When Co-Parenting Just Doesn’t Work: The Solution? Parallel Parenting
When Co-Parenting Just Won’t Work
“Divorce is not inherently bad for the child. Conflict is.”
In today’s episode, Seth and Pete talk about the challenges of parenting when divorced parents just can’t make things work. It’s called Parallel Parenting. Is it okay for the kids? How does it work? And how do parents handle the challenges that come with it? What happens if your ex is alienating your child from you or using the child as a tool for vindication? They talk through many aspects of this parenting plan as well as explaining why it’s used and in what situations. They talk about improving your communication skills using the BIFF method – Brief, Informative, Friendly and Firm. And they talk about why it’s important to try getting to a place where you can say things like, “whatever’s easiest for you.”
Links & Notes
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Pete Wright:
Welcome to How To Split A Toaster, a divorce podcast about saving your relationships from TruStory FM. Today, when you can't talk to your toaster, you toast in parallel.
Seth Nelson:
Welcome to the show, everyone. I'm Seth Nelson. As always, I'm here with my good friend, Pete Wright. We've talked about co-parenting on this show but what happens when parenting your kids together is simply too hard? When conflict is high and communication is impossible, we turn to parallel parenting, a co-parenting arrangement where separated and divorced parents work together while staying apart. Pete, if you think about a toaster, you really are always doing parallel.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, I guess that's true.
Seth Nelson:
Yep.
Pete Wright:
Who would toast perpendicular, man? That's ridiculous.
Seth Nelson:
Well, I guess they have those toaster ovens that's-
Pete Wright:
Yes. You could stack your toast. Look, this whole concept, you brought this. I actually don't even remember how we got into talking about parallel parenting but we are doing a whole conversation on it today because it breaks my brain. I'm going to need you to explain what parallel parenting is and how it could possibly be a good strategy for separating parents with kids.
Seth Nelson:
Think of parallel parenting simply... The way I always like to tell clients when you think about this, the rules at mom's house are the rules at mom's house, the rules at dad's house are at the rules at dad's house. What dad does, dad does, what mom does, mom does, and there's very little interaction, communication, co-parenting, trying to work things out for what's best for your kid. Take all that stuff and just put it to the side. It sounds horrible because-
Pete Wright:
It sounds horrible.
Seth Nelson:
How do you do that, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Well, and what gets you there? What are the constituent elements that get you to the point where, "I'm just not going to talk to my co-parent anymore. We're going to have a set of rules that we abide by and we're not going to be able to work together as parents."
Seth Nelson:
A lot of it is one parent has mental illness, addiction. Those are big ones, okay? If you are truly dealing with someone who's a narcissist and can never see the other side, it's always a fight, they'll hold you to the letter of the agreement, and look, I write parenting plans every day, review them every day, study how they're written. I cannot write a parenting plan and no lawyer can write a parenting plan that will solve every single potential thing that comes up in a child's life from age 2 to 18. It just doesn't happen.
So when you try to just look at the agreement and then there could be ambiguity, there could be vagueness, there's a lot of things that we work hard to eliminate from the contract. But when you start playing lawyer and you're reading the contract and the parenting plan and you're trying to say, "Well, you did this and didn't do this," well, first off, let's assume you violated it.
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
We've talked about, okay, you go to court, file a motion for contempt and enforcement, and there's just all this stuff that just ramps things up and people just throw it at each other's face. When it gets to that point, you guys just need to stop worrying about this stuff and just... When you have your kid do your thing, when she has the kid, let her do her thing and that's parallel parenting and it can go to an extreme.
Pete Wright:
How so?
Seth Nelson:
When's the last time that you or your wife went to a doctor's appointment for your child and didn't update the other parent?
Pete Wright:
Okay. That seems like it would be a strange thing given you only have the one child.
Seth Nelson:
Right. So parallel parenting, you think the child is sick? On your time, you take that child to the doctor and the only thing you're required to do is tell the other parent that you went and then that parent can get the medical records directly from the doctor. That's an extreme example.
Pete Wright:
That's what I hear when you say extreme like it could go to the point where a parent takes the child to the doctor and then there's a parental handoff and the other parent also takes the child to the doctor.
Seth Nelson:
That's right.
Pete Wright:
That seems crazy to me. How is that useful for the kid?
