Ep #62: Conscious Co-Parenting 101

Welcome to the Co-Parenting with Confidence podcast. I'm your host, Mikki Gardner, and this is episode number 62, Conscious Co-Parenting 101. Welcome to Co-Parenting with Confidence, a podcast for those courageous moms out there who wanna move past the conflict and frustration of divorce and show up as the mom they truly want to be. My name's Mikki Gardner. I'm a certified life and conscious parenting coach with my own personal dose of co-parenting experience. Throughout my co-parenting journey, I have learned to become confident in who I am as a woman and a mother and I'm here to help you do the same. If you're ready to learn what it takes to become a great co-parent and an amazing example to your children, well, get ready and let's dive into today's episode. Welcome, friend. Have you ever felt like co-parenting is really just parenting with your arms tied behind your back? Like there's no way that you can win with the co-parenting partner that you have? Well, listen, you are not alone and this conversation today is for you. But before I dive in, I just wanna thank you for being here with me. I love hanging out with you each week and I'm truly grateful that you're spending the time listening. And if you're new here, welcome. I'm so glad that you found me. If you love this show and it's resonating with you and offering you value, I would be so grateful if you would subscribe and go and rate and review the show. This is truly the lifeblood for podcasters. This is a labor of love, podcasting. And really, you giving back and showing that you value this and want more of this, the way that you can do that is to go and rate and review the show and subscribe. So if you're feeling like giving, I would appreciate it. So one thing that you may or may not know about me is that I am a certified life coach. I'm certified through the life coach school, the best life coaching school in my opinion. I went there, so I love it. And I'm also a certified conscious parenting coach. But what is conscious parenting? Well, I wanted to sort of dive into what it is, but more importantly, I wanna talk about why it is so crucial, in my opinion, for co-parenting. So what is conscious parenting? Well, conscious parenting is a method that Dr. Shefali Tsabary created. She is Oprah's parenting expert. She is so wise and so extraordinary. And I had the pleasure of being in her coaching school and learning directly from her. She blends really a Western psychology method with Eastern wisdom traditions. It really resonated with me and conscious parenting is something that I've been doing in my own life for three or four years now. And I have really seen such a change and an impact on my relationship with my child. But then I started seeing such a huge impact in my co-parenting. And that's why I'm teaching these skills to my clients today and why I wanted to bring it to you on this podcast. 'Cause people are often asking, what is it and how do we do more of it? So conscious parenting, right, or CP is a term that's used to describe a parenting style. That style focuses on awareness, connectedness and mindfulness. I mean, here's the thing, you guys, it's called parenting for a reason. Because parenting is about the parent. If parenting were about our children, it would be called childing. It's not. So here's the thing. When we look at any parent really, our biggest fear is the pain of our children, right? It's the hardest thing for us to witness. But the biggest disservice to any child is a parent who cannot witness their pain. So this approach of parenting really requires self-reflection, awareness, attunement, communication skills, respect. It basically helps you ensure that you are seeing and hearing your child where they are. It allows for awareness and attunement to what is actually happening versus what we think, quote unquote, "should be happening." Conscious parenting in and of itself takes a ton of inner work and a lot of healing. It's something that we learn, it is a skill that we learn and is cultivated. I mean, the hardest part about being a parent, frankly, is dealing with yourself, right? Because you set the tone and you're the cause of factor in any given situation. And that's not to blame by any means, it's just when we are aware of what's true, we have so much more power. And let's be honest, when we get divorced, we are usually in a very highly emotional reactive state. No one gets divorced for happy reasons. So while we're trying to sort out all of this hurt and pain and maybe trauma, we're also expected to help our kids navigate through that. But you cannot help your kids until you've helped yourself, right. It's like that old adage on the airplane where they tell you to put your mask on first, why? So that you can be aware, so that you can be conscious, aware, so that you can help others. This applies the same thing to parenting, but a hundred percent to parenting during and after divorce. Our children's lives are impacted by divorce and their sense of safety is challenged at best and destroyed in some situations. And so it's really our job and our responsibility as the parent to help make decisions to do whatever we can to support our children and to not add more fuel to the fire, so to speak. But that starts with taking care of you. And that's why it's all about parenting. Co-parenting is about the parents, not so much about the child. And this is why I believe this conscious co-parenting is a vital framework as we learn how to co-parent. So today I'm gonna really lay out the three C's of conscious co-parenting. So what is conscious co-parenting? Well, it doesn't mean perfect parenting by any means, but it means that you are aware of what you're doing and why you're doing it, even if that awareness comes after the fact. And even if the other co-parent isn't participating. So I'm gonna go into these three C's; compassion, connection and collaboration. The first one is compassion and this is really the foundation of conscious parenting and conscious co-parenting. So compassion really starts with awareness. Why is this so important? 