Sol (00:01)
Today on Coparenting Beyond Conflict, I'll be speaking with Jill Barnett-Kaufman, a licensed therapist, divorce coach, mediator, and co-parenting expert. After navigating her own challenging divorce, Jill made it her mission to help others face divorce with confidence, less stress, and greater peace. Through her book, I'm Getting Divorced, Now What? and her transformative coaching programs, Jill empowers parents to not just survive, but thrive in divorce and co-parenting.

I learned a lot from her insights. I think you will too. Let's dive in.

Today on Co-Parenting Beyond Conflict, I'll be speaking with Jill Barnett-Kaufman, a licensed therapist, divorce coach, mediator, and co-parenting expert. After navigating her own challenging divorce, Jill made it her mission to help others facing divorce with confidence, less stress, and greater peace.

Through her book, I'm Getting Divorced, Now What? and her transformative coaching programs, Jill empowers parents to not just survive, but thrive in divorce and co-parenting. I learned a lot from her insights, I think you will too. Let's dive in.

Sol (01:18)
Hi, Jill. Welcome to the podcast. Thanks for being with us today.

Jill (01:21)
Thank you so much for having me, Sol.

Sol (01:23)
So firstly, I'd love to start off with a question about how did you get to the place you are today? How did you get involved with supporting co-parents?

Jill (01:32)
So I'm going to try to make this as short as possible, but I started, when my oldest was one, teaching parenting classes. And then I became a therapist, I went to graduate school, and then I got divorced. I was a co-parent of minor children for years now , they're adult children. And it was difficult.

It was really difficult. So as a therapist, I was like, I should know how to do this better. How come I'm not able to handle this? So I did a lot of research and training and, became a divorce coach. And co-parenting is one of my areas of expertise because it matters, the kids are impacted by the way we parent. And I made a ton of mistakes and we all do. But, there's a lot of

information out there for people to help them do better.

Sol (02:19)
Yeah, I think a lot of us come from personal experience. This is something that we've all been through and we want to help others through our experience. And it sounds like that's what you're doing.

Jill (02:28)
Absolutely, yeah, I definitely can empathize with everybody who's struggling with it.

Sol (02:33)
Now, since you specialize, I believe, in high conflict situations, right? I'm thinking about that person, thinking about getting divorced and maybe they're realizing that the person they thought they knew, they're learning in a new way, maybe is antagonistic, they're seeing behaviors that concern them, and they've decided they want to get a divorce, but they're facing the impossible decision of going down that road.

Jill (02:38)
Yes.

Sol (02:57)
If you could talk to that person right now, what would you share with them about this journey ahead of them?

Jill (03:01)
So It is a process. right? You're going from being a couple, married couple, where you have to care about what each other thinks and does and make decisions together, to being separate individual parents who need to co-parent and communicate, but you don't need to agree on everything. You don't have to have the same rules at each house. You don't have to

have the same way of parenting. I think a lot of times people make the mistakes of thinking that you are in the same relationship that you were. You really have to go through this grieving process and this transformation into being more like colleagues or coworkers. it's very hard to do that when you have all this history with each other.

Sol (03:45)
I like what you said about transitioning into colleagues. Supporting the kids together, but from a non-entangled way. Can you say more about that? What does that look like? How does that...

Jill (03:56)
Yeah. I think you have to understand that respect is super important. You have to respect each other. Each of you are the only people who love your children this much and who feel this way about your children. It's such a benefit when you parent together in terms of when you don't go against each other. Do you know what I mean? When you don't...

speak negatively against each other. I have an example. When my youngest was in high school, he did something that was not good. We both met with him at my house. I remember this very well because I really didn't punish my kids very much, but we met with him to punish him in my house together. He went back and forth between the two houses and we had the same punishment for nine days.

Communicated about it, he understood it, we asked him if he had any questions, but us as a team doing that was so much more powerful than each of us doing our own thing. So it's not like you have to do that on everything. You don't have to agree on everything, but on the big things, you're gonna want the person to be able to work with you when there are big things that you have to do for your children.

So, on the day-to-day things, the rules that you have in your house, you can have your own rules and the other parent can have their own rules. But you want to have a working relationship. So when it is important, if there's a medical issue that you have to deal with, there's some really important things that you are going to need to work together.

Sol (05:25)
And how does a co-parent who maybe is earlier on in that stage of co-parenting, how do they get to that place where they can work with their co-parent in that way?

