Coparent Academy Podcast
Lifechanging Coparenting
Coparent Academy Podcast
#162 - How to Have Hard Conversations with Your Coparent
Watch this episode on YouTube.
Having tough conversations with your coparent can feel overwhelming, especially when emotions run high or past conflict clouds your judgment. In this video a family law attorney and a therapist talk about practical, compassionate strategies to help coparents with difficult discussions.
Whether you're deciding on daycare, addressing new romantic partners, or managing your child's education, this video will help you:
- Recognize your own mixed emotions
- Prepare for conflict without defensiveness
- Break conversations into manageable steps
- Stay grounded when the other parent is dismissive
- Seek understanding instead of just solutions
This isn’t about “winning” the argument—it’s about improving communication, even in high-conflict situations.
This topic is one that comes up a lot, and I was joking that. I thought if I wanted to get any actual views on this video, I need to name it how to have five ways to have a conversation with your narcissistic ex. But that's not. I'm not going to do that to you. That's not where we're going. We're going to be. We're going to be curious and compassionate towards ourself and others and in this conversation, we're going to focus on how we can help ourselves be prepared to have difficult conversations. Is that right?
Speaker 2:That's right.
Speaker 1:So how can we, how can co-parents do that? How can they be prepared to approach a difficult conversation?
Speaker 2:Yeah, this comes up in a lot of context for me as a therapist.
Speaker 2:So one thing that my clients have appreciated learning more about is using the strategy of talking about a subject using multiple perspectives that they're experiencing inside of themselves.
Speaker 2:So there's often, when there's a difficult conversation coming up, a lot of times we feel pressure to come into the conversation with our position and we want to have the right position and we want to be able to defend the position and it's all about our position that we're the thing that we want or the position that we want to maintain or achieve, and so the strategy that I'm sharing is really different from that. It's more of acknowledging that I don't necessarily have one solid, monolithical way that I look at something or feel about something, and so maybe it would help to have that be part of the conversation, and the other person might be experiencing that as well, because I think most of us do have mixed emotions about things or different perspectives that we can take. We might not realize it at first, but once we slow down and are mindful about it, we might realize that it is true that we have just multiple things going on inside us about this conversation or issue.
Speaker 1:There are lots of examples that come up in co-parenting that I could throw out there. See if any of these stick for you as maybe a good one for us to talk about Sometimes the choice of a daycare provider for, like, really little kids, or the choice of a school or an extracurricular, or whether we feel okay with our child being around our co-parent's new romantic partner there can be a bunch of different situations where we're dealing with a joint decision with our co-parent with whom we have some conflict and we're concerned about the safety of our child, and it can bring up just a lot.
Speaker 2:Maybe it's because it's the first one you said, but the one that stuck in my mind was the one about the daycare, because one of the things that I notice parents having different perspectives on and feeling pressure about is what kind of environment and experience do they want their child to have, and one of the issues that immediately came up in my mind was there are some preschools that are more academically focused, and then there are some preschools that are more focused on play.
Speaker 2:Let's say I'm the parent that wants to focus on play. I might start a conversation by saying acknowledging that part of me is really focused on the child being able to be in an environment where there's play as the focus, because from a developmental perspective, children, the work of childhood, is play right Like. Play is not just fluff. Play is the context in which they learn a lot of important life skills that might be more important than learning their like some academic skills at that point. But I could also acknowledge, like part of me really understands we want our child to be successful in life. We don't want to feel like our child's getting behind other children. So part of me understands you spouse might have that other perspective. I understand both of these things. I really want to talk this through with you and see what can we do that might help us acknowledge and provide some experiences for both of these things.
Speaker 1:Yeah, because if they don't go into the hoity toity preschool they won't get into the Excel Academy, then they won't get into the private high school on scholarship, and then they won't get into Harvard and then they won't be a brain surgeon. So if you let our child play instead of learning their ABCs and their address and their colors, they're not going to be a brain surgeon.
Speaker 2:And then the other parent might be thinking yes, if we do those academic preschools, they might do all that, and then they might also get to college, be completely burned out and have no people skills, so it's really hard to sometimes know what the right thing is.
