For beginning we all are trying to achieve the mystical perfect co-parenting. But what if its not possible? What if we are met with the situation when we only can not do the "good co-parenting" whatever that is. What does that mean for children we are focusing on?
When mother of my partners son realized that I am here to stay, she found the new reality too much to accept. Her initial demand was that dad has to “hide me”. Meaning; I was not allowed to “show up” anywhere she goes, not to be seen during school pickups, not be be seen within after school clubs, school events, or whatever other child related events. She stated that only bio-parents can be seen with their son. She expressed that she will not allow me to be in handovers or even in the car when driving to handovers. And as a last resort: If I will not obey those rules and will be in his car, I am not allowed to leave the car or say a word to her, or even look at her direction. (From their phone conversation: “Tell to your girlfriend that she can not talk or look at me during our handovers. I find any word or comment from her triggering, because she should not be here anyway, she is not a parent, she doesn't belong to the picture. Last time she said: "Hi, how was your weekend" and I find it upsetting. Its not her business to ask how was MY weekend. If you really must bring her, she must keep her mouth shut and stay in the car.”)
Obviously, those demands were silly and surely could not be taken seriously! The first impulse for the majority of people in this situation would be: BM should get over herself! Grow up! Who the hell she thinks she is to dictate, where I can or can not be and how many words I am allowed to say in public places! All those are valid reactions. Yes, she did cross the line of acceptable requests and expected boundaries. I would lie, if I say, that those thoughts did not cross our minds and our conversion. The mother of his son announced that she was going to mistreat me and now we were put in a situation where we had to decide, how we will respond. She said out loud that she will apply “silent treatment” that is a well known form of abuse in social groups. I am writing about the silent treatment between Bio-mothers and step-mothers (or ex partners versus new partners if that applies to your situation) here. On the other hand, I am a trained CBT therapist and have a degree in psychology and human development. The situation intrigued me professionally. As well as I am a divorced mother and my children have a step-mum. I can remember my own very conflicting feelings when my ex found his now wife. So we took a bit of time to think. Rule of thumb: never give a response immediately, without giving yourself some cooling down time. We chose to look behind the rude words. To act upon why she said what she said, hoping to reduce her discomfort. Fact is; if you are going to corner someone, they will only attack, not surrender. The way to lower conflict situation is not to corner that person, who already feels hurt and who lost control over things she used to have control over? (Their co-parenting relationship was fully orchestrated by the mother of their son, but that is a story for another chapter) We were able to identify couple of her needs: It is painful for the mother to face reality. Yes, in words she accepted the fact that he has a partner now and her son is spending time with that partner, but she doesn't want to witness that reality. She is desperate to shelter herself from the reality. Maybe she can face it later, when she had more time to adapt with the new reality? What are we willing to accommodate as a gesture of good will? We are willing to respect the fact that she is feeling emotional pain about the situation. We will not have any benefit from adding to that pain. We will try out best not to agonise her more. To minimise the chance for her to "lose it" we can choose to drive me home before driving to the handover point whenever possible. If driving me home first is not possible, I can respect her request and stay in the car and will not say “hello” or any other pleasantries that are expected in similar situations. Yes, it feels like "giving in a toddler tantrum" but she is not in sound mind at this point, so we can not expect her to start behaving reasonably only because we said "no, you can not have it". If she asks dad to come and collect their son from her home, I am not getting out of the car before he is driving up to her driveway. But I am happy to remind in the car and "not put my foot on her driveway", as it's her private land. However, in this case dad will not spend time in her house to get their son dressed and ready for leaving. Mum has to get their son ready and dad will only collect. When our offer was presented in response to her requests, the mother of his son stated that now dad is ruining their good co-parenting. She described emotionally, with a suitable amount of tears and sobbing, that now their son will suffer badly because dad isn't spending time in mum's company anymore. What their son's need is that dad will come up into mum's house, spend some time indoors playing with him before they are getting ready to leave. Dad must keep doing family days with mum and son only or he will cause emotional damage to their son and overall everything is now wrong. Why is dad not following the rules she is saying how a correct co-parenting should be? That now dad is choosing to be a BAD DAD and a BAD CO-PARENT. Dad said that he can hear her opinion, but he is refusing to act as family with mother if she insists that their son's step-mum has to be left out and excluded. Mum realised that she can not make him change his mind about this and because they do have to have a handover somehow, mum said she will take their son to a playground instead of allowing dad to come to her house from now on. This was the first unexpected win. For the first time in 4 years, dad was able to negotiate to meet halfway (they have 40 mile between their houses). Against mums' threats, it had a very positive effect on their son’s emotional wellbeing. When handovers happened from one parent house to another parent house, their son was crying during the time when he was carried from one parent’s house to the other parent’s car and driving off. It always felt for that little boy that he was taken away, had to leave one of his homes and one of his parents and he experienced feelings of loss and emotional pain every handover. When the duty parent took him to the agreed playground before their handover, it wasn't anymore "I have to leave my home to go to another home" it was replaced with: “I am having one parent at playground and if this one has to leave, now I have another one here to carry on having this fun”. Their son did not experience a feeling of loss and "being taken away", now it was one parent swapped out another one. He was still playing in the same playground, still having fun to the point when he had enough of playing. Then they left with the parent present to carry on with his day. After couple of moths and couple of attempts to create some "innocent co-incidence" or plain set ups situation, where they would spend time "just three of us, as the our son's real family", mother realised that dad really meant, when he said that he will not go out for any socialising with BM and their son only without including step-mum. Second