'Cause you can only change what you are aware of. It sounds basic, but honestly so many of us live in a reactionary state. All we are doing is reacting to whatever is coming at us, right? We are just on the defense all of the time. And that is not being aware, that is not having agency in life, you are just in a reactive state. What we want to do is get into a responsive state. And to do that, we need to be aware of what is happening, allowing for what is and then accepting our agency, right? Agency are the choices that you have available to you. So often it feels like we don't have any, but you always have choices. But we have to be aware to start that. So awareness is a skill that is built in different ways. I know I've talked on this podcast a lot about meditation. This has been one of the biggest teachers of awareness for me. Mindfulness, we hear so much about it in society these days because it is so necessary. Our brains are not built, nor do they have the capacity to take in the amount of information that we are subjecting them to. They just don't. Multitasking is a facade, it's false. It doesn't actually exist. We can only do something with our full presence. And so learning how to be aware, mindful and present to what is happening in any given moment is the most powerful state that you can be in. So compassion really starts with just awareness, awareness for what is, what is true versus the stories that we're telling ourselves. The next piece of compassion is understanding how the world works, right? And how it works is there is the law of cause and effect. So the law of cause and effect is a universal law which specifically states that every single action in the universe produces a reaction no matter what, right? This is a scientific method. So much has been studied about this. Plato was actually the first, Newton developed it more and you find it pop up in Buddhism and all the wisdom teachings, right? So this is a universal law. When we open up and have compassion for this is the law that actually everything is working under, we get to have a lot more power and agency in life. Because we start to understand that every action that we take has a reaction. It affects other people, ourselves, everything around us. And so when we start to understand this, when we start to become aware and mindful of this and we start to actually trust this law, it actually releases us from needing to know what the right answers are. We just have to know that this cause created this effect. Sometimes we know it before and we can do this intentionally. Other times we learn it after the fact, right? It's why hindsight is always 20/20 as they say. We can see it clearly after it's all unfolded. But part of having compassion for that this is how there is this law of nature, a universal law that we're all working under of cause and effect, it releases us of having to know all the answers and just deal with what's in front of us. And this is really an actual more empowering state than anything. We don't have to be reactive to everything, but we can actually stop and choose to be responsive because we know the impact that every action has. When we look at compassion and awareness in this universal law, we also have to understand that we are all energy, right? Whatever your religious beliefs are, there is a universal law that we are also all energy. Everything in the world, whether the chair that I'm looking at, the podcast microphone I'm using, myself, my dog, right? Any of this, the plant that I'm staring at, you can boil all of it down into the smallest point and each smallest point is an atom. An atom is 1% material, right, physical and 99% energy. So we are just energetic beings. Why is this important? Because when we have compassion for the fact that we are energetic beings, we are all created from the same exact thing, we can start to open up to compassion. We can start to understand that energy is constantly moving. It's not stopping. It's ever evolving. It's not static. And here's how I apply it to co-parenting. When we start to understand the law of cause and effect and sort of the energetic of the world, the energetic law that everything is moving, everything is changing because that is how it is, right? We don't get stuck as much in these old stories, in these rigid ideas that just because someone was one way that they will always be that. Just like you have changed and evolved since your divorce because of everything you've gone through, we have to extend the same assumption that the same is true for your co-parenting partner. Now, you might not see it on the outside, but we have to understand that energetically everything is changing. And so why is this important? Because when we know that nothing is static and everyone is changing, your acts being the same way, we can start to have a little compassion for what we don't know. We can open up to curiosity of maybe there are shifts that are happening that will result down the road in a positive direction, a positive change that we want. So that's why I think when we look at compassion, it's so important. Really, it's the basic for conscious co-parenting. Understanding how the world works, that we are aware beings, that there is laws of cause and effect, and energetically, we