Parent Mediation

Co-Parenting After Divorce and for Never-Married Parents

Co-parenting is a life-long relationship. Your children keep you linked to the other parent even if you are parenting after divorce or never-married.

In fact, most divorced and unmarried parents have more years of co-parenting ahead of them than the actual years of their marriage or dating relationship. Removing the intimacy of a marriage or dating relationship can sometimes lead to improved communication and warmer feelings between the parents.

Of course, this is the ideal scenario for co-parenting. Sometimes parent mediation is needed.

The Challenge of Co-Parenting After Divorce or Relationship Break-Up

However, it is often the case that the broken relationship was a result of opposing communication styles, goals, aspirations, values – all of which can lead to ongoing conflict, expensive legal fees, mistrust, and overall negative feelings.

Co-parenting under these circumstances is much harder. And the children are the ones stuck in the middle, pulled in different directions.

Parenting requires a litany of decisions that can be difficult when the two parents are dealing with resentment, hurt, and often a desire to separate from the other.

Yet, both parents love their children and truly want to make decisions with their best interest at heart. This is where parent mediation can help.

Parent Mediation Helps Co-Parents Make Decisions To Benefit Their Children

It is with these dynamics that parenting mediation can be helpful.

A parent mediator can help facilitate communication and decision-making for issues related to:

  • Divorce or paternity joint modifications to the parenting plan
  • Child-related information sharing
  • Parenting time schedule
  • Holidays and vacations
  • Extracurricular activities
  • Education and schooling
  • Child support modification
  • Sending shared and consistent messages
  • Limit-setting
  • Health, dental and medical issues
  • Child mental health
  • Relationships with relatives

The divorce research is clear that there is a correlation between the level of conflict between the two parents and outcomes for their children.

The higher the conflict the greater the chance that the children will experience negative outcomes. Research has shown a negative impact on child and adult mental health, educational and career attainment, relationships, physical health, and overall success and happiness.

The good news is that the reverse is also true. By lowering the children’s exposure to conflict parents are increasing the likelihood of positive outcomes.

The goal of parenting mediation is to strengthen the parenting relationship, protect the children from exposure to conflict, help parenting after divorce, separation or relationship break-up, and more than anything else, benefit the lives of children.

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What Clients Say About Ben

 

“Child custody can be emotional, complex and difficult, Ben was able to navigate both while being respectful, understanding and extremely patient and helpful. His background as a counselor, vs. a legal background, kept the process focused on the issues and not all about the legal technicalities that can make child custody more about the law then the child. We were able resolve our issues quickly which allowed us to move past the negations and into conversations on how to increase trust and better co-parent our child. I am very pleased with our decision to choose this route and would highly recommend Ben to anyone”.

Lauren

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Ben Stich Mediator, LICSW, M.Ed

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