High Conflict Co-Parenting with Bradley Craig | Co-Parenting & Coffee
uh hi everybody my name is brad craig
uh you may have heard me speak before uh talking parents invited me previously to talk
a little bit about high conflict parents but i had about 15 minutes so they were
kind enough to invite me back to talk a little bit about more about my work with
families so hopefully you all see what i can't see this the slides on the screen here and what
i'm going to do is talk a little bit about some resources for you with high conflict uh families
it's important to understand the the field that i specialize in really is working with high conflict
families and there's very little that i can train you on in 50 minutes of speaking today but what i
can do is give you some pointers and some skills and maybe some tools to utilize quickly with with
a high conflict person or at least some resources to continue learning and growing so i think it's
important to understand i'm a licensed social worker and a certified family life educator
and this is the field that i specialize in helping families raise children between two homes
whether they're high conflict or just trying to work together my services aren't limited to folks
that are going through a divorce sometimes i have grandparents same sex couples other situations
where children are going up between two of them so today's presentation is going to be on how
to deal with high conflict situations no matter what the two home circumstances are there are
some forms available for you so hopefully you see those on the screen at the very bottom
if you go to children.com backslashforms.htm uh there's forms that you may find helpful to
you in working with family uh or working with the high conflict person or if you're somebody who
specializes in this field working with uh high conflict parents so let's uh get started and sorry
these slides are working oddly for me one of the things that i find when i'm working with families
especially in the high conflict situation is rarely do i find it's really one parent when
i'm working with high conflict families one of the things that i often find is it's either two
parents engaged in maybe maladaptive behaviors uh and a lot of times they're unintentional uh
it's due to the environment that they're raised in uh or other skills that they've learned that work
well in some situations but not necessarily in a co-parenting situation what i mean by rarely
do i find it's one parent there's certainly cases i work with where both parents are
struggling with personality disorders or they may be engaged in stream conflict at the
expense of their child intentionally but often what i find is one parent may have more of the
high conflict behaviors but the other parent doesn't have the skills to deal with a high
conflict situation uh if anyone out there has a teenager you know what i'm talking about that
uh even those of us that are the most trained in working with uh adolescents sometimes
find ourselves in the situation of boy i don't know how to deal with this one so
today i'm hoping to give you some pointers that will help you out i think the best way to
remain empowered and learn skills and working with families is to continue to learn if you're
going to work with a family that's high conflict as a specialist or if you are in a situation
where you're in a high conflict relationship or for that matter if you're giving advice to a
friend or family member who's in that situation learning is empowerment and continue
to learn grow and new learn new skills and learn those skills to provide advice
for those family members and friends that are going through high conflict situation i
certainly provide a lot of tools on the website shouldermiddle.com or between2homes.com we have
class on basic co-parenting boundaries which we'll be talking about today in parallel co-parenting
and the reason i'm emphasizing these is i'm going to be addressing a lot of these topics today that
i won't have time to flesh out and so if you take an online class or you're reading the book or you
use the workbook then you'll be practicing some of these skills um there's also another book that
i strongly recommend uh it's by the author bill eddie who's a social worker an attorney and it's
called splitting and it's a great resource for uh parents if you are dealing with a high conflict
coherent who has personality disorder or at least is exer is um displaying those traits uh traits of
histrionic or narcissistic personality disorder or personality traits okay so one of the things that
i think is very important with a lot of the high conflict families that i've worked with they're
getting advice from family members and friends sometimes attorneys sometimes even mental health
professionals that are sometimes working against them and creating more conflict so i think
one of the best resources that you can have is to surround yourself with the right people the
people that are supporting you and co-parenting independent of how your co-parent is choosing
to respond so there's a handout on my website and it's in my book and material but i
want to cover this a little bit with you surround yourself with co-parenting
supporters co-parenting supporters are those folks that are trying to empower you and
most importantly they're looking out for the best interest of your child generally so let's do
a comparison of co-parent supporters people that are supporting the co-parenting relationship as
opposed to those family members and friends that are co-parenting detractors that often increase
conflict between two homes and guide parents down the wrong path of making decisions that are
not in the message of their child a co-parenting supporter isn't going to involve your child in
the conflict whether they agree or disagree with your co-parenting and your co-parent they're not
going to involve your child they're going to say things like well that's between your mom and dad
or redirect where co-parent detractors are often involved in bad mouthing it's the grandparent
who says you know uh your dad is a is a jerk and your mom's trying to deal with him but she's
but you know he's uh insulting and aggressive they're bad mouthing the other parent in
the presence of the child or encouraging you to do the same thing so they may be saying
that negative things directly to your child or they may be saying things to you but still in
the presence of your child equally as harmful they a coherent supporter is going to respect both of
your roles as the child's parent a co-parenting detractor will often try and replace either your
duties or your coherence so for example they may um want to show up at exchanges sorry i see
something on here in chat so i want to make sure you're still on the resource
slides okay how about now perfect sorry all right now we're on co-caring
supporters and attractors hopefully maybe some of you went to the website and downloaded this
form so you can follow along with me when i mess up uh so uh a co-parent supporter is going to
respect both your coherence role and your role where co-parenting detractors often try to replace
one parent it's the stepmother or stepfather who uh decide to start showing up at exchanges or
