Heather Tannenbaum works as a divorce, co-parenting, and mediation prep coach. She's an author and she helps divorcing parents, either individually or together, navigate the transition into co-parenting. I'm excited to have her on the podcast today. Let's dive in. Hello, Heather. Welcome to the show and thanks for being here today. Thank you so much for having me. It's nice to be here. I always am curious about people that are in the field of helping co-parents. What inspired you to get into this field? First and foremost, I would say that it was my own personal divorce that got me here after 14 and a half years of marriage. My marriage ended. I was actually married to a family law lawyer and I had been a stay at home mom and I found myself figuring out what are my next steps here. You know, I've always had this marriage and this life and now it's changing. And oh my gosh, what do I do? I've been a full time mom and a primary caregiver and now I find myself having to share parenting time with somebody. I'm not used to that. So there's all these feelings that go along with it. I started writing down my feelings in terms of a journal and coping strategies and things like that. And I feel like I had a unique perspective having been married to a divorce lawyer. I just learned some things from him over the years. You know, your spouse comes home, talks to you about work. And so you learn different perspective. As my journal evolved over time, it kind of turned into a book. And so I self-published it. And I started going around to different family law firms in my area and promoting the book. And I was talking to a lawyer and she said to me, you have such a healthy outlook, I think you'd make an incredible divorce coach. And I said, that's so nice, but it's a divorce. And so a few Google searches later and a few days later, I was signed up to receive my certification and five years later, here I am. So that leads me to my next question about co-parenting coaches. I think that some people. have heard about it, but I think a lot of listeners probably don't have a coach. What might you say to them if they're curious about coaching and what that might give them as co-parent? Whether you're amicable or whether you're contentious or whether your relationship with your co-parent is anywhere in between, having a co-parenting coach is always beneficial because it's somebody to help bounce ideas off of. So for example, it helps you take the emotion out of it. If he wants to change weekends. because his girlfriend's taking him away and absolutely not. Sometimes they need to kind of just say that and hear about from the other side and give a bit of a different perspective and different options. Oh, I didn't think I could handle it like that. It's a sounding board, it's a safe space, and it's a way for you to maintain or create more of a positive relationship with your co-parent, irrespective of how cooperative they choose to be. I know you've advocated too for this co-parenting team, assembling the parenting coordinator. If I could wave a magic wand right now and assemble that perfect team, who would be on that team? It completely depends on what your individual circumstances are because there are similarities and there are common threads for every divorce. But there's also specific and special circumstances. And as a coach, for example, if I have one family with two kids who are involved in competitive hockey. That's going to be very different and their parenting schedule may look very different than family who has two children who aren't in any extracurricular activities. For example, I'm Canadian, so let's stick to hockey. Hockey practices are very time consuming and it might not always be that you can take your children or if they have practices in different arenas on the same days, you can't. So sometimes we have to check our ego at the door and we have to actually work with our co-parents. And again, depending how much your co-parent is willing to work with you. Cause that's always the wild card here. Some of your listeners might be saying, my co-parent is so uncooperative, they won't help me out. That's okay. That's totally okay because you can only control your part of it. If your co-parent's not cooperative, you can still act the right way. It makes me think about this quote that I think you have on your website, using your divorce as an opportunity to build a better you. I'm curious if you could share more about that perspective. How can we use divorce to bring positive energy to our lives? Chances are, if you've been in a marriage that is not working, even if you thought it was working, it obviously wasn't for both of you, so then it's not working. Chances are, over time, little bits of yourself and your soul have been chipped away because you're trying to make it work. You're trying to raise your family. You're trying to live your life. And so parts of yourself. slowly get chipped away. And so now you have this opportunity to be the person that you've always wanted to be. So for me, as a personal example, I had focused all my time and energy on raising my children. I got to be that mom who volunteered at the school. And I got to be that mom that when the school called and said my kid fell in a puddle and he needs new socks, I was able to go, I was very fortunate like that. But now all of a sudden I found myself having every other weekend to myself. Well, what do I do with it? So I started to think, well, what are some things that I enjoyed doing that I kind of put on the back burner when I became a mom and a wife? And so finding new activities was able to give me an outlet to build the me that I wanted to be. And you meet like-minded people. You find people who enjoy the same things and you might make a connection with it with another female or a male or just a companion. And it helps to lift you up because divorce can be a really isolating, lonely process. You mentioned about doing this trigger work so you can show up in these conflicted situations. What advice might you give to a parent who's dealing with an argumentative or a toxic ex? Do you have any tools or techniques that you recommend for navigating those challenges? Yeah, a lot. And unfortunately, this is a really common situation. I would say 80%. of my clients are dealing with a toxic, aggressive, not nice whole parent, or that's how they feel. And part of it is taking the emotion out of it, taking a step back and trying to see it from their