How To Coparent Children With Developmental Challenges

Episode Transcript

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Hi everyone, welcome to the show. I’m Dr. Nicole, and on today’s episode, we are talking about what can be a tricky topic of coparenting, especially when you have a child who may have a neurodevelopmental or behavioral or mental health type of challenge. Coparenting in a situation of separation or divorce can be tough for a lot of reasons, and many of you have written in over the past year or two with just everything from general to real specific questions that come up about this, and so I know that it’s an issue that a lot of you are dealing with. There are ways to approach this that allow for better communication, emotional wellness, and just healthier relationships for not only the adults involved, but for the kids involved as well. So to help us explore this topic, I’ve invited Dr. Jenna Flowers on the show today. Let me tell you a bit about her.

She’s a psychologist and Family Therapist with a private practice in Newport Beach and is the Clinical Director of Mainspring Family Wellness, offering counseling services and parenting classes. She offers an online course for coparenting called coparentwell.com. She has written a book called The Conscious Parent’s Guide to Coparenting, and is a court-appointed coparenting therapist in Orange County. Dr. Flowers is also the co-host of Mainspring Family Wellness podcast, discussing all things parenting and family wellness. She herself is a coparent to three children ages 20, 13, 10 and a bonus mom to a 15-year-old son, so she’s got the personal as well as the professional experience. Jenna, welcome to the show. It’s so great to have you here.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Oh, thanks so much, Nicole. It’s such a pleasure.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Like I said, this is a big topic for a lot of people, right? I’m not sure exactly what the formal divorce statistics are at this point, but I know that, solidly, it’s something that probably about 50% or even more of the families listening are dealing with. So I’m excited to get into this because so many people have questions around this. But I want to sort of frame this by having you share your story, because I know that part of your journey with this professionally has been your own experience around what has happened for you personally. So I’d love to have you just share a bit of your journey of how you came to be doing the work that you’re doing.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Oh, thank you. Yes. So five years ago, I ended up in a divorce myself and I had three kids at the time. I had a high schooler and then I think a five-year-old and then also an eight-year-old. So it was a lot of transition, and the one thing that my ex-husband and I could really align in though, was that we still really wanted to see our children know that they were loved by us, that they were so important to us. And we really wanted the very best for them. We didn’t want anything to fall through the cracks for them. And so I’m so thankful that we could really unite as parents on that front, and that our kids always knew that we were still both in it and very much involved in their lives. And so we have continued with our coparenting coming from that lens. And when I wrote the book Conscious Parents Guide to Coparenting, I actually was married at the time. And when I reflect back now, I realize, I ended up putting that parenting curriculum together in that book — because I’ve written parenting curriculums for since 2007, and the book was in 2015. I was actually writing my own manual for myself. And so I’m kind of living proof and so is my ex-husband that it works. If you really put the time in and recognize, if you want to have children that are securely attached in the world, then here are the steps on how to do it even after a divorce. Because ruptures are going to happen. In fact, you brought up the divorce rate. It is high, and it’s even higher for families with special needs. But it’s actually around 60% now, and even in my area of Orange County, California, I’ve heard it even at 75%. I mean, that’s crazy that it’s increasing, and that’s also very sad. But there’s also this reality that it still happens. And so when these ruptures happen for our children, we as parents have to make a choice of, “Okay, even though this didn’t work out for myself, am I going to allow it to become toxic for my children?” And when we look a little deeper into the research about divorce rates, initially, children who go through a divorce will have some anxiety or depression, because of course, they are grieving. The whole family is grieving. But children who stay in higher conflict homes for the long run, have a much higher rate of depression and anxiety as a result. So if your parents — even though you are going through something that’s very sad, and it’s a rupture, if you handle it really well with your kids they will be okay in the long run. They just really need to know that, “My parents are okay, and they are still there for me.” And children really benefit from seeing a level of respect and friendliness from their parents, they still want to know “Are they okay? Are they on good terms?” I’ve had some cases, Nicole, where parents can’t even be at an open house together. And it’s just so sad to me that you can’t go to the parent-teacher conference together for your child? This is where we are landing into more of this is a you problem versus this is a problem-free child. And so my whole base is: You create a secure connection, both of you are very necessary to be a part of your kids lives. And how do you go about doing that? And of course, sometimes you need some personal time to try to work through your own stuff. But if you take the time to do it, you’ll get there. And that’s always been my process with myself. And now I’m married, I just got married, actually, in the summer, and I’m learning what it’s to have a blended family. And even working with my ex-husband in that process. I’m still the primary parent for my kids. And my husband is — I’m his support for his son at 15, and he is my support. So he’s not making any final decisions here. Because that’s not his job. And I think when you understand how to organize it correctly in your home, then we are not overstepping on boundaries. And then the other coparent also doesn’t feel overstepped as well. Everybody knows how important everyone is to different people in the system.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