doing the exchanges instead of you doing your exchange or and i don't mean that in a helpful way
sometimes step parents grandparents really do help in the cohering relationship hey if neither of
you can exchange directly i'll be glad to help but often what they're trying to do is replace
a role they'll either try and replace your role hey i'll fill out those documents don't
worry about that you don't have to do that or they'll try and replace the co-parent
try to be the new mother or the new father coherent supporters are going to encourage
you to work directly with your co-parents saying things like well have you talked to
him or her about that they may even help you sometimes by looking at it from that person's
perspective uh for example you know i know you're frustrated with this but as a male i can
see it from his perspective where a co-pairing detractor is going to encourage you to fight
or to ignore your co-parent uh or get involved in the conflict even you know they're the ones
who mom and dad are talking at the doorstep and that's when grandpa walks into the room and gets
involved in the conversation between mom and dad bottom line co-parenting supporters trust you
they recognize that you've ended your intimate relationship but you're now in a co-parenting
or business relationship with your co-parent where co-pairing detractors are often insecure
when you and your co-parent get along a co-pairing distract detractor will often uh focus on their
jealousy insecurity may engage in some of those behaviors that were we expect from high school
students but not necessarily for grown adults that are raising children between two homes
coverage supporters encourage you to co-parent and work together or co-parent detractors really
encourage you to compete to get the other parent out of decision making just like things say things
like look it's your parenting time you should be able to do what you want cobering supporters
often see themselves as part of the entire family not maternal or paternal but the entire family so
they're going to encourage you at times like hey we're having a birthday party why don't you invite
your co-parent where co-parenting detractors um are often again insecure or uncomfortable with
that so they're going to encourage you not to seek your co-parent or to invite them to see
things as mom's house versus dad's house instead of two homes working together in the best
interest of the child a coherent supporter is oh i noticed a typo in there a co-parent supporter is
going to recognize how important it is to reduce the distance between two homes so that both
parents can go to school functions be involved in extracurricular activities so that the child's
peer relationships are unaffected by the distance where a co-pairing the tracker will often
encourage more and more distance because again they don't want you to get along they don't
want you to interact they don't necessarily want the other parent at extracurricular activities
so they're going to encourage that distance a co-hearing supporter is going to encourage you
to have memorabilia within the household that would include your co-parent so for example
there may be a picture of your co-parent on your child's bedroom wall that would make
sense where co-parenting detractors are going to discourage that they don't want to look at your
co-parents face they don't want to be reminded maybe of your co-parent a cochrane supporter is
going to help out when invited to participate where a co-parent attractor really is going to
intrude on the co-parenting relationship and encourage conflict so i want to start looking at
some of the typical common mistakes parents make with children hopefully through this presentation
what will happen is you will start identifying some of the behaviors of your co-parent but i'm
also hoping that you'll be recognizing some of the mistakes that you may have made along the
way or if you haven't made those mistakes you'll recognize ahead of time that this
is a common mistake that parents put children in growing up between two homes this also
gives you an opportunity to have some labels for these behaviors so i want to start with um let's
see the choice of managing conservatorship it's pulling the child into where do you want to live
how much time do you want to spend with your dad how much time do you want to spend with your mom
just think about how much pressure that puts on a child ultimately i find that a lot of children who
get pulled into making a decision of whether to spend time with one parent or the other experience
guilt later on especially as they're adults and they realize boy my parents should have never
pulled me into that situation in the first place um i realize that there are some situations
where courts may give a child a voice in the schedule between two homes or where
their primary residence is going to be but most courts throughout the united states and
certainly here in texas i can say it has to be up to the best interest of the child so just because
the child says i want to live with one parent if that parent makes bad parenting decisions the
child's not going to be safe there then the court isn't going to support that the secret agent child
is the child that's used to gather information about the other household they're asked questions
like where did you go this weekend what did you see this weekend who were you with what movies
did you see what did you eat they're probed about their time with the other household and sometimes
in fact in most cases where i work with parents it's unintentional it's just well i'm just trying
to have conversations i'm just trying to get information from them to carry on a conversation
so what i encourage parents is instead of asking what the child did with the other parent ask
about their time with you instead of saying what did you eat for lunch say what would you like
for dinner instead of saying what movie did you guys go see say what movie would you like to sing
and that way you're focused on their time with you if a child spontaneously brings up things
again you can use reflective listening as we talked about in the last segment to
talk about their feelings and thoughts so basically the secret agent
child is used to gather information a child has a right to a private relationship with
mom and a private relationship with dad or whoever the members of that other household they didn't
ask to have two homes that's a situation created by the adults they shouldn't have to be reporting
back and forth for information you don't have available and that's the hard part i think of
raising a child between two homes is that they're going to have life experiences without you most
of us didn't bring children to the world to spend all that time without us the messenger child is
used in two different roles as the messenger it's either physical or verbal so physical would
be give your mother this or give your father that where you put things in the backpack
of the child to deliver to the other parent the verbal messenger is the child
told things like well tell your mom that there's an extracurricular activity coming
up or tell your dad you need to go to church more often where they're used in a role of delivering
