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Co-Parenting Works!

ZONDERVAN

Chapter One

Though you have made me see troubles, many and bitter, you will restore my life again; from the depths of the earth you will again bring me up. You will increase my honor and comfort me once again. PSALM 71:20–21

Weeping may remain for a night, but rejoicing comes in the morning. PSALM 30:5

I sat at my kitchen table, crying. I stared through my tears at the blurry neighborhood outside. "God, do you even see me sitting here right now?" I prayed. "Do you see my tears? Do you know how much I'm hurting? Do you sense how terrified I am about the future? I'm a single parent now! How can I raise a child alone? How will I pay the bills? Where will I live? How will I ever face the judgment of the people around me, people I love, who judge us because we're getting divorced? I know you hate divorce. I know you hate what it does to your children. I know you hate what it will do to my child ..."

I wiped my eyes with a tissue. The details of my life on that morning seemed like a knotted, tangled mess that I couldn't unravel, couldn't make sense of.

I begin this story here, at this memory of a place of pain in my life, because although I have journeyed years beyond those overwhelming moments and the haunting questions, I will never forget them. I will never forget how I felt during those dark days: as if I were in a thick fog. I had no idea what was on the other side of that fog, or even when I would get through it. My past was a sea of regrets, and I was completely disillusioned about the future.

My emotions after the divorce were intense and painful — hard for even me to understand, and even harder to describe to my friends. Their words of "encouragement" sometimes seemed to be half judgment and condemnation, as if they couldn't speak to me without first making clear where they stood on the issue of divorce. Their unasked questions about why and who was to blame made every conversation awkward and uncomfortable.

I thought it odd at the time that they felt the need to express their moral objection to divorce. Did they really think anyone was more uncomfortable with the idea of divorce than I was at that time? I was experiencing firsthand the pain divorce caused! Watching my marriage deteriorate and crumble was not what I dreamed about as a child. I'm sure none of us grew up imagining we would find our princess or prince charming, get married (in a castle), have babies — and then end up divorced. That's not the "happily ever after" we imagined. Our wedding day with rice and flowers and kisses wasn't supposed to lead to a war that resulted in your children growing up in two separate houses, or in only one with another parent they never see.

Not all of us down the path of divorce have come to the threshold of co-parenting. To many readers, this picture of the newly divorced, grieving mother may seem beside the point. Perhaps you've never been married, and are looking for ways to keep your children's other biological parent involved in their life. Perhaps you lost a spouse or partner to illness or war or an accident, and you're looking for guidance in managing other relatives, perhaps grandparents, who want to be involved in your children's lives. In any of these cases, our circumstances are similar: you're now a single parent, and another caregiver or parent has a presence in your children's life; you're looking for ways to facilitate that presence in a way that's fair and helpful for all parties.

That's what we hope to guide in this book. Not so much for your sake, although in the end you'll find parenting to be better with a committed co-parent. And not so much for your co-parent's sake, although, in the end, he or she will be glad to be involved in raising and loving that precious child. We do all of this for the sake of the children we love. Keep that in mind; when things gets tough, as it will at times, you'll remember why it's worth it.

Whatever circumstances set you on this course — especially if you're just beginning and your heart is hurting so badly that the word heartache makes sense to you for the first time — in this book you have found a place of grace. No one is judging you here, and you share this experience with many others. Welcome.

One Heart, Two Homes

Before your divorce, even though one parent may have assumed most child-rearing duties, your children relied on both of you to bring stability and security to their world. The things about your spouse, now ex-spouse, that drove you crazy were not lost on your kids either, but kids have a wonderful and immediate forgiveness response. And they have that response because they sensed an important and crucial truth: they need both of you. I have almost never heard of young children who wanted their parents to divorce. For the vast majority of children, their parents' divorce was that unthinkable disaster that would bring their whole world crashing into incurable disaster. It was the monster under the bed.

As a result, kids of divorce can't imagine a world in which both parents won't continue to love them and be involved in their lives. That would be the realization of their worst fears.