Jill (05:34)
is really hard. And in some cases harder than others because there's so many emotions going on. So you're going through so much grief, so much anger, so much sadness. You're worried about your children, guilt. There's so much going on for you individually that to put that all aside

It's very hard to do. So I highly recommend counseling, divorce coaching, get help with skills that you can use to do this, like journaling, support groups. There's lots of support groups out there. There's books on this. There's so much out there to help you, but you can't do it just yourself and think that it's going to be easy. It's not. It takes work.

I tell people all the time, think of your children. Think about that your children will be so much better off if you don't show anger and emotion toward their other parent, if you don't increase conflict. And if you have a high conflict person that you're dealing with, it gets really hard. And I have some tools for that. I'm sure you know some of them.

Sol (06:37)
For people that are dealing with high conflict individuals, antagonistic co-parents. What do do?

Jill (06:43)
So one of my favorite tools is from Bill Eddy. Do you know Bill Eddy? Yeah. Okay. So the BIFF method where you are brief, informative, friendly, and firm. And it gives you a structure to communicate with someone who's high conflict where you don't get pulled into all the emotional stuff because anything you say that's like, feel this way or I think you should do, that's going to trigger them to ...

Sol (06:48)
Of yeah.

Jill (07:08)
challenge you and to create more conflict. If you are brief, you just stick to the facts. are friendly. Friendly is so important. With my clients, I always work through emails because they think they're being friendly, but they're really not being that friendly. But you want to say please and thank you and pick on something that they've done that's positive. And you really want to be as friendly as possible. And then firm, where you're setting a clear boundary,

You really want those four parts to put into any kind of communication that you're going to have with

Sol (07:38)
Mm-hmm. Yeah, you mentioned about boundaries and those I know are super key in co-parenting dynamics. Can you give an example of how boundaries come to play in co-parenting and how someone could get good setting boundaries if they've never set them before?

Jill (07:53)
Yeah, well, it's hard to get good at setting boundaries. There's lots of books on setting boundaries, but the way to get good is just practice. You never want to leave things open-ended. You never want to say, "I'd like to switch days with you in the next two weeks on January 21st. Let me know how you feel about that." That's a recipe for disaster.

There's no boundaries there. So if you say, "I have a work function on January 21st. If you're not available, please tell me by Friday at 5 p.m. and if I don't hear from you, I will find other care for them." So you're very clear about when you're gonna hear back and if you don't hear from them, because sometimes they ignore you,

then you tell them what's going to happen. They still may give you a hard time after that date that, "hey, I can take them. Of course I can take them. I just didn't have a chance to get back to you." Well, I'm sorry, I've already made other plans. And that's your boundary.

Sol (08:48)
Talking about doing the healing work that is needed, working with a therapist, I believe you recommended. How does someone who maybe hasn't seen a therapist before, how do they approach that healing work? Are there tools and techniques that are accessible?

Jill (09:03)
There are a few good books that they could read. Like I said, support groups. Journaling is really good. Getting your feelings out some way by either writing it out. Art is a good way, but you have to get your feelings out. You can't have it sit there because I always tell people it's like,

a glass jar with a top on it, your feelings are in that jar until you open up the top. So they're going to be there and they're going to sit there and have an effect on you. They're going to create anxiety. They're going to create resentment and you're going to explode. You might explode at your kids or your friends or somebody, family, and it's not the best way to handle your emotions. There's exercises really

really important, I think, during divorce because there is so much tension and anxiety and feelings there. I think exercise, whatever you can do, walk, go to gym. There's lots of different yoga, meditation. That's really, really helpful. And sometimes different practices will have something to focus on and to heal. So there's meditation practices like that.

There are other ways other than therapy and support groups, but it's harder. I think if you have a professional helping you, it's a little bit easier.

Sol (10:17)
Well, and in addition to the challenges of co-parenting, co-parents are also parenting, and there are challenges and how do we support our kids through this process?

Jill (10:26)
That is a great question because we're hurting, how are we gonna be supporting someone else when we're hurting? But that's what we parents do, right? We have to put our needs aside for our kids. And I think there's so many ways we can support our kids, but the best way is to listen, okay? Most parents do too much talking and they don't listen enough.

If your kids aren't talking to you, you can ask them questions. And if they're not willing to talk at the time you're asking them questions, try again later. There's lots of times, depending on the ages of the kids, when parents can get kids to talk more. Like I always say, before they go to bed, if you're lying down with them, it's a great time. They're calm. They have more patience. They like talking. The other way is, and especially boys, they don't like to

look at you in the eye when you're talking. That's kind of threatening to them. So it's when you're doing something else with them, like if you're playing Legos with them or you're driving with them in the car and you're not looking right at them, those are good times to talk to kids and just kind of ask, how are you doing? How is everything going with what's going on with dad and I or mom and I? And I know this can be hard. What are some of the feelings that you're feeling? And if they don't know how to say it, you can say, well,

are you worried about anything? Are you sad? It's understandable, all those emotions. And a lot of times parents don't push for kids to talk because they think they have to solve the thing that they're talking about, like they're sad or they're worried. And you don't solve it. When you're talking to your children and you try to solve the problem, you're not allowing them to express the feeling.