things to the other parent verbally or physically as opposed to the parent taking responsibility and
communicating directly with their co-parent they may mistake is involving the child in adult or
legal issues uh hey we're going to court tomorrow to fight for you uh you know we're just going
to let the judge decide what's going to happen showing children copies of the court order uh look
here it is on page seven here it says that this is the third weekend of the month or uh first weekend
of the month the exchange facilitator is the child that mom and dad don't exchange a doorstep the
child has to walk down the driveway to get into the car the other parent and i will tell you as a
professional working with high conflict families while i hate for a child to be in the situation of
the exchange facilitator it is safer for the child to be the one who has to walk down the driveway
to get into the car of the other parent than it is for the child to witness verbal or physical
conflict in their presence so a lot of uh courts now are ordering exchanges at the school where the
parents don't have to be in the same place but if you can avoid the circumstance if you can just
keep your behaviors intact and your coherent can keep their behaviors intact when you exchange you
could do doorstep exchanges politely and civilly but if you can't sometimes it's more appropriate
for the child to be the exchange facilitator i miss you is one of those phrases that often
encourage a child's feelings of guilt uh because they're growing up between two homes so when
you're saying things like i miss you i can't wait to you come home the child may not be impacted by
that but you certainly increase the risk that the child may be feeling guilty about the time that
they're trying to enjoy with the other parent so a typical example of that would be you know
you call your child and what they want to tell you is what a great time they're having but when
you start off the conversation with hey buddy i really miss you what are you doing then of course
their response is going to be i miss you too and then it devolves into sounding like the child
needs to take care of the parent as opposed to the parent supporting the child's time with at
their other household another big mistake is asking your child to keep secrets don't tell your
mom that i'm dating bill don't tell your uh dad uh that we went to see that rated r movie uh uh
don't tell your uh uh don't don't tell your dad that your stepbrother hit you okay because i
think it's just going to create more conflict so they encourage the child to keep secrets and of
course the problem with that is secrets are often destructive to family systems a lot of times the
reason people end up getting a divorce is because a history of secrets but children are sometimes
trained to keep those secrets by the behaviors of their parents um eight nine and ten maybe i
can just combine those together a good example of that is a child who never slept with mom and
dad before but suddenly mom and dad separate and now the child starts sleeping with parent a or
parent bean and often what you hear that parents say is well you know they just needed somebody
to sleep with but the fact is the child was able to sleep independently before and what you see
is often the parent is changing their behavior we previously agreed he's going to sleep by
himself but now he's going to sleep with me they're altering the child's role kind of like
you're my teddy bear until there's another adult to share the bed with me and sometimes they're
relying on the child to meet their own needs while it's irritating to sleep with a child it may feel
good to them and feel like a comfort zone and they may miss their child when they go to the other
household so this is more time i get to spend with the child but that can be very confusing with
the child growing up between two homes especially if they're not sleeping with the parent in the
other household negative comments it's a given you shouldn't say anything negative about the other
parent to the child but often where i find parents harming their child is by having conversations
about the other parent in the presence of the child so you need to make sure that not only are
you not saying negative things directly to your child about your coherence you've got to make sure
if you're talking on the phone to your attorney best friend or relative that your child isn't
overhearing you disparage the other parent because the other mistake is often i find parents
allowing others to make negative comments you know well i don't say anything bad about him but i
live with my dad what am i supposed to do my dad says negative things stop your dad from doing that
and if you can't stop him from doing that then he doesn't need to be around your child another big
mistake is i always tell my child the truth there are a lot of adult things that children don't
need to know about court is a good example of that one example that i often use with families when
they say well i always tell my child the truth is did you tell them how they were made now
biologically we may talk about sperm eggs fertilization but what we don't talk about is
the actual occurrence of how they were created if you understand my meaning that's behind closed
door stuff children's property bottom line if it belongs to the child belongs to the child one
of the problems that i have is parents will tell children things like this is yours but it has
to stay here if it's theirs they should be able to carry it back and forth between two homes so my
suggestion is if there's something you get in your household that you don't want your child to carry
to the other household don't say it's theirs just say it's spot for this home for example you
buy a video game system okay this is a video game system for this house you know the people
that live here can use this video game system pets and attachment issues if you guys
just separate it's not a great time to go and get a puppy because it's hard enough for
the child to leave a parent behind on a regular basis more or less a puppy and attachment items
would be things like security blankets mobiles things like that for infants where if
you have that same mobile going back and forth or at least the same sounds of the
mobile it can be comforting to your child reflective listening is basically just answering a
question with a question about a child's feelings or making a statement that's a question so instead
of probing the child what did you do in the other household child comes in and says i'm really
mad we just focus on the feeling rather than why are you mad what happened over there gathering
information from them we just focus on the feeling alienating co-alienating and even
estrangement behaviors are really a professional seminar within themselves
a lot of mental health professionals i work with aren't familiar with alienation and
estrangement so i really can't cover this topic and give it the attention that it needs in
one minute what i would encourage you to do is read and learn more we flesh this out
in the book and on the online class and there's lots of other material out there
on lots of other people's websites that talk about alienation and estrangement what i can say
