Protecting Children through High-Conflict Divorce and Coercive Parenting

Co-parenting offers the best long-term outcomes for children of divorce. This I what the research shows and I stand by it. The key however is that it needs to be healthy co-parenting. Healthy, in terms of both parents’ psychological and emotional well-being, and both parents holding the best interests of their children in utmost priority.

What happens then, when one parent is NOT psychologically or emotionally healthy? When one parent is high-conflict, has a personality disorder, is abusive, struggles with addiction, or is relationally complex and is either unwilling or just does not have the capacity to co-parent?

I have seen many parents struggle through trying to co-parent and try everything they can to establish a healthy co-parenting relationship unsuccessfully. They end up stuck in feelings of guilt and shame because they just can’t seem to co-parent well, due to no fault of their own. When friends, family, legal professionals, therapists – when everyone is telling you to co-parent but you just can’t seem to get it right, what then?

Here’s the thing – if you keep trying to co-parent with someone who does not have the capacity to, you are actually causing your children more harm. Your energy is focused on the conflict, thoughts, actions, and triggering reactions of the other parent and not on your children. You’re distracted, and not present.

The other parent due to their own challenges is also not present, also not able to meet the needs of the children, and often times due to the maladaptive and coercive parenting approach they implement, are causing the children overt harm.

In an ideal world, you should be able to appeal to professionals within the legal system to help keep your children safe. However, the current legal system is one that consistently prioritizes parental right, over and above child safety often leaving children in harmful environments for extended periods of time.

So what can you possibly do to protect your children?

You can learn to parent differently.

Trauma Healing Parenting is a child centric, trauma-informed and responsive parenting approach created specifically to support children in the midst of high-conflict divorce, who have experienced domestic abuse, and who are experiencing maladaptive, and coercive parenting.

It is a parenting approach that teaches how to both heal the trauma your child is experiencing, and also build resiliency to protect them from future ongoing experiences of trauma.

I say “ongoing” trauma, because as long as these children are spending time with the maladaptive parent, these children will continue to experience harm at the hands of that parent.

It is in these specific situations that Trauma Healing Parenting can provide hope.

It can support these children through their experience of being placed in a less than healthy, traumatic environment repeatedly, week after week after week.

It’s parenting that holds the relationship with your child as sacred, and central to everything you do and looks at the relationship from a Trauma Informed lens.

It creates a Trauma Healing environment – both relationally and environmentally.

And it maintains the Trauma Healing environment through establishing boundaries and communication strategies which minimizes conflict and other distractions which would otherwise take your focus away from your parenting.

So how do you parent from a Trauma Healing lens?

The first step is to shift your focus away from what the maladaptive parent is or is not doing.

It’s important to get crystal clear on what you can and, I would argue more importantly, what you CAN’T control within this situation.

Then, you can focus our time and attention on things that you can influence.

Second, focus on the relationship that you have with your children. Parenting children through high-conflict divorce, domestic abuse, and who are experiencing maladaptive and coercive parenting, is unlike any other. These children are experiencing trauma. That trauma is undermining the healthy growth and development of their brain, and hence these children have unique developmental needs. Needs that can be addressed through parenting in a way that involves being highly attuned and responsive to these unique developmental needs.

Being responsive to their needs comes from both a relational and environmental perspective. From a relational standpoint, these children will depend on safety, stability and reliability in your mood and affect so they know what to expect from you. From an environmental lens they will need consistency, predictability, boundaries and expectations. Of course, despite your best efforts you are not going to get it right 100% of the time. You’re only human after all – and that is where the importance of repair and reconnect come in.

Being honest and making repairs with your children is crucial to maintaining a sense of safety within the relationship and also helps the relationship grow and evolve. You can admit that you are not perfect, and that adults also, sometimes make mistakes. It gives you the opportunity to model the importance of apology in a way that normalizes making mistakes, and helps foster the development of a healthy growth mindset.

Trauma Healing Parenting is NOT co-parenting. In fact, it has nothing to do with the other parent. But it has everything to do with YOUR relationship with YOUR children.

It teaches you to parent in a way these children desperately need to ensure healthy emotional and psychological growth and development, and to minimize the probability of negative long-term physical and mental health outcomes that these children may otherwise likely face.

Trauma Healing Parenting is not easy. It requires dedication, time, and an unrelenting resolve to do whatever it is you need to do to provide your children with the opportunity to be healthy and Thrive.

Are you unsure if this approach is a fit for your children or not?

If you have experienced domestic abuse, are experiencing post-separation abuse, or are in the midst of a high-conflict divorce, I can almost guarantee that your children are experiencing some form of coercive or maladaptive parenting which is negatively affecting their emotional and psychological growth and development.

The earlier interventions can be put in place, the better chance these children have at securing positive outcomes and being successful in life in spite of the harm they experience.

Remember, there is only one person that can heal your child’s trauma in the most effective and efficient way.

That one person is YOU.