Home

How Parents Treat Each Other

Email to friendEmail to friend

Children love their Mum and Dad, so look at the relationships from their perspective. It really doesn’t matter who did what to whom. The adjustment of the parents and how they treat each other are amongst the most important factors in how children experience divorce. The benefits to the children of developing a good co-operative relationship with their other parent can be enormous and the negative effects of not behaving in a civil way far-reaching. At some level work towards mending or reforming your relationship with the other parent. Remember, it's vital for fostering good practise at home and for parenting your children. Common sense? Easier said than done? ’Yeah but no but, yeah but no but…’ the answer is unequivocally ‘YES!’

YOUR MOTIVATION

  • It is key to helping you move on, develop, and provide a good backdrop for your new life.
  • It will massively improve the chances of your children developing a healthy level of self-esteem.
  • It is vital for helping your children to have a happy childhood.

AN EXERCISE

Try and articulate your problems with this concept (if of course you have any!). Write down the reasons that make you instinctively not want to do it…….

RE-DEFINE YOUR RELATIONSHIP IN YOUR OWN MIND

Think of someone with whom you have a good functional relationship. Someone with whom you have to deal with to achieve a mutual goal in a non-personal way. For example:

  • A work colleague
  • Your child’s teacher
  • Your cleaner
  • Your doctor
  • An au-pair, child minder, baby sitter etc

Now use the language and manner you might use when dealing with these people and behave accordingly with your ex whereby…

  • You give enough information or tools to get the job done
  • Do not share anything irrelevant to the goal
  • You provide them with the help so that they can do their bit
  • You keep them on-side

With these people it’s easy to see how impossible it is to get things done if you don’t behave properly, calmly and stick to the agenda. If you don’t, there’ll be a confrontation and an argument and you’ll achieve nothing. So why then would you imagine that behaving like this with your ex is going to get the result you want?

Here are some top tips that will help you and your ex to keep things under control:
  • Give each other loads of space
  • Go at the speed of the person most hurt by the split
  • Let each other have time to work through bad feelings
  • Be polite and courteous
  • Be punctual for arrangements
  • Stick to a relevant and appropriate agenda
  • Think before you speak 
  • Have a cooling-off period when you get overheated
  • Follow through to show you can be trusted
  • Put things in writing and agree action points
  • Work out a code of conduct carefully
  • Keep your dignity and self-respect
If you share children you do still have a relationship of sorts and it’s important that you plan to turn this relationship into a working one that you can manage and handle. This may well be an extremely hard step and so it requires a bit of thought.

BE REALISTIC

Above all, be realistic: don’t over- or under-promise; or expect too much or too little of your co-parent. Think about how you’re behaving as parents towards each other from all angles, and from different perspectives. Put yourself in your mum’s shoes – what would she say about how you’re behaving and parenting together? Then your best friend’s shoes - what would she say? Looking at things through other people’s eyes can help you to see what you should be doing more clearly.

Explain to your ex at the outset that this is the way you will be behaving from now on. It may feel a bit odd at the beginning, but as time goes on it will be less forced and will develop its own rhythm. Obviously you will get it wrong from time to time, you will snap, may be a bit off and make sure that you check these episodes which will happen are sorted out quickly in a business like and efficient manner. Through an agreed grievance plan.

GRIEVANCE PLANS

When things go wrong with your behaviour, and I think we all know when we go wrong (!) you’ll need to sort it and get back on track. Sort it sooner rather than later, and away from the children. Sort out the specific issue without diverting from the subject and getting into irrelevancies (the sort of ‘and another thing..’ type conversation). Apologise, explain, and leave it at that. You’ll be back on track. If you believe that things are wrong with the other person’s behaviour you’ll need to deal with that too in order to get them back on track. Do it when you have calmed down! Explain your concerns and irritations and appeal to the other person to rectify their behaviour and leave it at that. Do not fester, do not mull on it, do not speak in anger, do not speak in haste. Think of the times when you’ve done that before and think how the conversation went way off course – we’ve all done it – don’t deny it! Just use it as an example of how not to do it! Don’t forget you’re trying to re-stabilise the ship. It all sounds like ‘Perfect Peter’ behaviour but it’ll help you enormously. So don’t not do it because you don’t feel like being nice! It’s a cunning way to make things work better.

Categories: