Speaker 1: 0:00

There's a lot of co-parenting advice out there. We're going to hear some that we saw on Instagram. Then we're going to talk about it.

Speaker 2: 0:06

What if, every time someone you loved responded to you when you complained about a bad situation in your relationship or like you're sharing that, you feel like you're really being mistreated and this person responds with oh, but they love you. You'd feel really invalidated and I'm sure this has happened to you. It's really frustrating actually. So why, when our kids come to us and say something about the other parent that happened, that they don't feel comfortable with, or they're upset that the other parent said or did? Why, as co-parents, do we suddenly feel like our feet are stuck in concrete blocks and we lose all ability to reason? Well, it's because we don't want to say the wrong thing and potentially appear as though we are painting our exes in a bad light to our children. But then what happens? We're denying our kids reality. That's like us saying oh, don't worry about it, they could treat you badly or hurt you, but they love you, so it's okay. What message is that sending?

Speaker 2: 1:04

If you're like me, you probably are bending over backwards trying to figure out how to take the high road and also support your children in their feelings and in the fact that it can be really hard to adjust to a co-parented lifestyle, especially when the other parent may have really big feelings about the divorce and a lack of ability to hold those feelings back. So here's what you need to do. I bet that really upset you. Huh, I don't think I would have liked that either. Tell me how you handled it.

Speaker 2: 1:35

What are your questions about this situation? Were there other parts of the weekend or the day with this person that you enjoyed? Because what we want to do is get our children to recognize that certain behaviors people have are not okay and they don't make us feel good, and also the both end. Somebody can be both hurtful in one situation and still a good, loving parent. Maybe you don't think that's okay, but what we want to do is help them see for themselves how they feel by validating that it's okay to have feelings, not having to trauma dump on our kids. There's a difference.

Speaker 1: 2:13

That's Michelle Dempsey. She's got a real popular Instagram page and she is giving some advice about how to deal with some of the questions that we get all the time from kids. They come home, or not even a question, maybe they come home with a situation, the co-parent said something, they have feelings about it, they hop in the car at the transition and sometimes, depending on the kid and their age, they just boom. They're off to the races telling you all about it. So what do you think about the advice that she was giving?

Speaker 3: 2:44

I think she's right in that you need to listen to what the child has to say. You also have to understand depending on their age, they just might not have liked that they had to give up their cell phone, or they had to eat dinner with people or do things they don't want to do. So I think the big deal is to listen to what they have to say and see the hidden messages of what they're saying.

Speaker 1: 3:12

And it seems like we can separate some of these missions. So the first one, validating. How should you validate your child's emotions so they feel heard when they come into the car, for example, after a visitation, and start dumping on you about what their concerns are?

Speaker 3: 3:30

I think it's important. One of the methods is called reflective listening, but that could get you in trouble too, because if you start repeating everything they say, you might say more than you want to.

Speaker 1: 3:41

So when your kid comes into the car and they're saying to you you want to? So when your kid comes into the car and they're saying to you man, I'm really upset because dad took my cell phone just because I wouldn't clean up my room when he wanted me to, and that's totally unfair. That's a very common scenario that we get, especially if there are two different parenting styles in the two households. Maybe in this circumstance that we're talking about, dad is a person who is much more focused on immediate consequences for conduct. And if you don't do what I tell you to do, everybody knows what the punishment is. This is the punishment that's getting put into place. Mom doesn't do that, so the kid's going to prefer mom's way, and so they dump to mom when they get in the car.

Speaker 3: 4:26

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 4:27

So let's say you have an eight-year-old or a 10-year-old hopefully not an eight-year-old with the phone, Maybe. Let's say maybe a 12-year-old that comes into the car and is like mom. Dad was so mean. I didn't clean my room when he told me to to, because I was still playing my game and he took my phone away.

Speaker 3: 4:52

So you're the mom, you hear that You're in the car. What do you say? Most of the time? I think I would say when you're at your dad's house, dad's rules apply Right and you need to follow his rules and I would suggest that you do that. I guess I'm coming from a therapist place at this moment, but I would say how do you get what you want? And if you want your phone, then you do what's required of you. It's simple that way, but for kids that age, saying that must not have felt like fun. I know your phone's very important to you. What could you have done differently to make it easier for dad to not take your phone?