though is alienation is basically where a child is being turned against the other parent and often
the parent that's alienating is encouraging that you don't have to go if you don't want to i can't
make you go if you don't want to on the other hand sometimes the other parent is involved in
estranging behaviors things that a child wouldn't want to spend time with whether witnessing a
parent verbally physically or sexually molest them or another parent that's estrangement but
sometimes these things go hand in hand one parent trying to turn the child against the
other parent the other parent having boundaries that are poor and they don't know how to respond
so it creates more conflict all right i would love to spend more time on that because that's
something i think we need to understand more about and i'm guessing that um talking parents is
going to be inviting a speaker on alienation and estrangement at some point i certainly encourage
that okay so let's talk a little bit about just changing your thinking in situations i
told you i wanted to give you some skills to help you move forward and to do that i want to
change the way you may have looked at situations i challenge myself on this all the time when i
jump to a conclusion so let's talk a little bit about cognitive distortions cognitive distortions
are basically tools that we use to survive the way we think about situations but they often
can work against us so for example let's talk about emotional reasoning emotional reasoning
is basically because i feel it it must be true now the truth is we're responsible for our own
feelings but sometimes the way we think about things changes the situation for us and our
feelings so for example public speaking if i approach this oh i'm going to get some bad reviews
there's people who don't like me i'm going to be nervous and upset during this presentation if
i look at it as hey technology i can't always figure this out i'm going to remain nervous
during the presentation and i won't do as well if i think about it differently if i go i'm really
excited to have this opportunity to talk to people to share some information i'm really excited
to hopefully improve the quality of life for children growing up between two homes then i'm
excited about presenting today emotional reasoning is because i feel it it's true because i feel
intimidated you're trying to intimidate me because i'm nervous you're making me nervous as opposed to
you know what i'm responsible for my own feelings maybe i need to look at this a little differently
maybe my initial reaction and feeling isn't the truth so for example if i sent you a message that
said i'm really excited that you're attending the presentation today but i send it to you in
an email you can hear that two different ways he's really excited or you know what the way
i heard that is i'm really excited that you're participating today as if i don't
have a million other things to do so emotional reasoning is oh wow i feel really
good he's excited that i'm here or reading that same message another person could go i think he's
being very sarcastic that's where we can challenge our thinking how do i know that to be true how do
i know whether he's sarcastic or really excited well that changes and challenges my feelings and
thoughts imperative thinking is basically the it must be this way i i must have primary because
i've always been the primary caregiver uh i must have the rights to be able to do these things
and it's this imperative thinking that often sabotages people i find in the courtroom because
they see it as well the world has to work this way and when it does it it sabotages them and they
have real difficulty facing the reality of their circumstances personalization and blame
the number one problem i deal with with high conflict families is personalization and blame
where they take everything you say as personal not everything that's exaggerating they take a lot
of things that you say as very personal as opposed to you know you say something like you know a lot
of men ball are balding are you saying that i'm balding are you threatening that i'm going to be
balding blame though is the biggest problem i have with high conflict families frequently what
happens is i see these parents stuck in this finger pointing as opposed to this how am i
contributing to this conflict what could i do to handle this situation differently they often
will use excuses like well you made me do this and you made me do that as opposed to i'm the one
who's totally in control of my behaviors in action black and white thinking is basically what it says
black and white thinking it's black or it's white and very little room for gray so it's important
in negotiation and compromise and interest-based communication that we're looking at you know there
is middle ground for a lot of these things maybe i don't get everything that i want but i get a lot
of what i want and if we both get a lot of what we want our child does better growing up between
two homes if we mutually agree extreme thinking i uh used an example of extreme thinking the always
never you're never here on time i often work with families that say things like you're never here on
time but if you actually break down the year and the total exchanges they've done the vast majority
of the time they are on time so extreme thinking would be like um our child was devastated you
didn't show up on time when you yelled he was traumatized devastated and traumatized
you know unless they're in a psychiatric hospital most likely they weren't devastated or
traumatized now it doesn't mean that they weren't affected but these type of terms these global
statements intrude in co-parenting communication because you're going to go to you're never here on
time to them arguing the times that they have been on time and then you've lost focus as opposed
to looking at a solution like let's just come up with a solution for how we're going to address
letting each other know when we're running light mind reading is uh something that i deal with
a lot with high conflict families it's the assuming you know what your co-parent is thinking
i work with a lot of families and i'll tell you frequently it's mr craig you just don't understand
i've been married to them for 10 years you don't know what they're like so then i ask so why are
you separated they say well because they changed yes they changed you probably have learned
new things since separation uh if you all live together as you've matured you've learned new
skills and new thoughts so you don't always know what the other parent is thinking and the ostrich
technique is just basically i'll just ignore it i deal with that a lot in communications with
parents uh sometimes billing with parents where if i just ignore it it'll go away again i've
spent a very brief amount of time on cognitive distortions but there's something there's seeds
that i can plant for you to hopefully learn more about so you can gain skills on dealing with
a high conflict parent or maybe recognize how some of your own behaviors may be sabotaging
your co-parenting relationship so how do you challenge this cognitive distortion so i feel
nervous sad scared because of what's just occurred i've just read this message one of the ways