That’s a great way to describe it. We have this idea that well, we divorce or separate, and then we are separate. No, if you have children, there still is a system in operation here, and you get to choose how functional or dysfunctional for that system to be. I want to touch on something that you mentioned that I think is really valuable here around the idea of what happens to kids when parents get divorced, the grieving, the anxiety, the depression, but actually what can happen to kids when parents stay in a really dysfunctional, contentious situation? Because I think there still is this very predominant messaging in our culture around, “It doesn’t matter how bad, you stay together for the kids because it’s better for the kids.” And so can we just touch on that? Because I’m sure there’s people who are listening, who are like “Wow this has not been good. There’s been lots of… but everybody keeps telling me, we should stay together.” And really, what you shared briefly there is that that’s not necessarily true that it’s better for the kids.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Yes, I mean if you have a situation where it’s a toxic situation, where there is domestic violence, where there is chronic alcoholism or drug use, where there is abuse and violation that’s occurring, I think it’s really important that you get professional help, and really start to work out how do you set effective boundaries. And that’s not to say that you need to get divorced. It may be though that you do need to separate, that you need to have enough of a space and distance to both reflect on what you really want out of a relationship. Like is this cup filling or is this cup depleting? Because if your relationships are chronically cup depleting, then what’s happening within your own psyche? What are you doing for your own self care? How can you turn things around? And there is a truth too, that sometimes we do outgrow how a relationship is, how it is functioning. And if you don’t have two partners that are willing to both commit to it, this isn’t functioning well for either of us. So how do we get it back on track? Sometimes we are just not aligned on that, and we do outgrow the functioning of our relationship or how it is currently functioning.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I think that’s a great point. And so certainly in situations where there is clear abuse, substance use, those kinds of things. What about though — because I think I see this a lot in 25 years of working with families where there’s one or more children in the family with high needs or extra challenges, it can get to the point where there’s a toxicity around both parents or one or both parents being really emotionally dysregulated, or just a lot of yelling, a lot of arguing, a lot of contentiousness. That’s not good for kids either, right?

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

No, it’s really not healthy. It’s not healthy for anybody. And I think when it’s gotten to that level, it’s because there hasn’t been enough self-care that’s been laid out and properly designed in the family system, where we have really given permission to everybody to “take care of yourselves”. And what does that look like? For someone that might be that they go to church on a Wednesday night and they have got their women’s study, or they have got a men’s night where they are playing basketball with a bunch of guys, or they go on a personal retreat, or whatever it is for that person individually, it has to feel it’s soothing to the soul, especially when you have special needs kids, because when you’re a caregiver, kind of a caregiver beyond just parenting. It is exhausting. Yeah. And so decompression points are critical. And how you both are honoring that for each other, I think is really important. The other thing, too, Nicole, is that everybody has a different bandwidth. Some of us have more resilience and can take on, and some of us have just a shorter bandwidth. And it’s important to have a conversation about that with our partners. And if you have one partner that becomes resentful, where they are just taking on so much, which is often very common — this happens a lot, you’ve got one high functioning person and the other one is kind of under functioning. Some kind of conversation has to take place about this. And some other solutions have to be looked at. So if that person’s always the high functioner, where are their decompression points? Because they still need them. Because if not, resentment festers, and then the breakdown of a relationship happens. There is always a breaking point.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

