Latest / Divorce Coaches Academy / Love Your Children More Than You Hate Your Ex
Transcript
- Tracy Callahan: Welcome back to Divorce Coaches Academy Podcast. I'm Tracy, and there's a phrase many of us have heard in our work with separating and divorced parents. You have to love your children more than you hate your ex. I understand what people mean by it, but I've been thinking about what happens when we say it to a parent who is deep in conflict and believes that everything they are doing is for their child. What did they hear? And how do we help them recognize when their feelings about the other parent are beginning to shape decisions that their child has to live with? So I get it, right? I understand why people say it. It names something painful and important. But I also know that if we offer it too quickly to a parent who is in the middle of a bitter conflict, It can land as an accusation. The parent may hear you are failing your children at precisely the moment they feel they are fighting for them. And once they feel judged, we may have lost the opening to help them examine what is actually happening here. So today, I want to stay with that sentence a little longer. What does it ask of a parent in practice? And what is our role as divorce coaches and other dispute resolution professionals? When someone is so caught in a cycle of blame that every new interaction seems to confirm the worst thing they believe about that other parent. Because this is rarely not just one argument, it's a pattern that can begin. During the separation and continue through mediation, negotiation, litigation, and yeah, years of co parenting. An unanswered message becomes proof of indifference. A changed pickup time becomes proof of manipulation. A child has a hard transition and the conclusion arrives before anyone has asked what the child actually experienced. Each new event join joins a growing file of evidence in that parent's mind. Soon, they are no longer responding only to the event in front of them. Yeah, they're responding to everything that came before it, and everything they will fear will come next. I want to talk about how we help clients find some room. To think inside that experience. I'm not suggesting that parents overlook harmful conduct, abandon appropriate legal remedies, or force warmth where there is none. I am asking what it takes to keep a child's needs from being swallowed by an adult conflict that has begun to organize the entire family's life. In this work, people often arrive with a story that is both deeply felt and from their perspective thoroughly documented. They have the screenshots, they can tell you what was said at the exchange six months ago, what was said in a depot, and exactly which sentence in an email proves that nothing has changed. Sometimes the facts are serious. Sometimes the other parent has really behaved badly. And sometimes there are safety concerns that require careful assessment and the involvement of the right professionals. We do our clients no service by treating all of that as simple miscommunication. At the same time, the emotional logic of the conflict can become self reinforcing. Once the other parent is understood as someone who is always malicious, even an ordinary mistake is interpreted as intentional. A neutral communication can be read as threat. A reasonable request may be rejected because of who made it. The parent becomes more vigilant, the response becomes sharper. And the other parent responds to the sharpness. Now there is a fresh incident to add to the file. That's the vortex I want to focus on today. Notice that I have not said the parents are equally responsible for what happened. No, we do not have to decide that in order to help one client examine their own participation in the Next exchange. Divorce coaching works at the individual level of dispute resolution. We can help a person notice what conflict is doing to their thinking and behavior, identify what is within their control, and participate more effectively in whatever process they are in. That process may be mediation, but it also could be litigation. It may be a difficult Tuesday night conversation about a school form. The skills matter in all of these places. And it begins often by slowing down our own response as professionals. A parent comes in furious and there can be a temptation to offer the quick correction. Don't let your feelings about your ex affect your children. The parent already knows they're supposed to put their children first. What they may not see is the precise point where protecting a child and pursuing conflict with the other parent have become entangled. We need enough curiosity to find that point with them. I might say, I can hear why this brought up so much for you. Walk me through what happened this time and then let's look at what you know, what you might be assuming, and what decision you have to make now. That is a completely different invitation. It does not require agreement with every accusation. It gives the client a place to begin to be heard and a way to begin sorting it. Let's take an example. A parent tells us the other parent returned to their child from the weekend without the child's jacket. On its own, a missing jacket may be a solvable problem. In this family, it is the 15th item that has not. Come back. The client says something like he doesn't show me that I have no control, he doesn't care whether she's cold, I'm documenting it for court. This is all manipulation. Perhaps the jacket does matter. Perhaps the child needs it tomorrow morning. Perhaps there is a recurring pattern that should be documented and addressed. But the client has also moved very quickly from a missing item to a conclusion about motive, parenting capacity, and legal strategy. If we join that leap, we may help actually escalate an exchange that could have been handled in a much smaller space. If we dismiss it as just to jack it, we miss the history and lose the client's trust. So we slow it down. What is the immediate need? The child needs a jacket for school. What facts do we have? The jacket did not return. What remains unknown? Well yeah, why it did not return? Whether it is in the car, whether it can be dropped off. What pattern, if any, needs attention later? What Response would solve the immediate problem while preserving the option to address the larger pattern through the appropriate channel. Those questions do not erase history. They prevent history from making every new decision for the client. This is one way I think about conflict competence. It is not the ability to feel calm about something that is upsetting. It is the capacity to notice the difference between an event, the meaning we attach to it, and the action we choose next. We can work with a client in that space. We can help them write a message that says, the jacket did not come back today. She needs