you can challenge your thinking is by socratic questioning how do i know this to be true how do
i know this is 100 the case because a lot of times people end up in misery because of their own way
of looking at things as opposed to being empowered to go maybe i shouldn't even waste my energy on
this so how do i know this to be true how do i know that's what they said or did am i assuming
just because they're based on our history i'm assuming it's occurring this way but i don't know
are there other possible reasons and conclusions let me take a step back from my feeling right now
and instead go how do i know that this is true are there other possible reasons other possible
explanations for why it occurred that way is there another way of looking at this
should i do a self-check maybe i'm the problem here maybe my emotions are getting
in the way of me making a logical decision should i look into this a little bit further
before reaching a conclusion should i reach out and say when you said you were really excited that
i was taking your training did you mean you truly were excited or did you mean that sarcastically
just trying to understand where you're coming from um uh i'm gonna encourage you to look at some
of the blogs on talkingparents.com those are the boundaries there's co-parenting
boundaries and unhealthy boundaries those are really good links to review through i'm
also going to cover boundaries just a little bit without boundaries we end up blaming everybody
else for our feelings sometimes people do cross our boundaries maybe we haven't made them clear
there are certainly situations where you have to be safe and where you're going to need to have
a wall so i'm going to talk about boundaries and how to establish boundaries and also when to
just protect yourself you may be in the habit of blaming your co-parent for your own discomfort
and it may be your own thinking that's leading to that comfort for a lot of you you've probably
recognized this remember how something used to bother you and now that circumstance comes up and
you go huh that doesn't even bother me anymore think about our teenage high school behaviors
how emotionally we're at the time and now you go i just don't even care about those things anymore
they're just not important to me the same way that's called maturing there's physical maturity
and psychological maturity psychological maturity is getting to be a certain age where emotionally
you've made the progress to go i don't need to waste my time on being upset about this
often families are stuck in this blame game where it came out of their mouth and it led
me to do this so again the statement will be if you didn't want me to do this you shouldn't
have done that or you made me do it when we look at the blame game it's the activating event what
came out of somebody's mouth and then well then i responded this way as opposed to understanding
how communication really works there's the activating event somebody called me a jerk then
your belief kicks in because it goes from their mouth into your ear and now you're processing
it beliefs could be a history of experiences if i were abused as a child by somebody who always
said the color blue then the color blue is going to be a trigger for me and when my co-parent used
the word blue it may be that historically i've had negative experiences recognizing that so i just
automatically assume conflict beliefs kick in and then we process it it's not like it just shoots
out of our mouth we actually sit there and go huh how can i respond to this how can i think now
sometimes our hearts are beating or adrenaline is going and it's harder to control our reactions
but the truth is it goes out of their mouth into our brain we then process it then we choose
how to respond to that so when we look at the blame game the way to kick yourself out of that
again by socratic questioning is to think about how do i know this to be true so i want to give
you an example so um john is 22 minutes late for the exchange of their child so mary is thinking
he just doesn't care about my parenting time he can't be relied on i mean this is the start
of my parenting time our son should be here so what happens is she jumps to feeling angry
with him and then sends this nasty message or calls through uh talking parents and says you
know you don't care about my time you uh you know you're trying to manipulate our child she's angry
and she responds angrily but let's look at the situation different let's say john is 22 minutes
for the exchange so mary thinks he doesn't care about my time and he can't be relying upon but
then she stops and goes wait how do i know that to be true how do i know he really doesn't care
about my parenting time and how do i know that he just doesn't care about my feelings and can't
be relied upon well let me look at this a little differently i don't know for certain why he's
not here what are some of the other possibilities maybe the car broke down maybe our child is still
in his other household vomiting i wouldn't want him to be racing him out of the house so now
instead of feeling angry mary they start feeling curious i wonder why they're not here yet instead
of wasting my time being angry maybe i ought to think about what are the other possibilities
huh now i'm really curious i wonder why so instead of wasting your time feeling mad
discounted hurt now she's feeling curious since she thinks no i don't know that to be
true she calls him he picks up the phone and says hey mary i'm sorry i know i should be there
by now but i have a flat tire we're on the side of the road i'm trying to get there as soon
as i possibly can i'm really sorry about that probably should have called you but tell you
what i'm only about five minutes away if you want to come meet me off of i-20 i'm here you
can pick them up or just wait for me to get there uh when we have this uh tire working so instead
of mary wasting all that energy being angry now she's heard what the circumstance really
is and if anything she may feel i'm a little worried about them being on the side of the road i
also want to give you some techniques to recognize that are typical of high conflict types of
personalities and again sometimes these are just survival skills that you learn so to protect
yourself from conflict but it can work against you in communication so i want to give you some
examples of techniques that high conflict individuals often use to try and get you off track
in conversations one is using a response that just takes whatever you're concerned about and makes it
into a joke i know you don't really feel that way because you're always acting that way or uh you
know men are just this way what are we supposed to do about hahaha as opposed to really focusing on
the issue that you're trying to address with them or they may attempt to delay the conversation
or redirect whatever well so sue me or they may try and debate the legitimacy of your
feelings you know it's not that big of a deal you know you don't really feel that way the solution
really is don't engage in any of that don't let them redirect you come back on target don't label
them while you're just trying to make a joke out of it don't waste any of your energy on that
just go yeah but as i was saying or i wonder if we can focus back on this so your co-parent