have more power and more impact than we could ever know. So the second C of conscious co-parenting is connection. Connection is massive. And one that I talk with my clients a lot about because it's twofold. There's connections to others and there's connections to yourself. When we look at conscious co-parenting, we always start with self-awareness, connection to self. Why? Because our relationship with ourself will always influence our relationship with others. There's a saying, the way we do one thing is the way we do everything. And what that means is if we are very short, impatient, critical and nasty to ourselves, do you think that we're gonna completely change in how we treat other people? No. That's why when we can open up to compassion towards ourselves and others, we start to open up across the board. And so when we look at connection and self-awareness, the first step is really self-acceptance. Learning how to accept yourself in all your parts, the good, the bad, the ugly, because we all have all of it, right? There's no one that's just good or just bad, right? We're all the parts of ourselves. And with all of my clients, I really work on the basic self-understanding, self-worth. And what I mean by that is your worth is inherent. It is not something that is earned or given to you or validated by an outside source. You are worthy in and of yourself simply because you are made from source. Again, because we all are here living this life on this planet, I believe that our worth is already inherent. Now, everything in our society tells us otherwise, tells us we have to earn love, we have to earn our worthiness, we have to achieve, we have to strive, we have to do, but really it's just simply not true. And so when we start to understand that we're worthy already, we don't start looking at it from other people. We don't look outside ourselves to get validation, meaning we're not enslaving other people to validate us or even better yet, we're not asking other people to be in charge of our feelings, we're doing that ourselves. This is liberation. And it also allows us, when we are very self-aware and self-connected, we aren't looking for other people's opinions to tell us how we should feel about ourselves. We're doing that all on our own and this creates freedom and ease. How do we do this? Well, we go through the reparenting process. I know I've probably mentioned it a few times here and this is the biggest part of conscious parenting that I learned from Dr. Shefali. Reparenting really means being the parent that you may or may not have ever had. Now, this is not about blaming our childhood, getting stuck in regret or resentment, but it's really just deciding now to be the strong, loving, trustworthy parent or adult that you needed when you were little, but you get to be that now. Why is this important? Because it means that you're healing the wounds that are within you. Whenever we are triggered and a trigger is anything that we deem bad, that we think forces a reaction, really a trigger is something that is bringing up an emotional wound inside of you that hasn't been healed yet. This is happening so that you can heal it. That person who is triggering you or that situation or your child or whatever, right? They aren't triggering you. What it is, is there is an opportunity that you are being made aware of an unhealed wound in you that you have the opportunity to heal. Most of us ignore these. We blame the other person. We act like we don't have anything to do about it when really it's the universe's way of telling you, offering you this ability to heal the wounds, because once we heal them, they don't hurt so much. We don't get so triggered. We are released and liberated from it really. The other thing reparenting does, right? Reparenting is really learning how to change our beliefs, changing the narrative, right? Those limiting beliefs, the conditioning that has been handed to us and then deciding, deciding how you wanna show up in the world. It means creating a vision for who you wanna be. Again, that strong, loving, trustworthy version of you, and you work towards creating that version of you today. So that's what reparenting looks like. I'll dive into that more in another episode, but that is a huge part of the connection piece. So why is connection such a big part of conscious co-parenting? Well, because we are wired for belonging. And what do I mean by that? Evolutionarily, we were wired to belong to other people, to be in community, because that's actually how we survived, right? As a caveman, when we go all the way back, a caveman can't live on his own. No, we have to actually be within community for safety, for connection, for getting food and shelter, all these things. So we're actually wired this way. So when we feel rejection, or anything that pushes us towards disconnection, it feels like we are being threatened on a very basic level. Divorce is a time that does this a hundred percent. So this wired for belonging is really important when we think about connection, because we tend to control things, right? We want to feel connected, we wanna feel good, again, because it's this basic sense of safety for us. But so often, we don't understand what we have control over. We spend so much time trying to control other people. Why? So that we can really avoid feeling bad, so that we can try to feel safe, so we can feel connected. Things like people pleasing, keeping the peace, trying to change other people, are just an attempt to control someone else's actions or emotions, so that we can feel better. We don't have control over other people. This is another law, a universal law, that all humans have free will. And