Speaker 1: 0:00

A co-parent who's looking to improperly control or manipulate the decision-making process about extracurriculars can do it in several ways, and one of the most harmful ways is to get your kids buy-in about a certain extracurricular before they've even spoken about it with the other parent parent, while casting the other parent as someone who is maybe the bad guy, who's more concerned about their own time or their finances than they are about what the child wants or is in the child's best interest. We're going to go through some, and each of these scenarios are really violative of cooperative co-parenting. The first scenario is where the co-parent tries to hype up or glamorize the activity to get the kid excited about it before it's even really a topic of conversation with the co-parent. One approach is giving a curated experience of the activity Depending on the age of the child and what level they're considering participating, showing them only the best and brightest, only the most fun aspects of whatever that activity could be, without giving any indication to the child that there's a lot of work involved, that's not always fun, that it may cut into other things that they would like to do or they're used to doing. The parent may sort of hype up these pie-in-the-sky aspirations for this activity If your child's not particularly athletic, for example, giving the indication that, oh, you could be a pro or you could be playing on a college scholarship. Giving the indication that, oh, you could be a pro or you could be playing on a college scholarship. If your child is not one, who's going to be dedicating thousands of hours saying, oh, you could be on the stage playing this instrument, whatever it is, it is providing your child with this really unrealistic view of what the future holds for them if they just do this activity that the parent wants them to do.

Speaker 1: 1:42

Another curated experience example is talking about all the ancillary things that they would do if they were doing this activity. So you know, if it's a travel team that they're trying to get the kid to sign up for, saying, oh, you know, when we go to these tournaments that we have to travel, for we'll stay in hotels with pools and we'll do this and we'll go out to eat and we'll do all this fun stuff, all the stuff that is adjacent to the activity itself. But the kid might be so interested in doing the adjacent thing that they then start to think that they want to do the activity itself. You may or may not be surprised to find out how many times a kid will agree to something they don't really want to do if they think they're going to be able to go out to eat and swim at the pool at the hotel, especially with a bunch of friends on a team. That sounds like a lot of fun. Another tactic is using social pressure, saying to the child oh, I heard that all of your friends are signing up for this, saying that this is what, like all the best kids, or all the best athletes, or all the coolest kids, whatever language that they think is going to work with your particular child, to create this sense of fear of missing out if they don't do this extracurricular activity.

Speaker 1: 2:51

A third tactic that can be used is to frame this activity that the child's never done before as a special bond between the parent and the child. This is particularly effective if the co-parent who's employing this tactic isn't around much. You know, if they're not really taking their parenting time, if they're kind of dismissive or ignores the child during the time that they have, they may say to the kid hey, this is going to be our special thing. They're sort of promising them that it's going to make the parent want to spend more time with the child. So they'll use language like hey, this will be our special activity that we do every Saturday. It's just going to be just the two of us.

Speaker 1: 3:27

If the child is really craving extra time and attention from the parent, it makes them think this is what makes me important enough, I guess, or special enough to have this time with my parent. That is otherwise kind of ignoring me. If the child doesn't want to spend all this additional time, if they're kind of happy with what's going on already, it can make the child feel guilty for rejecting this overture of special one-on-one time with the parent. It puts them in a rough spot either way. One, they feel like they have to do this thing in order to be worthy of their parent's attention, or two, they feel like they're the bad guy and they're rejecting their parent if they don't want to do this activity.

Speaker 1: 4:07

Another approach that the co-parent will take is to undermine the other parent, to cast the parent who doesn't want to do the activity or maybe doesn't even know about the activity yet as the bad guy. So the manipulating co-parent will say something like oh, I'd love to sign you, you up, but I'm not sure that your other parents gonna agree. You know they worry a lot about money and they worry a lot about their time or whatever it is frame themselves as the good guy, framing the other parent as the bad guy and, before even talking with the other parent, putting this concept in the kid's head that if the other parent says no, it's because they're being selfish and they don't love you, not like I love you. But this winds up framing for the child if the child's old enough to understand any potentially valid concerns the other parent's going to have as being negative concerns even from the very beginning. It's also really hurtful because sometimes just saying things like this can start the child to sort of think and doubt themselves and doubt the other parent, and so there may not be any concerns that are brought up. The other parent may be on board completely as soon as they hear about it without reservation. But there's still been this sort of kernel planted in the child's head that the other parent was against it from the beginning or there was a problem. It can make the child have a decreased excitement about an activity that both parents actually are totally on board for, because in the back of their mind they're going to be doubting oh, my other parent did really want to be here. Did they really want me to do this? Am I really causing them money trouble? It's a really unfair tactic that parents sometimes do.

