The Impactful Parent: Joe Dillon on Divorce, Children, and Parenting Plans

Host: Christina Compost, Founder of The Impactful Parent
Guest: Joe Dillon, Equitable Mediation Services

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Christina: Welcome, impactful parents. Today, we’re going to be talking about divorce. I’m going to be asking a divorce mediator the questions that you are too afraid to ask, but really need to know the answers to regarding the divorce process, how it affects our kids, and what is the best parenting plan for your age group of children.

Hello, my name is Christina Compost, and I’m founder of the Impactful Parent. I help parents of school-age children who want to stay one step ahead of their kids to turn their chaos into connection with their adolescent. I’m a mom of four, a teacher that’s taught every grade from preschool through high school. Today I help moms and dads like yourself to navigate that exhausting, confusing, frustrating, but rewarding world of parenting.

Today I have a special guest. His name is Joe Dillon. Joe is a pioneer in divorce mediation with over 17 years of experience helping couples navigate divorce with dignity and financial wisdom. Combining his MBA in finance with specialized training from Harvard, MIT, and Northwestern to achieve a remarkable 98% case resolution rate at his company, Equitable Mediation Services.

As a child of divorce himself, he brings personal understanding to his professional expertise, focusing on agreements that protect both the emotional well-being of everyone involved and the financial futures of everyone, especially for the kids. He is a sought-after expert featured in publications like Forbes, Business Insider, and Newsweek.

I’m happy to have Joe on the Impactful Parent stage today to give us his insights about divorce and all those questions that you are afraid to ask but really need to know the answers to regarding the divorce process and how it affects the kids and most importantly what’s the best parenting plan for your age group of children. Welcome to the stage, Joe.

Joe: Thanks Christina. That’s quite an introduction. That guy sounds pretty interesting. Hopefully we’ll get to talk to him today.

What do you tell parents who are worried that they failed their children?

Christina: You work with couples who have already decided to divorce. What do you tell parents who are worried they’ve somehow failed their children by not being able to make their marriage work? Because I know this weighs really heavy on a lot of parents’ hearts.

Joe: It does. What I tell them is that you’re modeling excellent behavior by settling your divorce through mediation. You’re choosing to be amicable. You’re recognizing that you’re no longer going to be husband or wife, but you’ll still be mom and dad, which is a very important role, as we all know.

You’re really showing them that even though people might not agree on certain things, that they can put those differences aside and still communicate respectfully and still do what needs to be done as a parent. A parent’s work is never done. At the end of the day, you’re showing them, “Look, just because we don’t love each other anymore, it doesn’t mean we don’t love you.”

They really feel like if they can continue that behavior – now certainly someone who goes through an adversarial divorce, that’s outside of my realm as a mediator – but that’s what I tell folks and I hope it resonates with them because it really is a difficult decision when you’re a parent. There’s no doubt about it.

Role modeling during this time is SO IMPORTANT.

Christina: I’m glad you pointed that out because a lot of parents forget that kids learn from watching more than any other thing, more than Google, even more than just – they are watchers and they are watching when you think they’re not watching. What divorce does is it gives us an opportunity as parents to show how to deal with conflict, how to deal with somebody that maybe you don’t agree with, maybe that you might not even like anymore. Your kids are watching you through this process. How are you handling your stress? How are you handling your anger? They take all of that to heart. I’m glad that we started with that because the eyes are definitely upon us.

Joe: Oh, yeah. The eyes and ears are open. If you ever want to spread the news about something, tell a three-year-old and tell them it’s a secret. Say, “Listen, this is a secret. Don’t tell anybody this.” The entire neighborhood will know in five minutes.

Christina: I want to make sure parents know because even when your partner is being horrible in your eyes to you or to everything and just acting inappropriately, this is an opportunity for us to actually role model well. I know it’s really tough taking the high road, but I would just want to encourage parents to do that because of those eyes watching.

What is the best parenting plan depending on age group?

Christina: You work with families where kids range from toddlers to teenagers. How should a parenting plan for a five-year-old look different from one for a 15-year-old? They’re going to be different. I imagine they have different needs, these different ages of kids. What do parents get wrong when they don’t consider their child’s developmental age when going through this process?

Joe: That’s a great question. There are a couple of things that are important to state before we answer that question. The first is that we have a saying in our profession. I learned this from a professor of mine at Northwestern. She said, “Parenting plans are carved in sand.”

