Making the best of parenting after divorce with Dr. Marchelle Lee
Dr. Marchelle Lee: This program is called co-parenting in the future.
Dr. Marchelle Lee: Juli, what were the circumstances surrounding you founding this program?
Juli: Well I came up it with my ex-husband and we were divorced we had a very good friend who’s an attorney and I was in his office one day and he said you know there are these parenting courses that are out there and they really don’t do what you and Mark have done in your relationship. You guys have done an amazing job with your divorce but most importantly your kids are in great shape. You should come up with a program. So I went to Mark and told him what our friend had said and we spent time designing the program and then we did a number of pilots with real people who ended up getting a ton out of the program. We launched it about a year ago now.
Dr. Lee: The breaking up is hard to do. Y’know messy, but you don’t want your children to feel like they had to carry the burden of that mess.
Juli: Exactly
Dr. Lee: How were your children at the time of your divorce?
Juli: I believe six and eight six and eight.
Dr. Lee: How old are they now?
Juli: 31 and 28
Dr. Lee: great job.
Juli: Yeah I feel that anything can be done if any two people will make up their mind they want to get it done and put aside their own personal feelings. Sometimes we have to look at the whole instead of the piece. My piece is mine you know.
Dr. Lee: oh that’s great I commend you. The program co-parenting into the future has a lot to offer. Martha tell me your testimony about being involved in the program.
Martha: Yes a few years ago I was invited by Juli and Mark to do a pilot program. I myself was going through divorce and I thought I knew what happened in my marriage, but I did the program and let me tell you if anybody would had told me what I was going to learn in this program I would have done it many many years ago. What happened in this program is that there is a tool of communication there that is just unbelievable. I was able to see exactly what happened.
I was in church getting ready to get married. I was to walk down the aisle in the wedding march and my father helped me by my side and everybody kept looking at me and signaling me to walk and I wasn’t I wasn’t going walk because it sounded like what was playing was elevator music and I thought “was that the music I chose???” Finally I end up having to walk to this horrible elevator music and my father hands me to my future husband to be and I raise my eyes to look at him and I say “what happened to the music?” With a big smile on his face he says “I changed it!”
So, thanks to this co-parenting course I was able to see that right then and there I made a huge decision, and I could’ve made up anything, but I made up that this man will never listen to me he will always do what he wants. And you know that was the theme of my marriage. At every argument that was the core of it. So years later he’d done what he’d done and we are facing divorce and thanks to this program I’m able to be responsible that I brought that into the marriage and I was able to get complete with him. I could forgive myself for that. Another great thing that happened in this co-parenting course is that I was able to create something bigger than just that mess, which is a family. We are not together as a couple anymore, but we hatched three children that we are committed to. We both love these three children. So let’s create being partners again. It’s a game. You get to create whatever you want in that moment and we created a partnership. If you see my ex-husband and I together now everybody thinks we still are together. We go on Sunday mornings to breakfast. You know he may come and say “hey everybody let’s go to dinner or to breakfast. We just have that kind of relationship. It wasn’t going happen that way but this co-parenting course gives you so many tools to create this kind of future where your children are left untouched, like Juli said earlier.
My older daughters 26 and happily married. My son he’s 20 years old and been in a relationship for two years now. My little one is getting excellent grades. I mean they are just like really healthy and it was so great that their daddy took a part in their lives.
Dr. Lee: right amen. Now these courses can be taught online?
Martha: Yes, they’re taught online at http://coparentingintothefuture.com. There’s a trailer on there and you can register. The courses are either four hours or six hours and there’s also a Spanish version now. You get your certificate so that you can get your divorce decree needed by some states in order to get your divorce. Like here in Texas it is mandated in some of the jurisdictions of the state.
Dr. Lee: That’s great.
Juli: And the whole thing is it’s not just informational learning so people take the course it’s a very personal experience. There’s a workbook that they download and we pause in the video and they work in the workbook and they get to a place like Martha got to – every single person that’s done it that I know of has gotten to where they what we call took a left turn in their relationship and where they’re responsible – not blame that’s the key word right there. That’s right, that label goes out the window. They have to stop blaming themselves and they stop blaming their spouse or former spouse. And then they create a really powerful, we call it a context, or a future. for their relationship going forwards, so that it makes a difference for the kids.
Dr. Lee: Okay, the name may seem obvious to some but why “co-parenting into the future”?
Juli: Well, as for “into the future” if you think about it, whether you’re married or whether you’re divorced, and if you have children, you’re connected forever.
Dr. Lee: forever!
Juli: Your kids are going to graduate. They’re going to get married. They’re going to have kids. You are going to be seeing that other person. So that’s why we called it co-parenting into the future.
Dr. Lee: You know this is an awesome program because so often people who don’t divorce well (I’ll put it like that) the children really end up in a bad way and in a bad place. They carry guilt. They carry shame. One parent may try to wash the child’s mind about the other parent. And what this program does is it stops all of that. It helps them say okay we didn’t make it but the children we have, we want to give them a better future. We want to give them a better self-esteem. We want to let them know that we still love them and we want to see the best for them.
And I’m looking at this it says that you have a quiz they download it they get their certificate, all of that kind of stuff. What are some of the things the couple learn out of this.
Martha: They learn to, like I said earlier, they learn to see the moment of what happened. They learn to be responsible for their lives. They learn what we call do’s and don’ts, you know tactics in conversations. Like, not to have toxic conversations around your children. You may want to have clothes at mom’s and dad’s house. You know, when you got married you didn’t know what there was to do if went through divorce, so these things you don’t know are thrown at you in a really hard moment. It’s big enough that you’re going through the divorce and it’s already a lot of heartache. Then having to think of all these details, like the children’s clothes and home work, etc. You know sometimes children leave the backpack at mom’s house because daddy went and picked them up. You know, things like that – to look ahead at medications and such. Agreements is another thing when parents divorce and in general they have to come to agreements somehow. Well agreements needs to be in writing, not just verbal agreements. And there are just a lot of very very very critical information that that creates a successful future that is very valuable.
Juli: The cool thing is that people design it themselves. So everybody walks out of the course with an action plan
Dr. Lee: So, they have a lot of input and they get guide the way they want their family go. So it will be different for each person.
Juli: Yes, it’s a completely different for each person
Dr. Lee: Awesome that is great that is great. This allows then to work out holidays and summer breaks and who buys what when and all of that. Who’s parents get to… you work through that whole process.
Juli: Yeah, as people are going through the program they do that kind of thinking.
Dr. Lee: That something that they never even thought about even when they got married you know I tell people we spend more time on the marriage day and the wedding day then we think thinking about the marriage. This is great Juli this is really great. Okay so it’s a hundred percent successful so far right?
Juli: Right
