The life-changing magic of parallel parenting
We're frequently told that the best way to co-parent is by becoming BFFs with the ex, wearing matching T-shirts at every soccer game, and compromising till the cows come home. There's just one itty bitty problem with this: none of the standard advice applies when you're co-parenting with a high-conflict ex.
True co-parenting requires amicable communication, flexibility from both parties, and a general ability to just plain get along. High-conflict co-parenting is defined as the lack of all those things. So what's the answer? Meet the life-changing magic of parallel parenting!
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What's parallel parenting?
So what is parallel parenting, exactly? Short answer: your house, your rules. Longer answer: parallel parenting is what you start doing once you realize that co-parenting with a high-conflict ex isn't possible. Parallel parenting also means making the mental shift away from expecting your high-conflict co-parent to return favors, stick to their word, or see your point of view regarding basic parenting issues. Ain’t never gonna happen.
The primary difference between parallel parenting and co-parenting is that parallel parenting no longer includes communication with a high-conflict ex on specifics around daily parenting duties like daily routine, diet, homework, or bedtime. This doesn't mean that you're being an uncooperative jerk — it means you've decided to get real about what you can and can't agree on with your ex. And if you never seem to agree, well… why keep beating your head against that brick wall?
One parent continually trying to dictate how daily life should be run in the other parent's home isn't a positive or sustainable co-parenting relationship. Creating a parallel parenting plan is the process of putting boundaries in place that help calm the chaos between houses and reclaim some personal peace.
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A few awesome benefits of parallel parenting
There’s a knee-jerk tendency for people who aren’t familiar with high conflict personality types to think of parallel parenting as “failed” co-parenting, as if limiting an ex’s intrusiveness in your life somehow makes you the high conflict one. Parallel parenting isn’t failed co-parenting — it’s a completely valid, alternative approach to raising a child with someone who’s proven time and again that they’re not capable of compromise or reciprocation. Not even when doing so truly is in the best interest of your shared child.
Some friggin’ fantastic benefits we saw after switching to parallel parenting included:
Waaay less stress and chaos in our daily lives: Drastically reducing non-essential communication with Dan’s ex eradicated the vast majority of ongoing conflict between houses.
No more feeling like we were constantly walking on eggshells: Once we decided that there was no point trying to make Dan’s ex happy (she got mad no matter what we tried anyway), we stopped being paranoid about whether we were parenting SD “wrong” or in a way that would upset her mom.
Reduced friction between houses: Well, fewer incidents of friction at least, which totally counts.
A tremendously improved attitude from my stepdaughter: My SD was used to thinking of her mom as being the head honcho in charge, so she didn’t really respect our rules or believe us when we said that XYZ needed to happen. When we switched to parallel parenting, SD learned that her mom no longer got veto power over what happened at our house — so SD stopped acting out so much and started treating us with a bit more respect.
Higher quality family time together: Creating limitations around the frequency and length of the ex’s phone calls that aligned with our personal values meant our family time wasn’t constantly getting interrupted anymore. We also had fewer limitations on what we did together as a family once we weren’t taking the ex’s approval or disapproval into consideration anymore.
The biggest benefit of parallel parenting is experienced by the kids themselves though — because anything that reduces conflict between homes is better for the kids. Parallel parenting also reduces stress within your home; not only are the kids being raised in a more harmonious environment, but being less stressed out ourselves makes us better parents and stepparents.
The default advice around co-parenting seems to be based on the idea that kids will be traumatized if faced with having different rules and expectations at each home. Yet out here in the real world, kids live like that every single day — even in traditional families! Kids understand they can’t act the same way in the classroom as they can on the playground, and that the rules at Grandma’s house are different than at your house. The idea that kids have to have the same exact routine at both of their parents’ houses or we’ll end up damaging them for life is kinda… well, silly.
Big picture, what’s best for the kids is to be raised in an environment where their parents and stepparents aren’t miserable stress balls living on the edge of a nervous breakdown. And parallel parenting is one of the protective boundaries you can put in place to help with that.
How to start parallel parenting
The first step in making the shift from high-conflict co-parenting to parallel parenting is to stop adjusting your parenting actions in an attempt to make the ex happy. As part of this, you also need to be willing to let your co-parent be unhappy. This is counterintuitive for most of us, as our natural human instinct is to keep right on compromising until everyone agrees.
The thing is, a high-conflict co-parent is gonna be pissed at any solution that isn’t their solution — and sometimes they’ll be pissed even then, as you’ve probably already learned the hard way. So if repeatedly trying to compromise hasn’t won you any brownie points, you might as well make the decisions that work best for you and your family. Especially since a high-conflict ex will never agree with your decisions anyway.
Agreeing to disagree is another part of parallel parenting, but what happens if you and your high-conflict ex disagree about major joint custody issues like medical concerns or education decisions? In that case, turn to the professionals for help.
Although parallel parenting doesn't refer to an official, court-ordered parenting arrangement, a solid foundation for parallel parenting can be established by including the right points in your parenting plan... such as requesting that any disagreements between co-parents will be settled by a court-appointed mediator or parenting coordinator.
While there’s no magic button that’ll make a toxic ex stop acting high-conflict, parallel parenting can at least restore some semblance of balance to a biased co-parenting situation.