Speaker 1: 5:39

We could also say remember, different places have different rules. It doesn't mean the rules aren't okay, it just means they're different. If you were at school and the rule is, don't take your phone out of your locker at school or your backpack, you get it taken away and you go into your math class and you take your phone out and you start texting your friends, what's going to happen? The teacher is going to take your phone away. Dad has a rule at his house. It's not a crazy rule, it's an okay rule. You're supposed to clean your room. You didn't do it. You got your phone away. How's that different than being at school? It doesn't mean it's unfair. I know it's not fun, I know you're sad about it and I'm sorry that you had that experience, but now you understand you got to follow the rules.

Speaker 3: 6:21

I don't think it means you love your children less when you talk to them that way, and I think you're validating their feelings when you say I know you really like your phone and it's hard to lose it. That's absolutely the truth.

Speaker 1: 6:37

So validating your child's feelings doesn't have to mean at the same time, invalidating the right of your co-parent to have a totally within the norm set of rules at their household.

Speaker 3: 6:49

Yes, that can be very different.

Speaker 1: 6:51

Right, you can validate both at the same time.

Speaker 3: 6:54

Yeah, I tell little kids that when you're at dad's house, dad's the king and when you're at mom's house, mom's the queen, and it's Works that way all the way up, because there can be different rules and it's highly unlikely unless you perceive your co-parent as a villain it's highly unlikely that what they're imposing at their house is really detrimental to the child. Might be a different set of rules, but it's highly unlikely that they're hanging them from their thumbs from the ceiling fan or something crazy like that. It's highly unlikely that's happening.

Speaker 1: 7:36

And there are circumstances in which the parent is being inappropriate. But we can't give generic advice, general advice to mass of the public about how to respond based on the fear that in a subset of situations there's actually some sort of abusive or traumatic experience happening. So I think, for the majority of the people who would watch that Instagram video, we're dealing with a typically normal set of parents, with differences in households, different sets of rules and a child looking to get some sympathy or play one off the other, which you know that's their. That's the job. As a kid, you're supposed to be selfish and try to play one off the other and get some advantage. If you're not doing that, I'm actually worried about you as a kid.

Speaker 3: 8:22

Yes, if you're not advantage it's your job description Exactly.

Speaker 1: 8:28

And it doesn't mean they're a bad kid or it doesn't mean that they're, you know, doing something wrong. They're just they're being developmentally appropriate in the set of circumstances in which they find themselves. But what if you have a situation in which the child comes into your car and I hear this more often than I would like, and I hear this more often than I would like you have a child who maybe is in that sort of pre-puberty, pre-teen, pudgy stage and they haven't quite developed into their body yet and they have some body issues. And girl comes back from dad's house and his dad said that maybe I should not eat that extra cookie. Or dad said maybe we should go for a run. Or dad said I was looking a little bit bigger. You know, those are kinds of things that's not great parenting by dad in that case. Or if mom did it by mom, because moms actually do that sometimes more than dads do.

Speaker 3: 9:22

Exactly.

Speaker 1: 9:24

How would you handle that situation? Because that's not a hey, follow the rules situation. That's, yeah, a hurtful thing was said. How would you handle that situation? Because that's not a hey, follow the rules situation? That's, yeah, a hurtful thing was said. How would we approach that?

Speaker 3: 9:32

I think you'd say wow, that must have really hurt your feelings. Who you are and what you are and your body is perfect for you. I don't know, it's really hard to say because there's almost no way to make it right at that point. Would you like to try to do something about it? What almost puts you back into the dad's or the mom's, other parents view? I guess the only thing I could think of to say is I think you're absolutely perfect, but then you're almost making them choose between the two at that situation. So that's not really good either. Oh man, you really are putting a funky place.

Speaker 1: 10:09

You can unintentionally create circumstances for your co-parent by making unnecessary comments to your children that put them in this impossible position of thinking about how to respond, and it puts your child in a really confusing situation about how to receive the information from either side. Typically, I don't think kids from my perspective don't tend to want to get into long drawn out conversations with adults. They want to come and get a little bit of reassurance, to get a little bit of love, and then they want to move on to something that's not conflictual.