Seth Nelson:
Believe this or not, the best thing for children is to not be placed in conflict. So when you have two parents that go to the doctor together and argue for the sake of argument in front of the child and in front of the doctor, it's better for that child for one parent not to be there so there's no argument. Divorce is not inherently bad for children, conflict is.
Pete Wright:
Okay. So even post divorce, what we're talking about is... All of my questions, I realize as you were talking, that my questions assume that the child is an automaton, is a non-participant, and of course, like a child of any reasonable age, once they can speak, would be able to answer the question, "Were you just at the doctor?" and probably get a good answer. So the child is a participant in communication, right?
Seth Nelson:
The child shouldn't be but the child's going to come home and either have medication with them or be sick and you're going to see that or the child's not going to go to school and you're going to get a notification from the school. So most of the communication, if not all of it, and it's usually written as, "Except in case of an emergency," and then I define what an emergency is, is through OurFamilyWizard. We've talked about these parenting apps.
Pete Wright:
Yes. Let's talk about it.
Seth Nelson:
Do you use OurFamilyWizard in all of its form and function? Including receipts, including the calendar, and you get a notification, "Child's not at school." Through OurFamilyWizard, "Hey, I got a notification, is everything okay?" It could be an emergency so maybe it's written that if you get a notification from school, you're allowed to text the person, "Hey," texting, "Got a notification child's not at school. What's going on?" Now, with these parents, I work hard to teach them how to properly draft an email or a text brief, informative, friendly, and firm. That's it. But the response then should be, "Sick. Taking to the doctor, will update OurFamilyWizard," or, "Call the doctor after 3:00 and get the report."
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
I'm showing you the extreme examples.
Pete Wright:
But it feels like it's going to be extreme if you're going down the road of parallel parenting in the first place like by default, parallel parenting seems extreme to me.
Seth Nelson:
It is. That's a very good point. So Pete, what did you like to do growing up, extracurricular-wise?
Pete Wright:
I played soccer. You probably won't believe that but I played soccer.
Seth Nelson:
I believe it.
Pete Wright:
I was exceptionally bad at it. I was goalie on a very good team so I never played.
Seth Nelson:
There you go. So you got clean sheets but not because of what you did.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Exactly.
Seth Nelson:
Perfect. Scoreboard looks good.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Scoreboard was great.
Seth Nelson:
So here's the deal, people that have conflict like this cannot agree on extracurriculars. So your parents, let's assume, are divorced. Your mom wants to sign you up for soccer, dad doesn't. Here's the rule, either parent can sign up the child for anything they want to sign them up for but they're only required to take them for things that either they agreed to or that they signed them up for.
Pete Wright:
Okay. So mom signs the kid up for soccer.
Seth Nelson:
Mom sends OurFamilyWizard, "Hey, Pete wants to do soccer again this year, thinking about signing them up. Do you agree?" "No," is the answer.
Pete Wright:
Okay. So mom does it anyway.
Seth Nelson:
She's allowed to.
Pete Wright:
Because parallel parenting?
Seth Nelson:
Yep.
Pete Wright:
Okay. And then, Pete goes over to dad's for a week, right? Now, but what about soccer practice? Does dad have any responsibility to get Pete to soccer practice?
Seth Nelson:
Nope.
Pete Wright:
What if Pete says, "But daddy, daddy, I love soccer and I want to play soccer."?
Seth Nelson:
That's between Pete and his dad. It has nothing to do with the co-parenting.
Pete Wright:
Wow. Okay. I need you to talk to me a little bit about how these co-parenting agreements are set up. What is the role of attorney? How do you work with attorneys? What gets you to the point of saying, "Look, I think we need to put together a parallel parenting agreement because this is ridiculous and we're not going to get anywhere with these people," or does the court play any role in it? Can the judge just say, "Look, it feels like you guys aren't ever going to be able to talk so let's go ahead and go down the road of parallel parenting."? How does that work?
Seth Nelson:
That's exactly how it works. It is-
Pete Wright:
Oh.
Seth Nelson:
You answered your question by the question like how bad does it get? We've talked about it on the show. When someone says it's Tuesday, the other says it's Wednesday. When anybody says, "I want to do soccer." "No." "I want to do X." "No." "This is a lot. I don't want to take the child on my time." It's not your time. It's the child's time with you and part of being a parent is taking your kid to soccer practice, into the soccer games, into the extracurriculars. And then, parents will say, "Seth is only wanting his son to sign up for soccer," like if my former spouse is talking, "because Seth played college soccer. He is all about soccer. He is living vicariously, reliving the dream," on and on and on and on and my kid is doing cartwheels at soccer practice and obviously screaming to me though I missed the signal and this is a true story. When he was five years old when I was coaching his soccer, he's screaming out, "Put me in gymnastics," all I keep saying is, "Stop doing cartwheels in soccer practice."