Children of divorce have one heart, but they live in two homes. What co-parents do to protect their children's hearts is the key to an enjoyable childhood and healthy upbringing for them — even when they have two families, two bedrooms, and two very different lives. Creating a co-parenting team with your ex, working together for the sake of your children, will reap rewards for your children that are far more valuable than anything tangible you could give them.

It's not about you; it's about your kids.

It's not about the past; it's about your kids' future.

For their long-term well-being, your kids need you to take the sometimes difficult step of creating a co-parenting team with your ex. Right now you may have serious doubts that such a thing could ever be; and even if the two of you agreed to do it, you have doubts about how well it would work. That's what we'll be discussing in the rest of this book. I'll try to anticipate and deal with each question and doubt you have — which are probably the same ones the participants in my seminars raise over and over again.

The End Adult Matters Most

If I'm your co-parenting coach, then like any good coach I want to give you an overview of where we're going and what our goals are. Even if all you do is just read through this book, you'll still pick up some helpful takeaways. By also digesting and implementing these ideas, you can radically change your life and the lives of your children, now and far into the future — which means you'll also be affecting the lives of your unborn grandchildren. Quite a return on your investment of time and effort!

What will you accomplish? With sincere commitment to excellent co-parenting, you will be able to:

• Communicate with your co-parent calmly, with purpose and clarity. • Intentionally schedule time with your co-parent to discuss important issues related to your child — and, yes, even find solutions. • Focus on the positive aspects of giving your children the freedom to love both parents. • Attend — along with your co-parent and any stepparents — your children's school functions, athletic events, and all extracurricular events with peace and anticipated enjoyment. • Speak words of life and hope to your children about their other parent. • Celebrate the love and the time your children share with their other parent. • Exercise emotional maturity when something hurtful happens. • Choose to leave some things unsaid for the best interest of your children. • Co-parent forward — make co-parenting decisions today that will affect your children positively five years and ten years from now. • Be a positive "first filter" to all outside influences to your children's lives. • Plan ahead what you will do when your children are away during holidays — to avoid loneliness and depression. Create a "fun plan" for yourself. • Create a support system to help you process difficulties with your co-parent. • Anticipate your children's monumental moments in life and create a game plan that allows all family members — from both sides of your children's family — to participate amiably and enjoyably. • Prepare for your children's adulthood: graduations, weddings, and future grandchildren. • Understand fully what is at stake — the heart of your children and their future. • Begin with the end in mind: What will your children say twenty years from now? What will their lives be like, and how will your decisions today affect that future? • Commit to a positive co-parenting TEAMM mentality — because, as the TEAMM acronym denotes: The End Adult Matters Most!

Memories ...

Before we dive into the rest of the book, I want you to write down your top childhood memories — good, bad, or otherwise. Don't worry about being exhaustive; this isn't a test. No pressure. Just write down the first memories that come to mind. After all, there's a reason they're the first memories you think of. Spend a few minutes to reflect, and be honest, even if some of these memories are painful. If, in fact, some of them are so painful you don't want to commit them to writing here, just use code words that only you would understand — the day, or the place, or some detail that you connect with the event.

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Why did I ask you to complete this exercise, even though it may, for some of you, have dredged up unpleasant thoughts? Two reasons. First, understanding your past can strengthen your future. You may have sad memories of hurts inflicted upon you by people you love. Unresolved issues may still fill you with anger or sadness. On the other hand, many memories probably make you smile, even laugh out loud. You may feel pride and a sense of accomplishment to have been part of your family's legacy, a legacy that still lives on inside of you.

When I look back, some of my best memories connect me to my grandparents, both the Gallegos and Grasmick families. I am grateful to be an extension of those individuals — a fun mix of German and Spanish influences, beliefs, values, and family traditions. I still get choked up at the sound of upbeat Spanish music as I remember the weddings and "wedding marches" of our family heritage, and how I loved to dance across the floor with my Grandpa Gallegos. These days, when I smell coffee early in the morning, I think of my Grasmick grandparents. As a child, I would roll over in the morning at first awakening, hearing the coffee percolate, and know that they were up and waiting for me. How I wish I could still wander, sleepy-eyed, to their kitchen table and read the Rocky Ford newspaper and plan for the Saturday yard sales.