Speaker 3: 10:41

Make sure that they've had enough time to finish up with what's going on. Then, if you want to go play with the dog, the dog has missed you, or something like that to try to make the change appropriate. But you are very right, they don't want to then have this long conversation about feelings that only really sometimes is only about the parent, anyhow, the parent wants to talk about. Let me tell you what they did to me. It's not appropriate.

Speaker 1: 11:13

Exactly. And if you do that to your kid, if you turn every little share that they have with you into something that now requires an action plan where we're going to do step one, step two, we're going to talk to dad, we're going to have a meeting, we're going to get lawyers involved then they're going to be like, oh, like. That is not at all what I want. They don't want every little confidence that they're sharing just getting it off their chest to turn into a whole crusade.

Speaker 3: 11:42

And it's fair to say, maybe you could talk to your therapist about it. Many of them have a therapist or somebody they can talk to and that might work really well for some of them.

Speaker 1: 11:53

Yeah, what do you think about? I know some folks who will do this if the child comes home with some concerns and if they are in therapy, they'll say hey, why don't you put that? That's a good thing to put in your journal? Why don't you put in what you're thinking about and then you can talk with Miss Amy or Miss whoever or Mr Whoever your therapist next time you see them. But what do you think about that?

Speaker 3: 12:19

Yeah, I think that's a really good idea and, as parents, what I would appreciate as a therapist is I talked to the parents before I talk to the kid normally. And so hearing from the parent, this is what they said when they came back. So then the parent can, you can maybe lead the child to talking about how was the visit or something like that, depending on what the relationship is with the child and how old the child is, but it gives you the knowledge that might be something they want to talk about.

Speaker 1: 12:55

What if a child comes back and is explicitly trying to triangulate you against the other parent? It's trying to recruit you to go and we talked to dad about that. We told mom about that, that it's not okay. How do you handle that?

Speaker 3: 13:09

It depends on how well it's received. It may make it worse, because sometimes if you go and talk to the other parent, then the other parent makes the child have a penalty for having. You shouldn't have told your dad what I said, or something like that or something like that, there's almost no way to not, as a co-parent, not be in a bad position. I think mostly you just need to validate the things and even empower them to talk to their parent about it.

Speaker 3: 13:43

Like if dad says that to you again or mom says that to you again, say, man, it hurts my feelings, or something like that. There's a big power differential and it's true that the kid doesn't have much power over the parent to be able to say that it's scary. But if we can empower the child to speak directly to the parent about how they feel, it's a whole lot better for them. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 14:11

And I feel like in that first instance of yeah, I'm sure your dad didn't mean that or your mom didn't mean to make you feel bad, I think I would only consider saying that in a circumstance in which I think it would actually be received. If I think it's a circumstance in which the parent is just that kind of parent and is just mean and not a great parent, then we have to reconsider what we're doing generally. But also I don't think I would take that back to that parent because it wouldn't do any good. But in the sense of helping empower the child to let the parent know how they feel, yeah, you can try and again we always devolve in these conversations to the worst case scenario, the case where we truly have someone who has behaviors that we would classify as narcissistic or whatever else. You can do a lot by having some good natured, non-accusatory communication about things that maybe didn't go as intended to stop it from happening again.

Speaker 3: 15:28

Yeah, it's got to be presented very carefully because it can be perceived even by pretty good grandparents that that this is criticism and perceived as criticism doesn't work. But you're right saying I know you didn't intend to hurt her feelings or his feelings- or even I did this the other day.

Speaker 1: 15:48

Hey, this happened. He told me this and made me think what I did the other day. Can you believe this? Like the other day I did X. They're telling me that this happened and I think we're both having some trouble adjusting to this new developmental stage our child's in.

Speaker 3: 16:00

This is difficult. They're now 13 or 14, or 16, and, oh my gosh, what do we do with them now?

