When Co-Parenting Falls Apart: Navigating Care for a Special Needs Child After Divorce
Navigating Co-Parenting of a Child with Special Needs
In this episode of How to Split a Toaster, Seth and Pete dive into a challenging listener question about co-parenting a child with special needs after divorce. They aim to provide guidance and perspective, even when there are no easy solutions.
Our listener wrote in, explaining how their once amicable co-parenting relationship completely deteriorated over disagreements related to caring for their special needs child after the divorce. Seth and Pete emphasize the difficulties that can emerge when expectations change, acceptance differs, and consistency in care becomes paramount.
Questions we answer in this episode:
How can you rebuild communication with an ex over a child's care?
What role can your divorce attorney play in this process?
How do you balance caring for other kids as well?
Key Takeaways:
Overcommunication is essential for co-parenting a special needs child
Finding acceptance early is crucial to stay on the same page
Consistency of care should be the north star, despite disputes
This profoundly challenging issue rarely has simple solutions. But Seth and Pete provide their best advice for navigating the tricky waters of co-parenting a special needs child after divorce. Their insights make this episode invaluable for anyone facing this difficult situation.
Links & Notes
Got a question you want to ask on the show? Click here!
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to How to Split a Toaster, a divorce Podcast about saving your relationships from TruStory FM. Today, your toaster's taking the stage.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show everybody. I'm Seth Nelson. As always, I'm here with my good friend Pete Wright and it's listener question.
Pete Wright:
It's listener question. This is one, Seth, that has been hanging out in our listener question file for some time for this reason. I'm going to go ahead and read it. This comes from Veronica who has this question. "I just listened to the mental illness in the marriage episode. My co-parenting relationship started out amiable and cooperative, but completely fell apart over the care and custody of a mentally ill child. I'd love to hear an episode about this." Well, Veronica, today is your day.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. And Veronica, sorry it took us so long to get to your question, but we thought it was so important and you asked for an episode and it's certainly worthy of a full episode. That's why it took us a little while, so I apologize for that. This is one of the most difficult types of parenting cases, child custody cases, any term that your state uses, you can have. It's hard enough to have parents agree on how to care for a sick child in the best of times. When you are in a co-parent relationship, whether that is you're married and sometimes the marriage breaks down over how you deal with a child with mental illness or physical disabilities or anything else, sometimes when you're divorced and you're not looking on the same roof and children requires much consistency as possible, man, is that hard, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
So, it's heart-wrenching. It's extremely difficult. And everything, I think Veronica, that we're going to say on the show you probably already thought of, but you need to co-parent on the other side to be a willing partner in this. And also, and this is especially hard, sometimes we just don't know what's best. So if doctors are giving advice, we try to follow that advice, but sometimes it doesn't work or it's wrong and then they go to step two and then let's try step three. And maybe step three takes hold for a little bit and then wanes, and then we're onto step four. So there's no good answers here. Most of what we're going to say, like I said, you've heard before, you've already thought of, and that's about how you communicate and what you can do to do your best to be as consistent as possible.
Pete Wright:
Well, and the question for me starts with the relationship started out amiable and cooperative, but fell apart over the care and custody of this child. I'm curious what you read into that statement, because to me it sounds like it might be just the conflict or the friction of co-parenting post divorce and maybe the struggle of a lot of things that we've been talking about, about how to co-parent and how to manage the details of a child's life.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, well, part of dealing with a kid that has mental illness is the parents readjusting their expectations, hopes and dreams that they frankly put on the child, right? We all are hoping for a happy and healthy child. And when for whatever reason they don't fall within the norm, which is a range or they have special needs, we have to readjust, right? Because no one ever says, "Oh man, I hope I have a special needs kid." It's something that is thrust upon you. And so part of that, readjusting in trying to get your child to be the best that they can be and as self-sufficient as they can be with the cards that they have been dealt in this thing called life, can be a struggle in and of it yourself. And some parents can't cope with that, the one that is in denial because there's a grieving process going on with that.
