Coparent Counseling – Kathleen Coughlin, LCSW – $150.00 (60-Minutes)
Coparent Counseling offers the children and parents an external outlet of support during a major life transition. During coparent counseling, the most important goal is to help the parent understand the importance of coparenting in a healthy, respectful, and child first manner. If you are angry with the other parent, this may show in your interactions with the children around that parent. In counseling we encourage parents to discuss the needs of their children together and to come up with ways to make this process easier on them. There are significant emotions and feelings that occur when parents decide to separate. The most important decision you can make as parents is to amicably coparent your children together. Develop a parenting plan together to model for your children that you can put your differences aside for their benefit. Your children benefit from seeing their parents communicate in a peaceful manner vs. observing hostility being modeled between the two most important people in their lives. Coparenting is agreeing to collaborate with one another, it is not a competition about who gets to spend more time with the kids. By communicating and compromising, your children can thrive in their new environments. Your children will be able to experience love and stability in both homes. The only ones that truly lose in a hostile separation or divorce are the children. The best gift parents can give their children is to communicate without anger and resentment. It is important to be mindful that you are not placing children in the middle of your own conflicts.
“The sign of great parenting is not a child’s behavior. The sign of truly great parenting is the parent’s behavior” – Andy Smithson
Coparent counseling helps provide parents the opportunity to learn how to parent through cooperation, communication, compromise, and consistency. Coparent sessions can be scheduled independently by contacting a licensed counselor with training and experience or the court may order the counseling to occur. After a separation or divorce parents will need to work together to develop a parenting plan, coordinate appointments, and activities for their children, and to develop ways to communicate amicably around their children. In your counseling sessions, the goal of coparenting is to assist your family with developing ideas and solutions that will work for your family vs. litigating in a courtroom. Problems that existed with communication in the relationship may carry over after the relationship ends. Coparenting aims to reduce stress and improve communication and family functioning for the benefit of the children.
Please call our office at 386-449-8600 to schedule your appointment.