That’s right, there is. And sometimes when you hit that breaking point, that can be repaired over time through couples therapy, through various kinds of things. And sometimes the decision does need to be made or is made, that we are going to go our separate ways. And then we need to focus on and “How do we best support the kids?” And this is that coparenting piece. It’s one thing for two adults to decide, okay, we are not going to be together anymore. But then what does that look like for the kids that we share? What does that look like for how we need to communicate with one another, with how this logistically is going to set up, because there are a lot of decisions around that? So I’m curious to have you touch on what are some of the common challenges that come up around coparenting? So people are in a coparenting situation, what do you see as some of the primary things that people struggle with or don’t navigate well, or just the issues that come up there?

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Well, I think communication and updating one another, I think, is really the main one. And sometimes also, kind of setting yourself up to be more important than the other parent, that can be another issue. Parental alienation has a lot of complex layers to it, but there are definite cases that I’ve seen where one parent kind of thinks they are the more important parent, and then little by little they are saying, “Well, the kids decided that and this, and so I’m just going to honor it, it’s not my job to enforce anything.” And so then you’re not coparenting. And yet, they are also benefiting from it passive aggressively, because they may feel like they have more of an alliance with their children. And that’s always a shame, because parents need to be the ones in charge, they need to be the authority, and they have to be able to make these decisions together. And the kids should not really be in charge of these decisions. It’s a little different once our kids are older, in their teens, and there may be more critical decisions like “This is the high school, guys, I really do want to go to.” Or “It’s easier for me to be at this one house instead of going every couple days, because it’s just where my life now is at 16, or 17.” That’s a different conversation. When you have littler kids that are in elementary school, it shouldn’t be up to your children to make certain decisions for themselves when it comes to living arrangements, how much time they are spending with one parent or not. And that’s when people have to be adults and work together. And I think also when it comes to special needs kids, which is part of what I wanted to talk about, I did want to share it — my children actually have ADD and ADHD, so this is something I’m very well versed in, and also why I’ve had to maybe work more in tandem with my coparent more so than if I had kids that didn’t have ADHD, because there are certain accommodations that I’ve just had to make because of the landscape of how my children are wired and what they are needing. So it’s very common that even if we do a really good job with coordinating certain things, something’s going to be forgotten. Something’s going to be left at somebody else’s home. And then I might suggest: How can we better plan this for next time? But likely we are probably going to have to drive back over to dad’s house and pick it up, or someone’s going to have to drop something off. We have to have some flexibility with it because it’s an ongoing learning process about how to remember things, how to be better organized, and how to plan.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Well, and often there’s more involvement that you need to have with the school and just with the things that your child’s involved in, too, and making sure that both parents are knowing what’s going on with those situations and are implementing plans if kids have plans in place at school or plans in place with a therapist or whatever, with things what they are working on, that both households, both parents are involved in and on the same page, and promoting and working on those things in their separate environments. Right?