it for school tomorrow. Can you let me know whether you have it and when it can be returned? If there is a continuing problem with belongings, we can help them think about a repeatable system or raise it in the process already available to them. The message about tomorrow's jacket need not carry six months of anger. Now of course, some conflicts are far more consequential than a jacket. A child reports a frightening experience. There's concerns and About substance abuse or violence, neglect, or apparent not following an order. In those situations, our first task is to recognize the difference. Let's not escalate cannot become an instruction to ignore danger. A professional needs to work within their role, identifying when an immediate safety response or specialized help is needed, and avoid coaching someone past a concern that requires. Legal guidance, clinical care, or protective action. Loving a child may require firmer boundaries and formal intervention. The goal is proportionate, informed response, not a peaceful appearance. I also want to speak about the word hate. Sometimes a client uses it plainly. I hate him, I hate her. We do not need to panic at that word and we do not need to endorse it as the permanent truth about the relationship. Hatred can be an expression, an expression of grief, betrayal, fear, exhaustion, or a desperate attempt to create distance from someone who has hurt them. Our role is not to argue them out of the feeling. Feelings do not become less powerful simply because we tell someone they should not have them. Our role is to ask what happens when that feeling becomes the decision making system. I might ask a parent, when you look back at the last few exchanges, where did your concern for your child guide your response? And where did the need to make sure the other parent understood what they had done begin to take over? That's a really hard question. I would ask it only after there is enough trust to hold that answer though. But it gets us closer to the heart of the issue than telling someone to be the bigger person. There's a real difference between a boundary and a punishment. A boundary says I will communicate in writing about the children and I will respond to requests that require a decision. A punishment says because of what you did, I will make access to information difficult. A boundary can protect a parent and a child. A punishment often recruits that child into the adult conflict even when no one intends that outcome. Helping clients tell the difference is part of this work. Another place we can be useful is examining what the client wants from a particular action. Imagine a parent is preparing a long message describing years of the other parent's failure in response to a simple schedule question. Before we work on wording, I want to know: what is the message meant to accomplish? Does the parent need a yes or no about Friday? Are they trying to create a record? Are they hoping the other parent will finally acknowledge the past? Are they trying to be understood? Because those are all different goals. One email is unlikely to accomplish all of them. So sometimes the most honest and compassionate thing we can say is, I understand why you want them to acknowledge this. I'm not sure this message will give you that. What is your child need settled by Friday? Because that question returns us to agency. It helps the client make a decision about the issue at hand without pretending their longing for accountability is trivial. There may be another place to process the past, another process to address a violation, and another professional whose help is appropriate. The co parenting message does not have to do all of that work. And if you're a divorce coach listening to this, this is also where our ethical boundaries matter. We are not there to determine which parent is telling the truth. To diagnose the absent parent or to build a case against them. We should not become the person who reviews each screenshot and confirms yes, this proves they are a quote unquote narcissist, or this will look terrible in court. We can help the client organize what happened, prepare useful questions for their attorney or mediator, understand the choices before them, and consider. The likely effect of their own response. That is substantive work. It asks more of us than simply agreeing with the person who is in the room. The phrase love your children more than you hate your ex can sound as though the solution is just to summon more love. Most parents in this position already love their child fiercely. The problem is that love can be pulled into the conflict itself. A parent may believe that every concession betrays the child, every unanswered insult teaches the child weakness, or every opportunity the other parent gets is something taken from them. Their protective instinct is real, but its direction has been shaped by the fight. So instead of asking whether they love their children enough, I think we can ask a more useful question. What would your child experience if this decision were guided by their needs rather than by your need to respond to the other parent? We need to make that concrete. If the child enjoys an activity during the other parent's time, can that enjoyment exist without becoming evidence for one side? If the child misses a parent, can they say so without being asked to reassure the other? If a school event is coming, can the adults plan the logistics without making the child manage their physical distance from one another? Those are really ordinary moments. And ordinary moments are where a child learns what it feels like to live between two homes. Many children can navigate different household rules. What becomes so much harder is the feeling that affection for one parent is a statement against the other or that a report about their day may trigger another round of adult conflict. We need to be careful here. Children are individuals, and we should not press presume to know what a particular child is feeling. We can still help a parent consider what their behavior asks of the child. And seek the child's perspective through appropriate channels when needed. I remember the way some parents talk about a school recital, a game, or a birthday dinner. Before they even describe what the child did, they describe where the other parents sat, who they brought, whether they waved, whether a photograph was posted, and what it all meant. I say this with compassion. The history between these adults can make a shared space feel almost unbearable. But it's worth noticing when the other parent's presence becomes the whole story of that child's day. The child had a performance, the child had a birthday, the child was there too. For professionals, that observation is not a cue to shame the parent. It's a cue to make the child visible again. Tell me about how your daughter seemed to