Co-Parent Unscripted | Tammy and Jay Daughtry

well it is great to see everybody getting to know everybody and if you hadn't had the chance to share a little bit we're gonna give you some more time to get to know each other a little bit more later on tonight welcome to panco parent unscripted here at Woodstock City Church we are so delighted that you decided to spend a little bit of time with us my name is Jared Smith I'm one of the groups of pastors here at the church in the mission here at the church is simple is to lead people into a growing relationship with Jesus Christ and everything that we do is is aimed in that direction some of you guys are around the church a lot some of you guys this might be your first time in our building and we just want to say a special welcome we hope that tonight is helpful for you as we have conversations of what hangs in the balance for all of us as parents right one of the things that we all know is that parenting is hard do you ask any parent parenting is hard but when you add the complexity of raising children in two separate homes man it gets so much more difficult and so what we want to do tonight is by creating a safe environment where we can have open conversations about how we're doing in that parenting role because we know what hangs in the balance the fact that you're here tonight shows that you care shows that you're above average and that you're feeling a little bit of this okay it's going okay or it's not going great or it's going to fabulous but what can we do to make it go even better so when the tonight we're not gonna have all the answers we're not gonna resolve all the issues but our hope is that tonight we can address some things that can give us some helpful approaches some practical tips some practical things that we can do to help us as parents so when the team approached me about kind of coming and being a part of tonight they came to me and they said hey Jared we just need somebody who came from a divorced home and turned out okay and I didn't really know how to take that but then I thought you know what hey if if okay is what you're looking for and if here's okay and I'm somewhere around there I'll do that I'm game for that because I did I came from a co-parenting family my parents separated when I was nine divorced when I was 11 I've seen the good the bad and the ugly of divorce I know what it feels like to be and walk through those experiences and honestly I love my mom and I love my dad and I wish they had an experience like this where they could have conversations honest conversations about how they were doing in this co-parenting model huh right because parenting is hard it's difficult but when we can take steps together it can be powerful you know when things get goin rough it's difficult on us all but when we can feel and know that we're not alone in things that's when it can be the biggest part of what we feel like God can do in and through it all you know and tonight we're not gonna have all the answers we're not gonna bring the resolve of things and the thing that we want to focus on tonight is how what do what can we control what can we do in and through the experiences there's gonna be some times tonight where honestly divorce is hard and so there's gonna be some things that you might hear that you just hard to hear and it can be easy for us to sit there and say okay yeah that's great that's great but but if you knew my circumstances you knew my situation if you knew it my bleepity bleep ex did right there's gonna be a piece of us that can creep up and start seeking those things and honestly you're probably right if you put me in your circumstance and in your shoes I'd probably feel every bit of the same thing but tonight what we want to focus on is the things that we can control we want to focus on us we want to focus on our hearts on our posture on our responses in those difficult situations and circumstances and as a guy who's experienced that personally I can tell you this that it's not the details of the circumstances or he-said she-said stuff that the kids are gonna remember they're gonna remember the model of what a healthy response looks like I remember just after my parents divorced I was spending time with my dad's and I would come downstairs and he would be reading his Bible and at the time I didn't want anything to do with the Bible just as much as my dad didn't want anything to do with the divorce I was going on but it made an amazing model of what faith looks like in difficult circumstances in difficult situations and years later as I read through my Bible now I see page after page of story after story where people's lives didn't go the way that they thought it was gonna go but there's a God who loves them who offers hope for them regardless of their circumstances that's the opportunity that you and I get to lead through with our kids I'm raising a family now and my kids are there leveraging every little bit of what might be the only benefit in a kids eyes of what divorce brings you know what I'm talking about double Christmases right double presents double birthdays and they're just experiencing it just as grandkids but those times where we can model how best to respond in the circumstances that we didn't choose always but we find ourselves in our desires that's a night that we find a hope in all of those circumstances no matter where you are in your faith journey or where you are and be part of a church community that cuz then I could be a helpful experience to take steps forward tonight we've got the opportunity to hear from Tammy and J Daughtry they are a fun couple out of Nashville Tennessee who are experts in the field they've got master's degree in marriage and family counseling as well as being Co parents themselves both of them coming out of single-parent home they're a fun couple that are going to share some practical things that we can all do and our approach towards parenting then when they're sharing there might be a time where you're thinking okay that's good but I got a question or hey hey wait wait I don't know okay I got a follow-up question of for more details so what we've done is we've actually created a number it's a phone number that you can text in at any point tonight there's numbers right there the six seven eight five eight five six oh eight five you want to write it down or we'll have it up on the screen later on tonight during the time but if there's any point where you have a question about okay I want more information or what what's the best way to for me to respond maybe in this situation you can text that in and then after they share they're gonna have some time for you to kind of unpack things at your tables to have some conversations in community and then at the end of the night we're gonna come back up and answer as many of the questions that we can to make this as a helpful ignite an event for you here at co-parenting unscripted so in just a second there's gonna be a video that rolls and then my friends Tammy and Jade are you gonna come up and when they do when those lights come up can you help me out and give a very very warm welcome to our friends Tammy and Jay Daughtry thanks for being here [Music] well good evening what anyway like to curtsey for you thank you no I'll try not to talk like we're from Nashville because really I'm from Denver he's from Chicago Oh Bronco Bears but thank you so much for coming out tonight it is a joy and an honor to be with you a little story about where we come from 17 years ago I was facing a divorce I had been in counseling in an eight-and-a-half year marriage for five years of that journey fighting for my marriage absolutely 