So if one parent's in denial, "No, this isn't happening. No, I don't want to label my child. No, I'm going to not use the medication," there's always no, no, no, no, no, then that can be an issue. And the other one is farther along in the process like, "Man, we need to get help. I've been seeing this for a while." So part of that is just adjusting in and of itself, and that can be a breakdown in the parent relationship because you're at different areas of acceptance on this very difficult issue.
Pete Wright:
What are the systems... I think I know the answer to this question already, but are there systems in the divorce process to help parents dealing with kids on the variety of mental health spectra to help better understand or give tools for how to communicate in this scenario? Do you build this into a parenting plan?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. So when you have a special need kid, if you're going to trial, that's something that actually gets the court's attention. However, the issue becomes, does the court believe the kid has special needs? If one's saying no and one's saying yes and it's a battle of behavior and the kid is five years old or six years old and maybe not have a formal diagnosis, then you're arguing over whether there's an issue or not.
Pete Wright:
Wow. I don't even know what to do with that statement, Seth. I mean, it just feels like when we've been talking about parental alienation and other ways to game the parental sort of co-parenting process, that what you just said is diabolical.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah, it's absolutely horrible. Sometimes you have to bring in evidence to court, information that you're getting into the court record when you're in trial. Therefore, it's now evidence that the court can consider. Then I usually advise clients not to obtain a video of your kid when they are totally breaking down and doing things that are outside the norm. Then if you have that videotaped information that I get into evidence, the court's going to see it but you are opening up yourself for attack by the other lawyer to say, "Your kid was breaking down and you made the decision to video it for evidence?"
Pete Wright:
To make a video.
Seth Nelson:
Right? And the answer is yes. And then on redirect, when I'm talking to my client is, what led to that decision? She's like, "Because no one believes me, and I wanted to show you what I see on a daily basis. And yeah, out of the 30 times that this has happened in the last 90 days, one time I videoed it."
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Seth Nelson:
Right? So you're in court, you get that, experts are key in this because they're going to come in and talk about it. "Here's what happens, here's what the kid needs." Then it's your job as the lawyer to show that your client can provide it. So the only way, if the other parent isn't going to do it and stick to the plan, the only way to limit that negative aspect of parenting because the kid needs such structure is to limit the time with the other parent.
Pete Wright:
Then it becomes custody.
Seth Nelson:
That becomes a full-blown trial.
Pete Wright:
I imagine you've seen it swing both ways in terms of kids getting what they need out of a custody trial. Does it feel like the arc of history tends to bend toward good health and healing and a good thriving life for the kids? Or is it really just all about what game you play in court?
Seth Nelson:
I think the arc in non-special need kids goes to the parent that isn't causing the "problems", has a better long-term relationship with the children. If you're bashing your co-parent in front of your kid, every time you say something negative, you might as well say, "I don't want to have a good relationship with you when you're in your 20s and 30s." That's what you're telling your kid when you bash the other parent, right? And I've seen that over and over again. Kids figure it out and they figure it out quick and they figure it out before you realize they figure it out.
Now, when you have a special need kid that maybe is nonverbal, so has to show their love and affection in a different way, maybe they're on the spectrum and relationships and showing their feelings is more difficult. So that becomes less about the parent-child relationship and more about, "What do we do to care for this kid?" So here's some things you can do, right? First off, you make requests. You're not making demands. "I think this is what we should try. Here's what I have set up at my place." Get a Google talk. So there's just an abundance of communication. Get the Google calendar, get it where you can show what medications they've taken, what they've eaten, what has set them off, if it's a noise or if it's a allergy or if it's... I mean, like I said, I'm not telling anything that she hasn't heard already or thought of.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, right.
Seth Nelson:
But you have to over communicate when you have a special needs kid, not under communicate. And ultimately if they're not on board, you're going to stick to what you're sticking to at your place. And I get and appreciate that when your kid comes back to you, it takes you 48 hours to get them back on track. And the next thing you know, they're going back over to the other parent and it's going to get all messed up again, right? It's brutal. We don't know what the mental illness is in this question, so I'm reading a lot into it. I'm trying to expand the conversation, not that I'm saying we should have had more information. It's very personal.
