There might be plenty of personality traits and opinions that separate you from your ex and have led you to divorce one another. But you can avoid inviting tension into your life after divorce by finding common ground on co-parenting tactics.
Setting the stage for how you will take care of your children with your ex after your divorce can be a lot to think about. However, finding ways to compromise can help you create consistent routines for your children and wiggle room surrounding parenting plan expectations.
Unifying discipline
Maybe you are stricter about limiting electronics or temporarily taking away certain privileges as a form of disciplining your children. Agreeing to a plan for discipline that both you and your child’s other parent stand by is ideal. This is because it will help prevent one parent from trying to be more relaxed about what is acceptable and unacceptable, which may spread a confusing message to children. Otherwise, you can consider at least agreeing to disagree if you plan to allow one another to set your own rules for your children.
Allowing schedule change requests
You probably don’t want to continually revisit a parenting plan that took months to develop. So, before finalizing your plan, you can add rules about handling future schedule conflicts. Create a set of conditions under which you are both willing to accommodate requests.
Sticking to the schedule as much as possible can help your children know what to expect and look forward to their time with each parent. But since emergencies may arise and adjusting to single parenting can come with surprises, it doesn’t hurt to agree to bend the rules here and there.
Co-parenting will be a new for you and your ex, so you may benefit from finding points of agreement instead of putting up a fight. And setting aside personal preferences can help you come up with a co-parenting strategy that benefits everyone.