So if you say, "don't worry, everything's going to be OK," You're not allowing them to express, "well, I'm really worried about what am I going to do when I have to leave you?" Or "what am I going to do if I forget something and it's at dad's house?" you really want to encourage them to talk. Solving the problem is really a feeling stopper.

It's something that we should try to avoid.

Sol (12:29)
I'm also wondering, I interface with parents that are in conflicted situations in court, where they don't want to involve their kids in the conflict. How do you navigate that as a parent talking about the situation, but not involving them in it?

Jill (12:46)
You only should tell them things that they need to know and that directly involve them. So if you're in court, I wouldn't even tell them that you're in court if they're young enough. Too many times parents, I think, share too much stuff with their children that they shouldn't be sharing. It doesn't mean you don't share anything. You have to share where you're going to live and how the schedule is going to be,

answer all their questions. If they find out that you're going to court somehow, if they overhear it or one parent tells them, then you need to let them know. You can give them some generalities like, we have to come to agreement on a lot of things and the court's going to help us do that. But then you want to say, but everything's going to be okay. We're going to work this out. This isn't something you have to worry about. You really want to take all of the responsibility and the worry

away from them. I've had clients where one of the parents says, well, dad doesn't give me money, so I can't afford that. And the children get really anxious about finances and they're like, I don't know if I should eat this because we don't have a lot of money. They are just making decisions based on their childhood experiences. So it's really important that they not be worried about those adult things.

Sol (13:56)
I could imagine too that those sorts of worries end up carrying through their entire lives potentially and having a difficult relationship with money.

Jill (14:05)
Absolutely. Everything that happens in childhood has an impact on us as adults. And it doesn't mean we're always going to be affected by it, but we probably will have to work through issues at some point.

Sol (14:17)
I hear you advocating what sounds to me for a more collaborative style of co-parenting. I'm curious, what are your thoughts about parallel parenting? Is it ever warranted? What sorts of situations?

Jill (14:29)
Absolutely, it's a hundred percent warranted when you have someone you're co-parenting with who won't co-parent with you or who undermines you or is really difficult. So yeah, if you don't have a choice, you have to do parallel parenting and it's fine, people do it and the kids turn out fine. It's really the relationship between the parents

that affects the children. So if that relationship is really bad and the children see that, that's going to negatively impact the children. You have to communicate. Some people use an app like Our Family Wizard or something like that for things that you have to communicate with the other person.

When you don't have a choice, you have to do it.

Sol (15:07)
Now, if someone were currently parallel parenting or keeping limited contact, do you have thoughts for how they might be able to transition to a more collaborative approach?

Jill (15:17)
Yeah. That's the whole being friendly and you can't control what they do. But your communication, no matter what they say, is friendly and using the BIFF method or these methods that lower conflict. At some point they're going to give up, hopefully, most people. At some point they will be bored because you're not fighting back. I have this great

example of a BIFF response because she wanted to bring her kids to her work event. And he writes to her, why would I do that? You are such a slut. You always flirt with your boss. I'm not going to expose our kids to that. This ridiculous response. And she responds back, this is a family event

and there are going to be other children there. Not responding to any of the accusations or the negativity and just thank you so much for letting me know by 5 PM on Friday or whatever. You literally ignore all the provoking that they do.

It's really hard. I know that but it's definitely it works eventually because they're gonna give up.

Sol (16:25)
What a saint to be able to respond to a message like that in that way. Yeah, have to do a lot of your own work.

Jill (16:30)
I know it's,

yeah, and it's real, right? You know, we all know

Sol (16:36)
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.

Sol AI (16:58)
And now, back to the show.

Sol (17:00)
Do you ever see co-parents where they're both claiming to be focused on the children, but they're using the children to create more conflict with the co-parent? How does that play out and can you give some examples?

Jill (17:12)
Yeah, I have lots of examples of that. I have one client who the mom is saying that the children don't want to go to be with the dad. And instead of telling the children that it's the dad's parenting time, the mom will go and pick up the children instead of the dad or offer them options to stay with her instead of the dad.