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

I’ll tell you, my youngest actually has — I got COVID earlier in January, even though I was vaccinated and everything, but I still have this little ongoing cough that just kind of comes back. So my youngest actually has some issues with regulation, as well as ADHD. And he’s had occupational therapy in his background, he’s had regular therapy. I’ve tried a lot of different things and he also does speech therapy. Well, we reach certain impasses where he just gets so upset, and he doesn’t know how to manage his emotions. And I called my ex, and I said “I just think he needs to go back into therapy.” And my ex was like, “No, I’m not saying yes to that.” And I was so mad. I was like, “Why are you doing this? He needs the help.” Well, I had to just kind of put the conversation aside because I was getting upset, and I didn’t understand. But something else happened between our boys, and I was like, “We need to just sit down with your dad, and we have to get on the same page and talk it out.” And Nicole, what I took from that was when we sat down with my son, and it was just him, no other siblings in the room, and we were able to just sit and hear and listen to him, and it was a conversation about “Things sometimes don’t feel fair, brother is better at these things than me. I want to be this, I want to do that.” And he needed both of us in the same room to just listen. And the greatest intervention that we could give him was our ability to sit together in the room with him, and then come up with solutions together and say, “We are not going to go to a therapist then.” Because I think my ex had good insight. You’re right. It’s not about going to a therapist. It’s about us sitting down with you and giving you some accountability to “This is what we are going to do.” And then every 10 days, we are going to sit back down and check in and say “How are we doing with this?” And it’s made such a difference. This was the game changer that my son needed. He needed to know both of us cared and we were in it with him. And a therapist couldn’t do that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I love that example. And I think the challenge here is that most of the time when two adults are separating or divorcing, moving in separate directions with their lives, most of the time, it’s because communication is not going well. They are not regulating their emotions and behaviors around each other. Right. And so this idea that in order to really make coparenting work and to raise the healthiest kids that we can, in this coparenting situation, it is going to require that the adults take responsibility for maybe improving or working on some of those things that weren’t going so well in the relationship to begin with. Right. And that’s challenging,

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

For sure. But here’s the great thing about It: You’re no longer with that person because you romantically or relationally didn’t want to feel partnered in that way anymore. But the reality is you’re still partnered as parents. So when you make the transition, and sometimes it’s a difficult transition to initially make because everybody’s grieving, everyone’s tender, but you’re starting to hone in on the business of parenting, the transactions of parenting, and the focus is just on the kids. One of the one of the things that I’ve really noticed for my area is we have a lot of difficulty with child-centered parenting in these marriages. So many people are just so focused on their kids all the time, that they are not taking care of their marriages. So I will often end up seeing people that yeah, there’s nothing left between the two of them because they didn’t build anything. They just built on the kids. And so, since they still have that in common, they can actually function and work on that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah. That’s a great point. And I think sometimes too, especially when we are talking about kids with a lot of extra challenges, kids with maybe more severe disabilities. More significant behavioral issues, those kinds of things. One of the things that I’ve seen in my practice over the years is that when they split their parenting time, they actually become better parents. Because bandwidth-wise, they are getting some reprieve. Suddenly the divorce has forced them to structure their time, and they get breaks, things that they weren’t willing to work on when they were married, of how are we going to get breaks? How are we going to divide up responsibilities so that we can both manage this better, automatically happen in a separation or divorce, because they are not in the same place, and kids are going back and forth. And I have seen some parents grow into better versions of themselves as parents just because they are simply not around their kids 100% of the time like they were before.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Yes, I agree. And in fact, I have quite a few friends, even outside of my private practice, that have kids with special needs, and they are divorced, and how they are using their time when they are not with their kids, because it’s so intensive when they are with their children. I mean, you’re on 100% the whole time, right? They are mountain biking, they are active, they are doing things that just feel very cup filling for them, for themselves, to just replenish. And then they can go back in. So there is a bit of a tag teaming that’s taking place.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah. Let’s get into this idea of conscious coparenting, I think you set the stage for that really nicely, when you told your story about how you and your ex have chosen to coparent, which really is a lovely example of what conscious coparenting is. But I’d love for you to define that. What is conscious coparenting? We have done some previous episodes on the show around conscious parenting and things related to that. So certainly, if you’re listening and you and you missed those episodes, go check back in the episode list and maybe listen to some of those for some context too. But talk about what is conscious coparenting, why this is so important.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

