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Are Co-Parents Teaching Resilience?
As more and more children experience high-conflict co-parenting, they not only get caught in the middle of conflict, but also in the middle of coddling. Why are high-conflict co-parents prone to coddling their children? Because they fear not being the preferred parent. They honestly fear losing their children to the wiles and ways of the…
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THE MAGIC OF SUMMERTIME
Summer is here. I would like to challenge all co-parents this year to develop a new way of thinking about their children during this special time. We all have our own stories of the magic of summer during our childhoods. Some of you had great family vacations and family connections, and others had difficult families,…
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Why can’t he just be normal?
I recently had a mom walk into my office and she plopped down on my couch and began sobbing. When she was able to talk, she kept repeating, “Why, why, why, why?” I finally got her calmed down and asked her to tell me what was going on. Her response was not remarkable, shocking, or…
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Asking the Right Questions
One of the biggest parenting mistakes you can make is in how you respond to your child’s questions or statements about divorce or your co-parent. Too often, parents engage in defensive or factual answers that don’t get at what the child really cares about. Here are a few examples: “Mom said that if you…
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Kids Benefit from Different Parents
There is an almost universal concept in parenting. I say almost since there’s usually an exception to the rule, but I haven’t yet seen it. Whether different sex or same-sex couples, the assumption seems to hold — no two parents are alike. In my experience, parents seem to be attracted to one another in the…