My fiancee pointed that out to me. Jo-
Pete Wright:
He's over there with a yakisoba table saying, "Hey, all I want to do is cook this shrimp. Why won't you put me in cooking school and keep me on the soccer field?"
Seth Nelson:
Put the shrimp away during halftime, okay?
Pete Wright:
That's right.
Seth Nelson:
It is not-
Pete Wright:
Can I just tell you a quick story?
Seth Nelson:
It's not Kosher.
Pete Wright:
My son's not Kosher. I had my son. I knew that soccer wasn't the right thing for my son because he was very young. I don't know. He was six. When do you start doing youth soccer, right? I was standing on the sidelines and I watched my son walk off the field, pick up a piece of trash, Capri Sun, like a juice box and start drinking it on the field while he is playing. I was like, right then, "Soccer's not your game, man." Let's go and do something else. So I feel like those are the signs. All right. So parent sees those signs and you start approaching the idea of we need to put a parallel parenting plan in place.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. A lot of it really sounds foreign to everything we've talked about on the show on how to better co-parent and it's actually simple because literally what happens at dad's house happens at dad's house, what happens at mom's house, happens at mom's house, and the least amount of interaction, the better. So we've talked about right of first refusal, common in a lot of parenting plans. That is, I have my child, it is a Saturday of the weekend, that I have them all weekend, but I've got a big trial on Monday.
So I'm in the office prepping and I'm going to be in the office for more than four hours or eight hours or ten hours, whatever the case may be, but I'm unavailable to care for my child. I'm required to say to the other parent, "Hey, I'm unavailable. Do you want to have time?" and they usually say, "Yes." They say yes, I drop them off, I pick them up, whatever the case may be, and they go spend time with mom because I'm working and the concept is, "Look, you already have your kid at best half the time, let's say, and if you are unavailable, then why should the other parent not have time with the child?"
Pete Wright:
Totally makes sense to me.
Seth Nelson:
Right? It makes sense.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
But in a parallel parenting, you just eliminate the right of first refusal.
Pete Wright:
Wow. So you suddenly... I just go for childcare, I don't even need to ask.
Seth Nelson:
Correct. We just eliminate it.
Pete Wright:
Fascinating.
Seth Nelson:
We just eliminate it. Now, that leads to other problems. What happens if every weekend I have my child, I'm just pawning them off to friends' sleepovers and I say, "Oh, he has a lot of sleepovers," but it's every weekend? What happens if I'm just giving them to the grandparents to take care of or an aunt and uncle to stay at all the time and I'm not really doing any parenting but I'm not interested in parenting but I just don't want you to have them?
Pete Wright:
So suddenly, the child becomes a tool for vindication somehow.
Seth Nelson:
Which is a lot of the nexus of the problems with parallel parenting of when you say, "How does these things stem?" It has nothing to do with the child. It's like you're using that child as a pawn in your chess game which both of you're playing pretty well because we know the pawns just get wiped off the board.
Pete Wright:
Well, that leads to like how some of these tools are used and in my very cursory research, trying to figure out how to make sense of parallel parenting, I came up with this phrase that I feel like is something you're going to be able to talk about parental alienation.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. So parental alienation is when one parent attempts or succeeds in alienating the child from the other parent. It's actually a psychological term. Can a parent just keep poisoning that well with that child and create such a mess that the child doesn't want to go over to the other parent? Worse case of parent alienation attempt that I ever dealt with is when the parent was telling the child that the other parent had sexually assaulted that child but it never happened.
Pete Wright:
Oh my goodness.
Seth Nelson:
Children at a very young age, as we all know, cannot distinguish between reality and fantasy. That's why when you see a father that dresses up in the bunny suit for Easter with a three-year-old or a two-year-old and then takes the head off and it's dad, the kid starts crying because that reality is different.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
They don't understand. So what happens in cases like that is you then need to prove not, this is going to be a double negative, not that the violence did not occur but you have to show that it... Which it's hard to prove a negative.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Seth Nelson:
You have to show that the other parent planted this seed in this little child's head and this little child might believe that they were sexually assaulted.