when they have free will, just like you and I do, just like our co-parenting partners do, just like our children do, we essentially do not have control over them. Now, what we do have is influence and I'll talk about that in a few minutes. But we have to understand where we have control and where we don't, because it gets so much involved when we are in relationship with others, that we try to control them, so that we can feel more connected. The third C that I wanna talk to about is collaboration. And this is one of the most important ones as it relates to co-parenting. Parenting, yes, relationships, yes, adulting in the world, yes, and co-parenting. Here's the thing. Being a quote unquote "good parent" doesn't come naturally. You aren't either naturally a good or a bad parent, right? Parenting and co-parenting especially is a skill. It is a skill that you have to learn. It is a muscle that you have to strengthen. It is not assumed or just granted to some, but not others. It's really a skill that we learn by choosing to be responsible in our lives. And when I say responsible, I always mean response hyphen able, the ability to respond to life, to other people. So there are skills that we have to learn. One of those skills is problem solving. When we now have trying to co-parent or trying to parent with multiple houses, there's always gonna be some amount of conflict. There's always gonna be some amount of misunderstanding or just complexities. So we have to learn how to problem solve. We also have to learn how to resolve conflict. Many of us do not have that skill. And one of the ways that we learn how to work through conflict and problem solve is learning how to listen to understand versus listening to respond. And when I say respond here, I mean like a rebuttal. And we always know the difference energetically on how we feel. Have you ever sat through a conversation with your co-parenting partner and you're just waiting for them, just waiting for a break, or you're thinking about what you're gonna say next or how you're gonna respond? In that moment, we are not listening to understand. When I say understand, I'm not saying you're trying to agree with or condone, but you're just trying to understand, right? Listening with compassion, opening up to curiosity, what am I not understanding here? What is this person really meaning, right? They might be saying this, but what do they really need here? Especially with our children, when we're able to do this, we're able to see them and hear them and build really secure connection with them. We have to learn how to allow other people who have free will to have their own experience, right? Without making that mean something about you. And with conscious parenting, I believe that everybody, kids and other parents, everybody gets to have input. That does not mean that everybody gets to be a decision maker, right? You are the decision maker in your home. You are the decision maker of you, of your experience, of your co-parenting. Now, but when we have the compassion and we have the connection with others, well, then we allow in their input, but that doesn't mean that they get to say what goes. Your ex can have an opinion, but that doesn't mean that they get to make the decisions for you. You always have choices. You always have agency in any given situation, but we have to be aware to know what those choices are so that we can make them. The last part of collaboration that I wanna talk about and this is one of the things I talk about a lot here on this podcast and definitely in the work that I do every day with my clients, is understanding co-creation. And what do I mean by this? Every relationship is co-created. It is not one-sided. And so we have to understand that we are always bringing energetically something into a relationship. And to understand what that looks like. And being really clear on what your 50% of any situation is. There's an old saying, "You can either be right or you can be happy." And I think that really applies here. We can't always have both. And really it's about how are you owning your 50% of any relationship and what are you bringing to it? So those are the three Cs of conscious co-parenting. Compassion, connection, and collaboration. So why do I think that they're so, so important in your co-parenting relationship? Well, here's why. Here's the benefits. One, a conscious co-parenting relationship is built on an understanding of a long-term focus. We're not looking for short-term change as much as we are true, long-lasting change. This is an understanding from a place of compassion that everything is moving, everything's evolving. There's a flow state. There's supposed to be ups and downs, right? There's supposed to be moments of disconnection. And then we come back to connection. There's supposed to be misunderstandings and conflict. And we can come back to it through connecting, through compassion and through collaboration. So when things happen, we don't get so worked up, right? Because we know that we're in this state of up and down and we can learn how to ride it. We don't let everything be a problem, right? When something isn't seen the way we want it, because there's a trust, again, a trust in that universal law of cause and effect that we understand that all we can do is show up the best version of ourselves now that we are and trust that we're getting in the direction that we want. And here's the real benefit of it. Like I said earlier, you cannot control other people. The only thing you have control over is you. And that might not sound like much, it's everything. Because people and circumstances are not creating your feelings or your experience. It's the