Speaker 2:So, being open to the pros and cons of both sides, and another that we can have more than two parts of us going on too. There might be another part of us that I might be able to acknowledge. Maybe I'm feeling sad. Maybe I'm feeling sad about our child having to spend so much time in preschool or in daycare, right. Or maybe I'm worried because I want to spend a lot of time on my career and we need somebody to teach them these things. Maybe I'm feeling guilty about the time I'm so there could be these other more emotional parts that are coming out and making it feel more important to have one of these versus the other.
Speaker 2:You know, maybe one parent had the really academic experience or the really play. Let's say, maybe another parent went Montessori school all the way through and felt like that wasn't helpful either, because it was too focused on not enough focused on a specific curriculum they might be. The parent might be able to say I think part of me is reacting to the experience I had. Right which doesn't mean that there's nothing important there to learn from it, but it might just mean maybe part of what I'm feeling is about me and not about the kid.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I do a lot of mediations and what came to my mind in talking about this need for the balance is practically and I'm saying this because it may not be the helpful way I'm looking to see if I could approach it better. Part of me is saying you can do socialization with kids in different ways, but a really structured way is to do it at the preschool and you can teach your child how to read or count or learn their colors anytime. You don't actually need any other kids around to do that. So we can do that at home and you can do the socialization in school and that seems like a solution. Is that kind of response? If I were giving that kind of response to you as my co-parent, when you were offering up to me this feeling about how your conflicting parts were affecting you, how would that be received? Would that be helpful or unhelpful to come in with this sort of practical solution?
Speaker 2:What this is making me think of is breaking the conversation up into stages, right? So, like, maybe the first stage would be if each person could come in to the conversation not with a position, but with some introspection about what are their own multiple perspectives about this, because I don't know how somebody else might receive it, because I don't know what their experience is and what their perspectives are of looking at it. So sometimes opening this conversation might look like hey, I know we wanted to talk about choosing a school. I have really been thinking about the different thoughts and feelings I have about it, and so what I'd like to do is just share with you what I'm noticing, the different ways I'm looking at it, and maybe you don't even have to respond right now. Maybe, like, right now it's just about listening, and I also want to hear yours, the different perspectives that you might have about it, and then maybe this part of the conversation could just be about that.
Speaker 1:So how do you, how would we approach that if we were in a really conflictual situation? Because I've seen this I do parenting coordinator work as well where I've got the two co-parents in my office at the same time and we're talking about an issue. I can hear a parent saying I don't care how you feel, like we're paying X amount of money an hour or I have limited time and I don't want to hear how you feel. I just need to figure out what we're doing for daycare, like if you're on the receiving end of that from the other side. You've reached across the aisle to try to talk about how you're feeling and you've been shut down by a person who just wants a practical solution as quickly as possible. How can you be kind to yourself in that situation and continue on in the conversation, or what should you do?
Speaker 2:Yeah, the first thought that came to my mind is that if the other parent who's doing the shutting down is doing that, then that's probably a pattern that they've been in for a while, right?
Speaker 1:Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So it's probably not the first time that they're coming up against this kind of reaction and I would be curious about the person's experience, like how they coped with it in the past and was it helpful. And because coping it's so what I'm learning is it's so individual what's helpful for me might not be helpful for you. So individual what's helpful for me might not be helpful for you. One person might really doing breathing, but breathing to be effective needs to be what we call belly breathing, where you're filling up your the air is like coming all the way down and filling up your belly. I've clients who have had prior eating disorders and doing that is very triggering to them. So I would not necessarily recommend I do not mention like belly at all with these clients, even though that's what it's called. So I think and not everybody has the benefit of a therapist, but it can be helpful to. It's so hard for me to answer in a general way because things are really individualized.
Speaker 1:So essentially, then, think about trying to find a way for yourself, and this kind of goes back to the conversation we had in a prior video. We're noticing for yourself. How am I feeling, how does that response affect me? How am I feeling about that response, that response affecting me? How am I feeling about that response? What is a way that I can help myself get through these next few minutes of this conversation a little bit more easily? And if I'm coming into the conversation knowing that there exists a pattern of being shut down like that when I try to open up and have a healthy communication, then maybe in advance I'm prepared with the kinds of things that I know would be helpful, based on my own individual experience, because I know I'm going to be running into this probably when I get into the conversation.