And her excuse is, don't have a good relationship with the kids, so that's why they don't want to be with you. In reality, it is just more comfortable for the kids to be at her house because he had to move out. That's the house that they are comfortable with. So they're just staying there. And they'll go to dinner with him. They'll spend time with him when they go on trips. There's really no problem with

him it's just that they're more comfortable. So, you really have to be careful about thinking that you're protecting the kids because the kids need a relationship with both parents. And so, Even if the kids are more comfortable with one parent, you really need to encourage them to spend the parenting time that is in your agreement or that you've agreed to with the other parent, even if they'd rather be with you.

And that's hard. I get that. You don't want to push your children to situations that they're not comfortable in. But in the long run, it's better for the children to be close to both parents and to have a relationship with both parents. So you really have to support and encourage and facilitate the relationship with the other parents. So that's one example. There's lots of examples of parents who

can't put their own feelings about the other parent aside. When their child comes to them and complains about the other parent, they say, yeah, aren't they awful? I hated when they did that to me. And that's the worst thing you can say because we all have faults. We are all going to do things that the other person doesn't agree with or we make mistakes. But most parents are

good parents. There are those that are not good parents and that's a different situation. If your other parent is basically a decent parent, you don't want to pile on with them. You want to listen to your child if they complain about the other parent and say, it sounds like you're really upset about this. You need to talk to mom or you need to talk to dad about this because you don't want to triangulate. You don't want to get in the middle of that relationship.

You want to encourage your child to talk to the other parent. And that's where that relationship will get better as long as they talk about it and work on it.

Sol (19:37)
In that too you're teaching your children the skills that they will be able to use later in life with all sorts of different types of relationships.

Jill (19:44)
Exactly, exactly. It's really not good for a parent to just do everything for their children. The more we can teach them about relationships, about how to communicate, the better for them.

Sol (19:55)
Now Jill, you've been supporting co-parents for a while now, and I'm curious if you've seen any trends or changes in that course of supporting co-parents.

Jill (20:04)
Well, there's more knowledge about alienation, narcissism, like these words that people rarely used are becoming like kitchen table words. When I got divorced in 2012, there wasn't a lot out there. Nobody knew, nobody understood.

There's also people that say they're being alienated when that's not really going on. When it's the parent who's alienated from their children, they're doing some things that are not okay. So it's complicated. It's gotten really complicated. I do think people are more aware of

how to divorce differently than in the past. In the past, people just got attorneys and they worked through attorneys and that's how they got divorced. Now, people are more aware that there's mediation, that there are divorce coaches, that there's lots of different options than the traditional hire an attorney and you're off to the races. So that's a real positive.

Sol (21:05)
Do feel like there is a shift towards people using alternative divorcing strategies versus that traditional?

Jill (21:11)
yeah.

So many people I start talking to now are like, I don't want to spend a lot on attorneys. Whereas nobody used to say that, people are like, well we have to hire attorneys. We have to spend a lot of money. So yeah, I'm seeing that. And I'm also seeing people who want to work with me or somebody who can work them through, I'm a trained mediator, but it's not really mediation. It's working through how they talk to each other,

how they communicate, and some agreements outside of like formal mediation just to have like a place to talk to each other, which I think is really positive.

Sol (21:45)
Earlier on you said that it sounds like you coach your clients through messages between them and their co-parent. Can you tell us more about that? What are some of the communication challenges that co-parents face?

Jill (21:56)
Yeah. So many communication challenges. So as they're negotiating or as they're talking about what they're going to do in their divorce or with their children, all the things that happened when they were married are going to still happen. They didn't fix it or else they wouldn't be getting divorced, right? So one parent will send something to the other parent and they'll get triggered. And I'll read

the email from the other parent and I'm like, well, I don't think it's that bad. It's not as bad as you feel because I'm an objective person and I'm not emotional and I don't have this history with this person. That's really difficult because no matter what you do, you can't be objective when you're communicating with this person. It's very hard to be objective. So it's really good to have someone else look it over and to give you

the idea that maybe that one sentence wasn't great, but everything else is pretty okay. And then it settles you down a little bit because when you're triggered, your blood starts pumping, your heart starts racing, your prefrontal cortex shuts off and you're like, I'm going to fight, or fight or flight. So you can't think clearly and that's really difficult.

Having somebody, a friend, a divorce coach, or somebody to be the middle person between when you receive a communication and when you send out a communication is so important. And people really appreciate it.

Sol (23:20)
I can imagine it helps prevent people from getting in trouble in court, right? Just one message can challenge your case in court.