says well you know men are usually that way you might be right but as i was saying can we
agree to talk to each other about the fill in the blank some other techniques that are used to
get off track every statement is made with a why why didn't you tell me about that so your issue is
your child is having night terrors because he saw a monster movie at his other household and you're
just trying to say hey can we talk about this why didn't you tell me he was afraid of monster
movies gosh he's a five-year-old child most five-year-olds would be afraid of this but you
could debate that with that person or you could take a solution approach another example would
be why didn't you tell me why is this important to you why do you feel that way really trying
to focus on redirecting from the topic or just denying that there is a problem you know while
he doesn't have those night terrors over here the solution to that really is again
to redirect to focus back on topic you know i know you may have a question
or maybe you see it different than i do but i'm just wondering if we can't be on the
same page with that so you're not debating your co-parents position or thoughts what you're
saying is you may see a different maybe i'm even wrong but can we focus on a solution uh they often
try and turn it around and blame it on you well if you had not if you'd let him sleep with
you he wouldn't have those night terrors sometimes it's best again not to engage in
conflict just nod your head you're not saying you agree you're just acknowledging their statement
that perhaps i've always been late to but can we agree to come up with a solution to notify each
other moving forward so when you say you were late and he was upset or he appeared upset to me
and your co-parent says well you're late sometimes too whether you are or not don't jump into the
battle of whether you've ever been late or not move right into you might be right but can we
come up with a solution for this moving forward the blame technique uh typically responds with
oh you're trying to hurt me you're trying to intimidate your you're overwhelming me with things
i can't handle this right now or they may try and redirect it to that blame of why do you want to
make me feel this way or they may just attack you screaming and yelling bottom line if they're at
that point it's probably not a place to be able to communicate about that topic learn the skill to
be able to say look i'm really i see you're really upset with this let me come back to this later
or i'll call you tomorrow let me follow up later take that power away from them trying to make you
feel guilty and instead just say i'm hearing you how about i call you back at three o'clock
tomorrow and we continue this conversation verbal threats may be issued uh i'll just
ignore your text if you send it to me you're gonna regret this i'll bring you back to
court or um when you address an issue they want to attack you with their complaints against you again
don't give them the power to say okay just say no you have the right to your thoughts
i have no control over your thoughts but in the meantime can we talk about okay
so you think i'm a nasty horrible individual can we talk about getting billy to his extra
critical activities on time they may go off track again again you come right back to okay but
in the meantime can we talk about the following there are times where a wall is needed and what
i mean by a wall is you're not in a safe place or safe circumstance to be able to use some
of the other tools that i just talked about so there's a wall of silence knowing when to keep
your mouth shut knowing that if you say something right now it's just going to create more conflict
here you are at the child's extracurricular activity your co-parent is getting in conflict
with you right there at the extracurricular activity your child is standing right there you
can see how embarrassed and afraid there are sometimes it's appropriate to just stop talking
just redirect or create a wall of distance where you go to another bleacher you
remove yourself from the situation sometimes a wall of silence might just be
putting on headphones or anything you can do to take yourself mentally out of that
situation and put yourself in a relaxing place sometimes a wall of pleasant is really
important a wall of pleasant to just say okay co-parents screaming and yelling at you okay i've
used this tool many times when i'm on the stand okay it's a way of distancing yourself
and ultimately not engaging in conflict to protect yourself in that specific situation
i want to talk about some guidelines for written communication because one of the advantages of
written communication is that you get to control what goes out one of the problems that i have with
some of the families i work with is that they have poor impulse control so they want to send a
message or they want to call their co-parent and they just send a nasty dissertation i'll
give you an example of where i use this in my practice sometimes sometimes when i'm working with
families i will get an email let's say from an attorney that's bashing me or bashing the process
or bashing the other parent or the other attorney i could get involved in that and engage in the
same type of conversation or i can redirect so for example i get an email that's five paragraphs
long telling me how rotten i am with families i may even physically type out a response
that says you know i'm just trying to help these families i'm not charging them six hundred
dollars an hour you're the one who's exploiting them by encouraging conflict i could do all
that i might even type it out but there's an advantage to that draft file i can put it to the
side and go this is not what i want my co-parent the court the other attorney the professionals
that refer to me the families that refer to me to see so let me come back to that later i come
back i take that five paragraph response that i've typed up and i make it a paragraph and i realize
you know what that's still too much i still said way too much in that but right now my mind is
really kind of upset so let me put it in draft i come back a few hours later and it ends up being
three bullet points that addresses their statement i'm sorry that you're concerned about
this comma here's what actually happened and a description of what happened it appears that
you're concerned that i'm trying to exploit the clients let's have a meeting with both attorneys
where we can talk about this because i i want you to know i'm trying to work with the family not
against them so on my web page on the classes uh in my workbook and book there are these
guidelines for co-parenting communication written coherent communication and feel free to
visit my website and print these out for free let's talk about some of those guidelines
to think about before you hit send use draft if you need to say everything that you
want to therapeutically process all that but then hit only send when the message is productive in
general send only necessary emails sometimes when i'm working with high conflict parents they're
really excited about the prospect of starting to work together and they start to but then