100% committed to never getting divorced I come from divorce who's raised in a very complex family growing up and so the number one thing I was gonna do I was the first valedictorian first one to go off to college first of a lot of things so I was gonna be the first one to have the 70 year marriage or I guess 60 I don't know white picket fence I wanted a dozen kids that was plan a for me never never was I gonna go through a divorce however seventeen years ago I was separated for the first year and when my daughter was two our divorce was final so I found myself at his unexpected fork in the road you know I loved what they called tonight the unscripted co-parent that part of my journey was completely unscripted wasn't in my plan didn't think it was in God's plan didn't see a lot of Hope in the beginning and I'm here to say seventeen years later that little girl who I started asking the big question how do you co-parent between two homes she's got one heart two homes how do you do that I had this little girl who was barely starting to talk she was two and toddling around and you know doing what two-year-olds do and I wanted her to know it's okay to love your dad you don't have to pick a favorite it's okay to love us both how do you do that and so I started kind of shaking that tree with a lot of people in Nashville and around the country saying where are the tools and healthy co-parenting where's the roadmap not just the four-hour class that you have to take to check off the but where is the long-term roadmap on healthy co-parenting because two things I knew one is I never ever ever wanted her to feel like she had to pick a favorite I never wanted her to think that loving dad meant that it would upset me or that loving me would upset her dad and I also knew that I wanted to learn from people I was looking for tools to learn from people five and ten years down the road who were already doing a great job I I believed that there was a way we could do this and not shred her childhood and so I kind of went on this tenacious quest for information and at the time I was an event producer and had an event company traveling around the country doing fun events thought I'd retired doing events but that big hole in my soul that couldn't find an answer how do I co-parent well how do I raise an amazing daughter who's going to go on and have a lifelong marriage how do I do that God what how how do I forgive somebody that I'm very wounded by most likely no one will say sorry you know we get divorced we don't say we're sorry anymore how do you forgive how do you let go so that journey led me down a lot of roads and asking a lot of questions and kind of shaking those trees and one day God said tani write a book do something about it speak up and be a voice for kids and I remember thinking Lord I'm an event producer I have no idea how to write books I don't know you know where to even start I help promote books and records and other things for other people but I didn't know what to do but I started thinking what would I say to somebody four or five years I was four or five years down the road what would I say to somebody just getting started and so I secretly started writing a book and then started doing events for parents just like yourself I think the first one was in 2003 we started addressing this tough topic of co-parenting and so it's been a long winding road and I as a single mom I went off to grad school and wanted to get a master's in marriage and family to work with really ticked off Co parents who don't like each other and most of my peers in class said you want to do what they thought I had three heads I said you know kids don't have a voice in this journey I knew that from my own experience and I wanted to get in the mud and the pain and the hurt with people and figure out how can we heal and get healthy and get on with stable lives as parents and how can we raise amazing kids that are gonna go on and change the world and have traditional well well-adjusted family near the end of grad school I met mr. wonderful I went to what I thought was a single moms lunch at a church in Nashville they asked me to come and give my cards out and meet all these single moms at the church I was not stalking that's okay he always says that it's so not true but no the the professor who invited me in to talk she said Tammy we have a double lunch once a month this big married sunday-school does a double lunch and we have all these single moms and kids and the couples and we just fellowship so it's not a big you know stressful thing just come give out your cards because I was starting to do my counseling practicum there at the church so I showed up with business cards and thinking I'm gonna meet all these awesome moms got to church that morning and there was a really cute guy on the worship team and I was like Lord I'm not here to look at men there's a first second Sunday I'd been in that church and at the single mom lunch ended up across the table from mr. wonderful so I thought he was one of the married guys who had brought the food but the Lord had a whole nother story surprise for me in that story and he was there as a single dad there it was yeah single dad single me only only single dad brave enough to show up for that lunch because I mean let's face it after teaching Sunday school being on worship team twice that morning last thing I want to do is go home and cook for myself my treat it's you know that's like hey so what's cooking for me I will sit down and enjoy that but it was a great opportunity because yeah we got good food our kids got to enjoy and then parents were able to sit around the tables and talk and get real about life and about what we were using a single parents the isolation that we were challenged with the double duty that we had to do now for me I came into the single parent journey in a very different way I lost my wife of 21 years in a car accident and so I became a single father with three kids in just an instant in a moment everything changed and as a I was a pastor at the time and as I said I mean I ended up on the other side of the desk and experienced that whole thing in a very new way because no matter how empathetic you are it's different when you are in it and no matter how hard I have tried to understand the pain that people were going through in that time I didn't really understand it until I experienced it so down the road three and a half years later I met this beautiful lady as she stopped as she met me there at that luncheon and did make a few enemies that day just saying there's some other ladies that had their eye on mr. wonderful yes well I don't know about that but certainly for us it was the beginning of something new God was in it and we are glad for that yet I do come from a divorced family as well and part of my co-parenting story is recognizing that there was none and so the mother that had abandoned me and my two brothers and left us with our dad was never allowed back even when she tried and so all of a sudden Here I am in grad school learning all these things becoming a marriage family therapist and it dawns on me in the middle of a divorce adjustment class that I came from a step family I'm 45 years old how did I not know I came from step family you know but so for me that journey is extremely poignant at this point as I watched my mother die 2 years ago from from abuse she abused herself year after year opioids cocaine and alcohol and all those other things and finding myself my two brothers grown men with huge holes in our hearts because we never knew our mom we were never given that chance we're never allowed to have that chance and there is a deep deep part of us that