Back to school and co-parenting work go hand-in-hand. As parents, we enjoy the summer freedoms that come with parenting, and divorced moms and divorced dads are no different. When school starts back up, it’s time to dust off the co-parenting tips and tools and get to work.
Communication Tools
One of the best tips I give divorced parents is to use one primary way of communicating with your ex, now your coparent. If you are working through your issues in divorce outside of the courtroom, you can include a communication tool like Our Family Wizard, BeFayr, or AppClose, as a point for discussion with your soon-to-be ex. If your divorce is complete already, you may have thought about how you would communicate or considered including communication tools or methods in your divorce decree. But, if co-parenting communication tools, apps, or methods weren’t included in the divorce decree and you aren’t required to communicate one specific way by a court order or divorce decree, you, as parents, still have options available. Parents can choose to use the apps and websites designed for co-parenting needs without a court order requiring them to use the specific co-parenting. Some of the co-parenting communication apps and websites have subscription fees, and some don’t. Each of them has benefits for co-parents to meet unique needs like cost-sharing. If an app or website isn’t a fit right now, you can consider having one unique email address only for your ex or soon to be ex to use. Open and exit from that email address. Don’t have it forwarded to your work email or other email so that you can review and reply to those emails on your chosen schedule, and not as interruptions in your day. One email address allows you to be in control of when and how you see the emails from your ex, as you need to based on what’s going on in YOUR life, and not on when the ex sends the email.
Communicating with your ex or the other parent?
Another piece of co-parenting education I like to talk about is the beginning of the untangling of your lives – creating healthy boundaries. Recently I’ve visited with many ex-spouses and co-parents who have issues surrounding communication with their ex. Many of these issues have arisen because one or both ex-spouses did not stop communicating as a spouse and transition to communicating only as co-parents. Keep your communications about issues relating to your child or children. Keep your texts or emails with your ex focused on receiving or sending information about your child or children. Keep them straight to the point and don’t take any bait that your ex may send about your personal life or choices. Your divorce allowed you to exclude their opinions and thoughts from your life to the extent that it doesn’t relate to your shared kids. Consider figuring out a good, easily remembered way to sign off your communications with your ex. Use the same way every time to send the signal that your done with the text, moving on, and aren’t going to continue texting or email with him or her at this point. I call that the ‘simple sign-off’. Stay firm once you given the sign-off. For example, you say at the end of the exchange of some information with your co-parent ‘Got to get back to work, Jill’. Your ex replies ‘Really? I doubt it.’ What do you do? I’d say nothing. Nothing at all. Move on. That’s why you divorced, isn’t it?
This post is for information and education only. If you’d like to visit with Jill O’Connell, Esq., please call the office at 972-203-6644 or fill out our contact form for information on how to get an appointment with her.