they send a volume of messages to each other or they're constantly calling each other on
the phone rather than going hey this is new to us let's take some baby steps so in general send
only necessary emails and limit the amount per day if you are thinking i've got a topic i
want to address but it's not a fire maybe wait till the end of the day in case there's
three or four other things that pop up that you really want to share with your co-parents
in general i suggest limited to three topics at a time billy's got an extra activity scheduled
for friday at 5 00 pm at the following location have you got a copy of his report
card if so could you send it to me three i just want to make sure that
our mediation is still on for friday number the items so that your co-parent can
follow up with you and make sure those items match item number one the extracurricular
activity item number two the question about the doctor's appointment item number three and so
when your co-parent responds they're addressing one two and three also and it can keep you in
the loop there may be things you address that they don't need to respond to so they're
just typing two yes i'm going to be there use their name uh and i don't mean a negative
connotation i mean bill i read your message i'll respond to you tomorrow sincerely kim something
that again recognizes who they are but also cites that you're the author of what you send a kind of
you're verbally communicating then it's your voice use basic manners instead of insisting and
demanding use things like please thank you i appreciate your co-parent says you know i finally
got that report card to you that you've been asking for here are you happy now yes i am thank
you make your emails very brief and specific one of the things i find parents doing is when they're
writing or talking to each other they go into what i call a sales pitch the more your sales pitching
your concept or idea or your recommendation the more your co-parent may be coming up with reasons
to challenge it so for example starting with the billy says he's interested in playing football
would you be interested in him playing football too versus billy says he wants to play football
i know you typically don't like football but look i think you need to think about his feelings
instead of your own and i think you need to get him to participate well by the time you're
done with your diatribe you've turned your co-parent off to the original topic keep the
emails focused on the present and the future instead of saying you've always done this focus
on moving forward can we agree to the following whether it's happened in the past or not is
insignificant what's important now is seeing if you can't come up with a plan moving forward today
and moving forward can we agree to the following don't have others send your messages for you
don't have girlfriends boyfriend step parents grandparents send those messages for you unless
it's an emergency hey by the way they're broken down on the side of the road they don't have
access to the phone i'm letting you know this take responsibility yourself to send those
messages make your communications non-judgmental you've never cared about our child versus it's
really important to me is that something that's important to you too and asking as a question
for the most part keep the emails about exchange you know basics if you have a really successful
cooperative co-parenting relationship then you may be able to engage in a lot more conversations
but if you're in a high conflict scenario whether it's just now because sometimes we find
the death settles or in the future and future it calms down right now you want to focus on just the
minimal conversation here's what you need to know give choices and be flexible i'm thinking about
doing this what are your thoughts huh i never thought about that yeah let's see if we can't
come up with some other options to think about um ask instead of demand instead of saying you need
to be there to say i think it's important for him for you to be there if you get an email full of
what you're doing wrong use some of the things we've learned today don't get hooked into it
okay sounds like you're upset with me can we agree to be on time at exchanges and respond
as you would a co-worker or a business partner forget the intimate relationship and
instead just focus on the business of how can we get along sometimes it may
be appropriate to use an i feel statement i feel concerned when i see billy crying because
he's worried your car broke down according to him and i'm wondering if we can't let each other
know in advance if we're going to be running late if you get an email that asks for a response
and you don't have a response immediately at least respond with i'll let you know tomorrow
by 5 pm instead of doing the ostrich technique it'll go away then instead say here you can
expect an answer tomorrow at 5 pm or by 5 pm don't speak for anyone else that's a big mistake
i see with these situations is people speaking for the child billy was really upset when you billy
really wants you to you're not in billy's head so you don't know what billy is thinking or feeling
but what you can share with your co-parent is he said he felt the following or he appears
to be sad when he's crying those would be examples and bottom line is before you hit
send pull out that list print it for my website put it by your computer and read over
it before you hit send i hope this information has been valuable for you again these are
some of the resources that i have available there's plenty of other resources that are also
available and i think um it's time for some q a so for the next nine minutes i'll do some q a
with some broad responses if i can be helpful so let me see what some of these questions are uh
what to do about a co-parent not contacting the child i'm not sure there's much you can do about
that other than encourage your co-parent if you think it's appropriate for your child also let
your child know don't speak for your co-parent i don't encourage you to necessarily come up with
excuses for them but just focus on the facts say i don't know why your mother hasn't contacted
you today i don't know why your father hasn't because that's the truth you really don't know
why you don't have the answer for that all you can do is encourage and remain neutral to the best of
your ability so i hope that answered that question another question how can i send this webinar
to my high conflict co-parent without starting an argument uh really good question and actually
i get that question frequently when i'm teaching my co-parenting class it's like wow how do i get
my co-parent to attend this so here's the advice that i often give parents who take my online
or live co-parenting education class contact your co-parent and say i learned so much from the
following presentation i apologize about some of the mistakes that i've made i think it would be
really beneficial for us to talk after you take this so either they'll be motivated because they
want to learn and grow or if nothing else they'll often be thinking wow i can't wait to take this
presentation to find out what they're doing wrong when i'm teaching my co-parenting class it's funny
to watch the language of the participants because sometimes i'll be talking about one subject