we realized was really really broken but good news is three and a half years it's a tough journey after losing my wife and eight and a half years and to her journey God brings us together and lo and behold there's a great blending story that well and and I did not like I said I did not plan to go to a single moms lunch meet a guy that's really cute fall in love get married have him go to grad school and I'm finishing grad school enough you know years later open a Counseling Center and do all this together I had no clue there was no script I didn't know all the good stuff coming down the road and and I remember back in the the journey the hard hard part of the single parent journey so many nights wondering God is there any hope it's anybody ever gonna love me again how will this impact my daughter's life she's from a broken home is she gonna have a broken life or she can have a whole life I had so many questions and the thing that God kept doing over and over is putting cue cards in my path out of people out of leaders at a friend's to remind me Tammy God loves you he hates divorce but he doesn't hate the people who go through it he loves you he hates the pain it causes yeah but he loves you he loves you he loves your children and there is redemption in a story ahead for everybody that is unique and different our God is so creative like that and yet in the in the dark times quite often I wondered I really wondered and so wherever you are in your journey around this topic of co-parenting whether you're a co-parent you're a friend of a co-parent you're a stepparent you're a grandparent whatever that is just know that there is a story of hope and that the story for your children can be beautiful it can be awesome and your kids will not have to have a broken life just because they may have came come from a broken home and so where we are going with this journey there's a lot to pack into 45 minutes tonight the cool part and I don't know if you already know this or not if I'm going to kind of let the cat out of the bag but they're giving you when you leave tonight you're getting a copy of our book co-parenting works helping kids thrive after divorce you all get one yay to this church and so this is the fire hydrant here of all of this we're gonna give you a tiny little tip of the iceberg but in there whether you like to read or you don't please I just beg you dig into it read the table of contents see kind of what resonates cuz there's stuff in there that we won't even get to tonight but at the end of the story the end of the book there's a story there I want to tell you now before we start the practicality side there's a man named John Trent dr. John Trent who used to speak for Promise Keepers he's very spoke to six million men or more he's written a dozen books on healthy marriage and family and he is actually from a broken home and I found this out during grad school I had no idea I kind of assumed that the people that write all these marriage and parenting resources are from really healthy wonderful families well he came from a broken home but he has had an amazing life and he says there are two things that his mom did well his whole life that changed the repetitive course for him a she never spoke ill of John's dad never and second she talked to John about God's plan for a lifelong marriage even though she couldn't be that example and wops that out for her son she upheld that story for him that God has a plan for her for him to become a traditional dad with a lifelong family and now he does that all around the country and in the book we tell his story in our videos he tells his story but he says it's those two simple things over a long term they really changed his life and he didn't know his dad his dad walked out of his life when he was 2 he didn't meet him till he was in his 40s so he grew up hearing amazing stories about this invisible guy of course longing for him missing him but all his mom ever told him was the good stuff she told her son your dad he got awards in the military he was a ballplayer she told him all the good stuff and he said that just changed his life to know the good stuff about his dad and later in life he asked his mom after he met his dad you know you might have won a bit of been a little more honest with me you told me all this good stuff and then he met him and unfortunately and John tells this publicly so I have his permission to share it but unfortunately his father was a chain-smoking alcoholic he had been in and out of a lot of trouble had just had a really hard broken journey not a good example as a dad not even a really strong man and yet he went back to his mommy's like mom you told me all this good stuff and she said John I always knew that every time you looked in the mirror the genes you would see looking back at you half of them came from me and half from your dad she said I wanted you to know the good stuff about your dad so that you could grow up whole and know that you come from a good man and I got to tell you if there's nothing else you take away from tonight the power of what you say or what you leave unsaid to your children is life transforming and so I want to cheer tonight for dads I'm gonna cheer for moms I want to cheer for grandparents you know sometimes people assume since I'm a woman that I'm gonna be all-pro mom well I am Pro mom but let me tell you I am Pro dad dads matter to kids they matter so much and we're gonna talk about some of the hard stuff when you're trying to deal with co-parenting with somebody who's rude and difficult but dads matter and for anybody who's really angry at the other parent whether you're the mom or the dad I just beg you open up just a little bit of opportunity in your heart in your mind to hear what we have to say about how important it is that your kids get to love you both don't try to be the favorite don't try to be the one who's who always does everything right and wonderful and downplays the other parent because like Jay said in the long run even if you they don't know that person if all they've ever experienced is the tough stuff it hurts it hurts in a way that that is very difficult so I'm here to cheer for moms dads grandparents and churches like this that are willing to talk about hard real stuff and more than anything we're here to cheer for your kids we're here to cheer for the children who are there in that place and needing needing us in the midst of all of our personal pain to continue to be parents and that's not an easy task so we reduce our family yes real quick I think they have a picture of our fun family they are we blended these kids nine years ago there are four kids and actually that's one of our grandchildren we actually now have two I think the next slide there's our curtain yes grandkids are a little older now he's four she's two he's dead brother they are so much fun and they have a little brother coming in a couple weeks so we are grandparents now and we've got a lot of crazy fun happening out of this unscripted surprise I guess you'd say and and in step family math we always say you get credit for how many kids times how many years you've been married so we've got four kids and nine years of marriage we've done thirty six years of life in this last nine years so anybody that grew up in a stem family or is in one now you probably understand that math right we forget when you feel the the ridiculous freshman you go I didn't think it would be this hard yeah well yeah you know that's why it's all happening at Lightspeed Lightspeed and then some so as we know in the general topics of life over fifty-five percent of kids come from non-traditional families right so this is not new and