So conscious coparenting is the ability to recognize that your coparent is just as important as you are in your child’s life. And you have to have this awareness of the roles that you both play to this little person or people, right. And so when you have that level of awareness, you have a certain respect for who that person is and what they mean to the people that you love most, which are your kids. So when I think of conscious coparenting, I’m aware of this being a person that I want to be respectful of, that has his own life journey, and I want really good things for this person because I know that will only benefit the kids. And I want good things for me, and I’m really aligned with the fact that all of us have a growth path. And my pursuit is high growth and high contribution in the world. So to hold back energetically on anything that’s really negative or to wish-fill or anything like that, that brings me down rather than even my coparent.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And so it’s really this idea of how can we come together and treat each other in a way that allows us to be the best example for our kids, and prioritizes the healthy growth and development of our children? We are no longer committed to each other in our growth and development as a couple, that’s done, but we are very committed to the healthy growth and development of our children. I think something to insert here as well, some of our listeners do have one or more children with very significant levels of impairment, or significant developmental disabilities where maybe the parenting journey or the logistics and the task of parenting isn’t going to be done at 18 or 20. This is a lifelong endeavor and it strikes me as we are talking about this is it becomes even more necessary in those situations to approach this through the lens of conscious coparenting, because you are going to be dealing with this for the rest of your life, and how do you want that to be for you and for your kids? It becomes really important to think about.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Absolutely. I think having that long term vision of, if I just only think in the short term, “This person has hurt me. I’m just not going to work with them. I’m going to parallel-parent, I’m going to pretend they don’t exist.” I mean, that’s your own denial. So you both have to be willing to really want to work together. I say that, and then people are still in situations where they’ll say, “I want a conscious coparent, but I have an ex that is unwilling.”

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I was going to ask that. Yeah.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

And so when that’s the case, and it’s common, people have this, I would still say, “Then still offer it.” Because you never know when it might change. It could be that maybe that person just has their own inner work that they have to continue to do, but if you are doing your inner work, then you will only benefit from it. So at least you’re available for it. And you keep continuing to put it out there for the sake of your kids.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah, I think that’s such a good point. Because as you were talking, I was thinking, and I’ve seen that happen in the clinic too, where one parent is very committed to doing this in a more conscious, healthy way, and the other one isn’t, and you can only control what you can control on your side of the equation.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Yeah, you know, one thing I should have said earlier about some of the obstacles is when parents bad mouth one another, that is another one, especially in front of your kids, you just don’t want to use your kids as pawns and add toxicity, or that they’re aware of how you don’t like their other parent. That stuff is just not helpful at all.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

And those are situations and I see that happen, unfortunately quite often, where if that’s what’s going on in your world, in your relationship, if that’s how you’re handling that, you really need to seek out some counseling, some psychotherapy, some intervention and work for yourself to figure out why it is that you are doing that, why it is that you’re trying to manage your own emotions and things in that way, because it is patently unfair to children, it essentially puts them back in the middle of a toxic situation that they can’t get out of, because you both will be their parents forever. And I think that’s the key here. Regardless of what the adults in the situation decide to do about the legality or the circumstances of their relationship with one another, kids never can escape or get out of the fact that you both are their parents, regardless of what you do with your marriage or relationship, you’re always going to both be their parents. And so I think when there’s that kind of dysfunctional behavior going on, on the part of one or both parents, that’s really a call to some individual therapy, I think.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

For sure.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

So let’s get into a little bit — with the conscious coparenting, can you give a couple of examples of maybe strategies around that or a couple of, what does this look like in practice? How would you approach a specific situation from a conscious parenting kind of standpoint? I mean, I’m thinking of maybe even some of the common things that come up, like deciding on parenting time, or communication throughout the week, or making a decision for the child medically or school wise, or whatever. Those are some of the things that come up. How does that look if we’re using a conscious parenting approach? Are there certain strategies or ways that parents should approach those situations?

