Many parents create child custody plans with their co-parents without much difficulty – often to a contrast of their relationship. Their arrangement is typically done through strong communication, determining who’ll have their children at what time and days through the week, where they’ll go to school and how their diets are managed, along with a ton of other considerations.
Some parents don’t get the leniency of having a cooperative co-parent. They may find their child’s other parent is abusive or narcissistic during their marriage, and, as a result, this causes much conflict in a child custody arrangement – to the point that a child’s well-being is vulnerable. When this happens, parents may need to consider an alternative parenting plan – one such way is parallel parenting.
Here’s what you should know:
Sharing parenting responsibilities without causing problems
Parallel parenting is a plan that gives each parent responsibilities to fulfill without involving the other parent. These responsibilities are unique to every parenting plan. This gives parents the liberty of doing their parenting obligations and keeping involved with their children without stepping on the other parents’ toes – especially in or following a high-conflict separation or divorce.
Shield your child from conflict
While most parents who are involved in parallel parenting find that it not only greatly benefits them but it also helps protect children from conflict. High-conflict marriages often cause difficulty for children. Children are malleable and because of that, they may develop unhealthy habits from the difficulties between their parents.
Signs that you should consider a parallel parenting plan
People often treat their spouses differently during marriage. However, when there’s abuse in a marriage, this behavior is likely to continue after divorce. Parents may need to watch for indications that a co-parenting plan won’t work because of continuing conflict and instead transition to a parallel parenting plan.
You might consider parallel parenting if the following behaviors or actions are present in your relationship:
- Harassment, intimidation or physical abuse
- Manipulating a child
- Disregarding a child’s well-being
- Withholding information
Once you realize it’s time to change your parenting plan, you may need to reach out for legal help.