I'm so again grateful for churches like Woodstock and all of the other compartment regions of this church that want to talk about this stuff because it's real it matters it's not something to shine or to be embarrassed about it just let's get into it and talk about it and figure out how can we cheer for parents and for kids and so 55 percent of them are in non-traditional homes and then and uniquely you know when we look at America we we see ourselves as a country that's full of strong families traditional families there's mom there's dad there's the kids and so on and so forth well as of 2015 the number one family type in America is the step family of the blended family and that doesn't take into account all of those families that have been created by cohabitating couples many of who came from divorce and thought well I'll just avoid all this irritating painful stuff by not getting married and then they have children and then they split up and now they've got all the same pain and all the same dynamics but more complications so when we look at that statistic and understand that that's that's the makeup of America today we're not outliers we're not on the fringe we are the new normal to understand that when we're in single-parent post-divorce life this is a part of what we're doing right now and what we want to do is look at it and say okay so if this is what's happening now what do we do with them because ignoring it doesn't help shaming condemning doesn't help what we want to do is understand that there is a difference between a traditional intact family with two bio parents and a blended family where you have a bio in a step there's unique dynamics there that we have to understand deal with navigate so that we can have a whole and healthy happy family and in both sides of that spectrum are what we call coherence and some of you if you're if you are a co-parent or if you've used that phrase in the last couple years some people may go oh I know what that is and some people may say you're a wet you're doing what why would you care about parenting with your ex I some people don't understand the benefit of that don't think it's even something that's important so we want to start with kind of this baseline definition of what co-parenting is what it might be and what it's not and so the three things that simply clarify what is co-parenting is sharing time it's communicating and it's making decisions those are the three simple kind of foundational experiences of what it's like when bio parents are in two homes you're communicating you're sharing time and you're making decisions and now that is not a easy thing to do even with somebody you like and love alright and and it's extremely difficult when you're no longer on the same team in a sense with the other parent so that's what co-parenting is co-parenting my vision might be well it might be the fact that you're sharing the same event same time maybe a family holidays those sorts of things so co-parenting might be that might be part of that equation it might be that Johnny and Susie are are playing ball or doing a recital whatever they're involved in the two parents are still showing up not because they're interested in one another but because they have a common interest and that is their child and so we want to be there to support them so part of what co-parenting might be is being at the same event is being at some sort of a holiday event and birthdays and all those other things that are still going to be a part of that child's life that you have a vested common interest now here's what co-parenting is not co-parenting is not getting your needs met instead of your child's need it's not staying angry about the past it's not getting back together as husband and wife and it's not reunifying as a family now in some rare cases there is hope that couples can reconcile so let me put a little caveat there there are a few that we've worked with and we've heard of that go down on these dark hard roads and yet somewhere in the future there's a restoration so there could be a little hope some day but today we're gonna talk practical brass tacks we're no longer a family where sometimes not even friends most likely we start out as enemies and we're trying to figure this stuff out so we want to really think about the fact that it's not about getting our need met as an adult it's thinking always what is best for our kids and trying to communicate with the other party so let's talk about the lingo the language language matters right the words we use matter they're important and so we want to look at some basic things now the good old all-american divorce has a tendency to have language that is specifically coming from the legal system right and so we use words like custody we use words like visitation those kinds of words well they have they have their purpose but I think if we can change some of that language and again well aren't we splitting hairs here Jay isn't this why is that so important why does it matter what I say in relation to what's happening in this realm well the reason is because what's a child going to understand about a word like custody wolfies watched a few episodes of cops it's about getting cuffed and stuffed right you know visitation well what's visitation mean well it's some place you go and come back you're not a part of it right so a lot of the language that we want to change is all about fostering an idea of belonging we want our children to be sure they understand that they belong wherever they happen to be they belong with mom they belong with dad and that's okay so we want to use words that talked about parenting time parenting responsibilities when we talk about the child's other parent we talk about them in that way why do we want to call them our X I I don't think Tammy wants to walk around the rest of her life being known as John's ex most important thing that came out of that marriage that means anything to her is the fact that she has a daughter named Angela and so she's Angela's mom and John is Anjali is dead so they're really you're not there anything anymore but you are still the parent of that child right talking about your home as opposed to mom's house or dads house you know making sure that you're putting your child in that place your home with your dad your home with your mom oh you're going to your home with your dad this weekend that'll be great I hope you have a lot of fun well why is that matter again it's your home the child's home with that parent there's belonging that we're fostering we're laying the groundwork for them to understand that they don't have to be conflicted they've already got to divide itself and that divided heart is struggling because their parents being together was a unifying factor for them and now that's dis unified and so what we need to do is continue to foster a sense of belonging that allows us to minimize that divided heart and be sure that no matter where they're at they feel at home in one of the phrases that you'll hear us say and if you either read the book or you come look at our website there's a lot of cool stuff on our co-parenting international website but we come back to these four words one heart two homes one heart two homes a child comes and goes between both places with one heart in two homes part of the tough thing for kids when they're coming and going is that conflict between mom and dad now I'll tell you it's not easy none of this is easy and there are real reason it's probably everybody in here who's ever been through a divorce or a division of a relationship maybe you weren't married you you created a family then you divided there are real reasons but the pain point