Think about it – I originally grew up on the east coast. I now live on the west coast, so I’ve always been near water. Even when I lived in Chicago, I lived right off of Lake Michigan. When you think about building a sand castle, it’s impermanent. No matter how good a job you do, the tide is going to come in and wash it away.

We want to remember that when we talk to parents of young kids to say, “Look, it’s not going to be like this forever. We want to give you the right parenting plan at the right developmental age.” The mistakes they make, number one, is thinking that once we set a parenting plan, that’s it. This isn’t set it and forget it. This is you’re going to review this thing every year, every couple of years, and say, “Is this working for us? Is this working for our kids?” If not, I teach them in mediation how to adjust those plans.

Here’s an important consideration. In many states, not all, but many states, the number of overnights a child spends with each parent is a direct input into the calculation of child support. If you have a parenting plan that’s a 50/50 plan and each parent has a child seven out of 14 days in a two-week period, and you shift to one where one parent has every week and one’s got every other weekend – so that’s 10 days and four days – that’s going to throw off your child support. That’s another mistake sometimes people make if they think, “Oh, well, we’ll just figure it out in the future. We’ll just shift around as we go.” You’re going to run into some child support issues because the more you have a child with you, the more expenses you have.

As you go through this developmental stage, what you’re trying to emphasize is that even though it might be a little more difficult for you as parents in the early years, you don’t want to go long stretches where the kids aren’t seeing one of you. You don’t want 14 days on and 14 days off. Little kids are just going to be terrified.

You’re going to have more frequent switching, which isn’t the worst thing because you’re not dealing so much with the school bus and things like that. As kids get older, you can go longer periods. In the beginning, you might be switching every day, every other day. As you get older, you might go what we call 2-3-2. So two days with one parent, three with another, two with another. Those are kind of those things that help you expand that time.

Then we move into what we call 5-5-2-2. So you’ve got five days in a row with one, five with another, then the weekends. Finally, as teenagers, you get into the seven and seven usually because at that point, they’re probably not seeing a whole lot of you because they’re buried in their room or they’re with their friends. They’re coming and going as they get their driver’s license and things like that.

What you can see is the touch points are more frequent with younger kids and as they get older, you can go for longer periods of time.

Strategies to make difficult transitions from one parent to the other easier!

Christina: One of the things I wanted to point out that you said is that in the beginning there’s a lot of frequent switching back and forth. As the kids grow, there’s still a lot of switching. I know a lot of children have a hard time with that change – just going from one parent to the other and everything changing.

I just wanted to normalize that your child having difficulty going to the switch whether it’s going to a mom or going to a dad or going to both – it is very common. It is going to happen. The best advice I could give you as a parenting coach for something so difficult that you cannot change whether or not your child can adapt to that or not is everything else. Make sure it’s consistent and make sure that even the switching is consistent that it’s done consistently. It’s done at the same time. It’s done the same way to make everything else as consistent and the same and normal as possible so that when the change happens, it’s one change instead of eight changes. Like, “Where are we going to go this time? Where am I going to get dropped off?” Just keep it as much of a consistent as you possibly can to help ease that pain. Do you have any other quick little tips of advice regarding that?

Joe: To that I would say here’s a little pro tip. When we talk about parenting time exchanges, there’s a subtle psychology behind picking up versus dropping off. If it’s parenting time switch and you’re going from dad’s to mom’s, dad dropping the kids off at mom’s sends a subtle message that he’s leaving me. Whereas, “Hey, mom’s here. You’re going to mom’s house. Yay. Mom is coming to get us. She wants us.”

I know that sounds, as adults, we’re like, “Joe, what are you talking about here?” But I’m telling you, little stuff like that is the stuff that kids remember. Like we’ve been talking, kids are sponges. Those little subtle messages. As parents, we’re always looking for small subtle ways to send messages. I think that’s a good one in any parenting plan. The arrangement should always be whenever possible a parent picks up rather than drops off.

What would you tell a parent who knows their marriage is over but is paralyzed by fear about how divorce will impact their kids – where should they start to protect their children during this process?

Christina: That’s a great tip, Joe. What would you tell a parent who knows their marriage is over but is paralyzed by the fear about how the divorce is going to impact their kids? Another big topic I know parents really struggle with. Where should they start to protect their children during this process?

Joe: It starts with the parents and it starts with the adults in the room. The adults need to get together first and talk through how they’re going to move through the process that they’re going to commit to respectful communication, engaging in something like a mediated, amicable divorce and putting those kids first even though it might be hard for them.