Speaker 1: 5:47

Next is a tactic of creating a false sense of urgency. So the manipulative co-parent will be sitting on information for some period of time, having spoken with the child about hey, this is what we're going to do, it's going to be so much fun, we're going to go to the park and whatever it is, and at the same time, creating some sort of deadline for the decision. Maybe no deadline exists, you know. Maybe they are falsely saying to the co-parent hey, I've really looked into this and I've checked out the teams and there's only one spot left. We have to act right now. Or it may be that they really don't let the other parent know until the night before the deadline or the day of, and then they say to them for the very first time there's this extracurricular. Our child really wants to do it, we've talked about it a lot and the deadline is tonight. We've got to sign up.

Speaker 1: 6:32

Puts a lot of pressure on the other co-parent. It prevents them from being thoughtful. Taking time to consider what they can actually do, whether they can afford it, whether they're scheduled or permitted, what transportation issues there may be. It doesn't give them any time to actually meet with their child and get a sense of if their kid really wants to do this. Especially if that manufactured deadline is something that comes up during the other parent's parenting time. They don't even have the child with them to talk about it. And if they want to call and have a conversation then the child is with the parent who's been manufacturing this interest in this deadline all along. So it's a super unfair position. To put the other co-parent in.

Speaker 1: 7:11

Another technique is kind of the toe in the water technique Gets the child actually really invested into the activity before it's even being discussed with the other parent. So there are a few different ways to do this. Like without letting the other parent know they may sign them up for sort of a trial class. You know they may take them to a jiu-jitsu class or a musical class on their time, at their expense, without ever letting the other co-parent know. So by the time even the topic of this extracurricular is brought to the co-parent, the child has some actual experience doing it. Combining that with a curated exposure tactic is really a powerful double punch to get this kid really interested in this activity before it's even brought up to the other co-parent. In addition to doing things like taking a trial class, the manipulating parent may even have gone out and purchased some gear or a uniform. This child may have been spending days or weeks messing around with this gear, and it puts the other parent really in a difficult position to have to come in and say, well, we have to talk about this or think about it. It's a real tangible thing to the child at this point, and so it makes it extremely complicated.

Speaker 1: 8:25

All right, so let's talk about how this improper approach to getting into extracurriculars negatively impacts your child, because that's the key thing that we have to be worried about. So first, it can have really powerful impacts on your child's emotional well-being. It can create intense feelings of anxiety and guilt for your child. Anxiety because your child starts to feel responsible for whatever the outcome is. Now your child is going to start having some emotional caretaking for you. They feel that there's more at stake than the activity. There's the relationship there, there's your happiness with them and then with the other parent, they can have this sort of sense of dread. They're afraid of making the other parent unhappy.

Speaker 1: 9:11

You've hopelessly placed your child in the middle where showing interest for this activity can be a betrayal for the other parent. Not showing interest is a betrayal for you. That's a fierce loyalty conflict that your child's been put in. Another problem is it obscures your child's real interest. If you're trying to manufacture this interest or if the other parent is for a certain activity, then you won't know now. Is this something that they really want to do or is it just something that was manufactured by the manipulative co-parent? And you know what activity wasn't brought up by the child that they actually really wanted to do, because they could read the room and they knew that that wasn't going to work, especially if it's a season, like a lot of these activities are in seasons that conflict with each other.

Speaker 1: 10:02

So if you're a child getting the message that your parent wants you to play baseball in the spring, but you want it to do track, you can't do them both. And so what do you do? Do you stand up for yourself and say that you want track, or do you go with the flow and do the baseball? That depends a lot on the relationship that already exists, on other elements, of course of control that may be in the relationship if the parent is doing this kind of stuff. And it also depends on, you know, the child's just inherent personality. Are they a people pleaser? Are they more willing to stand up for themselves? So again, it makes it really difficult to determine what a child's true interest is.