for kids is when that anger gets in the way of their ability to enjoy both places so this is the challenge for us to be able to walk that fine line between what's personal and what's parental to find a way to do that to find strategies to find people and places to go who can help and encourage where we can spill out all that difficult stuff so that we can come back to our children and be the parent that he needs to be because it's hard that's not about judgment and I hope you don't feel that that's not about condemnation that's just about saying listen there's hope there's real hope beyond all of what you're hurting with now all of what you're experiencing or what you have experienced there's hope but we have to figure out how to change change the narrative and do it differently one of the practical most practical ideas we want to give you tonight is that when you do the handoff when you exchange your kids between homes whether it's the Walmart parking lot or Chuckie Cheese or chick-fil-a or the church parking lot or your house that is often the flash point of seeing each other and it may not have ever looked like this at a handoff but if you think about what the child may experience when maybe you're standing there having a little argument you're talking about child support or hey you owe me 20 bucks because I picked this up and you owe me you know those little handoff conversations are tough for kids so one of the real practical things we want to encourage you to think about doing is when you do those handoffs make them as positive as possible as brief as possible and never ever talk about co-parent business at the handoff don't don't talk about calendars and switching weekends don't talk about who's gonna get next Tuesday because you've got to take a trip out of town and it's great am I gonna pick him up or is the other ant gonna do it don't do that stuff there if there's one thing I did right 17 years ago is I asked my daughter's dad I said can we please make a commitment to never ever ever ever ever ever talk about business at the handoff because I knew that was gonna be the common time we were together for thousands of experiences for her life and I wanted to protect her from potentially having moments like that and I also wanted to protect myself I look back now and when I see her dad at a event at school or we planned some function that we're actually gonna all be part of it's not like that because we do the hard stuff at Ko parent meetings and in the book you're gonna get there's a whole chapter on just exploring the idea of how to have a co-parent meeting might be by phone might be over at a coffee shop might include a third party however that looks protect that handoff so that kids don't end up in a moment like that because like Jason nobody ever wants to lash out and forget our kids in our conflict that's never our desire but again those flashpoints can come up when we're exchanging kids so and consider that idea and again you can read more about that idea in the book and real quickly we're gonna give you one other interesting piece of knowledge that I found in grad school and I thought man this would have been really helpful at the beginning it's called the five categories of co-parenting and I didn't know they've actually got categories for this stuff right it just kind of seemed like a big pile of messy spaghetti and stuff was flying everywhere well there's actually categories and again the book goes through a deep dive on it but how we interact and how we communicate with each other as bio parents is where we determines what category we land in so really quick the five are perfect pals these are like Oh parents that get along they travel together they might even still own a business together they see each other they consider each other friends perfect pals someone's laughing down here it's a weirdo yeah it's very uncommon so we're not saying do that but we're just saying the smart people that research all this stuff this is where they landed right so the second one is called cooperative colleagues cooperative colleagues and so the summary of that you're not friends but you're like business partners you have a lot to talk about a lot of decisions to make you're vested in the same amazing kids you're all in for your kids you're not friends and you do not take vacation together right she's like thank you but you are cooperative colleagues that's where we want to point people to now where we usually start is what we call fiery foes and angry associates these kind of toggle back and forth and have different descriptors which you can read about in the book but again relationships end for lots of reasons and sometimes that fiery foe angry associate dynamic can can be what we do four five and ten years after divorce it can show up ten years twenty years later when kids are getting married and exes are still at war they might not have exchanged a child so for check-in ears but they're still at war and then the last one is called dissolve duos and this is where maybe one co-parent just voluntarily or for different reasons is completely out of the picture and they're dissolved duos now some of you are like Oh sign me up for that one come on you can laugh it's okay you know working and communicating and getting along with and making decisions with a person who we used to be married to or not anymore it's hard that's not our favorite thing to do in a day or a month but it's it's important because if you look at those categories down between angry fiery and dissolved quite often what happens when mom and dad are not communicating consistently and they're not interacting in a healthy way then the kids get stuck in the middle and so quite often they become the messenger they become the spy you know go tell me what's going on at dad's house Oh mom has a new boyfriend well who's he and what's he about that's not where we ever want to put our kids and so when we do a quick application of these five categories for what happens to children perfect pals those kids are confused it's really confusing I think they're gonna put that up there next yes what is the child experiencing they're confused you're not married anymore but you still go on vacation and you hang out all the time and we do Christmas all the time the same it's not necessarily horrible but it's confusing for kids who then later in life how do they know the difference between healthy marriage and whatever this is the second one these kids feel free they have the freedom to love mom and dad they have their freedom to be kids they get to enjoy their childhood they don't have to worry at the football game or the basketball practice that mom and dad are gonna make a scene because mom and dad are being a mature adults and communicating consistently and having healthy interaction so kids are free they don't have to pick a favorite I don't have to worry what's gonna happen if they're all at my graduation at my wedding the third one these kids fire defo parents live in fear and stress just constant fear and stress the fourth one angry they become prenta fight again like I said earlier parents don't communicate they're not working together so the fancy counselling word is parentis occation kids as young as seven eight nine years old become the third parent having to handle child support or make decisions or get formed sign from school or gosh I want to go to volleyball camp well your dad has to pay half call him that's not a joke it's job and then the last one those kids they just are abandoned and so where we want to point parents to and your cooperative co-parenting you're not there today maybe but in the book dig into that stuff and use