perspective. And so for example, you might get an email saying, I need to switch weekends. Well, you may have planned everything for that weekend, but the biggest tip that I can give that's the most general is ask yourself if your answer is going to be no I can't accommodate ask yourself this one question am I doing it to hurt him or her or am I doing it because it's best for the kids? Can it be switched? It's irritating you may feel that it's disrespectful of your time but if you can switch it does it make a difference or if your co-parent got tickets to an LA Lakers game you know it was a rare opportunity can the kids come even though it's your weekend? Do you want to say no to hurt your ex? Because sometimes it just ends up hurting the kids. So if there's a really good reason to say no, then that's okay. And those reasons do exist. But if you think it's going to benefit your kids and it's not really as big of a deal as it feels to you, is it something that you can do? What I'm hearing in that is putting the children first. And I'm curious if you have any other advice for co-parents on not putting their kids in the middle of the conflict. So I'm a parent too. My kids are now 19 and 21. When we signed up for this thing called parenthood, whether it was knowingly or unknowingly, we signed up to now take a back seat to somebody else's needs for the rest of our life. It's just what we did. We might not have known we did that, but here we are, we did it. And so divorce, marriage, nothing changes them. We made that agreement with ourselves, whether we knew it or not. Our needs are no longer the most important ones in the universe, our children's. And so we have to still remember them. Ask yourself always, what is best for your kids? And you might not like your ex. Maybe he or she did some really cruel things to you. Just because they were not a good life partner does not mean they're not a good parent. There are rare situations where not having contact with a parent might be best. I'm not talking about those cases. I'm talking about the majority of cases. It is better for your children to have healthy. functional relationship with both parents than it is to be estranged from a parent. We're not talking about situations of abuse or violence. Empouraging your children and helping foster those relationships. You might not like the way they show up, but it's not your job to talk to your kid about how you don't like how their parent shows up. We have a duty and an obligation to raise our children to be as healthy, strong, independent and self-sufficient as they can be. However, we are able to do that job. That is what we must. I noticed that you say there that your kids are past 18. So that means you're all done, right? It's such a misconception and an understandable one. We like to sometimes console ourselves and think when they're 18, I don't feel like this anymore, but I'm sorry to say it in most cases, it's not true. Because your child turns 18, they don't cease to exist. It just seems to be a child as the law sees it. But I, and I love my children dearly, but From the time they were 18 to the time they were 17, I mean, they didn't just magically grow up overnight. They still have needs and they still need guidance from both of you. The job doesn't end at 18. The job isn't quite under 21 either. And so I think as long as we share human beings with our ex-partner, we are tied to them. And it's... better to understand the reality that this situation is forever. And so you're in it for the long haul. Let's get you the tools that you need to deal with it in the most positive, effective way possible. Cause it's not going with. I've spoken with many co-parents that are going through, um, this really challenging situation of it's not just resentments about how they were treated in the marriage or in the divorce, but there's this ongoing tension in that relationship. perhaps with litigation, but every contact with their co-parent is challenged. And I'm curious, how would you speak to that person about this same topic of supporting their children in this difficult situation? Divorce is so tough and there are so many levels to it. I've heard people say, well, how am I supposed to be nice to her or him when they have either child support? I get all that, but this is where compartmentalizing is really important. What's the stuff? that I have to deal with the lawyer and watch the stuff I have to deal with my parents. They're not the same. Let your lawyers and your attorneys deal with the money and the division of property and all that stuff. That's very, very separate than who's taking your kid to taekwondo this week. One has nothing to do with the other. It's much easier said than done. I recognize that. But if you can make a commitment to yourself and to your children to show up for them as the best. parent you can be for that parenting time, take the other time to worry about the others. You have a divided time with your children when you're going through a divorce, so you have less time with them. Maximize the quality of that time because the quantity has been taken away. Put your phone away. Don't worry about the litigation, the finances. Take that time and really try to make a conscious effort to insulate yourself and your children so that you can maximize the quality. of the time you're spending with. I like that a lot. As a co-parent myself, I know how difficult communication can be. That's why I created Best Interest, the co-parenting app that uses advanced AI technology to automatically filter out all negativity, promoting positive communication, and helping you create a healthier environment for your family. Try it now and get 10% off with code BEYOND10. Link in the show notes. And now, back to the show. Going back to... people going through a divorce right now. What are some common mistakes that you see either in their parenting plan or the process of divorce? What's a common mistake that people make? There's two that I see. The first one is when you're coming up with your parenting plan, it's very easy to think about the short term. Okay. You forget in the moment that your children grow and swimming lessons and hockey practice might be what's really important today, but By tomorrow, it's driving lessons and car insurance. The needs of your children change. When you make a parenting plan, a lot of the mistakes that I see people make, which I help them avoid, is they're not thinking long-term enough, and