Speaker 1: 0:00

Your co-parenting interactions should be guided by cooperation, trust and empathy. We're going to talk about them in that order cooperation, trust and empathy because they really build on each other a little bit.

Speaker 2: 0:11

I was thinking about that. Yeah, how much of this is a being and a thinking and how much is a doing? You do have to do some things, sometimes differently. Cognitive behavioral therapy is a big part of what I do, and so it's not just thinking about it, it's a doing something different, and then the thinking can come along with it.

Speaker 1: 0:31

Right, and that's why we start with cooperation, because you can do cooperation, yeah, and so when you do cooperation, eventually, if you do it well and consistently, that can lead to greater trust.

Speaker 2: 0:43

And when you have built up a little bit more trust and you have a history of cooperation, it just becomes a whole lot easier to empathize with your co-parent so the easiest place to start here is the cooperation and if you stick your neck out, and you may have to a few times before the reciprocal cooperation starts to happen, but if you do and not doing the tit for tat, well, the last time I tried to do blah blah, blah, he did blah, blah, blah, and you know so. I'm never going to do that again.

Speaker 1: 1:17

And so the easiest place, I think, to start off with is to find things or situations in which you really don't care if you get disappointed. You'd rather not get disappointed, but it's not going to break your day if you get disappointed. It's not going to hurt your child if you get disappointed, and so if you're going to be the one who is saying, okay, I'm going to make a change, I'm going to work on cooperation so that we can work on our co-parenting. Even if I don't get a lot of reciprocity right away, I'm going to find a little thing that I can do.

Speaker 2: 1:48

Sometimes the little thing is just literally going an extra mile or two to meet them at a place where it's more convenient for them, or it could be changing the time frame by 30 minutes. You wouldn't believe how many times something that small comes up and it becomes such a major issue when you can go for something that you have a very small investment really.

Speaker 1: 2:11

Exactly, if you can do a bunch of those little things, then over time they're going to build up and you'll feel more confident in doing the larger things when you've had some reciprocity on the smaller things. And I'm very economics-minded and so from my perspective, lack of cooperation is a tax. You are making your own life more difficult, you're increasing your transaction costs. You're just making it harder to be a co-parent if you refuse to cooperate with each other.

Speaker 2: 2:43

I think that is very interesting, because none of us really like more taxes, and so why are you charging yourself an extra tax with this?

Speaker 1: 2:52

Right. Why make yourself have to have three extra rounds of communication? Or why make it so that you always both have to bring things for the soccer game? You always have to both bring the snack. You know why? Can't you trade off responsibilities to even out the load?

Speaker 2: 3:09

Well, and then if you do both bring something, it turns into a major hassle for the kid. Oh, my goodness, I know a child that has three not just the two from the two parents, but also one from a grandparent. Three bats to every baseball game. Wow, he's got to decide which one of those three people he's going to make happy that day.

Speaker 1: 3:39

Right and which one he's going to reject. Exactly which one he's going to be disloyal to.

Speaker 2: 3:46

And the child feels that They've talked to me about it. Many of them have.

Speaker 1: 3:53

And so one of the big things too about cooperation and that bat example I think really brings it home is when you're not cooperating, it just intensifies the us versus them. Oh, totally, and cooperation is ch just intensifies the us versus them, oh, totally and cooperation is chipping away at the us versus them and that us versus them mentality is such a big part of all of the unnecessary conflict.

Speaker 2: 4:16

It's just the antithesis of cooperation, for sure. And if you do cooperate you get to enjoy the child and the child gets to enjoy the activity kind of the whole point in the first place.

Speaker 1: 4:30

And you're modeling good pro-social behavior to the child. They see how, oh, this is how it's supposed to be when you work together, and, oh, it does make it easier on everybody if we work together.

Speaker 2: 4:40

I reviewed a case and the child several times in my individual sessions with him, had told me how much his mom and dad cooperate with each other and are able to get along for what he needs. He really noticed it, yes, and he's a highly anxious child and of course lack of cooperation and conflict would spike that anxiety big time. That's the reason why he brought it up. He realized enough that he could tell me about it, and he's only 10.