these terms with your co-parent if I don't know if you can get a book buy them a book if your Co parents not here tonight share these terms with them and tell them this crazy lady came to this a back and talked about the fact that we're actually supposed to communicate and get along not because we like each other but because we love our kids and consider the idea of those co-parent meetings to protect your kids from that unexpected anger unexpected conflict well we hope you are enjoying the conversations around your table so you guys have sent in some questions and man some great questions just to continue to unpack all that Timmy and Jay have shared and and we've kind of looked through and looked for a theme amongst the questions it kind of picked some some of them the ones that we're gonna be able to see it to we're not gonna be able to get to all of them but the great advantages is that there's a book that you guys have written that everybody's gonna get a copy of that can help speak to a lot of these questions as well so let's dive in the very first question that we got hey what apps do you recommend to help with communication and scheduling well there's a very cool one called our family wizard our family wizard calm and it's a great tool you can share schedules transition time you can exchange receipts pay each other back for stuff but here's their really cool thing it actually has a messaging system and I always if I would have known about this tool 17 years ago we would have done that and only that because you you know it comes through your phone your computer so you can use it instead of texting an email you put everything in one place all of that's one place right so you can't remember oh did we exchange next Thursday for next Friday oh I forgot it's all there but the really cool part is there's a tone meter so when you're writing an email or a message to your co-parent no for real okay okay I like these people they're honest they've had some sugar so it will red light it if you're writing something in a way that's most likely gonna get you a hostile response so there's a red yellow or green light that helps you figure out is there a better way to ask this question or to share this information because it's a saw it's a smart software so check it out our family wizard comm and it's a really good tool for people who are already cooperative colleagues it puts all of it in one place it's super easy but for those that are in that fiery folk angry associate and especially dissolve duo it's a really helpful tool and guardrails yeah put some helpful resource definitely this next question is one that we had a kind of common theme a lot of different the question got asked a lot of different ways how do you move from angry associates to cooperative colleagues when the other parent may not want to in those categories how do you what kind of it's kind of a double question there and you know based on understanding what the research was looking at when they categorized these folks they were looking at two main factors interaction communications and what they wanted to find out is what level was the interaction and communication wasn't good was a quality inter was it was it consistent what was the communication like you know did they do it often when they did did it blow up you know what did all that look like so in in simplest terms if you find yourself looking at things now this is important too okay you're not one category in there in a different one I can't tell you how many people go in well I'm colleague but he is an angry associate you know no no no this is about relational quality right and so it's it's both of you together it's that relationship what's happening in that relationship so if you find yourself at that angry associate that fiery foe kind of place two basic things you can look at is how can I improve our communication and very simply all we're trying to say is the consistency and the quality of that communication making sure that the focus of the communication is always about what's happening with our kids right that's the focus of the communication nothing else okay so keeping that laser focus on what's happening with our kids what's going on socially what's going on academically and so on and so forth right so communication you want to keep it focused and it's about the consistency and the quality same thing with interactions right you look at well okay how do we interact what happens when we interact you know what are the good things that we can manage to do and what are the things that really the wheels come off in its not so good same thing keep it simple consistency and quality now your interaction should it have to be that much really right and so you don't have to look for that perfect pals kind of thing where you're going to dinner together and sharing vacations and all that no no no no what you want is moderate interaction and the reason you only have moderate interactions is because those interactions always have to do with kids what's happened with the kids the only reason you're interacting is because the kids are involved right but you do have to have high quality you have to make sure that they do interaction as far as it is far as you are able on your side of it to be able to do so you've got to make sure that you're doing everything you can to make sure that your action stays at a place that you can say that that was a decent interaction that was a quality interaction maybe there wasn't a lot that happened there but at least nothing bad happened nothing blew up nothing went sideways and I'll also say sorry that you can't control the other person right you can't make you can't make them want to change and truth is they may never change they may never read a book or come to a class or Cara hilla beans about cooperative co-parenting but you keep doing the right thing all the time over and over and over again and and when steps other parents that parents come into the equation maybe you know your former spouse remarries or you remarry keep doing the right healthy things over and over and over time time and consistency in the long run at a minimum your kids are gonna benefit from your healthy mindset about co-parenting even if the other person never gets on board what you do behind closed doors in how you respond that respond to your kids when they ask you hard questions do you give them a hope filled answer or dudes hair down the other parent when the other parent drops the ball do you make a big deal of it or do you think quick and strategic and fill in the gap and do the right thing and protect them there's a million moments in parenting you know the co-parenting journey that you're gonna have a choice am i choosing my kids best interest or you know getting back at or or what's the fare and right with the other person keep doing the right thing over and over on purpose because in the long run your kids are gonna benefit from your healthy mindset even if the other party never gets on board and generally everybody's want to comes from the same place no matter what you disagree about and can't get along about whatever that is the one thing you generally do agree about is that you want the best for your kids and that you love them so always try to frame it in a frame that says this is helpful for our kids this is something I found that can help our kids hey I read this book it's got amazing things that can help our kids you know now you're not pointing a finger saying hey you know I got this thing figured out you need to figure it out too that's not where we want to be we want to say it's about the kids that's the thing we agree on we love them we want the best form