Pete Wright:
Wow. That's actual malice.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Talk about detriment to a child.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
Worse is being sexually assaulted. The second worst thing is having a parent put in your mind that you were and you believe it to be true.
Pete Wright:
It's the same trauma.
Seth Nelson:
Exactly.
Pete Wright:
When you're at a certain age, right? Yeah. So this gets to how you manage through the big challenges of parenting that come with raising any child, let alone using the child as a tool for vindication. What do you do with things that happened like growing up, dealing with drugs and porn and sex and all of the things that kids have to learn about the big kid world before they're 18 and don't have to talk about that stuff anymore with their parents?
Seth Nelson:
So I think your question is, "Well, Seth, when you have to have a serious conversation about growing up, how do you have that conversation with your child when the co-parent might not be saying the same thing?"
Pete Wright:
Yes. That's my question. Good job.
Seth Nelson:
You have that conversation despite the fact that your co-parent might not be saying the same thing because you don't really have a co-parent, you have a parallel parent, and you're going to deal with whatever that issue is in your house in the way that you deem appropriate. When you want to get them a cell phone, you get them a cell phone.
Pete Wright:
But if the other parent doesn't want him to have a cell phone, cell phone doesn't come in the house.
Seth Nelson:
That's right. That's right. It just stays at... When you go to the transition, tell your friends, you're at dad's this week, you don't have your cell phone.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Seth Nelson:
Right? When you have the conversation, "I'm getting you a cell phone," which means you have porn available in your pocket. Other parent is not involved.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. It's crazy. It goes against everything we've talked about.
Pete Wright:
Everything. It feels to me like it's hard to even justify this conversation under the moniker a divorce podcast about saving your relationships because I hear you, I absolutely hear you. That this is about removing the child from conflict but everything we're saying appears to introduce more internal conflict to the child having to dance between this two set of potentially very different rule sets in order just to get through youth and teenage years. That seems just naturally damaging.
Seth Nelson:
It is not great for kids but in my experience, it's less damaging than two parents that are constantly in conflict.
Pete Wright:
What is the trigger? How often out of your book of clients do you find you turn to a parallel parenting arrangement? So if I'm listening to this and I know I have conflict in my divorce, should I expect my attorney to turn to parallel parenting pretty easily or is it something that's rare?
Seth Nelson:
No, and I'm going to expand it beyond our client base, just all the cases I've been dealt with over the last, geez, 15 years of doing nothing but divorce work. My guess is there's about 10% to 20% that are like this. Now, I actually think that as children get older, naturally, parallel parenting happens but not for a negative reason. There's less communication needed when you have a 16 or 17 year old than when you have a 6 or 7 year old.
A 6 or 7 year old, you got to figure out all the extracurriculars, they don't really have a voice, you can distract them with an ice cream cone, you got to make sure that everything's packed in their bag. When you got a kid that's 16 and driving, "Dude, you want to get to soccer? Get to soccer. You want to come home like..." So on that, maybe the curfew at mom's is 11:00 and maybe at dad's it's 1:00 AM so okay, we're not going to go to court and fight over two hours.
So I think naturally, I think some conversations when the kids are older are more important to make sure you're on the same page but they just don't occur as often, even in a healthy co-parent relationship. I mean, I don't talk to my former spouse as much now as I did from when he was little because there was just more moving parts in a little kid, right? 16 year olds, hopefully, 17, they're on cruise control doing their thing and you're just trying to get them through high school.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Borrowed time to 18 anyway, right?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. Exactly.
Pete Wright:
What do you do when one parent... I mean, I feel like I know the answer to this already but I got to ask. You're in a relationship that's high conflict because one parent doesn't want to communicate. The other parent says, "I think we can work this out," but it feels like you're on the road to parallel parenting anyway.
Seth Nelson:
Takes two. Takes two and what happens is there'll be portions of even co-parenting where parallel parenting will exist because there'll be something that happens at your house that maybe you didn't talk about with your former spouse that maybe you should have but yeah, my rules, whatever.
This just popped in my head. Here's an example. I think my son was 15. Ever since he was little, we would go out to nice restaurants because it would just be me and him and we would share a meal and I'm like, "I'm not going to eat Chick-fil-A all the time even though I love it just because I have a little kid. Let's go out to a nice restaurant. We can split a meal." It didn't actually cost me that much because we were splitting it and I would get a glass of wine and I would let him smell it. So then, we were at the house one day and I opened bottle of wine and he goes to smell it and he goes, "Can I have a glass?" and I'm like, "Hmm. Man, I really feel like I want to say yes to that question but I really need to talk to mom about it first. I just can't but I think she'll say..." He looks at me and he goes, "Mom, let's me have a glass of wine," and I was like, "What? Oh, here you go."