I know that simple act of that conversation between the two people who have probably been arguing for a while or perhaps like my parents not talking for months – being able to break that. If they can’t do it by themselves, certainly do it with a counselor or therapist. There’s no shame in that. Sometimes we’re all not – I’m not a mental health professional. I recognize when I need help with something that’s outside my realm of expertise.

Then as a unified front, being able to sit with your kids – of course age appropriate. A lot of folks are truly surprised, and again theme here – kids are a lot smarter than we give them credit for. I’m not saying you’re going to dump on a one-year-old an entire relationship history, but even little kids can absorb basic messages.

I’m a child of Sesame Street and the Electric Company – public television. Sesame Street, the Children’s Television Workshop, has a great guide for parents on getting a divorce and it talks to them like the characters are actually talking to the parents on how to tell your kids about the divorce no matter how old they are. I’d say for listeners, go do a quick Google search and check out Sesame Street guide to divorce and you can give enough information to kids.

That’s the key thing – give them enough information that they’re not worried. When we talk about worrying and ruining kids’ lives, children are worriers. They’re quiet. They don’t necessarily have the vocabulary to share what they’re feeling. It may come out in actions or bad grades or wetting the bed or not sleeping or behavioral issues. As parents, we want to make sure we give them enough information that’s age appropriate.

That’s the best thing I think you can do – not keep your kids in the dark. I basically found out my parents were getting a divorce as I watched my dad drive up the driveway with his car filled with stuff when I was like 14. I’m an adult. I know what’s going on here, you guys. You could have sat down and talked to me. I understood that you haven’t been talking for months on end. That’s the wrong way to do it just to be very clear.

If you’re worried and you’re paralyzed, get your stories together, get the unified front and have that conversation and then leave it open-ended. “If you have any questions, mom and dad are always here.” That to me is the best way as parents you can break through that barrier, ease the kids’ worries as well as yours.

How do you handle high-conflict situations when your ex is unmovable?

Christina: Once you get divorced, here’s a question that I get all the time as a parenting coach. How do you handle high-conflict situations when one of the parents that you’re working with is just unmovable and you just feel so stuck and frustrated and want to pull your hair out? What do you say for parents who are dealing with a really unmovable co-parent?

Joe: I think a lot of that comes from the reaction the immovable parent gets – the rise. They’re looking to see that they still have some impact on you. The way I suggest people remove that or not do that is to use something like a parenting app. Rather than communicating in real time on the phone, communicate through the app. The app will keep track of all your communications. I know I’m a terrible texter on the phone, so I know my messages are going to be short. That’s a good way to kind of clip that communication in the bud.

In other words, don’t stop communicating. Just change the methodology. Don’t tell the other parent that there’s a dance recital Saturday at 11:00 a.m. Put it on a shared calendar and make the responsibility theirs to get that information. Minimize the interactions that you have and that will go a long way towards – when you think about a fire, it needs oxygen. That’s what those conversations are to a high-conflict person. They’re looking to continue to add that kerosene. Just take the oxygen away from the fire. Don’t give them the rise.

Eventually, what I’ve noticed, even in my own sessions, even in mediation sessions, people get bored. The high-conflict person gets bored when the other person doesn’t care anymore and they calm themselves down. It sounds cliche, but I’ve seen it time and time again.

Christina: That’s great advice because I’m going to 100% agree with you. A lot of parents don’t know about these third-party apps that are literally meant for divorced couples to communicate. Let’s clarify too that Joe is not saying stop talking to that other parent. You’re just not talking to them in a text or on a conversation on the phone. You’re still telling them everything about the child’s life. You’re telling them when the recital is and when they get out of school and if there’s no school that day and if they need a doctor’s appointment. You’re communicating still. It’s just through an app that it’s all documented on. Then you also have that documentation. That app keeps all that for you and you can go to a mediator or if it got too bad, you actually got to go to a court, you can say, “Look, no, I’ve been communicating everything.”

What ‘putting the kids first’ really looks like in practice!

Christina: When divorcing parents come to you and say they want to put the kids first, as we all do, what does that actually look like in practice? How do you help them distinguish between what’s genuinely best for their children versus what makes the parents feel less guilty?

Joe: There lies the rub, Christina. “I want to put the kids first as long as it’s not Monday or Tuesday when I have gym and then Friday where I play poker and then Saturdays I want to go to the beach.” No, no, no, no, no.