Speaker 1: 5:14

That lack of conflict and the additional cooperation is helping him and so much of the cooperation, I think, comes down to self-respect and self-image and how you're viewed. So if you're telling me that you're not going to cooperate with me as a co-parent, then how does that mean you view me? Do you view me as the co-parent? Am I not worthy of cooperation? And it comes down to this idea of who are you and who do you think I am, and there's actually there are actually cultural differences in some places.

Speaker 1: 5:54

that sort of who do you think you are is actually who do you think I am? In different places. They say it in different ways. That's very interesting, yeah, and it's sort of the idea of do you think you're a big shot? Or who do you do you think I'm nothing? And how you ask that question is give some insight into what you, what the social structure is.

Speaker 2: 6:16

That is quite intriguing.

Speaker 1: 6:18

Yeah, and I think in this situation it's kind of a mix of who do you think you are? You think you don't have to cooperate with me? You, you get to control everything. Why?

Speaker 2: 6:25

do you? Get to control everything and then, who do you?

Speaker 1: 6:28

think I am, I'm not worthy of respect or cooperation. I'm not an equal parent. And if I'm not the equal parent, who are you cooperating? With you've got step parent and right, two were cooperating together does that mean that you?

Speaker 1: 6:41

think that you're the parent and now I'm being pushed out by the new step parent. All of those dynamics and I know I can hear people listening to this saying he's taking it way too far. That's not what that is. I promise you it's what it is. Yeah, All of that is wrapped up in these questions. It could be the smallest thing. Like Linda said, it could be meeting 30 minutes later. She won't even meet up 30 minutes later. He won't even meet me five minutes early. There's so much wrapped up into that and so much feeling of showing respect or feeling disrespected.

Speaker 2: 7:16

Almost every time that somebody wants to have an additional 30 minutes or something on the tail end of their visit, it's because that visit's not very long anyway. You know, it might be one of those weeknight visits or something and they're in the middle of a game, or you know the end of a movie or something like that. And yes, I know on those weeknight visits there's a parent wanting to get them in bed and so forth. So the parent with the child needs to plan ahead for stuff like that. But if it's at a time when you know there's still plenty of time before that that they could fudge on the time just a little bit Not that you do it all the time, if you expect it all the time Well then it's just taking advantage Exactly, and I think that's a great word for it, because I think that's one of the main things I hear from a lot of custodial parents that they don't want to be taken advantage of and so they feel like they've got to keep those boundaries so rigid that it can't happen.

Speaker 1: 8:17

Well, it's not like you can't close the barn door when the horse is already out, like it doesn't do any good. You can give, on this instance, that 30 minutes. There's nothing telling you that you can't decline to give it the next time. Now you may feel that there's an extra pressure on you to give it the next time, because why did you give it once and not a second time? But you do have that ability to test the waters and see. An expression that I use all the time with myself is I'm not going to bar trouble. So you're just barring trouble.

Speaker 2: 8:51

at that point it's not even in existence yet, but you're going to act as if the person has already taken advantage of your generosity and giving some extra time back so far in history in your relationship with that person that you know they are consistently 15 minutes late, and so you are borrowing trouble before they get there this time because you expect them to be 15 minutes late.

Speaker 1: 9:19

Exactly. And then the other part of cooperation, as it sort of leads into trust, is you want to create proper incentives. You want to incentivize your co-parent to work with you in the way that you want them to work with you, and so that means giving them both a carrot and a stick, so to speak. You want to give them incentives to do the right thing, and you want there to be appropriate consequences when they don't, and that works on both sides. Even the custodial and the non-custodial parent has the ability to issue carrots and sticks to have you know the, the punishment and the reward, and you don't have to frame it that way.

Speaker 1: 10:01

It's just sort of the way that you're thinking about it, and so one of the ways in which you can incentivize cooperation is by making it easy to cooperate, by being approachable. You don't want the person to be thinking to themselves oh, I'm so afraid to even ask for five minutes because of how they're going to respond to me if I do.

Speaker 2: 10:21

And if you show in those small ways that you're willing to give because it's something that your child really is interested in doing, and if you take yourself out of the position of, well, I'm being taken advantage of here or I am giving too much or this is inconveniencing me, but really what is it that would benefit your child about that extra time?

Speaker 1: 10:49

And yeah, thinking about my time versus his or her time it's my child's time, and then, as you get into trusting more, you have to make it easy for the person to tell you that they messed up, messed up. So much of a parent not telling their co-parent something is there's going to be a negative consequence that is out of proportion with what the circumstance was.

