What We Focus on Grows

​​How a Stable, Consistent Relationship with both Parents Benefits the Children

Your children are part of both of you and they need a healthy ongoing relationship with both parents to make it easier to cope with all the changes in their life.  While everything else is changing during and after the divorce knowing that those changes do not mean that they have lost one of their parents help make the new life seem more manageable. 

 

Developing a Parenting Plan

This is one of the most important things you and your ex will do, with the most long-lasting effects with regard to your children’s mental health and ease of transition into a family that co-parents.  A good plan will minimize conflict and misunderstandings.  A poor plan can add stress to the life of everyone involved for years to come.

 

A good parenting plan will set everyone up for success.

 

The more complete your parent plan is, the less there is to have misunderstandings about.  The example of a parenting plan available here was retrieved on 12/2/2018 from https://www.flcourts.org/content/download/403367/3458536/995a.pdf and takes into consideration a lot of events and details that may be involved in your life as well as giving you the instructions for a parenting plan required by the Florida Supreme Court.  There are other plans available and your lawyer may have one.  Look over the one provided here to get a better idea of what your family needs to have included. 

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Plan for the Future

Your relationship with your child is permanent so you may want to schedule changes to the plan and consider how various ages and needs may be met in a flexible way. 

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Permanent means graduation, college, job, marriage, GRANDchildren and other joyous events that occur along the way. 

 

And just a note – these are even more reasons to co-parent cooperatively since your children will want to celebrate with both parents without feeling pulled apart emotionally at every important event because the “adults” can’t put their egos, and assumptions leading to anger and hurt feelings aside and enjoy the occasions with their children.

 

Effective Communication about Parenting Time

When you have a good Parenting plan that everyone involved agrees on, communication can be easier since everyone knows what to expect.  Set up the best way to communicate, maybe that is texting, maybe an e-mail. 

 

Be responsive to the other parent and willing to make modifications, for the benefit of your child.  Seeing parents willing to cooperate and collaborate for their best interest, helps the child learn how to do that in life and it creates a greater feeling of security in their relationship with each parent.

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Go to https://www.lifeanewresources.com/divorce-parenting look on left side of page and click on Parenting plan to find the link to examples of parenting plans and the Florida form.

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