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Defining
your role
as a co-parent
©
2002 Benjamin D. Garber, Ph.D.
All co-parents are not created equal.
By reason of court order, personal decision, distance, cost
or conflict, some caregivers play a more active role in the day-to-day decision-making
and nurturing of a child than others. In general, you should be able to place
yourself and the other caregivers with whom you share child care responsibilities
somewhere along a continuum from
(a) Full-time, exclusive decision maker
(b) Active and equal parenting partner
(c) Secondary decision maker
(d) Infrequent visitor
(e) Uninvited, unwelcome and/or univolved parent
No matter where you stand on this continuum, three things are
worth considering:
Is the total balance of caregivers successfully meeting
my child(ren)’s needs? The kids’ needs must come first. Assuring that
the kids’ needs are met must be more important than considerations of getting
what you need and far more important than whatever conflict might exist among
the co-parents.
This point is critical, particular when separation and divorce
occur. Co-parents who can agree to this one, simple principle are more likely
to survive legal formalities with a minimum of stress, are more likely to
go on to live emotionally healthy lives and are more likely to raise emotionally
healthy children.
But putting the kids’ needs first requires maturity. It requires
the adult ability to see the world through another person’s eyes, to genuinely
grasp what the child(ren) needs, and sometimes to make decisions that go against
one’s own wishes.
The divorcing parent, for example, who recognizes her daughter’s
need for geographic stability might effectively sacrifice her wish to spend
more time with her daughter in favor of the child’s needs.
But what does a child need? Above and beyond food clothing
and shelter, assuming safety and at least one warm and loving environment,
kids need stability. They need predictability and consistency and limits.*
Kids need calm and firm and reliable. They need at least one
home –a secure base- from which they can be launched each day
and to which they can return to be refueled, confident and secure in every
aspect of home.
Co-parents living apart may be able to meet these needs jointly
(what courts sometimes call a joint or shared physical custody arrangement).
Doing so requires that co-parents be role models of maturity. That communication
and cooperation between the child(ren)’s homes is excellent, that co-parents
genuinely respect one another and that a fair degree of consistency of expectations,
limits and consequences between the homes can be established and maintained.
Unfortunately, the conflicts inherent in separation and divorce
often contaminate the post-divorce co-parenting relationship. When separated
co-parents lack respect, cannot communicate or cooperate or –worse still–
are actively battling, the likelihood that joint or shared physical custody
will serve the child’s interests first and foremost diminishes quickly.
Am I offering the highest quality caregiving possible? Quality.
Not quantity. One cannot make up for the other. Understandably, many caregivers
who see their children infrequently want only to have a good time. Such a
parent’s motivation is understandable, but its selfish.
“But I only see my son one weekend a month! Why shouldn’t we
live it up?” Two reasons: First, if “live it up” means no limits and
no consequences, this isn’t parenting, its partying. Partying is fun. Everyone
needs to, even parents and kids.
Parenting is about instilling security. Its about helping
your children feel confident that they’re being held. In the same way that
an upset infant is calmed by being swaddled (that is, wrapped firmly in a
blanket and held close), a parent’s job remains to “hold” a child by setting
limits and following through calmly.
The partying parent has the selfish goal of making the child
(and him– or herself) happy.
The healthy, mature parent has the primary goal of making the child healthy,
even at the cost of the child’s apparent happiness. This means following through.
This means that a misbehaving child may need to be grounded (or suffer some
other consequence) even on dad’s one weekend a month!
The other reason is this: The part-time co-parent who breaks
all the rules becomes the good guy and implicitly sets up the other co-parent(s)
to be the bad guy. When one caregiver does all the discipline and the other
has all of the fun, the co-parenting relationship is unbalanced and the child
will live in the resulting tension.
Is my caregiving role in the child(ren)’s life fulfilling
to me? Its true: Your happiness in the co-parenting relationship is the
least among these three considerations, but still important. Your wish to
see your kids more often, to share in more of their fun, to attend the events
in their lives and to be there as a role model and mentor is one measure
of your love.
Many of us have children in the first place out of a selfish
(if seldom voiced) wish to live again through their experiences or to pass
on our wisdom (“Don’t do what I once did!”) for their benefit.
If the children’s needs are being met, yours may need to take
a back seat. Making this sacrifice can be incredibly painful. Letting go of
your kids represents a terrible loss to many parents, a real cause of depression
and rage. Take these feelings to the adults in your life who can listen.
Find a therapist who can help. But take comfort in your certainty that the
kids’ needs are being met and give what you can when you can toward their
growth and well-being.
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Parenting Pointer ---------------------
Co-parents living apart are sometimes able to improve communication,
cooperation and therefore consistency for the kids by exchanging a parenting
notebook. In general, a parenting notebook is as simple as a spiral bound
notebook or as complicated as a structured form copied many times over and
collected in a ring-binder. Structured categories help to minimize unnecessary
exchanges and to keep the adults’ feelings about one another at a distance.
Categories might include Health and Medication Updates, School and Homework
Issues, Friends, Appointments and Successes.
If you use a parenting notebook, consider these rules:
1. The notebook is exchanged directly between adult hands. The kids do not
have access.
2. The sending parent is responsible to briefly summarize any updates about
each child in writing.
3. The receiving parent is responsible to “catch up” by reading through the
notebook soon after the kids arrive and either to follow through or call to
inquire further about any immediate concern.
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facsimile 603.879.9070 