As a parent, you want what is best for your child. This will continue even as you go through the struggles of divorce and as you adjust to co-parenting in the aftermath of a split.
Of course, not everything will settle into an easy pattern right away. In fact, it is more common for parents to struggle to form a new parenting balance after a divorce. You could potentially help ease your way into this new situation through parallel parenting.
What is parallel parenting?
Psychology Today discusses the point of parallel parenting and how it serves divorced families. Parallel parenting is a form of co-parenting meant for temporary use. With it, parents can avoid direct contact with one another while simultaneously sharing custody and having equal access to the kids.
Parallel parenting accomplishes this through the use of strict rules about communication. When you utilize this form of parenting, you and your co-parent can only communicate via the written word. This can include everything from texts to hand-written letters. You can even avoid conversation this way since you can simply keep logs of important information in a notebook to pass back and forward with your child during visitation swaps.
Using it as a stepping stone
As mentioned, parallel parenting is a temporary form of co-parenting. The eventual goal is to move on to a more engaged, active and cooperative form of co-parenting. Thus, a judge will periodically review your case and decide if they will allow things to continue as-is, make changes to the current situation, or decide that you have moved beyond the need for parallel parenting and can progress to something else.