From child custody to child support — divorce comes with a lot of decisions regarding your children. In the mix of divorce decisions, your living parenting arrangement and co-parent partnership requires careful consideration.
Reviewing your relationship with your soon-to-be ex is one of the first steps you can take to determine what kind of set-up will work best for you and your family. Take into account how you were able to handle serious talks during and at the end of your marriage. Noting your current attitude toward your ex can help you decide if you’ll be more successful at co-parenting or parallel parenting after divorce.
Parallel parenting approach
Are your interactions with your spouse often heated? If so, pulling back and separating your lives from one another, in every aspect, might be the best idea. This includes accepting you have fairly different takes on parenting.
Couples ending a high-conflict relationship might find parallel parenting works best. Through parallel parenting, parents tend to have a business-like relationship and stick to a rigid parenting schedule. So as long as your child’s needs are a priority and taken care of, you will stay out of each other’s hair.
Co-parenting set-up
However, if you can shelf your differences to take care of your children more collaboratively with your ex, then co-parenting might work better.
If you can imagine you and your ex both attending your child’s band concert or sporting event without any tension, then that’s a good sign you can handle a highly communicative parenting style. Also, co-parents are usually more open to change plans, from long-and short-term scheduling to child drop-up times.
The beauty of parenting is there isn’t one approach that everyone must follow. Plus, adapting and changing your parenting arrangement is totally acceptable as your children grow or your conflict level decreases between you and your ex.
