A divorce can be a traumatic experience for everybody involved, particularly in terms of co-parenting afterwards. For many parents, the hardest thing will be seeing the impact divorce and co-parenting can have on their kids. While the marriage might no longer be established, you still both have children, and nothing can change that. If you and your partner have decided to split up, it’s important to figure out a way to co-parent your kids in a way that is healthier for them.

 

View it as a New Start

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking that by getting divorced, you’ve ruined your child’s life. In fact, life after divorce can be much better for many children because they are no longer living with parents who are in conflict with one another. After getting divorced, children can spend more quality time with each parent individually, which is often much easier for everybody. This gives the divorce a chance to actually be
a new start for both you and your kids.

 

Be Cooperative

It can be difficult to imagine cooperating with your ex-spouse if they have done something that has seriously hurt you, which led to the end of the marriage. However, cooperating with one another as parents does not necessarily mean that you need to be friends with one another. It will usually mean that you have to make a conscious decision to be willing to be co-parents for the sake of your kids. In the end, to coparent successfully, you need to keep reminding yourself that your love for your child will always be much greater than the level of dislike that you might have for your ex.

 

Make a Plan for Co-Parenting

Once you’ve decided that cooperation is better for your family as you coparent after the divorce, it’s important to come up with a plan for coparenting that is going to work well for both you and your kids. It’s a good idea to sit down and talk to your kids, if they are old enough, to hear if they have any good ideas for what might work. Be clear with them when it comes to how you feel about each idea and make sure that the expectations that you have are set out from the beginning.
Communicate Expenses Clearly

One of the most difficult parts of coparenting after a divorce can often be when it comes to communicating childcare expenses and other costs that are related to your children to your ex. This might not be easy to do if you are trying to avoid talking to your ex unless absolutely necessary or if they are not very cooperative with you when it comes to expenses. You can use Onward to make sharing expenses easier when coparenting. Onward is an app that you can use to easily add any expenses that are immediately shared with the other parent. There is the option to add receipts and other documents, and you can easily use the app to repay one another when needed.

 

Be Respectful

It can sometimes be tough to make that decision to be the bigger person and be respectful if you are dealing with an ex-partner who is not treating you with very much respect since the divorce. However, it’s important to remember that, in the end, you can’t control what anybody else chooses to do and the only thing that you are in control of is yourself and how you respond, which will ultimately impact your kids. Even better if you are both able to remain respectful when it comes to how you treat and speak to each other and about each other in front of the children especially. It’s important to remember that no matter what has happened between you and your ex-spouse, your child still loves both of you as parents and needs to see you both put on a united front and continue to respect each other throughout the process.

 

Be Flexible

While you may have a plan in place for how you are going to coparent your kids, there will likely be times where you will need to re-evaluate this plan and be flexible, since unexpected things are sure to happen sometimes. For example, your circumstances might change in the future, or the circumstances of your ex might change, which could result in you no longer being able to stick to the coparenting plan as well. Or you might need to spend some time revisiting and tweaking your plan for coparenting at the start of each school term to make sure that it accommodates for your child’s activity schedule.

A divorce might sometimes be the best option for a marriage, but it will have an impact on everybody in the family, especially the kids. By making a decision to coparent together, you can lessen the impact on the kids and even make the divorce a positive thing for them.