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

That’s a great question. I would first start by saying stay curious. Rather than thinking that you already know this is how it needs to be, this is the best solution. When we take that posture of staying curious and saying, “Well, tell me more. Why do you think the way that you do?” One of the great things that I started and what I wrote about, too, in my book was actually I would just ask questions and not pointed questions that are accusatory, but more of like, “What do you think about this?” And then I would invite the opinion of my ex, rather than, say, “This is how it’s going to be. This is what’s going down.” If I invited the question of like, “Would you be interested in this for our son? What are your thoughts?” And then we had a dialogue. And when we had a shared dialogue, then it did seem that we came back to a better decision-making process. So I think because of our oldest, she was going into senior year, there were already a lot of questions for her with the next stage of college and what that looked like, that kind of thrust us into, “Okay, we’re running into a new developmental stage. We have to talk about this. College is coming up, right?” And so that just kind of helped us get our bearings, because then when we had some other things come up for the other kids, like we’ve got one baseball player, now we’re talking about high schools, we’re talking about what are we doing? And my ex and I, we talk every day at some point. And we’re friends, there’s a friendship there now, which I really appreciate, but it’s because we’ve stayed curious with each other and really made it about the kids. So I think that’s one. Two, honestly just being kind, and respectful. I’ve got some cases, like I’ve shared, I’m court-appointed. And I had, a couple weeks ago where the dad got a terrible diagnosis for his father coming up with cancer. And in the mom, she cried, because that was someone that was important at the time when they were married. So having that empathy of like, “Wow, I’m so sorry that you’re going through that”, still maybe even asking, “How’s your family doing?” Keeping it friendly, but not necessarily always having to still be intrusive or anything, I think is important as well.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Right. And I want to say something about that, that I think is important that has come up in a lot of my discussions with parents around this, because inherently, somebody will say, “Well, I want to be kind, but he’s not kind to me”, or whatever. I think going back to what you were saying about your own side of the equation, at that point, it doesn’t matter how your coparent is being, you have the choice of responding with kindness and empathy, because that is what feels good and right to you. And ultimately, that’s what’s healthiest for you and for your kids, regardless of how the other parent is viewing it. And I think a lot of people have a hard time with that, right? There’s sort of this tit for tat, that well “She’s not this way, so I’m not going to be this way.” And this process, it strikes me as you’re talking about it, is really about owning our own emotions and responses to it and saying, “Wait a second, it doesn’t matter. If the roles reverse, and my dad got a terminal illness, and he didn’t cry about it, and he wasn’t supportive. Okay, that’s him. But what feels right and good for me to do here? And that’s what I’m going to lean into and do regardless of what I think he would do.”

 Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Yeah, I often start every session when I have coparenting sessions — because I do two individuals, I’ll do an individual with each of them to just hear their story and where the obstacles are. But often, Nicole, where I land is, “You guys are so well-intentioned, you really want to be good parents. And here’s what I’ve heard in your timeline and story about what you guys have done in the past together. Because sometimes we need a reminder: There were some ways that you guys really aligned, and you had to make tough choices, and you worked it out. So since we have some of that history, let’s just make some adjustments and move it into coparenting because you’re capable of it, and you’re both really well-intentioned. Sometimes we just forget that. One of my favorite quotes from Brenè Brown is “Be generous in your assumptions of the other.” And I think in coparenting that just goes so far. So that would be one of my other things, is just be generous in your assumptions. Now, I say this, and I also recognize a lot of your listeners may say, “I was married to a narcissist, or I had a child abuse report that was unfounded, where do I go with that?” And those are painful things, but that still comes back to you doing that on your own personal work to move through that. And then you do have to set appropriate boundaries. And even though personally that may have affected you, if that parent still is a good parent to your child, if they still love your child, they want to be there, they want to be involved, then you have to put aside that personal stuff to then figure out how to still work with that person, because there’s no grounds to take that person out of your child’s life. That child still very much needs a relationship with both of their parents.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah. As we are talking about this, I’m wondering if you have some insights, or some observations around things that particularly, when we are talking about coparenting of kids with more challenges, needs — diagnosed or undiagnosed, are there some things, some ways that you see coparents operating, or decisions they make maybe even about logistical things or whatever, that may be well-intentioned, but that you often see ended up not working out real well for kids? Are there other things that you observe or things that you can think of that are like “Yeah, I get why people maybe think X, Y, or Z is a good way to handle it. But actually there might be a different approach that’s helpful for kids.”

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Can you give me an example of that?