it's amazing because I vividly like I remember those moments where that was a good as an example in front of us where it was they chose the the the wise thing or the healthy thing and I didn't I don't think I grasped the full nature of it because I was 13 years old right but looking back that's what's left a lasting impression that's what really has stuck with me through the years you know and communication that's I mean this element in all of our relationships that can get better right let's move to the next question so what do you do if you're a narcissist I think it's really important there's interesting trends within culture and some of those trends will bring language from some other area and bring it into the forefront of what we're talking about culturally and this word in particular is one of those things right there is a very specific definition there's a clinical definition of narcissism is diagnoseable okay unfortunately folks are using the term and it has nothing to do with what the clinical definition is it's just more based on you know I don't like the way they act I don't like the way they do and sometimes it sounds like this looks like this therefore I'm gonna put this label on okay so we have to be real about what we're talking about here I'm not saying that you may not be trying to co-parent with a narcissist but I'm saying let's be realistic about it because that's a diagnosable thing okay that's a clinical term there's there's there's there's serious things going on and then at that point we have to recognize well if this person is a narcissist if they've been diagnosed with this issue then we have to back up and realize that we can't get apples from the orange tree why are we spending so much energy expecting them to be different when they really can't not without clinical help and if they're not willing to get that clinical help then we can't do anything about that but so many of us spend days and hours and moments wringing our hands and getting upset and all this emotional energy that we should be pouring into loving and building up our kids and keeping ourselves stable and happy we spend all that energy trying to get an apple from the orange tree so we need to know the difference really need to know the difference and be careful about the terms that we're using and yeah someone can be a really selfish nasty individual who is so inwardly focused that the rest of the world doesn't seem to matter yeah that's selfish that's not narcissism it's not fun they might act like a jerk and they might bring a lot of pain up all the time and they might do things that are just harmful both to you and to their own kids because they can't see past the end of their nose they're the center of their own universe so that's hard that's difficult we understand that and and in the book there's a couple chapters I want to point you to if you're in that really difficult co-parent situation chapter 13 when your co-parent won't cooperate there's a whole one there chapter 14 when the wheels fall off 15 filtering out negative voices and 17 when your ex is unsafe and sometimes this is you know a different whole different topic but we always have to know our kids are safe when they're with any adult whether it's the co-parent the grandparent the daycare the chat the school workers anywhere so use this as a tool dig through reuse the tools that we're trying to make available on these really tough topics and sometimes yeah somebody is just really difficult but there are ways to navigate that and if there's a safety issue where your child is potentially not safe then there's other avenues to to go down there and and you're their best advocate you know kids kids don't know how to speak up and ask for some of the things they need so be their best advocate and even though you might want to be an amazing co-parent and give 5050 time and give your kids freedom to love the other parent and never make them feel bad about having two homes if the other home isn't safe you have to pay attention and you've got to get smart and get some tools around that to help protect your kids and that could be a 3-hour lecture just there but there's a lot of good stuff in here to just kind of try to point you to so you have you know what your options are if it's anger or if it's actually a safety issue helpful in so many different ways so then the next question so how do you handle an ex who refuses to not fight in front of the kids no matter how many times you ask it goes over it over let's don't let's talk about this leaders talk about this later let's talk about this later and they just keep going after it well I would say first and foremost take a third party to every handoff and every situation you're in you know if you're gonna see them at a school function at a parent-teacher conference at a volleyball game a football game take a third party with you now that third party needs to be someone the kids know love and trust okay because it may be so volatile that they go with you and they're actually making the handoff while you stay in the car and of course the kids need to know that it's okay the kids need to know that this person is someone that they love and trust and they feel comfortable with in this process if it's at that point that's that's what you have to do sometimes if it gets dangerous where those those handoffs become really traumatic and maybe you don't feel safe then I would enlist a third party professionally to consider how do we do this different and it's not an easy road to map out and there are some extreme cases we know you know families we work with that have to go through what we call a safe exchange center now that's a lot of work and it's awkward and it we kind of think of what we want to do what but imagine being a little little kid six seven years old and from that time until you drive ten years of handoffs if every single time mom and dad are in the same space an eruption explode like they sit here where one parent is belligerent and verbally abusive and harmful that 10 years of exchanges can be done different so and we'd be happy to continue that conversation you can email us we can share with other tools with you that we know of but I say as the parent who's thinking straight and trying to be the safe healthy stable parent if that other like we said you can't change the other person you can only change yourself and empower yourself so always have a third party with you who can help even document the situation if you need to take legal action but be intentional to explore what are other ways we could do this because there are other ways it can be done it can be done like he said you know where someone else actually does the exchange or in a professional setting where bio parents don't even see each other and the kid has an opportunity to have a transition time leaving one going to the other and it protects the children from the two being together good we've got this next question we had a lot of different kind of variations of this one so what is your suggestion when one helm has structure and discipline and the other home does not so one home saying hey no you got to do your homework now you have to do your homework have you done your homework in the other hand other home that's so much what would your suggestion be there well you know certainly that that can be troubling but what we have to start to come to terms with and again we always go back to there's a big difference between an uncooperative co-parent and an unsafe right and just because they do it differently in at home doesn't necessarily mean it's bad okay now we may have a whole different set of ideas of how we're going to handle