When we have kids, whether or not we realize it, we signed up for something whether you want to do it or not. These kids are fully reliant, even though many of them will tell you they’re not, but they’re fully reliant on you to care for them and feed them and guide them and educate them.

One of the things that we see – putting kids first, most parents think putting kids first means that I am going to see them as much as possible so that I’m going to be actively involved in their lives. However, let’s take for example – I grew up in the New York City area, and a lot of people who worked in New York lived in New Jersey or Connecticut or other places and it takes a really long time to get into New York City at rush hour and a really long time to get home.

These parents, for example, who live in Princeton, New Jersey, which is about an hour’s train ride, but knowing the trains in New Jersey, it probably breaks down every other time. They’re saying, “Oh, I’m going to gladly pick my kid up at 3 every day when it’s my parenting time.” I’m like, “No, you’re not.”

Putting your kids first is acknowledging your own limitations despite you wanting to be there. Of course, my heart breaks for you. Rather than have your kids sitting on the curb outside of daycare until 6 p.m. by themselves, say, “Look, I love you. I really want to spend time with you, but dad or mom works in New York and so what I’m going to do the minute I get home, I’m going to pick you up from mom’s and then we’re going to go and do X, Y, and Z.”

Another piece is the financial piece. People think, “Well, I’m paying child support or I’m paying alimony because alimony also is a factor in child support in a lot of cases.” Yeah, but these are state guidelines. I truly admire the people who sign up – economists, mental health professionals, government people – to try to figure out what a state child support guideline should be. I don’t want that job. I don’t know how you calculate the average cost of raising a kid throughout a state. I live in California. California is huge. How do you figure out the difference between San Diego and San Francisco?

When we talk about putting kids first, it might mean paying more than the child support guideline. It might mean saying, “Look, I recognize that this is a guideline number.” Some people are really surprised to find out just how little that money is.

Along those lines, it may also mean – I grew up in my marital home. My mom kept our house – but it may be that if you’re going to keep the marital home that the other parent may need to live somewhere that is not necessarily ideal, like a studio apartment or a one-bedroom place, because the money that they’re going to need to provide the other spouse to keep that home in good working order and keep it safe and comfortable for the kids is going to be far greater than the guideline and probably prevent them, unless they’re very wealthy, from getting a place of equal stature on their own.

That’s what happened to me. My mom kept the house, but the child support she got and the alimony she got was not nearly enough. She worked three jobs. I would see her at 9:30 at night when she’d come home. In a weird way, I learned how to cook. I learned how to do laundry. I learned how to cut the grass, but I didn’t really want to learn those things at 14. But I did because she had to do that in order to keep the home.

When we talk about putting kids first, it’s recognizing it’s not that you don’t love them. It’s not that you’re any less of a parent. It’s just admitting to yourself that as much as I want to be home at three o’clock, I work an hour and a half away. I work on Wall Street. I’m not getting out at 2:30. I can’t do that. Also recognizing that the financials might need to look different than what the mandated crank-the-handle state guideline looks like.

Those are the things that really do crop up a lot and they’re hard conversations to have because the other parent says, “Well, I want to have a place that I’m proud of that the kids can come spend their parenting time with me.”

In those situations, we might recommend a nesting plan where that parent comes over to the marital home and has their parenting time and parent A vacates. So the parents are rotating in and out of the house and the kids are staying there so that both of them get the advantage of that home.

It’s gotten a lot more difficult. I will tell you that these days, financial pressures, mortgage interest rates, cost of housing – I have never seen it this challenging in my 17 years of private practice where people are simply unable to afford two separate places and sometimes even renting. We’re seeing a lot of cohabitation agreements these days and a lot of nesting plans.

Christina: There are so many things that you said there that I want to touch upon. One of them is admitting our limitations as a parent is so hard when you’re going through a divorce because you want things to be equal and to put the kids first truly by admitting some of your own limitations whether it’s not being able to be there quite as much as you really want to be or even being the bigger person and spending or giving more to your ex-spouse for alimony so that it’s for the betterment of the children. That hurts us inside to be a bigger person. It’s so difficult, but in the long run, I’m glad we’re talking about it because if our listeners can be that person, oh man, it’s just so much better for everybody.

What are some creative or non-traditional scheduling solutions? For example, letting the KIDS keep the house? What have you seen work?