Speaker 2:We have multiple perspectives on things, but we don't always, we're not always aware of it until we really start being curious about what those parts might be we might start with. I really think a preschool that's focused on play is the most important thing. Why do I think that? Maybe it's focused? Maybe partly it's a reaction to something I experienced. That doesn't mean I'm totally wrong, it just means maybe I'm feeling some extra about it. What's the extra? Maybe the extra is I have a fear for our child. What will happen if it's too academically focused? Okay, let's look at that fear. What can we do to help balance that? What can we do to help balance that, to get some balance in there so we can start understanding?
Speaker 1:And maybe the other side had the other experience, right, like maybe they had the play preschool and then they felt like they went to kindergarten and they weren't prepared, for example, and they were in the slow reading group, yeah, and then that gave them a different kind of shame that stayed with them and they're petrified that's going to happen to their child as well, or the thought that their child would be in a slow reading group is going to mean to them that they failed, because they failed to change what their negative experience was. From their perspective, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2:Or they might have had, let's say, they didn't go to the academic and then maybe it took longer for them to be identified with some kind of learning disability. You don't necessarily to give our kids what we needed, but not what they need.
Speaker 1:That's really powerful.
Speaker 2:That can be a question that might help cut through some of the things. Let me think about what this was like for me. What came out of this for me as a kid? Am I trying to give my kids what I now believe I needed then, but might not be what this kid needs?
Speaker 1:It's like any adaptation, whether it's genetic or whether it's social you adapt because of the need at the time, and then that adaptation stays longer than the environment that needed the adaptation, and so it becomes potentially unhelpful, especially through the fog of passage of a great deal of time and the introduction of additional situations that steered the course of your life, causally as well, and you're trying to maybe look back and say this one pinpoint on my timeline is what led me to here, disregarding in the moment the hundreds or thousands of other decisions or events that also took you to that position where you wound up.
Speaker 2:Yeah, they're trying to understand and honor the other person's point of view, like, I hear you that you're saying we just need to pick something, and I hear you that this academic is really important. What I'm wondering is what is this other person's experience that's causing them to be this way? I'm wondering, is it? Do they feel like they haven't been heard? Maybe not even with this person, but in some prior relationship, right? Do they feel like they have to fight and shut down in order? Maybe they are feeling uncomfortable about being able to be in this conversation. They just want it to end as soon as possible. Maybe they have the same doubts, right, but they just want it to be over. So what's coming up in my mind is a lot of curiosity about the other person, and that might be something that the spouse might know might have some insight.
Speaker 1:Yeah, or you may be wrong about it. I noticed that the more I've been married and you've been married for a long time I've been married for a long time and what I notice is that even after 25 years of marriage I may think that I know and I'm wrong. You can still inappropriately mind read the situation, but in this kind of context I can imagine it may be helpful to structure it iteratively anyway, where, if the other person wants to break it down, like you were saying, like not coming in with that specific objective, but say hey, that's a really good, I hear what you're saying, that's a really good point. Let me think more about that and get back with you. That would give the person an opportunity.
Speaker 1:If they want to shut it down, hey, we're done talking for right now we're going to need to talk about it again. But not forcing yourself to stay in a conversation where you're being actively shut down. And being shut down, like you said, is an indication that the person wants the conversation to be done. So fine, it can be done. It's not on their terms. Potentially it can be done. So fine, it can be done. It's not on their terms. Potentially we can be done for today. We'll need to address it, maybe in a different form later. Maybe we need to switch to email instead of having a live conversation. But I could see that if you can't, if you can't take care of the other person's emotional need in the moment, which is not your responsibility anyway then you can at least take care of your own which is not your responsibility anyway, then you can at least take care of your own.
Speaker 2:And so I think having it in a iterative process, like you're saying, gives the opportunity that at least there's a chance for these different perspectives to come out Right, because otherwise the whole conversation can end up being rushed and pressured and there's no opportunity. But having it in a segmented way might say okay, this part, step one, is only about taking perspectives on this thing. You know, some strategy that is used a lot in therapy is just like taking it one step at a time, because it's interesting, people have challenges with things that you might not think are challenging right, so we can break it down into steps and that just makes it more tolerable.
Speaker 1:So that was all really interesting. Thank you, karen, I really appreciate it. Thanks for talking with me.
Speaker 2:You're welcome, Ron. It's always fun to talk to you and I feel like I learned too, and I appreciate what you do.
Speaker 1:Thank you All, right, bye.
Speaker 2:Bye.