Pete Wright:
Okay.
Seth Nelson:
So maybe I would've-
Pete Wright:
You certainly get to know what's important to the other parent by way of the kid.
Seth Nelson:
Right. And so, maybe that would've been a co-parenting like, "Hey, he's 15," maybe I should have... If I would've mentioned it to her, which I never did. I did in joking, I think. I thought it was funny. Maybe she said, which probably she did, "Oh, I'm sorry. I probably should have talked about that first," and I'm like, "Yeah. No worries." But you take that in a high conflict divorce case where there's really parallel parenting going on and the kid says, "Well, mom lets me drink wine."? Oh, you're getting emotion.
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Right? You're going to court. Could you let your kid drink alcohol? Yes. That's like now a whole big deal in the court system where his mom and I have the same philosophy. Right now, he's a senior in high school, he's 18. Yeah. I'm going to let him have a drink at home because I'm trying to teach him how to drink responsibly before he goes off to school in August and can do whatever the hell he wants. I'm having conversations like, "If you're going to get a fake ID, which I know you will, make sure it's your name, not somebody else's name on that ID because then, it's not identity theft."
Pete Wright:
Oh, dear.
Seth Nelson:
Right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Which was a little different when you and I were growing up when we didn't really have identity theft, right?
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Oh, yeah. To my knowledge, it was all a fake name as far as I... I cannot confirm or deny.
Seth Nelson:
Right. My son asked me, "Dad, tell me that story again when you got put in the back of the cop car. Tell me that story when your fake ID got taken by the bouncer in Chicago and you went up to the cop and said, "He took my ID and it's real," because what person with a fake ID would go up to a cop to try to get it back so I played that card?" I didn't get it back.
Pete Wright:
At least you said it was real.
Seth Nelson:
Right. Yeah.
Pete Wright:
Officer, Officer, the bouncer took my fake ID. Oops.
Seth Nelson:
But these types of things, when you have a good co-parenting relationship, even though a decision might be made at one house or the other that maybe should have been discussed, that's a little form of parallel parenting like, "I'm not going to discuss. I'm just going to do it," and it's not in that way, negative. We talked about it, we joked about it but take that same scenario with a true parallel parenting and they're going to weaponize that action. They will weaponize it, they'll call their lawyer, they'll be filing shit in court.
Pete Wright:
What's the converse of that? Are there any decisions one parent can have that have to be followed at the other parent's house?
Seth Nelson:
Give me some... Fire away.
Pete Wright:
I don't know. I mean, you already brought up booze. You dropped porn a minute ago. What's the... Girlfriend sleepovers?
Seth Nelson:
Nope.
Pete Wright:
I don't know.
Seth Nelson:
Nope. If you want to-
Pete Wright:
Oh, that is-
Seth Nelson:
If want to have a girlfriend sleepover at the house, you're going to be allowed to do it now.
Pete Wright:
If the parent who has that is okay with it?
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. The parent can say, "Yep. Girl stayed the night and it was in another room," or whatever. I mean, and it's so hard to prove this stuff anyway. I mean, what are you going to do? Call the kids in? Did they sleep the night? Did you have sex? You're 16, you're 17, you're 18... So if you find out something's going on in the other house, I'm not saying that you can never file in court. This isn't just a free for all.
Pete Wright:
You can be upset about it and you can use the law to be upset about it.
Seth Nelson:
And you can try to file in court and say, "This is detrimental to the kid," or, "We need to change the time sharing plan. We need to do this, this, or that," but at least you were mentioning really big issues but a lot of co-parenting that breaks down and they go to parallel parenting, they can't agree on the little stuff. I hear this all the time, "I have to do all the driving." I get it. It's frustrating when you're co-parents moves 20 miles away and the parenting plan says that you do pick up and drop off and now, you're stuck in traffic and all this stuff. What they miss is that's quality time with the kid that the other parent is just giving up because the other parent doesn't really want to do that.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Seth Nelson:
But in parallel parenting, you're not doing exchanges at the house. You're usually doing exchanges at a police station or to and from school all the time.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Yikes.