Jill (23:28)
Yeah. I think people overreact a little bit on that because they're like, I can't say anything or, if I do anything, they're going to say I'm a bad parent. It's very hard to prove that anybody's a bad parent because they've done one little thing wrong. So I try to calm people down about that. It's not about court that I do this. It's more about

the reaction you're gonna get from the other person. So if you're triggered and you triggered them and they trigger you, it's like a cycle, you know, it's never gonna end.

Sol (23:55)
Yeah.

Now looking back, what is one piece of advice that you wish you had received before you went through your own divorce?

Jill (24:05)
I made so many mistakes. I really did. The biggest piece of advice is not to focus on the little things. Choose your battles. Really let so much of this go. There were things that I was focused on that I didn't get that were inconsequential.

You look at it now and you're like, ugh, that was ridiculous that I did that. But I didn't know any better. If you can really choose the things that are most important, and that's one thing I work with people on, what are your priorities? What's most important to you? Because everything else, who cares?

Sol (24:40)
Hm

So as someone who has navigated blended families, such as yourself, what are some insights that you have for parents who are considering getting remarried or creating a new family?

Jill (24:52)
Gosh yeah, so I'm remarried, have three stepchildren, three of my own children, so that's a lot of children. They're all adults, thank goodness. I have to say, when the children are still minors and you get married and you blend family in-house, it is extremely complicated. People do it all the time.

I didn't want to do that. We didn't get married until after our children were grown and out of the house. You really have to think about that. That's a really important part. What's the rush? That's what I say to people. Why rush into another marriage unless you are absolutely 100 % sure you're not going to get divorced? Nobody's sure. I get that. But take your time.

Get to know each other. You don't know someone until a year and a half of dating. You really don't know the real person. You're in that honeymoon phase. Then even after that year and a half, I was engaged for two and a half years. Why get married? I understand why people get married. I got married. But I just don't think you need to rush it. And for some reason, a lot of people rush it.

Sol (25:59)
Well, I mean, we've all been through marriage and divorce and the idea of not being 100 % sure about the next one. I think it's true. A lot of listeners. I'm also wondering about, you know, there are people that are seeking marriage sometimes are seeking security and safety. And I'm curious if you have advice for

someone who's recently gotten divorced and is starting a new relationship, very excited about it, thinking about getting remarried. What might you advise them to do before they do that?

Jill (26:28)
So time, obviously I said you don't get to know someone for like a year and a half at least. First of all, don't involve the children until it's a very serious relationship. No reason children need to meet someone you're just dating casually.

You don't want to repeat the mistakes of your past, right? So you really have to go and think about what happened to your marriage and why it happened and learn. Learn and grow and work on yourself. In the beginning, everything's great. There are no problems. This is the perfect person. They have no faults and we are going to have a happy life for...

ever. The real work happens when you have your first fight and you have disagreements and you're dealing with each other's children and you're coming up against things that are difficult. How you manage that is so important. You need to have those skills and those skills are not easy. I do marriage counseling too.

It's not easy to have the skills not to blow up when you get upset, to be respectful when you talk to each other if there's an issue. Until you really get those skills, be careful.

Sol (27:42)
Is there anything that we haven't talked about that you would like to share with our audience of co-parents as they navigate this journey?

Jill (27:49)
Well, first of all, I want to give everybody a lot of credit for doing this. A lot of people stay in bad marriages all their lives. My parents were one of them over 50 years. It's a lot easier to stay in a bad marriage than to go through this, go through divorce. But I tell everybody, children who are in a family with a

bad marriage, it's hurting them. It's not like you're protecting them by staying in that relationship. It affects them. So to have two happy households as opposed to one unhappy household, it is the right decision. And don't question yourself. We all do, right? We all question ourselves and say, did I do the right thing? But know that you are making a tough decision and you're going through something that

is one of the hardest things that people go through. So give yourself a break, take care of yourself, and get as much support as you possibly can.

Sol (28:44)
Thank you so much, Jill. This has been a very uplifting and enlightening conversation. I feel like I've learned a lot.

Sol (28:50)
Where can people connect with you and learn more about your programs or resources?

Jill (28:54)
My website is www.divorcecoachjill.com. I have a Facebook group for people going through separation and divorce. It's called Separation and Divorce Support Community. And I'm on Instagram at DivorceCoachJill. And they can email me at info @ DivorceCoachJill.com.

Sol (29:11)
Great, thanks so much, Jill

Jill (29:12)
Thank you.

Sol (29:16)
Thanks for joining us on the Coparenting Beyond Conflict podcast. To support our show, subscribe or leave a rating. Links for all books and resources mentioned on appear in our show notes or on CoparentingBeyondConflict.com. See you next time.

Sol (29:34)
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.