way that we're thinking that creates our feelings. And so you have so much more power than you think. And when you understand this, you also understand that it's your responsibility to go first. Gandhi said, be the change that you wanna see in the world. That is it, you go first. If you wanna feel love, if you want to feel connected to your children, if you wanna feel peace and ease in your co-parenting relationship, you go first. This does not mean that the other person wins just because you're not reacting. It doesn't mean you're giving up. It doesn't mean you're agreeing or condoning bad behavior. Not at all. What it means is that you are taking 100% responsibility for your 50% of this co-parenting relationship. That you are healing yourself and you're stopping. You're not adding more fuel to the fire, more junk to the pile to clean up later. You're taking ownership of where you are now. And you know that there is a fact of that. You showing up differently is going to shift everything. Because when one person changes, everything changes. It's just the law of how energy works. So instead of getting upset that, okay, I'm doing the right thing here. I'm trying to not fight. I'm trying to be compassionate. I'm trying to do all the things. Just because the other person isn't meeting you right away doesn't mean it's wrong or not working. And that's why I said at the beginning, this is a long-term game here. We are really looking for long focus. And we have to be connected to ourself, to have compassion, and to have that collaborative spirit to keep going. When we understand deep in our bones that we have no control over other people, this is so empowering. Because you stop trying to control them, right? You stop asking them to agree with you or validate you or tell you you're doing it right. And you start focusing on giving yourself what you need, co-creating the relationships and influencing in a positive way your family as you step in more powerfully and more connected. This is taking responsibility in your life in your co-parenting. This means not living on autopilot, not reactionary. And when we are reacting, we inevitably are making decisions that we regret and we have to clean up later. But instead, conscious co-parenting offers you the ability to pause, to be conscious, to be aware and to choose on purpose what you want. And I can't think of anything that is needed more in this world or any trait that our children need to see modeled for them more than this. Clients come to me all the time worried that they are ruining or damaging their children. And frankly, divorce makes this worry even bigger. They feel so alone, so alienated, victimized, angry, resentful, hopeless and helpless. I totally understand how they feel. And I think you probably do too. And it's no wonder because frankly, the legal system, the divorce system, the business of divorce sets us up for failure because it's based in creating division, separateness and disconnection. The antidote is connection, collaboration and compassion. Whenever I have a client tell me that they just, they could be a different parent if they had a different kid or they had a different ex or a different life, but I always turn that around because the question we really need to be asking ourselves is how would my kid, how would my co-parenting partner be different with another co-parent? It's a curious question. Because then you can ask yourself, what part of this am I co-creating? What part of this am I influencing? Again, not from a place of blame or judgment, but from a place of curiosity, of awareness, so that you can change. If you don't like what you are seeing or experiencing today in your co-parenting relationship, you focus on what you can change. What you can change is you. And listen, this idea of conscious co-parenting, it's very simple. It is not easy. It takes a ton of courage, of love, of patience, of openness, of willingness to fall flat on your face and get yourself back up. And it is 100% worth it. Because children learn what is caught, not taught. What does that mean? We can't lecture anyone to change. We do. We are the change that we wanna see. And that is what influences, that's what changes everything. So your children need to see you modeling the skills that you want for them to have. Emotional management, resilience, patience, presence. And the way that you do that is you start doing it today for yourself. If you're wondering if this journey might be one that could really benefit you, I'm happy to answer any questions you have. I know I just touched on all the things today, but if you wanna take a deep dive or you wanna see how this could impact your co-parenting relationship, I want you to schedule a clarity call with me. It's a 45 minute call. It's totally free, no strings attached, but you and I are going to figure out how we can take one or two simple actions that you can implement into your co-parenting relationship today that will change things going forward. We're gonna use that universal law of cause and effect for your benefit, okay? So that's the show for today. If you know someone who could benefit from this conversation, please share it with them. Just take a screenshot of this on your phone and text it to them or email it or share it on social. And if you do put it on Instagram, please tag me because I would love to connect with you. Thank you so much for spending time with me today. I'll see you next week. And in the meantime, take really, really good care of you, friend. Thanks for listening to Co-Parenting with Confidence. If you want more information or resources from this podcast, visit co-parentingwithconfidence.com. I'll see you next week.