Divorced Parents Struggling to Co-Parent

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We\’re struggling to co-parent divorce,
different rules at mom\’s house
and dad\’s house, how to deal with this
and support our children and new spouses
and, um, other kids who are going to,
you know, different homes.
Alright, so there\’s a lot to that question.
Uh, how much time do we have?
I say that jokingly, but, but here\’s the thing.
Um, different parenting styles is very common post divorce.
Uh, usually one of the parents is more, uh, maybe
historically we say they\’re more giving Disneyland,
uh, McDonald\’s, right?
So this, so they\’re doing more playful things.
And then you have the other parent who\’s a little bit more
structured, has expectations.
And those are some of the most common ones that I hear.
Now, one of the things that I would say to that is
consistency is important.
Uh, you can\’t control how your ex spouse is going to parent.
You just can\’t control that.
That\’s something that we have to learn.
It\’s what we call the locus of control.
We have to learn what we can influence
and what we can\’t influence.
In this situation. We cannot
influence how they\’re gonna parent.
What we can influence is, is how we respond in our home,
interacting with them, them feeling,
and again, I\’m gonna say this
and I say it every time we do this.
The first guidance for all parents is relationships first.
Uh, connection, bonding, attunement,
being aware of their needs.
Because if we don\’t do that then,
and we just focus on rules, then what happens
is they think we\’re more care.
We care more about the rules than we
do about the relationship.
We want to help them understand, love them first,
connect with them first.
Because if we have love
and connection, then everything else aside,
they know they have a safe place.
The core concept is love first.
And the best way we do that is create a safe environment
where our children feel safe in our presence.
Now, again, we can go too far one direction.
We can have no expectations that no guidelines.
There\’s a problem there that, again,
some people call \’em Disneyland dads
or Disneyland moms, where they\’re just play, play, play.
And I\’ve seen it both directions where
that parent just says, well,
I\’m just gonna show the children and I\’m just gonna,
I feel guilty because of the divorce
and I\’m just gonna give them everything.
Children don\’t do well when
they\’re given absolutely everything.
They need expectations, they need to work, they need
to develop life skills so they can become the
best self possible.
And if we can understand that,
then we\’re not gonna just give them everything.
We\’re gonna encourage them to do hard things.
And we want to teach them those kind of principles
regardless of whether we\’re divorced or not.
We wanna teach our children that through hard work,
we get good outcomes and, and life is filled with that.
We have to do that. \’cause if we don\’t, then
what we learn is everything\’s coming to us,
everything\’s given to us, and we become more self-focused
than hard work focused and relationship.
So we wanna develop meaningful relationship with them.
We wanna have structure and we can\’t recognize,
we can\’t control what the other parent does.