and you'll see an audience member doing this and i'm assuming what they're thinking is i've
been telling my co-parent that my attorney told my co-parent that i don't know why they won't listen
to me they're refusing to learn but then later on during the presentation i'll talk about another
subject and that same person you'll see doing this like oh that's me you're talking about so you
know the goal of any type of seminar that i'm providing like this is to give folks new tools to
learn to grow so it might be you just reach out with a i encourage you to take this class and if
the motivation is learning what you're doing wrong along the way they're going to learn
some skills themselves one would hope uh what is my ex's new spouse and the major detract
oh yeah what is my ex's new spouse and the major detractor in the relationship okay i'm not sure
i understand that question fully but i'm going to answer it to the best of my ability first
one of the things i'm going to encourage you to do is get rid of the word my ex i think that
creates a lot of conflict and it focuses on the previous intimate relationship your co-parent
is your co-parent they're only an x in the sense of the previous intimate relationship
and if we stay stuck in thinking about the previous intimate relationship then feelings
get hurt emotions get hurt so i'm always going to encourage you when you're referring to your
co-parent as my co-parent or their first name or their role you know my child's mother my
child's father so you're focusing on that current relationship that you have with them so uh what is
oh what if my is the oh okay now i see thank you for the type correction what if um you know one
of the things i often suggest is parents having the opportunity to be become educated so this kind
of goes back to that previous question of how do i get my co-parent involved in learning some of this
information you know maybe you pay for them to take an online class or training or maybe you buy
the book between two homes a co-pairing handbook or any of those resources that may be something
that you provide to your co-parent as a resource again saying this is what i really learned from it
there's not much you can do except hope to empower your co-parent to recognize that that person is
a detractor and a focus moving forward maybe you have a detractor in your life and if you do
maybe that would be the appropriate time to say hey i downloaded this off of a website and
i realized that my cousin sally has really been encouraging conflict between us and i apologize
about that i've learned some new skills and i've told i actually gave her this handout and said
look if you continue to be a co-parrying detractor then i'm going to stop having you around me in
our child because i just don't think it's in the child's best interest other than that there's
very little that you can do other than continue to serve as the appropriate role model remember
throughout this entire presentation and from my previous presentation one important concept to
hold on to is you can't change your co-parent but there are things that you do that may change
yourself and your reaction to them that changes their behaviors once i realize i can't pull you
out on the dance floor anymore i might just stop trying because you've proven a pattern of not
trying to pull me out or um being resistant to me pulling you out on the dance floor uh
how do you respond when co-parenting oh okay how do you respond to a co-parent who constantly
brings up old mistakes these are always insulting you just redirect you know use some of those
skills i talked about before okay you hate me but blah blah blah okay you think i'm an idiot
but blah blah blah tell them show them it doesn't affect you anymore you no longer have power over
me you can have whatever feelings and thoughts you want about me but i'm going to stay on track what
i often find with parents who have learned these skills themselves or through their own counselor
or therapist or with a parenting coordinator they're learning to disengage from the conflict
and once they really have those skills to disengage then their co-parent either stops the
behavior or the person learning the new skill goes it just doesn't phase me anymore it's amazing how
i used to jump right into conflict but now when i think about it as i'm so healthy that that doesn't
even bother me anymore it's very very empowering so if they constantly bring up those other
mistakes or always insulting you again i would just focus on okay but today and moving
forward okay yeah i had an affair but today and moving forward can we blah blah blah how can you
introduce a new spouse or partner into a child's life or co-parenting dynamic boy that's a
whole thing in itself and i'm not trying to uh sell my book there's lots of other good books
out there i highly recommend books like mom's house dad's house by issa richie and some of these
other books on co-parenting we don't always agree uh so you might find one book says one thing and
another says something different but you can take that information and think about how do i apply it
to this situation so that to me is a whole section in itself and it is in my book a whole section
on introducing significant others what i'd say is take it gradual just because you're at a
place doesn't mean your child is out of place i always encourage wait till post the legal order
being signed before introducing new relationships do it gradually into your child's life
recognize those behaviors if if they tend to if you see a lot of jealousy and insecurity
and immaturity in the person that you're dating that whenever you bring up the co-parent they
start to get angry or start saying you know you shouldn't do this or you shouldn't let them
get away with that that might be a warning sign that's not something you should expose to your
child so i know i'm covering that really quickly there's just so much to say in that that i don't
think i have enough time to fully flesh that out oh uh okay so we have about a minute and
a half which is time for me to wrap up mostly what i want to say is thank you
very much for giving your attention to talking parents and to me today we hope
that we've given you some really helpful reliable information one of the things i want to
encourage you to do is continue going not only utilizing talking parents but going to the website
for resources their blog is just full i find of helpful information i also encourage you to visit
my website childrenmiddle.com or between2homes.com to continue learning and growing good luck in
your co-parenting relationship i wish the best for everybody who's watching this and want to wrap
up with quickly if you continue to have conflict and their parenting coordinators in your area
i encourage you to reach out to a specialist who specializes in working with families raising
children between two homes for a solution for your family that can be co-parenting counseling
parenting coordination or pairing facilitation okay i believe we're done thank you so
much for spending your time with me today and uh hopefully you'll follow up in the future
if you need some help thank you very much
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