Christina: You brought up another subject about creative or non-traditional scheduling solutions that have helped parents and I’m curious which ones you have helped parents implement. One of the examples that you said is you know what do you think of that new idea of letting the kids keep the house and where the kids keep the house and now the parents have to go find somewhere else to live.

I know it’s not for everybody and it’s definitely probably for the financially well off. However, I love – as an outsider, I love this idea where the kids are stable and in one location and in a place where they grew up and they’re comfortable and the parents are shifting and taking the brunt of that. At the same time, I know it’s not for everybody, but just in general, what are those non-traditional scheduling solutions that you think have worked well depending on the family?

Joe: If you’ve got a bit of the means to do so, nesting plan can work. I will say to listeners, nesting plans tend to be bridge type solutions, one or two years. After a while, it gets a little awkward where you’re in a studio apartment and you’re rotating in and out and you’re like, “Oh boy, I just want to get on with my life or I met someone new and I don’t want to have them over here.”

But one idea is to keep the home and then to rent as small a place as possible, keep the expense low. You share that place, meaning you are rotating in and out. In order to make that work, you need to have what we might call a roommate agreement. It says, “Here’s the shared space.” When you leave the shared space on Sunday night, just making it up, you have put the dishes away. You have stocked the fridge, you have taken out the trash. You want to make sure that that home, that secondary location is in good working order.

That can work for couples where they can do some kind of situation where they’ve got a separate place. Some folks will get a two-bedroom. Some will buy someone who might buy a condo and then the other person goes and stays with their sister or their brother, things like that.

What’s gained even more popularity is cohabitation agreements. I know this is going to sound radical, but living together after divorce can work provided you’ve got a really solid plan and structure in place. What we do is we put together a parenting plan just like if you were to have separate households and instead of it being a parenting plan, we call it the parent on duty.

Let’s say Monday night was supposed to be your night, Christina. Tuesday night was supposed to be my night. If we were living separate and apart, they’d be by your house that one night, by my house the other night. Now it’s Monday and they need dinner or they have homework or they have to be driven to soccer practice. That’s you. Tuesday it’s me. We’re still cohabitating. We’re still recognizing that, okay, we’ve divorced now. We have officially divorced. Here’s how we’re going to handle the household finances and here’s how we’re going to handle our parenting duties.

In that situation, what we have and the same with the nesting plan is we usually like to suggest a quarterly check-in because a year might be too long. That may create some conflict. Quarterly check-in. If both parties agree to continue, continue it for another 90 days. If one party says, “Can’t do this anymore,” consider that the 90-day notice. Then within 90 days, a home is placed for sale or a separate residence is established.

I got to say, what’s really interesting is we’ve been blogging for 17 years. We’ve written a lot of interesting blog posts and some of them have really gone viral and been very popular. Our most popular post right now is called, “Can living together after divorce work?” The answer is yes. That is our most popular blog post right now. Not how much is alimony, not what is child support – all the stuff that you would think as a divorce mediator is throwing out there. It’s that post.

That really sends a strong message as to what’s going on in the general economy and what’s happening for people’s finances. You can get divorced. It can give you that psychological release. “Okay, I’m no longer married to this person” if that’s what you’re choosing to do. You can still cohabitate provided you work with someone like me that can help you put that kind of structure in place.

Christina: I’m excited to hear that there are other options out there because I think that sometimes when we’re going through divorce, we don’t realize that there are these other options. We think of divorce as one way. I’m glad to hear people are starting to expand.

When parents are creating custody schedules, they often focus on making things ‘fair’ between the adults – but how do you help them shift their thinking to what actually works for their specific child’s personality and needs?

Christina: Along those same lines, when parents are creating custody schedules, they often focus on making things fair – again, we want things fair all the time between two adults – but how do you help them shift their thinking to what actually works for their specific child’s personality and their needs?

Joe: That’s a great question, especially with young kids. I’m going to say something that a lot of the parents are going to get a giggle out of. This is actually a statement I use in mediation when I run into a parenting impasse.

There’s a psychology that parents have about sleepovers and they say, “Well, it’s only fair if the kids stay over at my house 50% of the time.” I’ve been practicing long enough and we track a lot of information as you would imagine. When I started practicing about 10% of our clients had what we call 50/50 parenting plans. So it was equal parenting time. Today it’s about 85%. That’s really quite a shift. It didn’t go from 10 to 20. It just became the norm.

