Benefits of Post-Divorce Coparenting Counseling

During your divorce proceedings, you may have had discussions regarding cooperative parenting or coparenting in regard to your children. At the time, you may not have really come to terms with the fact that challenges of different types can arise in an environment involving cooperative parenting. You may now find yourself dealing with an array of issues surrounding the care of your children. You may wonder whether there is any wisdom to seeking post- divorce coparenting counseling. There are some benefits associated with counseling to address issues arising from cooperative parenting:

• Open better lines of communication between parents
• Review parameters and requirements of cooperative parenting agreement
• Provide confidence to coparent more effectively
• Explore collaborative parenting strategies
• Enhance ability to coparent with other spouse
• Keeping focus on the best interests of the children

Before considering the benefits of post-divorce cooperative parent counseling, a reminder of what is meant by coparenting is useful. Collaborative parenting is a joint endeavor undertaken by divorced or separated parents to take on certain tasks together and in a cooperative manner relating to children born during the marriage. These tasks include:

• Providing basic care
• Socialization
• Undertaking essential tasks associated with raising

Cooperative parenting does not involve an intimate relationship between the parents. Rather, it is focused solely on the children and promoting their bests interests. What sometimes is called bi-parental care or parental investment is provided by both the mother and father in a cooperative parenting environment.

In the final analysis, cooperative parenting can only work well if parents have the ability to community effectively and civilly on a consistent basis. Unfortunately, due to the nature of divorce proceedings, coupled with what led up to and follows a marriage dissolution case, communications between parents can oftentimes be impaired. One of the key benefits associated with post-divorce cooperative parenting counseling is an improvement of communication between parents and between parents and children.

This type of counseling is also helpful in aiding parents to review, better understand, and maintain the fundamental requirements associated with a collaborative parenting scheme in a post-divorce world. The reality is that parameters and boundaries can become blurred or even not fully fixed in the first instance. These types of issues can be addressed and resolved in counseling.

Parents succeed in on parenting cooperatively when they have confidence in what they are undertaking. This includes confidence in the entirety of the cooperative process but also confidence in their own individual abilities as parents. Counseling associated with cooperative parenting can work to enhance the confidence of both parents on all levels of the process of caring for children in a shared environment.

Yet another of the benefits associated with this level of post-divorce supportive counseling is the ability to explore different join parenting strategies with the guidance of a professional. Developing more definitive strategies that are mutually shared between parents makes the entire process of collaborative parenting more consistently effective and productive.

On a related note, this type of post-divorce counseling aids both parents in enhancing their own abilities to parent effectively in shared environment. This includes both becoming more aware of tactics that positively contribute to the shared parenting process and identifies some parenting tactics that are not particularly helpful.

Collaborative parenting counseling helps to maintain the focus of the parenting process on the children. In the final analysis, the ultimate objective of cooperative parenting is to ensure that the best interests of the children are protected and advanced. Collaborative parenting counseling allows access to a profession who understands the best interests of a child objective and has experience in aiding parents in refining those parenting strategies that are useful in enhancing and advancing the best interests of their children.

If you have questions about coparenting or any other post-divorce issues, call (201) 845-7400.