experience the event. What did she want you to see? If she talks about it tonight, what would you like her to feel free to tell you? Sometimes a good question can shift the center of gravity more effectively than a lecture. When a client is especially entrenched, I find it helpful to work on a single decision rather than asking for a wholesale change in how they feel about their former partner. A parent may be nowhere near forgiveness. They may never seek it, and it is not ours to require it. They can still decide how to respond to a request for a schedule change. They can still keep a child out of an adult conversation. They can still pause before forwarding an angry email. They can still bring a genuine concern to counsel or another appropriate professional rather than putting the child in the role of witness or messenger. That is what more than can create in practice. It does not mean the painful feeling disappears. It means the child's needs get a place in that decision where anger alone would not give them. Here's a sequence I often think through when I'm supporting someone in the middle of an escalating exchange. First, let the person describe what happened without immediately editing their experience. Then help them identify the actual decision in front of them. Next, separate what they know from what they infer about motive. Ask whose needs will be affected, including the child's, and what information is still missing. Consider the available responses from a short practical message to consultation with an attorney or a safety professional. Finally, ask how will they know whether the response helped? Did it resolve the immediate issue? Did it protect the child? Did it preserve the child? A needed boundary? Did it avoid creating a second conflict that now needs to be resolved? And this isn't a rigid checklist to read to a client. It is a discipline for us. When we are steady, we can offer the kind of structure that allows a client to be more steady too. And there's another part of this that I think we sometimes avoid because it is uncomfortable. Some clients will tell us in effect, if I stop fighting, the other parent wins. This is where we have to be really precise. We are not asking a parent to surrender a substantive concern. We are helping them distinguish the issue they need to address from the intensity of the fight around it. A parent can challenge an unsafe proposal, enforce an agreement, and Pursue a court determination or say no to an unreasonable request without allowing every interaction to become a test of who has more more moral authority over the divorce. Litigation does not place someone outside of conflict management. And in fact, a person who's litigating may need even more support in thinking clearly about what belongs in a legal process. And what belongs in everyday co-parenting communication. Their attorney can certainly advise on legal strategy. Our work within our scope can help the client prepare, regulate, organize information, and choose how they engage between those formal steps. The existence of a lawsuit does not mean a child stops needing ordinary care or that every Tuesday problem should become a pleading. For us dispute resolution professionals, mediators, parenting coordinators, listening to these issues, those roles differ, but we can share an interest in helping parents see the decisions that are becoming obscured by the conflict. In mediation, that mean may mean identifying the interest beneath a repeated accusation. Yeah, in parenting coordination, it may mean clarifying the issue requiring a recommendation. Education or another step allowed by that appointment. For a divorce coach working with one parent, it may mean preparing them to raise a concern specifically and hear a response without treating every disagreement as confirmation of a fixed story. None of us can manufacture cooperation, but we can create conditions in which a better decision becomes possible. Sometimes I ask professionals to listen for a particular shift in the client's language. At the beginning of a conversation, the parent may say she always does this because she wants to hurt me. Later, they may be able to say I don't know why she did this. I do know our son needs a plan for tomorrow, and I know how I want to address the recurring issue. That is meaningful movement. It is not reconciliation. It is a client reclaiming the ability to decide rather than simply react. And if the parent cannot make that shift today, we do not have to force it. Sometimes the work is helping them wait before sending the message, that pause. Sometimes it's helping them take the child out of the middle of a conversation. Sometimes it's recognizing that their distress calls for support beyond coaching. We can be honest about what our process can and cannot hold. So I want to return to the sentence we started with. Love your children more than you hate your ex. I think its power is in the choice it points toward. It's dangerous that we can use it as a verdict against a struggling parent. If I'm going to use that idea with a client, I want to earn my way to it. I want to understand what has happened. Recognize what needs protection and help that parent see where the conflict is asking their child to carry a burden that does not belong to that child. A parent does not have to feel warmly toward their former spouse to make a child centered choice. They do not have to agree about the past. They do not have to give up a legitimate concern or legal process. They do have to make many decisions about what happens next. And those decisions shape the environment in which their child is growing up in. Our work is to help them make those decisions with more than anger in the room. We help them slow the story down, test the conclusion, recognize the need, choose the right channel, and respond with intention. We help them see that protecting a child and punishing a co-parent are not always the same act. Even when they feel inseparable in the moment. If you work in divorce coaching or family dispute resolution, I invite you to think about the next client who brings you a fresh incident and an old certainty. Before you help them draft the response, ask what the child needs from this particular decision. Ask what the client knows and what they are filling in. Ask what is theirs to do. What requires another professional? And what would happen if they waited long enough to choose instead of react? That is not small intervention. For a family living inside a cycle of escalating conflict, it may be the first moment in a long time when the next step is not dictated by the last injury. I want to thank you so much for joining me at Divorce Coaches Academy podcast. Thank you for being here. And for the work you are doing to help people navigate divorce and co-parenting with greater clarity, skill, and care. I'll see you next time.