things and what we want to do what we expect and so on and so forth and yes that can be terribly frustrating if in the other house it seems like a lot of that gets on done yet we don't want to put our kids in the middle of that process and make them feel like in some they're doing the wrong thing by being where they're at and doing what's expected there it's kind of like kids living in two different countries right right yeah there's an analogy we always share with with parents you know single parents stepparents kids are gonna come and go between two homes and you might all live in America you might live in the same zip code but your homes are different countries you have different traditions different things that are important different foods you eat different value system you can you can even be faith-filled christian households and still have a very different value system so the important thing is to understand okay what are the differences and if it's something that's a safety issue you know well my child is seven years old and being exposed to porn can I say that here that is a serious safety issue right you have to involve the professed professionals right and and if it's something like well you know they don't really make them do all their homework and they're in fourth grade well that's fourth grade right it is important but I'm not doing their homework in 4th grade is a different issue than them being exposed to digital content with no parameters and and being set up for other ongoing challenges so your countries are gonna be different and in your co-parent communication part of that might be just helping each other clarify okay I'm not here to tell you how to run your country here's the things in my country that two or three things that are important to me and I'm not saying you have to agree with me what do you think are the most - two or three most important things in your country you don't ask them you know what what are the things that you feel like as a parent you're gonna do consistently and you want me to know about not cuz we're gonna agree but at least we know the differences right and we give our time our kids a bit of time to transition back and forth because if they're coming from a house where they don't do homework and they don't have a bedtime well the family that's that structured and more may be conservative and proactive and putting them to bed at 8:00 well those teenagers or junior high kids are gonna give you a lot of back talk right well gosh at the other house I don't have to go to bed at 8:00 it's Friday night you know they'll say hurtful things like oh I wish I was at the other house I have so much more fun over there right and then the stable steady parent who's trying to do the right thing consistently is feeling like a loser yet remind yourself in those hard moments of parenting being a good parent you're not gonna be your kids favorite ever it's not personal it's not personal it's parenting right and if you think back to being 12 13 years old whatever your family story looked like the adults in your life who gave you boundaries and said you know what Tom it's time to go to bed or Sally no you're only 12 you can't go out on a Friday night till 10 o'clock Oh June you can't have Facebook till you're 13 or no you can't have a boyfriend when you're 11 well the people that told us no one we're kids we might have loved to miss our parents but we never said oh thank you for those healthy boundaries right thank you for teaching me that I need to be responsible with my time oh thank you for teaching me how to respect adults and oh dishes I love it when you give me chores no none of us did that when we were being raised and our kids are definitely not gonna thank us for the good stuff especially if they have another house that where there's absolutely no boundaries so remind yourself if you're the one trying to hold it together and be steady stable and consistent you're doing a great job and especially when you're a parent your kids say yeah it's no fun over here I have all the fun over there hold on tight and remind yourself I'm in this for the long run exactly it's not just now it's the long run exactly because they'll go pick it up they might not appreciate it now but then years later they'll see and appreciate it and so we got little time for one more question there's this how do you co-parent with someone who does not want to co-parent and refuses to communicate so if you had one thing that you'd say to kind of address that idea well here's the deal obviously if they don't want to and they're not going to does that change who you are does it make it different for you maybe they see the value of this next week next month ten years from now I don't know but if you see the you of it then you do what you do sometimes that's all you can do and the good news is the good news is that if there's one parent who's willing to be stable and engaged and apply these principles these co-parenting principles if there's at least one parent in the equation who's willing to do that that child is gonna have a better life absolutely they're not just gonna survive they're gonna thrive there's gonna be hope they're there life won't be defined by mom and dad not being together their life's gonna be defined by that healthy stable parent who continued to do the hard work and even have to double up because the other parent wasn't willing to engage yeah they will be in a better place and there is hope in you doing what you know you need to do there's a great one too to give us hope as we head out and wrap up tonight can you guys help me think Timmy and Jay time anyways hey thank you so much for coming in and joining in with co-parent unscripted we hope it's been helpful for you on your way out when you picked up your nametags we've actually got a copy of their books that's available for each of you to take home as well as in your booklet from co-parenting unscripted in the back page there's some additional resources that could be helpful some websites some other books that might be beneficial for you or for your co-parent to continue this process of how do we get better at this co-parenting thing and as well as our church staff we would love to be there and help into if there's times where you just feel stuck or you just need somebody to talk to it's kind of impersonal but care at Woodstock City org is a great way it's an email address care at Woodstock City org that you can feel free to reach out share kind of where you are and how we might be able to help you take steps together in this parenting round I would love to pray for us and the weekend can head out probably God we come to you not because oh is this church and that's what we're supposed to do but because we can because you're our God who knows us knows all the things that are going on in our worlds and cares for us that you want to show your faithfulness and your goodness even in our difficult situations so father I pray that you give us strength and wisdom to know what to do and the courage to do those things as we pursue you in and through it all it's in the powerful name of Jesus that we pray these things amen thank you I give so much for coming out tonight y'all have a good good evening you

Channel: North Point Care

Views: 170

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: care network, north point community church, woodstock church, buckhead church, Gwinnett church, decatur city church, brownsbridge church, help, struggling, challenges, pain, relationships, transition, change, ministry resources, resources, training, counseling

Id: WIo7epBo9zU

Length: 67min 23sec (4043 seconds)

Published: Thu Aug 23 2018