Seth Nelson:
Parallel parenting, you have it where both parents, if they agree on the extracurricular, are required to buy all items needed for the extracurricular, thus to limit the amount of exchange of soccer cleats, uniforms. So they're going to the coach, "I need two jerseys." Oh, the coach is like, "Yeah. Home and away." We're like, "Nope. Two home, two away."
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Four jerseys.
Seth Nelson:
Yep.
Pete Wright:
What about stuff like... So here's one that I think is coming up more and more. At my house, my son is going to be gluten free because he gets sick, he has inflammation, whatever. He is not being diagnosed with celiac disease but we know he has a gluten intolerance and dad doesn't believe that and doesn't care. So now, we have a kid where one parent believes deeply that health is at stake but the other parent does not.
Seth Nelson:
I would take it to court. Kids getting sick, you get a diagnostic, dad keeps feeding them the stuff, kid keeps eating it.
Pete Wright:
Vaccinations.
Seth Nelson:
Oh.
Pete Wright:
You can't see, dear listener, what just happened there. I think Seth just deflated on the word vaccinations.
Seth Nelson:
I've litigated this and judges just got it wrong because there was so much misinformation about vaccinations that judges didn't get it. What they were saying is it's a joint... Here's the problem in the law. On vaccinations, it's a medical decision which normally is a joint parental responsibility decision, both parents have to agree. Unfortunately, the default is the child is not vaccinated because it's an action you have to take. Not saying that they shouldn't be vaccinated.
So there's been motions filed... Well, during the epidemic, I mean, it was rampant to the point where the court in Hillsborough County put out a standing order that basically said, "It's a joint parental responsibility, figure it out and if you can't figure it out, don't come to us."
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Seth Nelson:
Because ultimately, to change it from joint to sole or ultimate decision making, I would have to prove that not getting vaccinated is detrimental to the child so what's that standard? That's different standards in every single courtroom. It depends on the experts that you get. I mean, it was a big problem but if you have a parenting plan that says, "You can punt it. We'll agree to abide by all CDC guidelines," right?
Pete Wright:
Okay. That suddenly seems to make it easy, like it or not.
Seth Nelson:
Right. Until one parent's like, "No, because I know they're going to say get vaccinated and I don't want that so I'm not doing it."
Pete Wright:
Right. I imagine that was an easier call 10 years ago.
Seth Nelson:
Right. The courthouse door is always open if there's something really bad happening but I'm just talking on this daily stuff and usually, if the kids are older, I try to do a week on, week off time sharing plan. Why? Less transitions.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
Right?
Pete Wright:
Last question as we wrap up. Our favorite line, are there any jurisdictional issues that you are aware of, state to state, that people need to be aware of?
Seth Nelson:
Oh. Yeah, no. It's check your local jurisdiction across the board, how parenting plans go, who makes decisions, how it goes but this is not a unique concept of parallel parenting, I would think, in Florida. People have these problems all over. Look, this is one of our podcasts where it's like, "Here's the deal," and there's not a lot of nuance in this.
Pete Wright:
Yeah. Right.
Seth Nelson:
Because it just gets so bad. You really just try to keep the other person informed through an app and everybody else gets the information directly from the school, the healthcare provider, the coach. You might have it where you're allowed to set up a parent teacher conference and all you have to do is let the other person know that you've set one up and they can get the information.
I have it where if you take the child to a medical provider, you're required to let the other parent know that the child went to the medical provider because how can you get the documents if you don't know that they even went to a new provider or even went there, right? So there's some little triggers that I put in into the parenting plan which I find to be very helpful but you're not required to tell them what's happening. If you want to do tutoring on your time, go do tutoring on your time. If you think the kid's not having trouble in math despite the fact that they're getting C's or D's or F's, you know? But less transitions, least amount of communication, these are the parents that don't necessarily sit in the same auditorium when their kid is in a play.
Pete Wright:
It is sad reality. Feels like a sad reality for some.
Seth Nelson:
On that point, I even have written in there, for example, if it's your week for the child to be and that's your week of time and the child's in a play, the other parent can go up after the play and say goodbye for no more than five minutes and then has to leave.
Pete Wright:
Wow.
Seth Nelson:
I can get real detailed because when that kid gets off the stage and all the parents are gathering around, which by the way, the kid just wants to hang out with his friends that are coming up and telling him a great job, not mom and dad. We stand in the background, we take our quick photo, and then we're like, "All right. Go thank grandpa and grandma."
