Parallel Parenting: A Structured Approach When Co-Parenting Isn’t Working

Welcome to Bridging the Gap, Law, Therapy, and Justice. Hey everyone, welcome back to an on-your-episode of Bridging the Gap, Law, Therapy, and Justice with Attorney and License Marriage and Family Therapist, Caitlin Burgess, I'm your host, Mike Leon. You know, Caitlin's interdisciplinary work blends law, psychology, and forensic practice to help families and courts navigate high-conflict situations with clarity and compassion. And in today's episode, we're going to be talking about parallel parenting, a structured model that can support children when traditional co-parenting simply isn't possible. Caitlin, it's good to see you as always. Let me ask you about parallel parenting, parallel parenting, excuse me, because say that three times fast, because I would love to understand a little bit more about the term. I'm sure many families when they approach you, they're hearing it for the first time. So describe what it means and how it differs from co-parenting. Yeah, right, so parallel parenting, that's something you would hear if you're involved in the family law process, for sure. It's not something you would hear sort of day-to-day as you go about your life. So it's definitely a term that we hear a lot in family law. So basically, the difference really is between parallel parenting and co-parenting counseling. It's when there's so much conflict that the parents really cannot collaborate and work together. So they engage in parallel parenting. And when that occurs, day-to-day decisions regarding the children, rules, routines occur. In each household, sort of separately, there's no real input from the other parent, no collaboration. It's also a parenting model that requires sort of minimal input from the other parent. They're just sort of functioning as two separate ships in the night, regarding the day-to-day routines of the children. Well, it's a good way to look at it, right? So you mentioned about conflict within there. And I'm sure conflict is high after these court orders and counseling, communication tools. What are some signs that you've seen that a family could benefit from this parallel parenting structure? So sometimes co-parenting counseling just doesn't work or co-parenting in the absence of co-parenting counseling doesn't work. So it doesn't need to be a long-term solution. Maybe the parents have just separated, and there's a lot of hurt feelings, a lot of intense big emotions, and so they're going to need to go into a parallel parenting model as sort of a temporary bridge to sort of ease them through that transition to divorced or separated parents. And let's contact between the parents can actually sometimes be healthier for the children and for the family as a whole. So in terms of signs that would be when the conflict is very, very high, maybe there has been domestic violence, and the parents just cannot collaborate. So that would be an indication that a parallel parenting model might be best for a particular family. Yeah. Caitlin, can you expand a little bit more about that? Because like you said, there are two nights in the ship. Two ships in the sea, excuse me, at night. And so they're doing their own parallel in terms of parenting. And so it's two different ships operating. But from that clinical standpoint, how does the reducing of contact between those parents actually help the child maybe feel more secure? Well, it's going to reduce conflict because they're not interacting, they're not triggering each other, they're not in a battle. And so anytime you reduce conflict in a post-separation post-diverse family, that is going to have a very positive impact on the family system as a whole. And particularly the children because the research studies have consistently demonstrated that, you know, divorce can be challenging on children. It's definitely considered an adverse childhood experience. But if the conflict is reduced, the long-term prospects for the children to develop in a healthy way actually increase and it's developmentally better for the kids. Can you kind of share obviously without giving intricate details of the client example? But from your work with these high conflicts happening in these families, can you share a situation you can think of where the parallel parenting model maybe changed the tone of a case or maybe it improved the stability for the child? Yeah, so again, can't talk about any case specific details here. But I can think of numerous examples from my clinical practice where the co-parenting counseling has just sort of skyrocketed tensions and not helped because the parents can't agree on anything and maybe this family doesn't want a parenting coordinator. And so, you know, I've heard sometimes parents say interacting with the other parent is agonizing, like that's a word I've used, causes them stress, causes them anxiety and to session extent that it's impacting their general health. So when that's the case, if I have been assigned to do co-parenting counseling, I might shift that a bit and have separate sessions or we might transition to a parallel parenting model. So generally, what I will see if the parent is using words such as agonizing to describe interactions or if there's a lot of contention, I've even seen things escalate, you know, to swearing, having to end phone calls between the parents or Zoom calls rather. In that case, switching to a parallel parenting model is better because the co-parenting counseling becomes contraindicated. That parallel parenting is going to keep tripping a sub-calon. I'm telling you what, I feel bad for you guys continuing to say it in the industry, but can I ask you a little bit on the courts? Let's focus on them for a second. What are some specific elements that judges tend to include to kind of keep things predictable and maybe reduce the opportunities for conflict? Yeah, courts don't like the conflict. They tend to try to put systems in place in terms of the parenting plan in terms of involving neutral professionals to reduce conflict because the courts don't like it. They, and it's not healthy for the children. So that's the reason that they are trying to ameliorate that issue, that concern. So when there is a lot of conflict, Mike, the courts want there to be a very predictable, very detailed parenting plan to give the family a lot of structure and they will sometimes implement or recommend or order rather because it is the court. Communication occur on parenting platforms, such as our family wizard, or talking parents because those are great platforms to help reduce the conflict. The communications can be considered evidence in court, their time, stamped, date, stamped, you know when the other parties read the email, when the other email was sent, they can't be altered. At least not to my knowledge. Regular text communications now, they could be altered and presented as evidence in a court matter. So the court likes those platforms. They have tone meters, for instance, on our family wizard, which