they're also looking at their parenting plan and their relationship with their co-parent with rose-colored glasses on. We can do birthday parties together. That's what we do now. It's no problem. We're gonna always just do birthday parties together. We don't have to put that in the parenting plan. as much as I really hope and pray that that's the case and it continues like that, it's always better to put it in the parenting plan. My wish is for all your listeners and viewers to be able to have their parenting plan done, put it in their drawer and never have to look at it because it means then that the co-parents are getting along. But in case all of a sudden you can't do birthday parties together because now one of you has repartnered and the partner doesn't like it and they want to do something different. Now all of a sudden we'll How do we manage this? We didn't write down the parenting plan because we always said it's fine. We're doing birthday parties together. But circumstances change. The parenting plan is meant to be a list of rules and expectations for both parents to have and to follow. And so if you can put it in a drawer and not worry about it, great. But when somebody says, actually we're gonna do the birthday party differently this year, we're gonna have our own. Now pull out your parenting plan and see what it says. Because if it's written in there, and there's a clause for that, there's no dispute to be had. because it's in there. If you haven't put it in, well now you have a dispute. What I'm hearing is that having a very prescriptive parenting plan that covers all the potential eventualities, even if things are feeling okay in the moment, they might shift. So it's about going through those details. Where would a parent start? Should they download a parenting plan off the internet? Are the resources available? I always recommend, obviously, that they work with a coach or someone to do this. I won't work on a parenting plan unless it's in conjunction with their attorney because I can't give legal advice. But what I can do and where somebody like me comes in very handy is I've usually worked with the parents or one of the parents. And I know a little bit about the family dynamic. But I will take the time and I ask, what are your family dynamics? let's come up with a parenting plan that works for you. So I had one family, for example, they didn't live too far from each other. The parents each wanted to see the kids every day. So we had come up with a plan whereby it made sense to satisfy the parents' needs on the days that the kids woke up at dad's house, mom took them to school and vice versa. And so it satisfied the parents' needs to see their kids every day, even if it was for 10 minutes on the way to school, it didn't interrupt the kids' routine. Things like that can be taken into the parenting plan. What I would recommend for people to do if they don't wanna work with a coach or they're getting along and they don't feel that they need to, that's wonderful. Go through what a day in the life of your family looks like and address all those logistical issues. What does school drop-off look like? What does school pickup look like? What do weekends look like? How do we arrange our family time? If Christmas Eve has always been really important to his family and Christmas Day is really important to her family. And obviously I'm only talking about general examples here. Then work it out as best you can and come up with as much as you can before you go to your attorney. You can say to your attorney, here's what we've come up with so far, what we agree. What else is missing? What more do we need in this plan? But as much as you can do on your own and work together, if your situation allows for it, then do that. The more that you can work out yourself, you're saving a lot of money because you're not having your lawyer draft every little thing. You're doing a lot of the work for it. What I'm also hearing in this though is that you don't know until you know. Coaches like yourself, they've seen it all. They know what happens once the new partners get introduced. Co-parents haven't gone through that, won't know what's important to have in there. I always put in an introduction of new partners into a parenting plan. This is a reality that you... have to consider is a possibility going forward for you or your co-parent. This is going to be a person who's going to be in your children's lives. How do you to decide at this point how that person will be introduced and when? These are things you have to think about and coming up with a parenting plan working with somebody you know like me it's not it's not always easy. I do put uncomfortable thoughts in their mind sometimes but these are things that you have to think about. Partnering is a very, very big one. And going forward when your kids are older, what is that going to look like? Similar to recommending that someone do premarital counseling prior to getting married, having those uncomfortable conversations before it's actually uncomfortable, same thing goes with getting divorced, right? You want to have those conversations. Well put. I'd love to talk more about communication. A lot of co-parents that struggle with the communication that they receive from their co-parent, it's triggering, takes them out of their day. takes them away from their kids. I'm curious what you would recommend for parents that are experiencing that type of situation. It's a good question. And yeah, that's a big part of it is communication. And I think limiting the communication and coming up with parameters and boundaries for that communication is really important. So for example, on your app, you have the ability to turn off notifications. If situation is contentious, I often recommend they turn off notifications because the last thing you want is you're out with your kids, you're enjoying. when I Sunday afternoon and you see your ex's name pop up and there's a message. And now all of a sudden, whether you check the message, I don't check the message. I don't want to ruin my afternoon by looking at it, but what does it say? Or maybe I'll feel better if I read it. Now you're in your head and now you're taken out of that moment. And now what you've just done is you've killed that quality time we talked about earlier and that insulating yourself. And so if you turn off the notifications, you're able to enjoy that quality time. You're able to compartmentalize. You're