What is Parenting Coordination?A big part of co-parenting often involves making joint decisions concerning your children. It could range from big decisions, like where your kids will go to school, to everyday items, such as whether your kids will buy lunch at school or bring a bagged lunch. When making these kinds of decisions result in conflict, and you can’t even get close to resolving them, a parenting coordinator may be able to help.
Parenting coordination is a non-adversarial dispute resolution process that is court ordered or agreed upon by the parties. The purpose of parenting coordination is to provide a child-focused process in which a parenting coordinator assists parents in creating or implementing a parenting plan by facilitating the resolution of disputes between the parents by providing education, making recommendations, and, with the prior approval of the parents and the court, making limited decisions within the scope of the court’s order of referral.
A Parenting Coordinator is a licensed mental health professional who is certified in family mediation and has a minimum of five years of counseling experience. Parenting coordinators are specially trained to help co-parents manage their parenting plan, improve communication, and resolve disputes. The role of a parenting coordinator will vary based on what a family needs and what the court may require.
The Florida Supreme Court has adopted a guiding principle encouraging a family court process to “empower families through skills development, assist them to resolve their own disputes, provide access to appropriate services, and offer a variety of dispute resolution forums where the family can resolve problems without additional emotional trauma”.
A parenting coordinator may monitor that parents are complying with their parenting agreement, educate and offer recommendations on ways to solve issues, or even make individual decisions for the parents based on what the court allows. A parenting coordinator is there to work with the co-parents, yet the overarching focus of their work is to uphold the best interests of the children and encourage each parent to do so as well.
Parenting Coordinators promote the best interests of minor children and their parents in high-conflict cases by reducing the duration and severity of parental conflict, thereby protecting children from the harmful effects of such conflict.
As a co-parent, you may be wondering if working with a parenting coordinator is in your best interest. A parenting coordinator can help to teach you communication skills to use in co-parenting. If you are always in conflict and cannot resolve issues with your co-parent, working with a parenting coordinator may help.
When there's less conflict, you are also less likely to make return trips to court. In turn, this will also help you to save money by not having to spend more on legal fees.
A parenting coordinator can help you to stop fighting so much by educating you on ways to resolve conflicts promptly. While you will be glad to have stopped fighting so much, your kids will also be happy to have more peace across their two homes.
A parenting coordinator will seek to gain an understanding of what is really going on within the family to create conflict. In many cases, this person will meet with both parents separately, and possibly the children, to get a deeper understanding of what might be creating and persisting the conflict. This gives them better insight as they help co-parents make the best decisions moving forward.
Working with a parenting coordinator may be a good option for families transitioning into shared parenting, but as always, the needs of every family are unique. Discuss parenting coordination with your attorney or other trusted family law professionals to get an idea of how it could impact your situation.
Helps create connections between your brain’s memory networks.
Designed to heal the relationship between parent and child.
Help your brain release itself from frozen or stuck patterns.
Make joint decisions concerning your children without conflict.