Parallel Parenting and How to Make It Work

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Raising your children in a positive and healthy manner while still remaining disengaged from your partner is indeed possible.

Although you may not get along with your partner and cannot stand each other and communicate properly, parallel parenting could be the best option that you may have on your table.

When considering how feasible the method of parallel parenting is to use, divorced or separated parents should always keep in mind that, although conflict has arisen between them, they should keep it as minimal as possible for the benefit of their offspring.

The tasks of raising a child are split between parents. For example, one parent can see over the children’s education and talent development, while the other can be focused on the common day-to-day care tasks.

The goal of parallel parenting is to develop a business relationship, where the sole beneficiaries are the children.

Because separation poses a threat to the mental and emotional development of the children, switching to parallel parenting is the healthiest alternative for the parents to allow their offspring to develop into healthy and balanced young adults.  

What is parallel parenting?

Parallel parenting consists of an arrangement done between parents, in which although they may not get along with one another and frequently disagree, they do agree on the best possible way of upbringing their children. They meet common ground on this, and share the responsibility of rearing their children in an amicable manner.

Parallel parenting offers the chance for parents to put aside their differences and hostility towards each other for the better good of their offspring.

Over time, as they gradually put aside their differences, parents working on a parallel parenting plan will reconnect and work together, eventually re-establishing cooperation for the best benefit of their children, laying out a path for better communication and decision making.

Related Reading: The Difference Between Co-Parenting and Parallel Parenting

Benefits

The benefits of parallel parenting revolve mainly around the children.

Most of the times children get caught up in their parents’ conflicts, exposing them to harmful emotions that can hinder their best development in life. One of the main pros of parallel parenting is that the children will have the presence and support of both of their parents in their lives.

Communication has to happen

Everything happens by the means of communication, and unless the parents establish or reestablish a decent connection between them, parallel parenting will not work.

Bill Eddy came up in 2011 with the BIFF acronym, which stand for Brief, Informative, Firm and Friendly.

Getting tangled up in conflicts and arguments with your parenting partner only means a waste of time and energy, which can be detrimental to the best upbringing of your child.

Even though parallel parenting also means disengaged parenting, a certain degree of communication still needs to be maintained between the parenting partners. This can be done by email, texting, or by a notebook entry.

When the child is in the care of either one of the parents, they can write down in a notebook all the details regarding the emotional wellbeing, sleeping patterns, educational-related issues and behavior of their children, and pass the notebook between them routinely.

Don’t wash your dirty laundry in front of the children

Divorced or split couples have a hard time with each other when they’re in the same room, and sometimes the high levels of animosity between them can seem hard to control.

Allowing children to witness the conflicts between their parents is unhealthy to their development.

If parents cannot stand each other not even in the same room, they can plan separate teacher conferences, two different birthday parties for the children or arranged drop-offs for them from school, music classes etc.

Even though some couples do not achieve their relationship goals, it is possible for them to achieve good parenting goals.

By maintaining mutual respect and by laying out a set of rules beforehand to minimize the contact between them with maximum efficiency, parents can remain connected to their children, while in the same time continue to remain disengaged with one another.

No child can develop their personality correctly if they find themselves constantly in the middle of their parents’ conflicts, and parallel parenting seems to offer the best solution for this.