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah. One of the things that I see come up sometimes is even around how they split their parenting time. Sometimes I’ll have parents who will be like “We just feel it’s best to do it right down the middle. And so he’s going to take the first three and a half days of the week and she’s going to take the second three and a half days of the week, and that’s how we are going to do it.” And it may be that type of arrangement may be a total disaster, let’s say, for a kid on the autism spectrum, who really struggles with transitions and maybe would do better with a week on, week off. I don’t know, that’s just one thing that comes to mind.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Yes, I’m so glad you brought that up. That is a great question. And that’s where coparenting therapy can be super helpful, because then hopefully you’re working with a therapist that is adept at understanding developmental stages, and then also some of the particular needs that your child may have. So transitions for a child on the spectrum, or a child with regulation issues is a really key issue, is often a part of also maybe if they have ABA, or if they have a certain treatment plan that you’re working on, on how to build into getting better at transitions. So there would be some issues. If you have the kind of parenting where it’s a five-two, two days on, two days off when they are little, that may be harder to really kind of get a rhythm on, right? Or they are missing too much time with a parent. So having some kind of conversation with a professional to help understand what would be best suited for a custody arrangement is a really good idea. And every child is different. When you have a high schooler, one week on, one week off, maybe actually a really good idea, because there’s less transition involved, and they can kind of camp with one. And you can also really get a rhythm with one parent. For myself, I have a five-two. So I have Monday, Tuesday, my ex has Wednesday, Thursday, and we switch every other weekend. And then we have all four, or all three of the kids because we have one that went to college, on the same schedule. And that works really well for us, because then we have at least five days of having a really nice rhythm together. And then the kids consistently know that Monday, Tuesday is mom, Wednesday, Thursday is with dad. Part of our coparenting arrangement, though is that because we don’t want to leave anything to fall through the cracks, we are still helping with different pickups when we are on our other days, because we are just outnumbered when you have more kids and different functions that everyone’s going to.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah. And that idea of “We are on the same team”, and I think that flexibility is so important. Okay, it just makes more sense for this person to be the parent that always does pick up. To be able to think about it again, in terms of what makes the most sense from the child’s perspective and from their experience. And so to that end, I’m wondering, what do you recommend around the process of involving kids in some of those conversations, getting their perspective? I 100% agree with you that children should never, for a variety of reasons, be in the position of making decisions about those things. Not healthy and appropriate for lots of reasons. But I’m wondering your thoughts on, do you involve them in just information gathering? Of their ideas and perspectives, and what it is, how do they feel? Do you have conversations around that? Do you just do it as parents? What do you think works best there?

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

That’s another great question. I think you may also see that just in their behavior on how they are relating to certain things, but sitting down and really hearing them, helping them feel really seen and heard and understanding where they are coming from is really important, and taking into account the next steps and then talking about it with your coparent to say, “Okay, this is what we have gathered. I think, based on this information, we should go with this strategy. What are your thoughts?” We have had some real sibling rivalry issues between my two boys, because my younger one just keeps thinking, “Even though you’re four years older than me, I should be at the same level as you”, Okay, you should be running at the same level. And you’re eight. So part of that sibling rivalry stuff, we have realized we are raising individual kids, only children in some ways, even though they are brothers. And each of them actually needs a little more one on one time. So even being flexible with our custody arrangement, I’m like, “You know what, how about if you take one on Monday night, and I’ll take the other and we are just going to have some good one on one time?” And that’s been so good to be able to — we don’t do it every week, but we will look for those special opportunities of just “Dad’s just going to take you. You’re going to have that time, and then you could stay back with me”, and maybe it’s not my custody night, but I still get some more time with one of my sons. It’s wonderful. But now having that flexibility, because you really have figured out what your kids are needing. See, that’s not about me. That’s not me trying to say, “Oh, I just want more time with my son. Right? No, that’s because actually, based on what we are seeing, he really benefits from that time. And children, boy, when they get that quality time, and it’s just them, and it’s them without their siblings. I think that’s across the boards too, Nicole. They can just blossom. They need that.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

I think that’s so true. It’s great advice. I’m wondering, in situations where coparents are just not working together enough, what’s a helpful strategy for that?