can let the party know, hey, this is a contentious communication, you need to lower the contention. Sometimes strict communication protocols, even ordering look, any communication on our family wizard or talking parents needs to be child-centered, creating detailed provisions for everything, practically, such as parents attending events. Sometimes there will be provisions in the parenting plan saying they cannot approach one another at events, detailed provisions for emergencies, travel, and so forth. So detailed parenting plans, communication protocols, appointing third party neutrals, such as therapists for the parents or therapists for the children or co-parenting counseling. So that's how a court would tend to respond to exceptionally high conflict. Kayla, let me ask you about the psyche of the parents for a second. When they get presented or when you've talked to them about maybe parallel parenting, how are you helping them process that like the structure doesn't necessarily signal failure on their end, it's really about protecting the child from the ongoing stress and the conflict that you guys are creating for on-time purpose. Sometimes you would have failure. Sometimes it can feel like a failure. Sometimes we have one parent wanting to co-parent and the other parent not wanting any contact at all, and so the parent that wants the co-parenting gets very disappointed. But really I try to emphasize the parents that this can be just a temporary bridge. It's really scaffolding for growth, try to provide psycho-education about the detrimental impacts of conflict on children and their healthy development, help them view it as not a personal failure, but really just hopefully just a temporary solution so emotions can cool down and then the family can hopefully co-parent eventually after some time. So I try to refocus this on just a possible temporary solution and put into place to help the family heal. Okay, let me ask you on that front about the kids specifically. Let's say there's somebody listening to this that is going through the parallel parenting. What are some routines you would recommend especially because kids are on the move and they're going between the two houses. What kind of routines practices should they start to implement to support them emotionally especially since the parents aren't interacting with each other? Yeah, children thrive on structure so I would recommend highly consistent routines in each household and parallel parenting. Those routines might be very different but at least the children know that in mom's household there's going to be consistent routine and that's household. There's going to be a consistent routine so highly structured routines. I would recommend that the transitions are not high conflict that they go smoothly, I really emphasize to the parents that conflict at the transitions and the kids are going to pick up on it so maybe if transitions occur in a neutral setting such as the school which is a great place for a transition or a daycare that sometimes works better for the the kids than having the exchange occur at the household. Caitlin, speaking of parallel parenting, co-parenting you mentioned once temporary and the hopeless to move towards collaboration with co-parenting so when they do shift back to that model like what are some conditions that usually need to be in place before that kind of transition to co-parenting can can can exist can be healthy, can be realistic. Yeah, so you know growth, personal growth on the part of each parent, they're they're less invested in the conflict, they're more centered on the children, less core filings. I'd like to see communications on, for example, if they're using our family wizard to be less contentious, more you know appropriate following the Biff model, brief informative, friendly and firm business-like professional as if you're speaking to a colleague. Just I'd like to see the decibel of the conflict down and for a sustained period, several like six months to a year, really see growth in the family and if there's growth in the family and they're ready to co-parent then yeah, it can be time to co-parent and maybe they could utilize a co-parenting counselor as part of that transition. Kaelan, as we kind of wrap here on this episode, maybe there's a listener out there that's trying to decipher between you know these two methods given the conflicts that are arising with respect to their situation. What are some additional things that you would recommend they consider that can kind of help them make sense of whether parallel parenting fits their family's needs right now or co-parenting? Yeah, I would ask them hey, I would get their feedback right or if I was working with them, I would want their feedback. If they're just kind of trying to make the decision themselves, I would just look at hey are we able to reach agreements? Are we able to create some flexibility? Stuff comes up right? Maybe there's an event that's going to happen in mom's neighborhood and the child wants to to attend and it's you know more appropriate for the child to attend with mom and maybe in this instance dad says okay sounds great. Sure no problem if they can reach those sort of seamless agreements without you know withholding the child or being punitive or weaponizing the child, how they're feeling actually interacting with a parent like that's important how you know kind of check in with yourself. How are my interactions with my co-parent impacting me personally? Are they causing me stress? So you know do I need a lot of guidance and how to respond to vitriol and an email or are things going smoothly and how are the kids doing? Are the transitions going well? Am I seeing a lot of behavioral issues with my child when my child comes back to their from their dads house for example? So I think you know you can just check in with yourself if you're working with your own parent coach or your own therapist you could kind of get some feedback from them if you have a lawyer you can talk to them about it. So just checking in with yourself making observations about your children how are they doing in school? How are they doing socially emotionally? Are they regressing in any way? Are we seeing behavioral offers? But if things are going smoother Mike then yeah you can transition to co-parenting and that really is a best-case scenario people able to co-parent effectively together. Yeah well Caitlin it's great insights as always I appreciate you breaking this down for the audience thanks again for the time. You're welcome and thank you. And that's it for today's episode of Bridging the Gap Law Therapy and Justice and if you want to learn more you want to connect with Caitlin and her team do me a favor visit caitlinburgess.com today and one more favor before you head out like subscribe leave a review comment or share the episode with someone who needs to hear it. I'm Mike Leon we'll see you everybody next time. Thanks for watching be sure to hit that like and subscribe button and leave us a review in the comments.