When in a custody hearing, if one of the spouses has concerns about the other’s involvement in their child’s life, it might be a reason to seek supervised visitation. For example, if you think your spouse doesn’t have the child’s best interests at heart, is unreliable, or may be a bad influence.  However, if you are the parent who gets supervised visitation – you may want to find ways to get the supervision requirement removed. If you think the court orders need some changing – you might have some options. In this article, you will learn why a person gets a supervised visitation and how ..read more

Dear Dr. Jann, I’ve been married to a man for five years. He has two children ages 8 and 10 and I have two, ages 13 and 10. Together, we also have twin three-year-old girls. His kids see their mother on weekends, but she really has no influence on them and I find they have a hard time coming back into the fold. I don’t know what to do anymore. Help! Sincerely, Mom of 6 Dr. Jann: Red flags ahead! Red flag number one. You said: “His kids see their mother on weekends…but she really has no influence on them.” It’s important to realize that a parent always has influence over their children. Unfortu ..read more

As parents, we are dealing with a scale of issues that none of us have dealt with before. It is a difficult and scary time for all of us but especially for our kids. Here at coParenter, our team of mediators are helping you work through these very challenging issues. We are here to support you through this very difficult time while you balance safety, coparenting, your childrens’ anxiety, and your own parental stress. This article should be a good starting place to help you make the best choices for you and your children. Here are some of the questions our mediators are seeing daily ..read more

Meeting your own enemies of emotions during the co-parenting journey? You are not alone. Let’s take a look at how to manage the roller coaster. Many separating parents blame each other for problems and think that the other parent is the enemy. This solves nothing, even if you are right. The causes of what is called intractable conflict have been studied. Those causes are the enemy, not the other parent: Emotional reactivity. Parents who have been in a romantic relationship that has deteriorated to the point of separating usually have a history of reacting with strong negative emotions to one a ..read more

Since they lack self-awareness, high conflict personalities (HCP) make no effort to change their own behavior when things go badly. They view complex problems and relationships as all another person’s responsibility and don’t see their own part in causing the problem or finding a solution. They don’t change their own behavior to try to make things better, so things don’t get better. In fact, they are highly defensive about their own behavior, so they put all of their energy into defending their own actions and shifting the blame to others. Finding easy ways to avoid unnecessarily triggering th ..read more

The loss and change of separation and divorce can splinter even the best parent’s attention. The emotional turmoil strikes at the heart of everything “home” – and most importantly how you parent your children. Your unsettled emotions pull you away from them into a morass of adult complexity they could never understand. Net result, honestly, they get scared even if they don’t show it. Most of us don’t have children to be separated from them on a regular schedule, to lose the opportunity to be a part of their every day-to-day, or worse to have them influenced by or parented by an unrelated adul ..read more

After Divorce Any New Relationship Should Be Handled Carefully Dear Dr. Jann: My kids’ dad and I have been apart for about a year. We share the kids’ time equally in our coParenting. I’ve recently met a great guy, and we’re planning to move in together, but my kids are upset and threatening to live with their dad. This is surprising because I was the one who was always there for them. Their dad traveled and was rarely home. Now he’s taking me back to court because of what he feels is bad judgment in this new relationship! Will I lose my kids if I move in with my boyfriend? Dr. Jann: Moving in ..read more

The coParenting Holiday Custody Schedule We want to talk a little bit about children and “Custody”.  As child-centric coParents and allies, we need to shift the language from “Custody” to residential schedules or simply coParenting schedules.  Children aren’t in CUSTODY! That’s old litigation language that implies ownership and prison more than the beautiful act of spending time with your kid(s).  Okay now back to your regularly scheduled programming. Can’t imagine a holiday season without your kids? You’re not alone! In the early months and years of separation and divorce, there’s so much l ..read more

It is my humble opinion that helicopter parents have their hearts in the right place but need to drastically rethink their parenting strategy. Whether you as a child were parented this way, maybe it is a direct response to your divorce or perhaps it is a cultural norm, you may have been exposed to this blind spot and you want to correct it. Here are some steps that may help you and your child reset the parent-child paradigm. Training them to leave the nest. This may be an odd one to think of if you’re staring at your toddler, but this will help you shift your parenting paradigm, ‘trainin ..read more

First off, ‘toxic’ is an easy descriptor when talking about an ex. Some people casually throw it around and use it as a synonym for ‘unhealthy’ or simply bad which makes it hard to talk about co-parenting tactics unless you define what ‘toxic’ really means. “By definition, a toxic relationship is a relationship characterized by behaviors on the part of the toxic partner that are emotionally and, not infrequently, physically damaging to their partner. While a healthy relationship contributes to our self-esteem and emotional energy, a toxic relationship damages self-esteem and drains energy ..read more