win: The mother of his son called him up one day and said that now she wants to avoid handovers in person entirely. That her first 3 years friendship has been always conditional and now dad lost the privilege for a friendly co-parenting. As a result, a new parenting plan was created and pick ups and drop offs happened from/to school or childminder from now on. Their son was now school age. Once again, against bio-moms prediction: the new arrangements had a positive impact on their sons emotional wellbeing. Previously handovers happened from parent to parent and their son lived through separation every time. That was because he got separated from one of his parents every time when it was handed over to the other one in person. Their child did feel that he is made to “leave one parent behind to be taken away by another parent”. With the new arrangement two parents did not meet. There was no parent to leave behind when one of them turned up in the nursery door or later on in the school gate. There was only excitement to see that parent who came to pick him up and take him home (one of the two homes he has). Obviously there were still rare occasions where parent to parent handovers had to happen. example; when nursery (and later school) were closed/ school holidays. Now those happened strictly on neutral ground (Playground half way between homes). One parent arrived 5-10 min earlier, got their son playing and when another one arrived, the first one left and the second one carried on playing with their son. The usual cry during the handover and driving off from a parent house got replaced occasionally: “Why do you have to leave already? Stay longer and play with me!” and a sad face, but no crying or feeling of being taken away or leaving one of his parents behind because he did not leave anyone behind. one of his parents had to leave the playground but he was still able to stay with the other one and carry on playing. Adults benefited from the fact that new "bad co-parenting" meant that parenting time was agreed for 6 months ahead and recorded in a shared excel table. A steady timeshare pattern gave stability and routine their son (and all the adults in this mixture) appreciated and benefited from. Previously mum and dad's day to day tasks were blended, they were talking daily about anything and everything and that meant that they arranged childcare very flexible: with a couple of days advanced and they swapped and changed a lot all the time. It worked for them when they were both single, because mum likes to socialise a lot and dad was happy to be very flexible as he is not a person who would plan ahead, rather goes with the flow. When dad moved his partner in, there were more people to consider and his partner had to plan things because of her work and child care obligations. Before the "bad co-parenting" era, during the "good co-parents" years, it was impossible for dad's side of the family to plan anything. Dad never knew he would be asked to do any swaps or extra nights because mum has new plans. He was confronted with a common quilt trip: “We suppose to be friends! that what good co-parents are doing, they will help each other out, I would do the same to you if needed.” ( Do I have to mention that those two times when we asked for a swap, the response was both times: “I would love to but I have plans for that time already but I definitely will help out next time.”) With being a "bad co-parent" we had information up to 6 months in advance about when their child will be with us, when with mum. Now we were able to book any holidays without "asking BM permission" to not send their son to dad's house over certain dates. Previously it was very difficult to keep parenting fair because mum pulled the guilt trip card every time. She used to say things like: "That what a good co-parenting suppose to be", "Don't forget that you are doing it to be a good co-parent! You don't want people to think that you can not be a good co-parent, do you?" "But we are friends! Don't you want to keep our co-parenting friendly?" and dad just did not want to call her out in fear of losing the friendship. ( read about co-parenting myths here) Now the friendship was out of the window anyway. When mum declared that friendship is gone, she also gave away one of her manipulations tools she used to have all the previous years. Without being threatened to "not play friendly anymore if you don't do XWZ for me" both sides were able to rely on the schedule and actually plan things in advance. There was less reasons to fall out or get into arguments, so a low conflict co-parenting was achieved with the "bad co-parenting" approach. Their son loved stability and became more relaxed, more settled and his constant tantrums disappeared. He became happier and more social and within 12 months his emotional health improved massively.
The third benefit of "bad co-parenting" came about social media use. The mother of his son began to worry that dad might see what she was posting on social media (she is massively involved with social media and is trying to make a living out of it) so she blocked both of us from her social media accounts. For us, it was a huge relief. Previously they (dad and mother of his son) were friends in social media and that is why we constantly had conversations about what we can post and what we can not regard as what might trigger her or how she might react to any of our social media moves. Finally we were free to handle our accounts without constantly worrying about her mental health and mood swings. As well as us his family was able to like our posts without upsetting BM who found it all disrespectful to her if they were “liking me too much”. Blocking each other from social media improved a lot at everyone's emotional wellbeing.
As you probably noticed: I have been using quotation marks when saying “bad co-parenting” and “good co-parenting” It's because good and bad are subjective terms. Far too often we read from social media or the internet what a “good co-parenting” must be. Unfortunately those are subjective opinions, not the reality. A good co-parenting is and always will be: the co-parenting I want to get, doesn't matter what others might need. And “I” have their own personal goals and motivations. They are unique and CAN NOT EVER BE RULE FOR EVERYONE ELSE TO FOLLOW. Each and every one must have enough self awareness to understand what kind of parent they want to be. If it is matching with your co-parents ideas, good for you. More often it will not ( read about the reasons here). Even more often happens that your co-parent will have changes in their lives and your current arrangement will not work any more. Your current co-parenting will not be the “good one” anymore for their side, but it's still the preferred option for you. Trying to force them with guilt-trip (you are a bad co-parent if you like different things than me or different things you used to like) is wrong idea and will only lead to resentment from both sides. The only sensible thing to do now is to get a book. Yes, a book, not a web page that comes up in google popularity contests. Books are more likely to be neutral and written by people who are specialists not sharing their personal experience. Remember: whoever tries to sell you their personal experience: they are not you, do not copy, adapt!
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