Create a successful parenting plan for children after divorce

Parents face unique challenges after divorce. In "The Co-Parenting Survival Guide," psychologists Elizabeth Thayer and Jeffrey Zimmerman set out rules for parents to calm the emotions and ease the stress of shared parenting. Read an excerpt below.

A dozen golden parent agreement rules
Most of the literature on co-parenting discusses sets of rules (Blau, 1993; Ricci, 1980) to follow when interacting with the other parent or when dealing with the children. These rules are designed to provide a structure for your interactions and to prevent conflict. They are crucial, simple fundamentals that need to be adhered to at all times to prevent hurting the children. Their simplicity makes them easy to accept, and few parents ever say that they don’t want to follow them. They would find it hard to argue that the rules aren’t in their children’s best interests. However, the dynamics of high-conflict relationships are such that the rules are easily broken. It is a good idea to keep these rules close at hand so that you can refer to them whenever fighting impulses arise. Melinda Blau’s book (1996) provides daily meditations for parents that can keep you focused on the behaviors that will enhance co-parenting relationships. Do whatever is necessary to make sure that the children’s needs are treated with the respect that they are due. You wouldn’t talk to a colleague or client in ways that would inflame them, nor would you interfere with their work or their relationships with shared personnel. You would work with them and figure out how to get the results you want and need. You need to treat your co-parent the same way.

The following are our recommendations for rules of conduct as co-parents. These rules should be reviewed and formally signed by both parents.

We will treat each other with respect at all times
The key to this parenting rule is cordiality. Parents must interact with each other in ways that demonstrate the fundamentals of acceptable social interaction. This means greeting each other nicely and exchanging pleasantries in front of the children. Both parents need to routinely act in a manner that models appropriate behavior between two adults. Remember that your children will treat you and the other parent in the same way that you treat one another. In addition, you are providing them with an example of how to approach other adults in their lives in school, athletics, work, etc. Common decency is the only acceptable principle to follow when working with or talking with the other parent. Anything less than that can be harmful to your children’s welfare and will contribute to a pattern of conflict, which will have a negative emotional impact on their future relationships with you and others in their lives.

We will not use condescending or derogatory terms in exchanges with each other
This too is a very simple rule! Do not speak to each other in inflammatory ways. High-conflict parents often feel free to say insulting, attacking things to one another that they would never say to anyone else in their lives. They use language that is not acceptable in any other areas of their lives. They feel free to call the other parent names, use slang, use four-letter words, and heap criticism upon the other parent. These are just more attempts to spray anger and to control the other parent. Every time that a parent hurls a hurtful remark at the other parent, every time a parent refers to the other parent in a derogatory manner, and every time a parent peppers their exchange with expletives, they need to remember how much they are affecting their children’s futures. Keep your children’s faces in front of you at all times (pull out their pictures if needed) and STOP before you say things that contribute to a level of conflict that will become harder and harder to repair.

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