Pete Wright:
No. Yeah, what can we do? I'm thinking about the pressures that come on a co-parenting couple when strained with care for a mentally ill child and not having the benefit of a smooth sort of marital relationship, right? When they've lost the partnership that comes in the marriage, they become strained on partnering on anything else is what I'm hearing.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. And it's going to put a strain on you financially because most kids with special needs, those special needs are going to cost money to try to address. And now it's like, "Well, we're a two person income household, and now do we need to go down to one because we need a parent really to raise this child and be all hands on deck? And then how do you get a break? And now we have less money, but we have more expenses, but at least we don't have the additional expenses of care. We need continuity of care." But now you are split up. Really? One parent's going to say, "It's okay that you stay home and I pay you alimony and you're raising the child that I barely ever see and all I'm doing is going to work"? That's a tough sell. So it gets pretty complicated pretty quick.
Pete Wright:
It just makes me think that some years back, I made a short film about a family dealing with just this and their routine at night. I did not meet the child. He was a teenager. I did not meet the child until yet in the home environment. So I got the tour of what the home environment looked like while the child was with caregivers at school. Every day mom had to go around to every door and they had giant wrought iron gates affixed to every internal door with deadbolts high up near the ceiling. They had deadbolts inside the house that they had to fortify and lock down and take the keys and hide the keys because every day, every night, the kiddo had a lot of energy in the middle of the night and they found he would go exploring and he would tear up the kitchen in the middle of the night or he would leave the house and run and they lived in farm property and they would risk losing him.
I think about the fortress of what they had to create in the home. And I think how do you possibly co-parent in that environment when you lose half your partnership? And in this case, they had two other kids who were not dealing with a mental illness.
Seth Nelson:
That's what I was thinking. What happens to that other kid that's sleeping when he wakes up in a nightmare and wants to go crawl into mom and dad's bed?
Pete Wright:
All the doors, everything's locked, dead bolted. They're in a fortress.
Seth Nelson:
Right. And so these are tough, tough decisions. How do you make sure that your other kids don't feel abandoned by you because you're always caring for the child with a disability? How do you give them the time that they need? How do you divide up your time to have a one-on-one with the child with a disability, assuming that one parent can handle the child with the disability? Sometimes it takes two, right?
Pete Wright:
In this isolated experience, that was one of the stories that came out in this, that mom is at home and taking care of her son at home alone. When the child goes to school, the state has resources, full-time aide walking to and from classes, all the classes have extra aides in them. So there's a whole team of people that work with the child at school. At home, it's a very different and isolating story.
Seth Nelson:
Right. And all those resources you talked about, Pete, are amazing. This family got them because that all comes from a federal law called the Individual Disability Education Act, called IDEA for short. A lot of people have heard of IEPs. Those are individual education plans. Those come from the IDEA. That's what that federal law says. The federal law says to the states, "If you want federal dollars for education, then you are required to provide a free and appropriate public education known as FAPE, free appropriate public education, to children that have special needs." And the way you do that is you create an individual education plan and there's a planned meeting and you talk about everything. So you get to that meeting and everybody's supposed to be on the same page and everything's supposed to be doing what's best for the kid. And when you say, "I need an aid," the state or local school board says, "We can't afford it," and you're like, "I don't care. That's not my problem. Figure it out. You get federal dollars." That in and of itself is a tough battle.
And then what, if any, aid can you get at home? What the IDEA allows for education past 18? So there's a lot of moving parts there. And then you add on top one parent thinks that the child should be medicated and the other one doesn't.
Pete Wright:
Well, this leads to sort of a hornet's nest that we've talked about in the past, right? Medications, vaccinations, any sort of continuity of care that fall into ideology.
Seth Nelson:
Right. And then you're ultimately going to court if you're not agreeing on this stuff on ultimate decision making. Who's going to be the decision maker? And if you're not going to give the medication, then maybe that child isn't with you.