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Depending on how serious it is, I think it’s important to have something like Talking Parents or some kind of court-appointed documentation, on “This is where we are agreeing to”, holding to the boundaries in whatever custody arrangement that you have. So if it’s healthcare issues, whatever it is, that there is some kind of accountability for what has already been agreed on, and then following through at least on those basics. So if you have agreed on the school or if you have agreed on certain health care arrangements that you’re following through on. And if the other parent isn’t following through on it, then you do need to take those steps on ensuring that at least it’s going to get followed through on your time, or then maybe you have to adjust custody arrangements.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Some parents are really reticent when they realize that something’s not going well, and even parents who have gone through a mediation or a collaborative divorce, when they get into the logistics of this and realize, “Whoa, we are not on the same page here. There’s major problems.” I think there’s a lot of parents who are hesitant to access services through the court to get support around that. Maybe there’s some stigma or bias around that. I know you do a lot of court mandated coparenting work. What would you say to that parent who is like “I’m listening to this, and I’m realizing, we just are not on the same page. This is really an issue. These boundaries aren’t being held to, it’s constantly an issue. What would you say to them to encourage them maybe to explore some court support or professional support around that?

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

I would find a therapist that’s open to doing some coparenting work as a first step. I’ll often have mediators or lawyers, even if they are receiving a call, they’ll say, “Oh, call Dr. Jenna. Go get a session first, before you come to me and spend a $5,000 retainer. Maybe you can just resolve this in even a few sessions.” And it’s helpful. Even if you do some coparenting work just for yourself, it may be how you’re approaching it, what you’re bringing into it, the baggage you’re bringing into it. I’ve had a couple recently where somebody had some previous information from their marriage, and it just keeps getting projected onto the coparenting and you have to be able to separate some of that stuff out to then just work with the real issues that are at hand. Because the marriage is over. So it’s so much about, “Well, what about just these to-do’s?  How can we make more ground here?”, because the needs are great, and you’ve got to make some decisions right now for your kids.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Yeah. So getting that professional support, starting with a therapist who can help you individually or work with you and your coparent, but I think knowing that it is an option to go to the court and get some support around that, especially if you’re having some very significant issues around legal or medical decision making, don’t be afraid to access support around that.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Yes, and I do actually have an online course, which anybody could access. It’s called Coparent Well, and it’s coparentwell.com, and people could take that online. It’s like three hours of content. I try to break it into five minutes, on the go, little steps. And then there’s checklists and things to follow through to help yourself kind of stay on track with the conversations with your ex so that you’re using the time wisely. It doesn’t become about yourself, you just kind of follow what’s written.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

That’s great. And that’s a great segue as we wrap up, because I was going to ask, Where can people find out more about the work you’re doing? I know you have a book, you just mentioned the course that you have. Where can they find out more?

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Thanks. So I have The Conscious Parents Guide to Coparenting. You can find that on Amazon or Barnes & Noble, and coparentwell.com, and then I have actually my own podcast, Mainspring Family Wellness, and you can listen to episode 6 with my ex-husband and I talking about coparenting. And then we have an upcoming episode on divorce support recovery because we are starting a divorce support group at Mainspring for people that are just ready to move on, and it’s facilitated by a divorce coach as well as a therapist. So it’s a little different than going to a church support group or a counselor support group, because you’re really being facilitated by professionals in the field.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

That’s great. You’ve got so many great resources available. And what’s the name of your podcast so people can go find that?

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Mainspring Family Wellness.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Awesome, awesome. This has been such great information, really some good big picture things for people to think about, as well as some really tangible strategies. So I really appreciate you taking the time with us today, and we are grateful for the work you’re doing.

Dr. Jenna Flowers 

Oh, thank you. And thank you so much for having me on the show. I so appreciate your voice in the parenting world and what you’re offering for families, especially families with special needs. It’s just so critical. So thank you, Dr. Nicole.

Dr. Nicole Beurkens 

Thank you. And thanks to all of you, as always, for listening. We will catch you back here next time.