Give the Gift of Co-Parenting
The holidays are already tough for many people, and being a co-parent for the first time only increases the stress. Right now, you might be grappling with the concept that you will be spending special days alone, or you may still be struggling to reach an agreement with your co-parent on who gets the kids and for how long. You may even catch yourself reminiscing on past seasons when you were still together with your child’s other parent. All of these issues are normal when you are going through a divorce or have recently reached an agreement. Yet, they don’t have to sour your relationships or ruin the joy that you feel this season.
One thing that I’ve found over the years is that it is better to reach out whenever you start to feel weighed down by the challenges of co-parenting. Instead of feeling angry at your child’s other parent, why not embrace your new relationship? Taking a co-parenting class is a gift that keeps on giving to you, your ex-partner, and most importantly, your children.
Experience a Mindset Shift
Christmas marks the end of the year, and this occasion might leave you feeling a little nostalgic. While it is good to think about the past sweet memories, nostalgia becomes a problem if it causes you to ruminate on negative events from the past.
Depending upon your relationship with your child’s other parent, you might have had a few ugly moments before you went your separate ways. It is common for people to feel like a divorce or break up was all the other person’s fault. Thinking about the other person negatively is a trap that you don’t want to fall into because it taints all of your future interactions.
One of the biggest secrets to becoming a successful co-parent is to accept responsibility for your actions that led to the ending of your past relationship. This might be hard to face, but choosing to accept ownership of your role is essential for breaking down your past behavior patterns.
Essentially, you can’t change the other person, but you can change yourself. Looking at your past relationship realistically leads to dramatic mind shifts that create complete turnarounds. Perhaps you might realize that you should have left the relationship sooner, or you might suddenly see how your misery was causing behavior on your part that influenced the other person’s behaviors.
If this all sounds heavy, don’t worry. You’ll be guided through the learning process by facilitators that have a full understanding of how important it is to feel supported as you take an honest look at how your actions affect others.
Stop Letting the Past Influence the Future
A divorce might free you from the every day conflicts that you had with your child’s other parent, but it doesn’t stop the strain in your relationship. Are you still reeling from your partner having an affair, or do you still remember every mean thing that they said? Holding on to these types of feelings does nothing to help your new relationship.
Co-parenting represents a new chapter in your life, and whatever happened in the past no longer matters when it comes to raising your children together. So, how do you let go of such deeply painful experiences? The process isn’t easy, but working through your co-parenting course gives you the tools that you need to begin looking more towards the future than the damage that was done in the past.
Address Breakdowns From Your Previous Relationship
Something happened that made you no longer be able to maintain a romantic relationship with your co-parent. While it might be easy to point towards an affair or an abusive situation, the truth is that most relationships break down in small ways that lead up to the final culminating blow.
Did you and your co-parent get together when you were young? It is common for couples to continue to communicate like they did when they were teenagers or young adults even once they’ve matured enough to know better ways to discuss problems.
Was one of you obsessed with work, and that led to the other person feeling overwhelmed by taking care of the household responsibilities and children? One or both of you might need to learn how to let go of your old roles so that you can work better together in your new ones.
Your previous relationship might also be complicated if you were never fully committed to the other parent. Co-parenting when you have no real past with the other person also presents challenges since you might not even know them well enough to figure out how they’ll react to new situations.
Identifying where your communication begins to break down helps you to develop new strategies that make it easier to convey your thoughts. Most importantly, you’ll learn valuable listening and response skills that make it much easier to show the other parent that you are both on the same team.
Feel More Confident Interacting With Other Involved People
The Christmas season brings people together, but this might not be something that you are looking forward to if you tend to have conflicts with your co-parent. In fact, you might even be put into some awkward situations this time of year.
Are you sharing custody and visitation over the holidays? If so, then you might be forced to interact with your co-parent’s family. Grandparents, aunts and uncles sometimes pick their little family members up from the other parent’s house, or your child might have a special event at school that requires everyone to sit in the same room.
After a divorce, you might have other relationships that also need mending. While you might not have to deal with your former in-law’s as much, the truth is that they still remain an integral part of your child’s life. That means that they also affect you, and you may need to communicate with them about your child’s well being when they are in their care.
Taking a class gives you the opportunity to address how your thoughts and behaviors influence all of the relationships that make up the fabric of your co-parenting lifestyle.
Learn How to Maintain Peace During Conflicts
You can also count on at least one conflict arising during the holidays. Whether your co-parent wants to keep the kids a little longer or shows up late for a pick up, you might need to maintain some flexibility during this time.
Conflicts are also likely to arise during the rest of your child-rearing years. Co-parenting requires you to find ways to peacefully resolve them, and our courses focus primarily on helping you to find ways to stay positive when life throws you a curve ball.
Show Your Children the Power of Resilience
Through it all, the main thing for co-parents to remember is that your children are always watching. Whether you have an infant or teens, they are aware of the tension that exists between their parents. As your child grows, they’ll be able to look back at how you and your co-parent handled this transitional time in your lives. Don’t you want them to feel supported by two parents who care enough to work through their differences and provide a stable life?
Look Forward to a Better Future for Your Family
You can choose to gift your child’s other parent with a co-parenting class that you take together, or you can choose to begin the process of working on yourself. In either case, you can expect to see minor changes in the beginning that begin to add up to a more peaceful future. Confidence, kindness and the ability to respond appropriately to any situation are just a few of the gifts that keep on giving when you make the commitment to be a better co-parent in the new year.
Believe it or not, the holiday season can be full of merriment and wonder again. Choosing to make a change now helps you to embrace the future year that is up ahead with confidence that you can handle anything with your co-parent. Sign up for your class today, and begin to feel empowered as you begin to experience a new perspective that influences your family relationships.