Speaker 1: 10:39

There's also negative impacts for the co-parenting relationship. So one, as we've talked about, it, puts the child in the middle. It makes the child a bit of a messenger or a negotiator, and that is a practice that harms the co-parenting relationship because it creates resentment and distrust. One parent is undermining the parental authority of the other parent in the situation You're casting. If you're manipulating the child in this way, you're casting the other parent as a problem, and if they're a problem, then the child's going to respect their parental authority less. That's going to create problems for you in the future too, because the more that you teach a child that they don't have to respect their parent or that they shouldn't, the more that's going to come back on you later on. And then it just further erodes the trust between the co-parents. It makes cooperative decision-making nearly impossible in this circumstance, but it erodes it in other circumstances as well. So the negative impact on the co-parent communication and relationship extends far beyond the extracurriculars.

Speaker 1: 11:41

Now I have to be clear that this isn't always a consciously manipulated plan. It could be the one parent is just really engaging in poor communication without the manipulative intent. They had the effect but it wasn't their intent. It could be one parent just has this unchecked enthusiasm themselves. I mean, maybe it's a parent who gets excited about all sorts of stuff and they got about this too and they just weren't thinking about it. It could be that one parent is trying to relive their own past through their child, trying to have their dreams fulfilled through their kid, and that has taken over their thinking. It wasn't so much an intent to manipulate the co-parent as it was not thinking about the co-parent, as they were living their own fantasy of what their own childhood could have been like if they had done this activity.

Speaker 1: 12:31

Regardless of the intent of the manipulating co-parent, it's still a problem. It still creates this manipulative dynamic between the parent and the co-parent and the parent and the child. It's creating this hidden alliance between the manipulating co-parent and the parent and the child. It's creating this hidden alliance between the manipulating co-parent and the child and it's creating this schism between the child and the other parent. This automatically negatively impacts your child and it also damages your co-parenting relationship, which maybe wasn't great to begin with. It just further sinks that relationship.

Speaker 1: 13:01

If you're the parent on the other side of this manipulation, how do you respond to it? If you're the parent on the other side of this manipulation, how do you respond to it? Certainly you're going to be pissed. Your child comes to you. They're already kind of sold on this activity and you want to just scream from the mountaintops because you're so frustrated by this. And if it was an intentional manipulation? This isn't the first situation where this has occurred and this isn't the only situation. Probably right now when this is happening, it's happening in other areas of co-parenting as well. So the first thing you need to do is regulate yourself, realize that your child has been put in the middle of this impossible situation.

Speaker 1: 13:41

So start off by addressing your child with empathy, not with any sort of suspicion, and you can let them know that you hear the excitement that they're feeling. Like you can say wow, this sounds like a lot of fun. I can see why you're so excited about it. Tell me more about it. And then you get from the child more information. You know what are their expectations. This helps you gently try to figure out what your child's genuine interest is, so you can ask them questions like well, that sounds like a lot of fun, what sounds like the most fun part to you? Your child may say well, what sounds like a lot of fun is going on a trip and staying in a hotel and being at a hotel with a pool and go out to eat. You know that'll tell you that it's not so much about the extracurricular and it's more about the ancillary things that the other parent has put in their head about the activity. You can also ask them oh okay, so it sounds like you really want to do this. I thought you wanted to do this other activity. Has something changed your mind or how do you feel about them in comparison to each other? And again, it's all dependent on age what kind of conversation you can have.

Speaker 1: 14:46

The next thing that you can do is to take the pressure off of your child and let them know that it's not their decision. You can say something like this sounds like a lot of fun and it's also a big decision. This is something that you know. Your other parent, mom or dad talk about together so that we can come up with a plan and make sure that it works.

Speaker 1: 15:03

As you're doing all this, avoid criticizing the other parent. I know it's going to be really tempting to say something like well, you know, your dad shouldn't have gotten your hopes up or your mom shouldn't have made you think that this was going to happen before talking with me. Don't do that. That's only going to make things worse. It only pulls your kid further into the conflict between co-parents. So just keep the focus on. This is a big decision that you know your other parent and I need to make together to make sure it works for the whole family, that we can actually make this happen. But I'm super excited and I hope it does.

Speaker 1: 15:36

You know, say something like that. Don't criticize the other co-parent. So obviously this type of sabotage or manipulation of a child's interest is not a healthy co-parenting process. If you want to see how to properly do extracurriculars as co-parents, we have another video. Here's a link to it. It's about a practical guide to extracurriculars for cooperative co-parents. In our next video, we're going to talk about how to do extracurriculars when you have a high conflict co-parenting situation.