Pete Wright:
So that gets back to, I think, the central question that, at least in my head when I think back to Veronica's question here is, when the relationship falls apart, what do you need to ask of your legal team, of your attorney in terms of supporting the co-parenting or dissolution of the co-parenting relationship?
Seth Nelson:
The best ways, to try to communicate, to rebuild it if you can. And if you can't, it's a little bit of lead follower, get out of the way, right? There's no good answer here because your attorney can't make the other person be a good co-parent. The judge can't make the other person be a good co-parent. What the judge can do is give you ultimate decision-making and limit the time. So these cases just go down to, our judicial system is not set up to solve these problems. Veronica is going to stop listening to this show.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
We're not helping her at all.
Pete Wright:
Yeah, but I think it just illustrates exactly your point, that there are things that are beyond the legal podcast, right? There are things that are beyond the system. And to your point, it's not set up to accomplish this for a lot of people.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. And I don't know what state she's in. I don't know what the laws are. I don't know what the child's disability is. I don't know how the relationship broke down. There's a lot of what ifs, what happens to fill out here. But usually kids that are special needs, the biggest thing they need is consistency. And it's hard enough in a house when you're living together, it gets dramatically harder when you're living apart.
Pete Wright:
That's not a very high place to leave us in this podcast, Seth. I feel like you left us on a real downer.
Seth Nelson:
Well, we don't have to end the show now, Pete. We can crack some dad jokes. We can-
Pete Wright:
Do we have some good jokes we can tell? Bottom line is, you know what's great? I'm going to find this silver lining here, is that Veronica is listening to the show and Veronica has found, I think, a silver lining. My experience is very limited, but what I do know is that there is a lot of love around kids with special needs in a lot of places. And I think finding the little nugget of love and joy that you have in your relationship with your child is the target, right? That's the special place.
Seth Nelson:
100%. And I will also tell you that in my experiences, when you bring your kid to the playground and they have special needs, the kids aren't the problem. It's the parents of the kids in the playground that are the problem. And I truly believe in this day and age that the young kids, we can complain about them being on their electronic devices and not having human interaction as much as we had when we were kids and the importance of that, but I do believe they're more open-minded about a whole host of issues including special needs kids and mental illness. I know my son would talk freely because he with his friends would talk freely about, "Oh yeah, I'm seeing a counselor. Here's what I'm dealing with" or, "I'm on this medication because I have anxiety," which a lot of youngsters have unbelievably, or, "I suffer from depression." A lot of those conversations are happening out in the open that were not happening when you and I were children.
Pete Wright:
Veronica, thank you for sending in this question and giving us an opportunity to talk about it. I hope in the absence of super concrete direction and silver bullet solutions to the legal system, I hope we've given you some things to think about and some potential directions to move in in your co-parenting relationship.
Seth Nelson:
And Pete, I don't think I've ever said this on the show. Veronica, my heart goes out to you so much. You know how to get ahold of me, Google it, How to Split a Toaster. You know how to find us there. But nelsonlg.com, get on my calendar for a "free consult" and see if I can help you out in any other way.
Pete Wright:
There you go. Seth mentioned it, howtosplitatoaster.com. Just tap the Submit a question if you want to be like Veronica, and ask your question to Seth, and we'll try and navigate our way through that too.
Seth Nelson:
We'll do the best we can. We're not perfect, Pete.
Pete Wright:
We are going to do the best we can. Yep, that's all we can do. Thank you everybody for downloading and listening to this show. We sure appreciate your time and attention. And on behalf of Seth Nelson, American's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright. We'll catch you back here next week on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships.
Outro:
How to Split a Toaster is part of the TruStory FM Podcast Network, produced by Andy Nelson, music by T. Bless & the Professionals and DB Studios. Seth Nelson is an attorney with NLG Divorce and Family Law with offices in Tampa, Florida. While we may be discussing family law topics, How to Split a Toaster is not intended to, nor is it providing legal advice. Every situation is different. If you have specific questions regarding your situation, please seek your own legal counsel with an attorney licensed to practice law in your jurisdiction. Pete Wright is not an attorney or employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
