Does Parallel Parenting Work for Arguing Exes?

After you get through a divorce, as parents, you still have more hurdles to overcome. Unfortunately, unlike childless couples, you will still have to maintain some level of contact with one another in order to raise your children.

Cooperative co-parenting may feel like an impossibility at first, or something you would not enjoy at all. In this transitional period, you can consider going for parallel parenting instead.

What is Parallel Parenting?

Psychology Today discusses parallel parenting after your divorce. Parallel parenting is a temporary form of co-parenting that allows you and your co-parent to raise your child without directly interacting with one another. It does so by ensuring you only communicate via writing, such as by text, email or even letter.

You can avoid conversations entirely as well, simply choosing to document important information or events about a visitation in a notebook, which your child can pass between the two of you.

How Does It Benefit You?

This style of communication has numerous benefits for the newly divorced. Primarily, it lets you process the situation without having to immediately leap into a new challenge together. It also lets you communicate without the knee-jerk responses you would likely give in a face-to-face conversation. This can cut down on arguments as well, which is one of the main benefits to both of you and your child.

However, parallel parenting is a temporary tool. A judge will occasionally review your case, deciding whether or not to keep the system as-is, to change it, or to have you move on to a more cooperative form of co-parenting. Because this differs so much from family to family, it is hard to estimate a timeline by which you can assume this change will happen.

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