If separated parents are truly committed to protecting their children from the negative impact of conflict they really need to be asking themselves this question;

What do we have to do to improve our relationship so that our children can grow up, thrive and develop, knowing and feeling ‘supported and held’ by a safe and secure parenting relationship in which they feel that they have each parent’s ‘loving permission’ to have a good relationship with the both parents.

For all sorts of reasons, separated parents often find it incredibly difficult and sadly, sometimes impossible, to create and develop a positive parenting relationship for their children, following the end of their marriage or co-habitation.

This article offers a framework of 10 questions that separated parents might want to reflect on, ask themselves and each other, as they struggle to build mutual understanding and rebuild their parenting relationship, following the end of their marriage or cohabitation.

This article does assume, at the very least, that both parents are committed to exploring mutually acceptable new and better ways of communicating, understanding that this is likely to require both of them to make a number of changes to their own thinking, behaviour and how they interact with each other.

Without this commitment to work together, focussed on improving their situation, no help from any family expert, will be enough and court is the likely outcome.

Here are the 10 questions with some supporting comments for each one.

1. Are we committed to develop and improve our parental relationship together, for the benefit of our children?

If your answer is, no, you need not proceed to the remaining questions. If your answer is yes, ask yourselves and discuss between yourselves WHY this is so important to you both and the children. If your answer is ‘yes, but’ there will be ‘limiting beliefs/barriers’ tied up with the word ‘but’ which will need to be addressed (see below)

2.How do you each describe your current parenting relationship ie describe how you communicate, your beliefs about each other, the level of trust between you etc and be honest with each other !

This is a starting point so that you can each decide, from your different perspective and beliefs, what aspects of the relationship need to be worked on. Listen carefully to what you each have to say, seeking to truly understand each other’s perceptions and beliefs. If you are not clear about these, ask each other questions until you are. Be tenaciously curious.

3.Having answered the above question, please take some time to think about and describe for each other the kind of relationship that you both want to have as parents and why.

When considering this question, perhaps reflect on how you will want your children to look back, when they are parents themselves, and describe, to their children, the relationship their parents (you both) had- Perhaps write this down in detail to give you a clear focus and vision for what you are both working hard for. It should motive you!

Your answers to this question may reveal how aligned or misaligned you both are with what you both believe is important for the children so far as your parenting relationship is concerned and your hopes and aspirations for the future.

4. To help answer question 3 please focus on what you believe your children need to feel about and from their parents relationship? ie Does your current parental relationship make them feel loved, secure, protected? If so, great. If not, why not? How do you each think the children would describe their ideal parents relationship.

This question seeks, of course to keep the children as the central focus and again focus you both on a creating and maintaining a clear, powerful, motivating vision for yourselves.

5.Having spent time identifying the things you both need to work on, the next question might be; Are you both prepared to discuss, consider and work together on what needs to change in order to improve your parenting relationship so that ultimately it becomes the kind of relationship that meets your children’s needs, understanding that the mediation process and, indeed, any constructive and productive relationship, only really works well when you both feel able and willing to listen to each other with the aim of understanding each other and working constructively through any differences that arise?

In other words, do you think your children are worth the effort? How committed are you both to doing the necessary work together, going through the necessary self-reflective process and making the necessary changes because this can be tough work.

6. Then, go on to consider what you can each individually do ( change) to improve the parenting relationship- (This can be tough especially where there is a fairly entrenched blame or self-justifying narrative about each other to overcome and this often involves calling on some deep personal resources such as self-awareness, patience, resilience and self- restraint).

Change is rarely easy but hopefully you have both already concluded that it is and will be worth it for your children. One of the keys is for you both to feel that you are each doing your best with the personal resources you have available and are making a real effort to understand, acknowledge and appreciate each other for your positive attributes as well as the things you might each find more challenging, understanding that you each have a responsibility to make the necessary changes to improve your parenting relationship and support each other.

After all, all relationships involve an interaction between at least two people who share responsibility for how successful or otherwise it is.

7. Then, you might ask each other what help you would like from the each other in order to support you both to improve the relationship, exercising self restraint if and when you feel the need to react defensively to views being expressed about what you both find difficult about each other, bearing in mind that they are simply views and perceptions based on your respective narratives (stored memories of your experiences). The key is to listen to understand before making a judgement or assumption about how you are going to respond.

It is so important to remember that you are a parenting team or alliance and it is the team or alliance that needs you both to be working for and in support of it and each other.

Perhaps, to help you both, create a mutual list of what you both believe your parenting team needs in order to be successful ie mutual respect, appreciation, acknowledgements etc and then decide whether there is a deficiency of any of these things. Perhaps use scales of 1-10 to give you a deeper understanding about what you each mean when describing things.

A good indication of mindset or attitude is evidenced in your language. For example, do you talk about ‘my’ children or ‘our’ children. Do you talk a lot about ‘I, me, myself’ or is there more ‘us, we, our’ (see question 8 below). Listen to yourselves. Also, try to remain aware of your internal dialogue which will give you clues to your beliefs (see question below).

8. All these questions will flush out the barriers to improving your communication and the parental relationship, from your different perspectives. In order to be sure that you have identified and captured all your perceived barriers, so that you can get to work on them, it is worth asking yourselves the following question;

What do we each believe makes it difficult to do the things we ask of ourselves and of each other, to improve our relationship, assuming, of course, that we acknowledge that if our parenting relationship were better we would be able to communicate and work together in a more positive and constructive way which would benefit our children as they grow and develop, modelling, as children do, their behaviour and how they interact with others, based on the parental relationship we both have.

This question may reveal to both of you some of the belief barriers you may have about your own abilities and abilities of each other to make the commitment and do the work necessary to make the necessary improvements to your parental relationship for your children. You can then get to work on these.

KEEP AT IT.

KEEP DOING THE WORK AND WATCH THINGS IMPROVE OVER TIME.

REMEMBER, CHANGE IS NOT INSTANT AND STARTS WITH CHANGING HOW YOU BEHAVE TOWARDS EACH OTHER.

START WITH THE SMALL THINGS, SMALL ACTS OF KINDNESS

John Hind- Compass-Resolution.com