able to insulate. I'm not suggesting that you never check it. but you can set up parameters ahead of time. I will be checking my app every evening at 8 p.m., something like that. Or I check it every other day, depending on the age of the children and the needs of the children. Obviously, if there's an emergency, there's a different protocol, right? Because your notifications is off. If there's an emergency, you call, or whatever protocol you guys put in place. Setting parameters for how you communicate is important. So oftentimes I recommend to my client right in the subject line, what it's about. So let's say it's about Thanksgiving weekend, not urgent or Thanksgiving weekend, urgent, whatever it is. I always encourage my clients also to employ the 24 hour rule. Unless it's time sensitive, please take at least 24 hours before you respond. And the reason being it enables you to let your emotions calm down. When you get a request to change weekends, for example, your initial responses, well, no way in 24 hours, maybe things have changed. Maybe you've had time now to have a little perspective, breathe, reflect, vent to a friend, talk to a coach, something. And so answering right away is not always best unless it's obviously time sensitive. And this is an important part that I think people don't quite understand when they're going through a separation argument. When you've been married or living together as partners for so long, you're kind of glued together. And so now you've got to unstick yourselves. But it's like when you step on gum, it's not a quick clean break. So you're in the messy middle for quite a while. And that messy middle, to put in a more professional way, is really the transition from learning how to go from being life partners to parenting partners. We have liberties with our spouse and our life partner that we don't have with a co-worker, for example. If your co-worker forgot to pick up the office coffee, you're just going to say, no problem, go get it now, or I'll do it. And in your head, you're thinking, oh my god, we always do this. But you don't say it. There's a filter there with a colleague or a co-worker that's not always present with a life partner. So if we begin to think of our co-parent and our parenting partner as a colleague, the dynamic of communication now. You can no longer speak to your co-parenting partner the way you did when they were your life partner. And creating those boundaries and thinking of it as a colleague, co-worker relationship gives you that built-in filter that just doesn't allow you anymore to react to them the way you would when they were your life partner. Your relationship has changed. So too muster communication in order to align with this new dynamic. That's really helpful. Do you ever advocate for people to add communication provisions in their parenting plan? Short answer is yes. But again, it depends on the circumstances. I just saw recently somebody had one and they did red, yellow, and green. So they had a color coding. Red means it's urgent, green. There's different ways to do it. But I would definitely set out some communication parameters, but in the parenting plan, of course, because you want to have as much in there as possible. but also communicate it with your spouse. Say, listen, I'm not running to my phone every time you send something. I will send something, I will check once a day, eight o'clock, kids are in bed, and that's when I'll check. I'm asking you to do the same. And then if they're not adherent to that, or you find that they're not following the protocol that you've put in place, you can say to them, they're trying to respond by whatever, or I'm going to go ahead and book them in for a swimming. Certain things are time-sensitive. And if you haven't heard back, it's important to set that expectation and say, you know, don't give them an hour to respond. That's not reasonable. But if you say it's Monday, I, if I don't hear from you by Friday, I need to sign them up before this faces are. One of the things that I'd love to talk to you about would be for any advice that you'd have for a co-parent who's just really struggling, how can they take care of themselves better today? What would you advocate they do? That's a really good question. It's tough. And I can sit here and tell you. that when your kids are with their other parent, take that time to yourself. Take a 10 minute walk, get some fresh air, commit to something that is attainable. Make sure you do something for yourself, even if it's just read a book, something that you don't do when your kids are with you. Find something positive about not having your kids with you. Again, the whole notion of building a better you. This is your opportunity to Find something and fill a void with something that makes you feel more fulfilled. Because if you feel more fulfilled, you will be a better parent. That's beautiful. Is there anything else you'd like to leave our listeners with today? It's my opinion that divorce does not mess up children. Conflict does. I have a lot of clients that come to me, whether they're contemplating divorce or whether they've been approached. by their partner for a divorce. My children are gonna be so messed up. We can't do this to the kids. Divorce doesn't mess up your children. Conflict does. And so that you can control. You can't control what your co-parenting partner does, but you can certainly control your part. So if your co-parent is speaking negatively about you to the children, which is never okay, but we all know that it happens in certain situations, it doesn't give you the right to do the same thing. Just because they're doing it doesn't mean you have to. Defend yourself. The only thing worse than having one parent that does that is having to. Thank you, Heather. I feel like I've learned a lot and thanks for being on the podcast today. Thank you for having me. Thanks for joining us on the Co-parenting Beyond Conflict podcast. To support our show, please subscribe or leave a rating. Links for all books and resources mentioned on today's podcast appear in our show notes or on Co-parenting beyond conflict.com. See you next time. The commentary and opinions available on this podcast are for informational and entertainment purposes only, and not for the purpose of providing legal or psychological advice. You should contact a licensed attorney, coach, or therapist in your state to obtain advice with respect to any particular issue or problem.