Speaker 2: 11:16

And it could be a simple mistake an easy mistake that it wasn't a plot to hurt you in any way. But but it just was a simple mistake and if they can't be honest about it when it happens, then that's going to wind up hurting you.

Speaker 1: 11:33

And if you leave that room for them to be open to tell you about it, and if you respond to them in a way that isn't aggressive or judgmental, then they're going to be more likely to accept your feedback on the situation.

Speaker 2: 11:48

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 11:49

If they say to you oh I am so sorry, I forgot all about the spelling list, I didn't study the words, and now you know our second grader or third grader or whatever, has failed the spelling test, your response could be I cannot believe how irresponsible you are as a parent. You don't love your child enough to study the spelling list. What were you doing? Were you watching a ball game? Were you watching QVC all night? They're not going to tell you about it in the future, and when you say to them some sort of well, this is what we need to do, they're going to already have been shut down because they were so defensive.

Speaker 2: 12:26

In that kind of situation, think what would you say to a good friend, or maybe the person who is your partner right now. If that happened, you'd probably say, oh, it's no big deal. It's just a simple little spelling test. We'll get it next time.

Speaker 1: 12:39

Right, exactly. And if you lead back with them on that. So if they say to you, oh, I forgot the spelling test, and you go oh, I'm so sorry, that happened to me once too, I did that and I felt horrible about it. I'm sure you feel horrible about it, it's not the hugest deal, we'll make sure that she catches up on the words Then that person is going to be A more likely to tell you the next time there's a situation which may be an actual serious situation that you need to worry about, and B is much more likely now to show you a little bit of grace when you mess up on something. So I'm not aware of any way in which showing grace, reserving judgment, being kind when someone brings you a problem that they've caused even is going to backfire on you.

Speaker 2: 13:22

Which is that empathy, which is both, I think, an action word and a feeling word that you can start to have after you've cooperated and done some back and forth Okay, I did this, so they're doing that. So yes, I'm going to do this again, so they're going to do that again and then the empathy starts to grow and that's where trust can eventually come from. It is so hard I even notice this a lot with parents and adolescents that live under the same roof that the adolescent is making a mistake in some way and the parents pull in all the boundaries that are so concerned with allowing them to do anything.

Speaker 2: 14:05

Pull in all the boundaries, that are so concerned with allowing them to do anything. And the adolescent is like but it was just this and it was a week ago, and they feel like it was so long ago. You know where the parent's like yes, it was that and it was a week ago. And so the trust rebuilding? I'm always talking to those adolescents, but it takes a lot longer to rebuild the trust than it did to get it in the first place. So now, and sometimes that's the way it is after a relationship has fallen apart, it takes a long time to rebuild the trust that you once had for that person, and so that's where these other doing and feeling things of the cooperation and the empathy have to come in first.

Speaker 1: 14:47

And it may be the case that if there's been a real violation of trust that led to the separation, and especially if you're the one who committed the violation of trust, you just kind of have to be honest with yourself about that and you have to be willing to pay that price which is maybe an unnecessary in your mind layer of administration on even minor tasks, of putting things in writing, of working in advance to make sure that it's taken care of.

Speaker 2: 15:13

you know being a little bit more agreeable than you'd like to be to during the sort of rebuilding phase of that trust especially if it involved dishonesty of some sort, then there may be that layer, like you said, of can I trust this at all, because you know there was this dishonesty at this point and, just like with the adolescent, it will take a lot longer than you think it should.

Speaker 1: 15:39

And just because somebody even might tell you they forgive you doesn't mean that it doesn't take a long time to rebuild the trust part and this reminds me so much, linda, of the reconciliation process that you talk about, and so you can imagine, with the co-parent with whom you violated their trust in the past, they're going to want to see you acknowledge it to some degree, hopefully you can acknowledge it.

Speaker 1: 16:04

And they're going to want to see. You know little actions. And if you're asking yourself how long do I have to pay for this violation of trust.

Speaker 2: 16:12

I hear those questions asked out loud a lot Exactly.

