biggest things are information, accountability, and structure," she says. "Parents post on it, it stays posted, and there doesn't have to be a lot of dispute about ‘who said what.’ I get to go back and say, well, no; actually you did say yes to that proposal, and then you rescinded it, but we're going to go with your first yes."  

This type of co-parenting documentation removes one of the biggest fuel sources for high-conflict communication: ambiguity about what was actually said or agreed to.  

The most important way OurFamilyWizard helps prevent childhood trauma is by shielding the kids from the conflict. If the parents still argue but only through the app, even if it’s nasty and intense, the kids aren’t exposed in the same way.  

Dr. Sullivan points to shared custody calendars as another powerful tool. "OurFamilyWizard provides a calendar that shares a ton of information about the kids where they don't have to interact with each other. They just post it on the calendar, and both of them have access to it. If you post something new, it alerts the other parent. That's the kind of model that is very helpful for high-conflict co-parents." 

Dr. Sullivan also highlights the potential of AI-assisted communication tools. OurFamilyWizard's Writing Assistant feature helps parents transform emotionally charged messages into clear, calm, child-focused communication. "You can build it in so seamlessly: Punch a button, and it'll take a two-paragraph problematic email and make it the way it should be." 

Dr. Deutsch echoes the value of structure and distance: "Respectful communications, only focused on the kids (not on the other person), and keeping the OurFamilyWizard calendar up to date, can create structure and distance." 

Take care of yourself

McGhee emphasizes what she calls "the basics": Don’t forget to prioritize sleep, nutrition, exercise, stress management. "We all parent very differently when we're well-rested, when we've had lunch that day, when we're exercising, when we have low levels of stress. Our brains and our bodies are very much connected. In order to regulate ourselves, we also need to be caring for ourselves." 

Seek professional help for high-conflict co-parenting

High-conflict co-parenting rarely resolves itself without outside support. The question is what kind of support is most useful. Several types of professional intervention can make a real difference: co-parenting counseling or coaching, individual therapy for parents, therapy for children, mediation, and parenting coordination.  

McGhee's practical checklist for parents starts with “Don’t go it alone.” Instead, "Figure out how to create a circle of support for yourself and for your kids. Because otherwise, those emotional boundaries get really blurry. You can't see the picture when you're in the frame. You have to figure out how to find people who can help you see outside your frame." 

Dr. Sullivan notes that children often need a neutral space to process what's happening in ways that don't put them in the middle. "You're not a great resource for your child when it comes to issues with their other parent, because you've got your own stuff going on," he tells his clients. "A counselor can develop adaptive coping strategies for the child. And that same message, coming from someone else, may land in a way it never would coming from you." 

Dr. Deutsch's bottom line: Seek help that builds skills, not just validates your feelings. "Get your own support. Not from someone who's just going to listen and nod their head and be ‘supportive.’ But someone who can help you build coping skills, including being able to regulate your emotions and being able to separate yourself from your co-parent as an intimate partner. You’re now a business partner in the business of raising the healthiest, most well-adjusted kids and adults." 

Be there for your kids

All these steps for stopping the cycle of toxic stress for children of divorce lead to one result: You have the skills and bandwidth to parent your child well. 

McGhee frames the power of one stable and emotionally present parent, even in an otherwise high-conflict situation, as genuinely transformative. "The research bears out that if kids have one stable, nurturing, solid, sturdy adult in their lives, they can still grow up and be happy, healthy human beings. I very much believe in the power of one." 

Joseph puts it clearly: "You can't change your co-parent. As a parenting coordinator, I can't change either of you. But I can offer you every opportunity to change what you have control over, and hope that you take it up. You can make things less awful. And even if we do a little change, and we make something that much less awful for your kid, isn't that a win?"
 

Protecting your child from the long-term effects of high-conflict divorce

The research, and every expert we spoke with, points clearly toward hope. Children are resilient, even when dealing with high-conflict co-parenting. One stable parent can make an enormous difference. Patterns of conflict can change (slowly, imperfectly, but meaningfully), with the right tools and support. 

High-conflict co-parenting is one of the most underrecognized forms of chronic stress in childhood. That’s not because the damage isn't real, but because it's slow, cumulative, and often invisible from the outside. The child who seems "fine" at school may be changing identities at every transition. The teenager acting out may be reaching for the only coping tools they could find. 

Whether you're deep in conflict or just beginning to notice the warning signs, the most important step is the same: Don’t wait for your co-parent to change first. The one thing you can control is how you show up. For your kids, that's everything.
 

About the Experts 

Robert A. Simon, Ph.D., is an internationally known forensic psychologist specializing in family law and the best interests of children. He spent 40 years evaluating families in high-conflict custody cases. You can contact him at rsimon@dr-simon.com 

Robin Deutsch, Ph.D., is a psychologist and nationally recognized educator in forensic and family psychology, with a focus on family court matters. You can contact her at drrobindeutsch@gmail.com or drrobindeutsch.com 

Matthew Sullivan, Ph.D., is a psychologist, author, and trainer of parenting coordinators who specializes in high-conflict co-parenting and intractable conflict. You can contact him at sullydoc.com  

Jennifer Joseph, JD, is a parenting coordinator and mediator who works exclusively with high-conflict families navigating custody and parenting disputes. You can contact her at jej@mnmediation.net 

Christina McGhee is a co-parenting educator, coach, and author who has worked with thousands of families going through separation and divorce. You can contact her at www.divorceandchildren.com or www.coparentingspecialist.com