These memories linger, and I am so grateful for them. I believe that God knew, out of the millions of parents he could have given me to, that I was to belong to these two families, and for that I thank him.

This brings us to my second reason for asking you to list your strongest memories: Your children are right now, as we speak, forming the memories that, good or bad, will make up their future list of "strongest memories." And they've already had both kinds — the good ones that will make them smile or laugh some future day, as well as the ones that will bring tears to their eyes.

You can't protect them from having some sad or painful memories — life deals those out to us whether we want them or not. But you can work with your ex-spouse to keep the negative memories to a minimum and to intentionally create occasions for your children that will foster happy memories, the kind they'll someday be as grateful for as I am of my memories of my Gallegos and Grasmick grandparents.

All of this is within your power — yours, and your co-parent's.

The Exercises

You'll find exercises like the recounting of memories you just did scattered through the book — not in every chapter, but often. Some of you tend to skip over exercises like these when you find them in books. I encourage you to resist skipping the exercises. They're here for a reason. You'll get much more out of the book, I assure you, if you complete these exercises. Take the initiative, and the minute or two it will take to do the work each time. You'll improve your ability to cope with the challenging situation you face, and because of that, your kids and your grandkids will benefit. Your work environment will benefit. Your own heart and soul will benefit. It's one thing to skim through a book like this, but it can become something entirely different when you commit to internalizing what you've learned.

I have been in your shoes. I'm still in them, since I will forever be a co-parent with my daughter's dad, and I will forever have complexities to process — even twenty years from now. I want you to get strong and healthy, and I want you to avoid every mistake humanly possible so that your children will have the very best YOU — and the very best life!

To ensure that — do the work. Fill in the blanks.

Meet the Cast

Throughout this book, I'll be sharing stories with you from the lives of people who've grown up in homes split by divorce — some from homes in which parents co-parented wisely, and some in which their parents made no attempt to co-parent cooperatively at all. We'll also hear from people engaged, as you are, in the task of co-parenting. As you consider the consequences of your own choices, it's helpful to hear how similar choices have affected the lives of others. I've changed the names of those people, of course, so they didn't have to worry about how their honest comments might hurt the feelings of their loved ones. I want you to meet the cast.

Joey is an adult child of divorce. He's married now, with kids himself, but he remembers the years after his own parents' divorce. He was twelve when it happened, just entering those difficult teenage years; and the pain of knowing he was not going to be able to grow up with both of his parents around him all the time was paralyzing. His grades dipped markedly that first year and stayed low the next. At first, he was told that he'd be spending every other weekend with his dad, and he considered it something to look forward to; but those weekends rarely materialized. It seemed to Joey that his mom came up with every excuse imaginable why Joey couldn't go with his dad on those weekends, and Joey's hopes that his dad would fight for him were in vain. Eventually Joey saw his dad only on holidays and for a week or so in the summer. He grew up grieving the loss of the relationship with his father.

Tina's parents divorced when she was a baby, so she never knew her parents as a couple, only as the two people she loved most. She remembers that throughout her childhood, they still argued heatedly. An only child, she cried herself to sleep many nights. Today, she's in her early thirties and has never wanted to get married. "Why take the risk?" she says. She has internalized all the negativity she heard from her parents about each other, and the effects of that on her life are many. For instance, she usually dates men who are emotionally abusive or just absent, because she has never seen a healthy example of love. She also has a hard time forgiving others for any type of offense, because the closest example she had for handling wrongs was her mom, who stayed mad indefinitely about every wrong done to her. Tina tries to let go of her past, but it seems to cling to her. She is truly lonely — but she dreads the idea of marriage because her parents would both be in the same room. That has never gone well.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Co-Parenting Works! by Tammy G. Daughtry Copyright © 2011 by Tammy G. Daughtry. Excerpted by permission of ZONDERVAN. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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