Speaker 1: 16:07

I can even see that as a good entree as well. If you think you have a basically good-natured but maybe a little clueless co-parent who's stepping in it and not intending to. I can even see having a conversation where you lead it with man. I'm having some difficulty at my house, like I feel like I keep saying the wrong thing, like I'll say this and she gets upset, or I say that and he gets mad at me, and I feel like I never quite know what landmine I'm about to step on. Are you experiencing that too? And then maybe that can open the dialogue and if you lead with a little bit of grace and a little bit of humility yourself, maybe then they'll open up and you can actually make some progress.

Speaker 3: 16:48

I think so and being able to say you probably would understand this more than me, especially if it's a same-sex parent.

Speaker 3: 16:57

That's a same-sex parent, you know I could say to you ron, as a man, how would you deal with this boy that does that? You could do the same with a woman. As a woman, how would you handle this? What do you know? What do I say? What do I do? How do I help it? Sometimes that works, sometimes it doesn't it. Really, I think the word is to come in with the idea that we love these kids and we want them to be better, and so how can we make this happen?

Speaker 1: 17:29

And then if you hit roadblocks with that and if it turns out that they're not open to having any sort of constructive dialogue or making any kind of constructive change, then at least that's information gathering. At least you're not mind reading them and assuming the worst. You've given them an opportunity to show you that they care and they want to make a change. And if they don't, then maybe it's time to make other changes. Maybe you need a parenting coordinator. Maybe the child needs to be in therapy to help support the situation. Maybe a modification needs to happen if it's really bad. Help support the situation. Maybe a modification needs to happen if it's really bad. But at least you're starting from a position of good faith. Attempt to communicate and not a position of mind reading and just attack and hyper litigation, something that we do at my house.

Speaker 1: 18:11

That Rebecca, my wife, did. She said hey, sometimes we have these conversations and they can be a little conflictual because we bring in all of our fears about things, our insecurities and our fears. So she had this really great idea of saying we're going to put some things and we're going to take them off the table. So literally wrote down I adore you, I love you, our relationship is wonderful. We're not in. I'm not abandoning you, you're not abandoning me.

Speaker 1: 18:39

All the things that you're like, worried about, literally wrote them down, put them in a container, literally took them off the table and said these things are off the table. We can have a conversation. We don't even have to worry about those things because we adore each other. We're here, we're in it to win it forever. Now let's talk about what's annoying us about each other. We're here, we're in it to win it forever. Now let's talk about what's annoying us about each other. Yes, and you can do that with your co-parent. You can say hey, let's get some things off the table. I think you're a wonderful parent, I think you have the best of attentions I'm not trying to attack you, but a little of you. Now we can have some conversations about, maybe, what we need help with.

Speaker 3: 19:16

And taking the past off the table is a really important thing, because so many times all the past is about the things that have hurt you. I recently had a conversation with my daughter about her dad. That was 27 years ago. We are not remotely the same people, so the past is really something that doesn't need to go into this stuff. Going to the past is useless.

Speaker 1: 19:42

It seems pretty obvious that Michelle Dempsey has really good intentions about good co-parenting and having good communication, and we all, I think, have trouble with these complicated situations. Sometimes co-parenting puts us in almost impossible situations. But not maximizing the conversation with your child, not asking too many questions that puts them in a weird spot. Making sure that you are actually making them feel heard and loved and safe without feeling interrogated that's the sweet spot.

Speaker 3: 20:15

And I think too, sometimes when we are triggered by something that the kid has said to us let's put your, go, put your clothes away and let's have a snack and talk about it, so that gives you a little time to go. Okay, this just punched me in the heart. What can I give me a minute? And it's not about saying I don't need to do it right this minute, but it's saying let's just get everybody ready to be able to have the conversation, and it can be a short conversation after that. I wouldn't delay it more than five minutes, but five minutes can be very valuable when you've been triggered by something that the child says to you.

Speaker 1: 20:59

Such great advice Always have to regulate yourself first before you can regulate your children or help them regulate themselves. Right, wonderful advice. All right, we'll leave it there. Connie LeBlanc, amazing therapist from Louisiana. Thank you, ma'am.

Speaker 3: 21:12

Thank you.