3 Ways TalkingParents Streamlines Co-Parenting

How TalkingParents can help you achieve more streamlined co-parenting.

• 4 min read
• custody
• health & wellness

For many co-parents, shared parenting is far from what they'd consider a walk in the park. Negative emotions during and after a separation or divorce can make the change from parenting to co-parenting challenging. Being a co-parent involves so many moving parts, and staying on top of everything it takes to care for and provide for your child is made trickier by mental and emotional influences.

Sometimes, a co-parent can benefit from treating their ex like a business partner. A typical business doesn't have everyday operations contending with emotional influences, so this approach usually involves separating your feelings in the situation and solely focusing on the facts and tasks. However, doing this on your own usually adds another layer of complications. Even for seasoned co-parents, taking the extra effort to separate your emotions from interactions with your ex is no easy feat.

With so many emotional factors involved, any tools that can help streamline your shared parenting journey can be an incredible asset. Using a tool that contains functions and details related to your co-parenting situation, you can stress less about shared parenting and focus on what needs to be done. TalkingParents, a co-parenting communication service, offers helpful features that can help approach shared parenting with the same accountability and security of managing transactions in a business partnership. Here are 3 ways TalkingParents can help you achieve more streamlined co-parenting.

1. It minimizes back-and-forth conversations

Consistent communication is vital in any relationship or collaboration. Co-parenting, however, is a dynamic that can be negatively impacted by communication. This annoyance is especially the case with conversations that repeatedly reference the same handful of topics. No one likes to repeat what they've recently said, and co-parents are no exception. Forgetting an answer to a question about your child can still be frustrating. For co-parents whose exes ask the same questions intentionally, it's another level of frustration that creates unnecessary stress and communication.

One way that TalkingParents helps parents achieve streamlined co-parenting is by minimizing back-and-forth conversations through several features. Secure Messaging stores chats in separate threads that can be differentiated by the subject line. If there's a specific detail you want to share with your co-parent, you can identify it with the subject line and refer them to a previous conversation. Additionally, each message is timestamped for when it was delivered to and read by your co-parent, so you'll know when they saw what you shared.

Another element that assists with minimizing repeated conversations is the Info Library, a feature that serves as an encyclopedia of everything related to your shared parenting situation. Parents can create and share customizable cards that contain vital information. Whether it's a go-to babysitter's phone number, your children's clothing sizes, or medical insurance details, the Info Library helps both parents reference helpful information without requiring them to consult their child's other parent or store it elsewhere. If your ex asks you a question that a pre-existing shared info card can answer, you can direct them to the Info Library without explaining the answers again.

2. It consolidates everything in one place

Parents must stay on top of large amounts of information about varying areas of their children's lives. It can get incredibly complicated for co-parents with shared custody to track their children's information with the additional layer of any variations related to their exes’ schedules. The complications deepen when combined with the need to communicate about these schedules, manage related shared expenses, and more. Co-parents must then deal with further complications since each part is traditionally handled in specific, single-function apps or services.

With TalkingParents, co-parenting is all consolidated into one service, meaning parents don't have to switch between multiple places to manage every moving part related to their children. On top of being able to message and share information with your co-parent, you can oversee the other significant aspects of your shared parenting situation with features that are just a few clicks or taps away.

Parents can take advantage of additional features in TalkingParents like:

• Accountable Payments for managing shared expenses
• Shared Calendar for tracking schedules and appointments
• Vault File Storage for retaining important documents
• Personal Journal for making and keeping private notes
• Accountable Calling for staying in touch with your kids

On top of keeping these different functions in a single service, TalkingParents reinforces the ability to keep everything in one place by documenting every action and interaction in an Unalterable Record that both parents can access. Like an efficient business stores data in an organized and easy-to-access way, our service offers parents the same level of organization with their co-parenting information. Instead of chasing past conversations and exchanges in several locations to prepare evidence for court, your Record stores every detail in one document that can be accessed in printed or PDF format.

3. It helps compartmentalize co-parenting

In addition to life's usual stressors, co-parents often deal with additional concerns and conflicts related to shared parenting. These factors can range from managing everyday annoyances to being harassed by their ex. Any form of stress can hinder your ability to focus on tasks and manage them efficiently, and it's rarely limited to co-parenting. The emotional toll that stressful or high-conflict co-parenting can take on parents tends to extend to other areas of their lives.

In high-stress situations, it's beneficial for parents to find healthy ways to manage their co-parenting anxiety. One way that co-parents can manage their stress and their shared parenting situation more efficiently is by compartmentalizing their emotions. While it's a helpful tool, it must be done while processing your feelings and can't be used to repress them. Co-parents who compartmentalize healthily can separate their thoughts and emotions related to shared parenting and prevent them from impacting their work, social, and personal lives.

In addition to housing communication and organizational functions in one service, TalkingParents further streamlines shared parenting by helping parents who want compartmentalized co-parenting. Compartmentalization can be challenging when conversations and other exchanges with your ex intermingle with non-parenting-related interactions. With our service, parents are a step ahead in compartmentalizing because all things co-parenting can be managed in one place. Additionally, the Journal feature offers a space for co-parents to ensure they can process their emotions and avoid repressing them.

Co-parenting is an emotional and challenging journey that offers a balance of joy and stress. With the right tools, parents can set themselves up for success through a streamlined framework for managing all things co-parenting. By keeping your information and interactions secure, documented, and consolidated, TalkingParents can help you confidently manage stress from your shared parenting situation and optimally collaborate with your co-parent to benefit your child.