A parenting team is more than just the parents. Learn to overcome common obstacles and build a strong team to help your children thrive in this article from The Center for Parenting Education. Below you’ll find an excerpt of the article. For the full details, check out the original post.
Who Is On Your Parenting Team?
You may wonder how you can develop an effective partnership with the people who are involved with you in raising and caring for your children. These can include:
- your co-parent,
- grandparents,
- caretakers,
- teachers,
- coaches,
- other involved adults.
Not only is this support important for the healthy development of your children, but it also makes the job of parenting less frustrating and more rewarding.
What Is a Parenting Team?
Team parenting is a mutual commitment between people involved in the care of a child to:
- share basic philosophical positions about parenting
- support one another and appreciate each other’s beliefs, needs, strengths, and efforts
- be flexible
- give feedback and constructive criticism to one another in a healthy and supportive way – you do not need to agree with your co-parent in their approach or ideas, but as parenting partners, you do need to listen to each other’s point of view
- plan together how to deal with major issues or persistent problems – discuss rules, expectations, and discipline issues
Guidelines for Effective Team Parenting
Once you become aware of what factors may be getting in the way of creating an effect partnership with your co-parent, there are many skills and attitudes you can learn and adopt that will help you successfully get “on the same page” with the people who are involved in caring for and raising your children.
General Tips
- Set aside a regular time to discuss what has been going on and to plan strategies for the upcoming week.
- If one of you wants to try a new approach, ask your co-parent for support or, at a minimum, non-interference.
- Avoid evading responsibility when a problem arises. Deal with issues as they occur.
- Don’t interfere with a situation the other person is handling.
- After problems have been solved, allow time to talk about the interactions and to give suggestions, praise, support, or constructive criticism.
- Resolve differences of opinion in private, not in front of your children.
When Parenting Partners Disagree
If you can’t agree on an issue, one of you may need to back down temporarily or agree to disagree. Remember that you don’t have to be see eye-to-eye on everything. Each of you can have certain rules which are unique for your relationship with your children; there can be “Mommy’s rules” and “Daddy’s rules.”
However, these differences should be on the less important issues. In addition, you can go along with each other on some issues in exchange for support on others.
When Children Try to Play Parents against Each Other
If your child seeks your support against his other parent, you can validate your child’s reactions, feelings, and perceptions. Encourage your child to work out the conflict directly with his other parent; you can offer to help him clarify his thoughts and present his feelings. While doing so, remain objective and do not take sides.
However, if you are concerned that your child is being harmed physically or emotionally, intervention may be called for, either in discussions with your spouse or co-parent or with outside resources.
Specific Team Communication Techniques
- Stick to the issue, don’t get side-tracked. Don’t bring up other complaints. Stay in the now and discuss one issue at a time.
- If your partner attacks, blames, or is disrespectful, ask him or her to speak more respectfully. You can refuse to continue a conversation in which you are not being treated with respect.
- Use Active Listening. This is an important skill, probably the most important communication skill you can learn.
- Use I-Messages when you want to express how you feel about the situation. It is a way to communicate your thoughts and feelings without blaming or attacking the other person. This skill involves remaining calm, clear, and confident. Be assertive, not aggressive.
- Choose with broad approaches in mind. Don’t challenge every argument that is presented and don’t argue over details. Instead of mentioning every time your spouse has let your child “off the hook” this past week, stay with the big picture and later you can give specific examples.
- Accept responsibility for your parenting choices. Don’t make excuses for your behavior.
- Accept that you and your partner may have different perspectives on some issues. Don’t take it as a personal affront, as long as the communication is respectful. You both may have valid, just different, perspectives. The goal is to come together and decide how you want to raise your children.
- Focus on solutions, rather than finding someone to blame. Appreciate that there is some legitimate reason for almost every behavior.
- Be assertive, not aggressive.
- Avoid lecturing. To decrease defensiveness in your partner, stay calm and objective and communicate your reactions in a descriptive, non-judgmental way.
- It is important to talk with your partner directly, not through your children; avoid using them as a middleman. This is good modeling for your children; they will learn to be direct in their communications with people and they will learn the fine arts of negotiation and compromise.
- When you receive a negative general statement, ask for more clarification and specifics.
Team Parent Conversation Starters
The following ideas can be used as a starting point for a general conversation with your partner about intentionally and deliberately creating a partnership as you raise your children.
- Explore each of your families of origin, how each of you were raised, and how that effects your current parenting.
- Describe what you think each of you does well in parenting and areas where each of you can grow.
- Talk about how you each can support one another to do the best job you can in raising your children.
- Discuss together the traits you each value in your children, talking about differences as well as traits you agree on. Awareness of this can help you get on the same page with your partner about your goals for your children.