Effective co-parenting can make life easier for you, your children’s other parent, and, most importantly, your kids. Yet, figuring out how to co-parent can be difficult, especially if you and your children’s other parent struggle to communicate with each other. In the worst instances, the other parent may be unwilling to engage with you at all. So, what do you do in these circumstances?
Tips for remedying a bad co-parenting relationship
Although it may feel like there’s nothing you can do to remedy your situation, there are steps that you can take to try to get your co-parenting relationship back on track. Here are some ideas that may be useful:
- Consider utilizing different modes of communication that reduce conflict.
- Find an app that can help with calendaring and other aspects of co-parenting.
- Ask the court to appoint a guardian ad litem who can get to know your child and make recommendations to the court about parenting time structure.
- Request assessments and evaluations that might provide insight into the parenting strengths and weaknesses of each parent, which can then help facilitate co-parenting.
- Secure counseling to assist you and your children’s other parent in talking through your co-parenting issues.
- Consider a custody modification, which could altogether eliminate the co-parenting issues that you’re seeing.
Find the co-parenting path that’s right for you
There’s no right way to approach your co-parenting relationship. Instead, you have to find the path that’s most effective for you and your children. Although you might be able to resolve your co-parenting issues on your own, there’s a good chance that you’ll need to turn to the court for help through a custody modification. Although that thought might be stressful, it’s certainly not something that you have to face on your own.
