When you have children and go through a divorce, you and the other parent will still need to coparent. You will have to focus on doing what’s best for your children, even when frustrating things happen.
If your children get in trouble at school or get into a fight, do you and the other parent have a plan for handling discipline? If you have to meet with a principal or teacher for a conference or because of a problem with your kids, do you both know how you’ll handle it?
Coparenting your kids isn’t just about sharing in the good times with your children, and you are bound to run into issues at their schools. It’s important that you and the other parent sit down and talk through disciplinary measures and how to approach school personnel about problems.
Presenting a combined front when speaking with educators
It is up to you and the other parent to come to school meetings or conferences as a combined front. Before you go inside to speak with the principal or teacher, make sure you both have discussed how you’ll handle disciplinary measures or other things that need to happen to help your child through this issue.
For example, if you and your ex go into the office and hear that your child was involved in a fight, how will you handle that meeting? Will one of you want to know more while the other is ready to reprimand your child? Will you both ask to find out more about why they got into a fight or want to talk to your child to get their side of events before handling the problem? Having a good strategy is important, so you both are prepared to handle any issue that arises in the same way.
Then, when you take your child or children home after a meeting, you can follow through on any discipline or other method of handling the problem that you have decided on. Whether that’s signing them up for therapy or grounding them from seeing their friends, both parents should be on board with the same treatment in either home.