PARENTING
AND
DIVORCE
Children can be
negatively affected
by parents’ interaction

By ROSEMARY J. STAUBER

In the September/October issue of SAN ANTONIO WOMAN, I wrote about an alternative to traditional litigated divorce — collaborative divorce.

Briefly, collaborative divorce and collaborative law focus on working out the terms of divorce without
the intervention of the court systems. Lawyers are involved and perhaps accountants, mental health professionals, child specialists and sometimes financial planners.

This approach helps couples that are able to put the needs of their children first and solve their problems in a relatively harmonious fashion.

Several studies indicate that children of divorce, when compared with children from nondivorced families, are more likely to have adjustment concerns and problems with worry, peer acceptance and acting-out behavior. While the experts argue about the long-term effects of divorce on children, those of us in the field know that there are problems and that the ways the parents interact with each other makes a huge difference in how the children grow and develop. It is clear that prolonged custody battles and pressure from both sides for the children to report on the other parent and to join in blaming and hating the other is harmful.

Some parents clearly cannot manage a harmonious approach to divorce. There are various resources to help the “high-conflict” parents achieve an acceptable dual-parenting approach. One of these is parenting coordination. Some judges maintain lists of psychotherapists trained in the methods and techniques of these approaches.

Initially, judges authorized the practitioners to make decisions for the families in the best interests of the children. As the practice has evolved, practitioners have recognized, as most psychotherapists have, that what works best is full involvement of all parties in the decision making process.

Texas Family Code defines parenting coordinator as an impartial third party appointed by the court to assist parties in resolving issues relating to parenting and other family concerns arising from an order in a suit affecting the parent-child relationship.

The authority of a parenting coordinator must be limited to matters that will aid the parties in identifying disputed issues; reducing misunderstandings; clarifying priorities; exploring possibilities for problem solving; developing methods of collaboration in parenting; developing a parenting plan; and complying with the court’s order regarding conservatorship or possession of and access to the child.

There are many programs for training parenting coordinators, and some use different names for the process. They are developed for the purpose of working specifically with high-conflict families. According to the Texas Family Code, "high-conflict case" means a suit affecting the parent-child relationship in which the parties demonstrate a pattern of repetitious litigation; anger and distrust; difficulty in communicating about and cooperating in the care of their children; other behaviors that in the discretion of the court warrant the appointment of a parenting coordinator.

Having spent many years in the therapy business, I have come across a few high-conflict families. I find this work extremely challenging. The sessions will quickly deteriorate into faultfinding and blaming matches. The one who can find more wrong with the other “wins.” Actually, everyone loses in this game.

The guidelines cited above are useful for all divorces that involve children. Some parents, by keeping the welfare of the children the highest priority, can do it themselves. Some can do it with the help of a mediator. For the high-conflict couple, a parenting coordinator is needed and may even be ordered by the judge.

The parenting coordinator is skilled in mediation and family systems therapy and must be well versed in child development, conflict resolution and family law. Parenting coordination offers some tools and guidelines. The following are adapted from Parenting Coordination: Texas Model for Collaborative Systems, compiled by Dr. Lynelle C. Yingling, 2006.

Mediation:

• Defining mutually agreeable parenting goals

• Brainstorming options to meet those goals

• Assessing and agreeing on solutions within legal guidelines

• Recording written agreements

• Working collaboratively with the legal community

Family Therapy:

• Family assessment

• System restructuring to meet the needs of the family

• Communication and conflict resolution skill building

• Interventions to shift interaction patterns

• Solution-focused problem solving Co-Parenting Education:

• Impact of divorce on family members

• Healthy co-parenting guidelines

• Communication skills

• Conflict resolution guidelines

Family Violence:

• Assessing level of violence

• Intervening appropriately to protect safety of all family members

Clearly, this is a complex process and cannot be fully addressed in an article of this sort. From A niche that puts children first, an article from APA [American Psychological Association] ONLINE, Monitor on Psychology, by Deborah Smith Bailey of the Monitor staff (Vol. 36, No.1, January 2005), I learned about Matthew Sullivan, Ph.D., a parenting coordinator in San Francisco. Because the work is so intense and the paperwork to document all of his interventions is so extensive, he limits his parenting coordination practice to approximately one-third of his total practice.

The way to limit the conflict is to write an extremely detailed plan. For example, when the court order calls for the parents to have the children on alternate weekends, he may write the plan by defining the weekend (e.g., 7 p.m. Friday until 5 p.m. Sunday) and give specific instructions, such as “Mom will drop the children off at the curb, and Dad will wait for them at the front door.”

The training focuses on the difficulty of this kind of work, even recommending that the therapist hire a security guard at her/his discretion to keep everyone safe if the battles escalate to the level of violence. This is a statement that Brigitte Bell, a parenting coordinator in Evanston, Ill., displays on her wall. It sums the issue up nicely:

"The only statistically significant factor about how children fare when their parents divorce is how much the parents fight and how they handle the conflict around the children. No particular schedule, no particular parenting arrangement, no pattern of overnights or times with mom or times with dad, no schedule regarding contact between siblings, none of that has been shown to affect the children’s welfare in a statistically significant way: only the degree of conflict between the parents."


Rosemary J. Stauber, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist in San Antonio and founding director of the Bexar County Women’s Center.