Co-Parenting Counseling addresses the challenges of raising children in dual households for the parents to:
- develop “a limited business partnership”
- develop strategies to work through the disruptions which occur in this restructuring
- create a parenting plan that meets the developmental and emotional needs of the children
- move beyond the “blame game” with the hurt and anger which harms ALL members of the changing family
- learn how to keep their children out of the middle
- learn to NOT be the uncooperative co-parent, often referred to as a “jerk”!
This type of therapy is challenging for the new co-parents who need and want to focus on the “best interests of their child”, to lay a foundation of working with the other co-parent for as long as you and your children are alive. Co-Parenting is a very specialized form of therapy, focusing on the co-parenting relationship of former partners (or partners in the process of divorce) and the parent-child relationship. Marital relationships contain patterns of behavior, belief systems and interactive styles which are characterisitically carried over to the post-divorce period, causing much misunderstanding, miscommunication, suspicion and mistrust of the other co-parent. Moving from these old relationship dynamics to a business relationship with the other co-parent requires a new perspective and willingness to listen and to change to what is going work for families undergoing structural change.