Speaker 1: 16:16

Then the response is probably going to be until that day when you've been doing that administrative layer to provide for the lack of trust and the other parent says, oh, that's okay, to provide for the lack of trust, and the other parent says, oh, that's okay, you don't need to do that thing that we've been doing so that I cause I didn't trust you anymore. And once they give you that ability, that freedom, not violating their trust and recognizing that just because they do that once, just because one time they say, oh, we don't have to do that this time, doesn't mean that you're off the hook for good, because they may just have a memory that comes back.

Speaker 2: 16:53

There may be a sense memory that reminds them of how they felt at the time and they, they say, no, I want us to still do that administrative layer that we put in place definitely that's one of the hardest parts about the reconciliation process is it's difficult for the co-parent that was hurt and has the great amount of pain and distrust at this point for the co-parent that hurt them, it's really difficult for them to not overlay that on how the child feels about that person and the child, not having had that exact same experience of their parent, is wondering why they've got to carry that around. I've often said it's like they are the foot soldiers for the parent that was wounded.

Speaker 1: 17:54

That's really. Yeah, that's really interesting.

Speaker 2: 17:56

They have to carry that flag into battle for that parent, even though they didn't have that experience, even though that's not their explanation of their hurt. You know, when I'm asking the child how they feel the parent has hurt them, that's not their experience, but they will frequently say but my mom or dad really hurt the other parent and I feel so bad for that that I can't trust him.

Speaker 1: 18:30

That's really interesting and I guess tell me if this makes sense to you, that at some point, especially with a teenager, you may get to the point where the parent who has is experiencing the lack of trust is going so overboard and asking for that administrative layer that the child eventually is like man, enough's enough. I observed this is going on. This parent is just being so unreasonable, it's so unfair they can wind up actually turning the child against them.

Speaker 2: 19:04

Yes, I have well recently seen that happen, and sometimes the child has to mature developmentally to a point where they look at it from a different perspective and what they were thinking was a big problem now suddenly doesn't seem like such a problem. Or they start spending some time with the parent that did the harm to the other one and they don't see them as being harmful and they don't see them as being a problem in any way to their relationship with them, and so then they start to wonder how that could have been such a big deal for so long. And I just try to help those kids to understand that their experience of their parent is allowed to be very different from the other parent's experience and they, frankly, can grasp that much faster than the adult can usually.

Speaker 1: 20:04

So by engaging in cooperative behaviors you can reduce your transaction costs and all sorts of things that you're doing as a co-parent. It can make life so much easier for you if you build that cooperation between you and your co-parent. If you can rebuild the trust, it reduces again a lot of transaction costs. If you can treat each other with empathy, you can facilitate trust. You can incentivize people to tell you the truth. You can cut off big problems while they're still little problems, before they become big problems, if you can get them early, because you've fostered this environment in which people can bring you issues and trouble from early on and you can model for your children what cooperation and trust and empathy look like. And you can inoculate yourself. You can protect yourself against your child's allegation or thought later on that you were the one who wasn't cooperating well, who wasn't participating well as a co-parent, who wasn't the reasonable person.

Speaker 2: 21:09

And I do pay attention to that.

Speaker 1: 21:10

They do.

Speaker 2: 21:12

If I do ask a child and sometimes I just volunteer the information that they feel like all of the continuing conflict between the parents is all so-and-so's fault, because they see either the initiation of a problem on that side or ramping up of the problem due to the verbiage between them.

Speaker 1: 21:35

I hadn't thought about this before. But also kids are much more used to getting in trouble and having punishments than we are as adults, and I can imagine that a child will look at an interminable punishment of one parent by the other as just unfair, because they know that they don't like to be punished without end.

Speaker 2: 21:54

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 21:56

All right. So do yourselves a favor. Cooperate, even if it hurts at first. Start with little things that you can be disappointed on. Rebuild that trust, act with empathy. Sometimes it's also just a loss, leader, like sometimes when you're building a business. You're going to lose money at first to gain money later. And with this cooperation and trust you may lose a few times early on to put it out there so that you can gain later, but it's an investment in yourself, in your co-parenting relationship and also in your children's happiness.

Speaker 2: 22:31

And even if nobody else is watching, you can look at the marriage yourself at the end of the day and be pretty happy with yourself about what you did.

Speaker 1: 22:40

Which is pretty valuable.

Speaker 2: 22:43

It sure is.