By Ho Shee Wai
Clinical Director / Registered Psychologist

To nurture well, the co-parents need to evolve from their conflicts to having clear goals, plans, priorities, “job description” (roles), and rules based on consensus.  Although individual co-parents will have unique goals, most parents will strive for some general, basic long-term co-parenting outcomes. 

Basic Co-Parenting Outcome / Goals

Your child should:

• Steadily feel and be shown unconditional love

• Steadily feel and be shown conditional respect

• To have his or her fears, dreams, feelings, hopes, and needs listened to

• Have a/all co-parent(s) play the role of loyal companion, friend, and playmate

• Be given merited praise and recognition often

• Feel and be shown honest affection

• Be given healthy touching, hugs, and kisses

• Be encouraged and guided, rather than criticized and shamed

• Be protected from abuses, dangers, and neglect

The co-parents need to agree on who is responsible to consistently model and teach your child:

• Self respect and non-egoistic pride

• Self nurturing values and skills

• Self protection skills

• Personal honesty and accountability

• Personal hygiene values and habits

• Proper bathroom manners and behaviours

• Language/swearing/name-calling limits

• Verbal and written communication skills

• Effective problem solving skills

• Anger/aggression/impulse management

• Nudity, modesty, and privacy standards

• Proper ethical and moral judgment

• Respectful attitude about race, gender, background, etc

Practically, the co-parents need to have clarity in terms of who is responsible for the following areas of your child’s life:

• Medical needs

• Education

• Physical care

• Health & growth

• Finance

• Spiritual/religion

Aim for consistency

It’s healthy for your child to be exposed to different perspectives and to learn to be flexible, but they also need to know they’re living under the same basic set of expectations at each home. Aiming for consistency between your home and the co-parent’s avoids confusion for your child.  Consistency needs to be in 3 main areas:  

Having looked at the goals of coparenting, let's look at how we can communicate so as to facilitate this process.

Rules

Rules do not have to be exactly the same, but if both co-parents establish generally consistent guidelines, your child will not have to bounce back and forth between two radically different disciplinary environments. Important lifestyle rules like homework issues, curfews, and off-limit activities should be followed in both households.

Discipline

Try to follow similar systems of consequences for broken rules, even if the infraction didn’t happen under your roof. So, if your kids have lost TV privileges while at the other co-parents’ house, follow through with the restriction. The same can be done for rewarding good behavior.

Schedule

Where you can, aim for some consistency in your child’s schedules. Making meals, homework, and bedtimes similar can go a long way toward your child’s adjustment to having two homes.

Communication Tips for Co-parents

Co-parenting is full of decisions you’ll have to make with the other co-parent(s), whether you like each another or not. Cooperating and communicating without major blow-ups or bickering makes decision-making far easier on everybody.