Book Review

The Co-Parenting Survival Guide:
Letting Go of Conflict after a Difficult Divorce

About 50% of divorced parents achieve a cooperative, positive co-parenting relationship within a year of their divorce becoming final. They're able to be respectful of each other and make decisions together. They may have different parenting styles and different opinions about what is best, but they do not try to control each other s parenting. They often give in to each other or compromise rather than fight. They work together in the best interests of the children.

Unfortunately, there is the second 50% of post-divorce parents, who experience varying levels of ongoing conflict. Their interactions may range from minor bickering, needing to prove they are right, coercion, and on to outright hostility. High conflict parents may refuse to talk to each other at all, file countless legal motions, and use their children as spies or allies in the warfare. If they do talk, sarcasm, condescending remarks, raised voices and profanity are often present. Joint decision-making becomes impossible. They have lost sight of what is in the children's best interests.

If your parenting relationship seems to be descending into the second 50%, a book by ElizabethThayer, PhD, and Jeffrey Zimmerman, PhD, can help you choose the children over the conflict. The Co-Parenting Survival Guide explains how to assess whether you have become addicted to conflict, and how to navigate hot spots of hostility around communication issues, visitation, extracurricular events, holidays, and new partners.

Practices that contribute to conflict addiction are identified. Counting the hours, or even the minutes children spend with the other parent becomes valued over the children's needs. Poor or distorted communication occurs and no one takes responsibility to check out what's real. "Winning" an issue over the other parent becomes the prize rather than the child's well-being.

The most severe damage for children of divorce is a result of ongoing parental conflict. This book can help you avoid the traps of hostility, inflexibility, and constant squabbling, and develop skills to sustain a co-parenting partnership based on love and concern for your children. All kids need two parents, whether they live together or not. Allow yours to benefit from parents who are living separately but working together.

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