Parenting Together

Parenting together with your co-parent can be difficult, especially if you disagree on many aspects of parenting. As co-parents, your parenting styles don't necessarily need to be exactly the same in order to parent together effectively. Even if your beliefs on how to raise kids are more similar than not, parenting in general can just be stressful, and you and your co-parent may react in different ways to stressful parenting situations. Much of what parents know about parenting comes from their own childhood experiences with their own parents. Childhood observations and values taught by one's own parents will have a great influence on one's parenting style later in life. Finding where you and your co-parent have agreements and disagreements on raising kids will help you to find your median in parenting together. Through this, developing a parenting partnership will help to make parenting together easier on everyone - your kids included. Acknowledging your parenting styles, discussing the future, and communicating in the present are all important steps to take in order to smoothen the process of parenting together with your co-parent.

As a co-parent in a divorced or separated family situation, even having to consider parenting together might induce stress. Before you bring up parenting topics with your co-parent, first consider our own parenting style. A lot of what you know about being a parent has come as a reaction to your own childhood, as your parents or those involved in your upbringing were your first teachers on how to live. You take from those experiences and react to them as a parent yourself, so your own upbringing can help to determine your own parenting style. Generally speaking, there are often three parenting styles cited: authoritarian, which means that you enact rather strict rules as a parent and do not try hard to understand your child's behavior as tied to their emotions; authoritative, which means that while you imply rules you also consider your child's emotions and discuss about actions and consequences with your child; and permissive, which means that you don't enact many rules and act more like a friend to your child than like a parent. It should not come as a surprise if you find that your parenting style falls in line with more than one of these defined styles. Think back to your own childhood to remember what your own parents were like. This may remind you of the way you are with your own kids. With your co-parent, talk honestly about your own upbringing, what you liked and didn't like, and how you see those things reflected in your own parenting style. You may begin to recognize those areas in which both of your parenting styles coincide, as well as other areas that you each want to work on individually in order to be better parents together. Having a better understanding of your parenting styles will be an important factor in building a stronger parenting partnership, allowing you to have a better idea of where you both hope to see your children in the future and how to help them get there.

Thinking towards your children's future can be both exciting and scary at the same time. Parents are the most influential model for a child in terms of how to live, so it is important that both parents take this into account when discussing where they imagine their child to be years from now. Together, talk about all of the aspirations you have for your child and what you think it will take to achieve those goals. Discuss the habits and values you'd both like to impart to your child. Also consider your child and their individual desires for the future. Neither you nor your co-parent can control everything that your child does, but you both do have an enormous influence on the choices your child makes now and into the future. Once you have decided on these things together, keep them in mind like a mantra as you move forward. Parenting together will be difficult, but keeping your common parenting goals constantly in mind will help to guide each of you through making positive parenting decisions. 

While discussing your child's future is an important element of effectively parenting together, communicating about what is happening with your kids now is a healthy practice of cooperative co-parents. Talking with your co-parent about what is going on in your child's daily life will help you both to better understand your child's current behavior. Your talks should be a time to reflect together about what's going on with your child, not a time to criticize or get angry at each other. If a rather stressful situation regarding your child has come up, find a calm moment to discuss what to do about it with your co-parent. Work together to find a solution to the problem that your child is facing. If you simply cannot come to an agreement as to how to handle a particular (or any) situation, seek help from a family law professional. Allowing a professional to help mediate your tough conversations may be a helpful step in finally reach agreements on parenting. 

No matter how far apart you and your co-parent may be physically, you are still parenting your child together. You might not have the same parenting style, but you should at least have a foundation of goals and values which you use to guide you through daily parenting challenges. Finding these areas of agreement as parents can be aided by having an understanding of your individual parenting styles, discussing your child's future and keeping an ongoing dialogue about the present. The choices you make as parents will have a lasting affect on your children, so do all that you can to make that lasting affect a healthy and positive one.