Pete Wright:
See you at home.
Seth Nelson:
Yeah. "See you at home," or, "Talk to you tomorrow, have fun at mom's," like whatever the case may be but these are people that we have to orchestrate that.
Pete Wright:
Fascinating. It's terrible.
Seth Nelson:
It's terrible. Nothing I'm saying is good but it's better than the conflict of, "No, come over here and take this picture. Be with me. Be with my family. Oh, here's my new girlfriend. Take a picture with her. Oh, hey, let's have someone else take a picture for us." And then, the next thing you know, the kids missing time with their friends. There's no time for a picture with the other side of the family. It's just a nightmare.
Pete Wright:
What's your message to folks who are in conflict, who you feel like might be on the road? Is there a save? Is there anything you feel like you can say or have said in the past that might get people to work together?
Seth Nelson:
I think how you communicate is critical. Brief, informative, friendly, and firm. Don't go on and on and on and don't cite to the parenting plan like they're going to read it differently. Don't play lawyer. Try to solve the problem. As much as you can, just say stuff like, "Whatever's easiest for you."
Pete Wright:
Yeah. I think that's a really good point and I just want to reflect on that for a second because there was a time some years ago where I felt like I was getting riled up. Maybe social media, maybe it's news, general state of things, just as broadly, but I feel like I was getting fired up at every little thing and I can imagine during a divorce process, that would be an easy default stance to find yourself in. I think if you have any bandwidth to have some sort of a mindfulness practice where you ask yourself, "Is this worth feeling strongly about?" and find more opportunities to answer no to that question, you'll be able to find peace.
Seth Nelson:
Right. The more you can say yes to the other side, the better. What people don't get about that is they think they're getting taken advantage of. What I tell them is, "You're taking away all their power."
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
They're looking for a fight and when you agree, there's no fight.
Pete Wright:
Right.
Seth Nelson:
Okay?
Pete Wright:
Yeah.
Seth Nelson:
Ultimately, your kids figure it out.
Pete Wright:
Sure.
Seth Nelson:
Ultimately, if you're trying to be alienated by the other parent, they're saying bad shit about you, kids grow up and make their own decisions about the relationship with their parents. I know it takes two to have a relationship but if you just have an absentee father, he's going to be absent.
But you talk to all these parents who work hard... I mean, in intact couples, they work hard to raise the children and give them wings. They give them wings and then the kids don't call and they're just devastated that their kids aren't calling but that's where those kids are in their lives at that time and you got to meet them where they are. You gave them their wings, they're out there flying. They're not going to come home to the nest as much as you hoped.
Pete Wright:
You did the right thing in the first place, give them the wings. Let them fly.
Seth Nelson:
I always tell parents like that, "Well, would you rather have them move back in and live with you until they're 35?"
Pete Wright:
Let me just tell you, the answer is no-
Seth Nelson:
Right.
Pete Wright:
It's got to be no.
Seth Nelson:
Right. That-
Pete Wright:
Please. If anybody is hedging on that, please check yourself. The answer's no.
Seth Nelson:
Look, we all have kids at different times in their lives. I moved home after college.
Pete Wright:
Sure.
Seth Nelson:
I was looking for work. And then, I lived on Grand Cayman for a few years with the job that I had and then I was studying for the LSAT when I moved back and I moved back to my parents' house to save money so I could save up money for law school. And so, there's times I came in and out. They would've preferred me to be elsewhere.
Pete Wright:
Out as the default state would've been fine. It is okay. Out is better.
Seth Nelson:
Exactly. So anyway, it's a horrible scenario but less conflict the better.
Pete Wright:
For sure. Thank you, everybody, for downloading and listening to the show. We sure appreciate it. We appreciate you for doing it and we encourage you, if you have any questions about parallel parenting or co-parenting, whatever the case, that you would like to ask Seth, please head over to howtosplitatoaster.com and you can just click the Ask A Question button and then it'll give you a little form where you can give us some questions or feedback, whatever you'd like to say to the show, and we'll address it on the air in an upcoming episode. Thank you, everybody. You're the best.Thank you. On behalf of Seth Nelson, you know him, America's favorite divorce attorney, I'm Pete Wright. We'll catch you right here next week on How to Split a Toaster, a divorce podcast about mostly saving your relationships.
Speaker 3:
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 an employee of NLG Divorce and Family Law. Seth Nelson is licensed to practice law in Florida.
