Co-parenting After a Separation or Divorce (continued)

• Ask your children's teachers or school administrator to send all correspondence to both parents.
• Inform the other parent of any changes in class schedules or extra-curricular activities.
• Be polite to your spouse at school events or sports events. Rude behavior or comments and can be distracting or humiliating to kids.
• Share your children's schoolwork with the other parent.
• Keep adequate school supplies at each parent’s home.
• Share information with your ex before parent-teacher conferences.
• Be objective. Do not criticize or blame the other parent during meetings with teachers.
• Ask teachers for suggestions for helping your child with schoolwork.
• Calendar any action steps recommended by the teacher and follow up on them.

Co-parenting financial issues

Unfortunately, most families have less money after a divorce. The cost of maintaining two separate households can strain your attempts to be effective co-parents. But there are ways to make co-parenting easier.

• Create a realistic spending plan for yourself and kids.
• Make prompt payments of support and alimony. This eliminates a source of parental conflict and shows the kids that you are caring for them.
• Allow your children to visit your ex even when the support check is late. Doing otherwise could backfire and trigger court action against you.
• Do not ask your child to deliver cash or support checks to your ex.
• Keep receipts and accurate financial records for any expenses shared by both parents.
• Discuss finances with your ex when kids are not present or cannot hear phone conversations.
• Avoid excess spending on kids to compensate for the divorce.
• Be gracious when your ex provides your children with vacations or opportunities that you cannot provide.

Effectively managing children's medical needs

Children who have chronic health conditions or disabilities will benefit greatly when their parents work as a team. Effective co-parenting can help parents focus on the best medical care for the child, and it can help reduce anxiety for everyone. Here are some tools.

• Choose one parent to communicate primarily with health care professionals, or attend medical appointments together with the child.
• Keep a file of your child's visits to doctors and any recommended treatments. Be willing to share the information with your ex.
• Be honest when discussing your child's health problems, try not to inflate them or minimize them to manipulate your ex.
• Transfer medications to your ex-spouse, not your child, at trade-off times. Include written instructions on dosage and side effects with the medication.
• Be consistent about medications and treatment.
• Inform your ex if treatments or medication dosing has been irregular so that any changes in your child's health condition will be understood and managed properly.
• If your child's illness becomes worse during a visit to your ex's home, look for information and facts; avoid over-reactionary responses.
• Cooperate with your ex about special foods or comforting personal articles that could be sent to the other parent's home while your child is recovering from an illness.

Tips for discipline and household rules

Strong differences in child rearing styles often contribute to marital problems, and after a separation or divorce these unsolved problems will need to be addressed on some level. Co-parents should discuss these issues to find areas of agreement and to come to terms with areas where they agree to disagree. Some basics:

• Aim for some consistency in schedule such as meal times, when homework is done, and bedtimes
• If a child has been disciplined in one household (as in no TV for a week), attempt to understand the other parent’s decision and honor it if possible
• Where the rules are different from one home to the other, acknowledge those differences and make sure the rules in each household are clear to the kids

Co-parenting suggestions for holidays and special events

Custody arrangements made through a court often include plans for holidays. As co-parents, you should aim to be flexible and fair with holiday scheduling. For example, some kids would prefer to spend one-half day with each parent rather than only see one parent on a holiday. Other kids and parents find this too fragmented, so they alternate attending holiday events.

One of the first steps to successful co-parenting during holidays is to take care of your emotions. Some newly divorced people consider holidays or special events an exciting opportunity to celebrate in a new, more meaningful way; but many parents and kids experience lots of strong emotions at these times. Anger, jealousy, shame, guilt, or fear may surface or be repressed and trigger depression or anxiety. This can steer you off course from your best co-parenting plans. To help yourself and your kids, take some time to share those feelings with a trusted individual. Talking to a friend or a professional can release some of the tensions and make the holiday time more positive.