When you get folks who are really insisting on a 50/50 parenting plan, we try to talk to them about what is it that you’re worried about? It’s usually they’re worried about that their kids are going to forget them or that the other parent’s going to badmouth them while they’re not there.

I explain to them that parenting time isn’t about sleepovers, it’s about parenting time, it’s about awake time. The line I love to use, especially with parents of young kids, because that’s usually where we get into a lot of it where they want 50/50 and I want them for a week and all of that and that’s probably not the greatest. I say, “Okay, let me ask you a question. What’s your favorite part of parenting time? Is it Saturday afternoon at three, you’re on the swings at the park, you’re running around, you’re giggling, you’re laughing. Or is it 2 in the morning when there’s a monster in my closet right now?”

They get a giggle out of it. I say, “Look, parenting time isn’t when your kids are asleep. Parenting time is when they’re awake.” Even if it’s the bedtime ritual that you like, there’s nothing saying – and this is how we get through that impasse – usually the other parent will chime in and go, “Listen, I’d be happy if you came over and did the bath and read the story and brushed the teeth because I can’t get that toothbrush in their face.” The other parent’s like, “Really?” I said, “Of course. I’ll go downstairs. I’ll watch my shows on Netflix. I’ll have a cup of tea. Go for it, pal.”

I think that goes back to understanding our own limitations, too. You get people to giggle and they laugh at their own foibles and you say, “Yeah, you know what? Okay, this works.”

Along those lines, kids – I’m a creature of habit. I’m such a routine person that my wife is like, “You are like a clock. You’re just so mechanized.” Recognizing some kids like me need that specific routine and would get upset if we weren’t in this place at this time on this day. Other kids are a little more laissez-faire, a little more flexible. As parents, you’re tuned into that. That can help say, “You know what, these kids could go with the flow. They could do 50/50. Whereas the other ones might say, ‘Listen, Sunday through Thursday night, Olivia or Johnny has to get up and have their cereal in their chair at this time and get the bus in front of our driveway. So Sunday through Thursday nights are going to unfortunately probably be with me or fortunately, and then we’ll work out some other parenting arrangement.'”

That’s the kind of stuff that when you get parents talking about it, it’s usually they’re doing it because they’re trying to win. They’re trying to get something over on the other parent. We’re saying, “No, no, no, no, no. This isn’t about you guys. What do the kids do?” I ask them these routines. When do they get up? What do they do? What do they like for breakfast? Where do they stand? Where’s their bus stop? Then they start realizing like, “Yeah, I’m going to have to get up at 4:30 to shower. Then I can get the kids. Then I drive them over to the other house. Yeah, maybe that’s not a great idea.”

Most of the times that works. Not all the time, but most of the time.

Christina: I love that because it is knowing yourself, what you’re capable of, what your strengths are, what your weaknesses are, and to admit that during this process for the betterment of the children because you are going to be a better parent. You’re going to show up better for them when you can emphasize your strengths and not have to do your weaknesses. I love this idea because it’s going to make you a better parent.

What if your kids are old enough to have a say in where they stay?

Christina: But Joe, what if your kids are old enough to have a say in where they go? Now that’s a whole different ballgame than us dictating it. How will that work if you just have a child who’s like, “I would rather not go to mom’s house or dad’s house,” whatever that looks like, because it’s inconvenient to the kid or maybe it could be about the parent, but a lot of times kids just don’t want to move back and forth or whatever their reason might be. Now they’re old enough to choose. What do you say for parents like that?

Joe: There’s two scenarios that play out like that and you hit on both of them actually, Christina. Let’s talk about the first one where there’s an issue between the kid and the parent. As kids get older, they have their own opinions. They have their own wants and needs. As parents, we sometimes have a difficult time acknowledging that these are now – they’re not fully functioning adults. Let’s be clear here. But they’ve got enough moxie and enough vocabulary to let us know really what they’re thinking.

First things first is it may be helpful to go and speak with a therapist together, you and your child, and try to work out whatever issues are happening between you. I’ve had friends and I’ve had clients who have done this where the child has gone in and spoke to the therapist, the adult has gone in, the parent, and then they collectively had sessions. If they can work out their differences, sometimes that can lead to more parenting time with the other individual. But if not, no problem.

The second is like you said, “I have my Xbox here, I have my friends here, I go to school from here, I just live in this place and I want to stay here.” To that, here’s where we come back to what we were just talking about with the monster in the closet – parenting time again is not about sleepovers. It’s about letting your kids know you are there for them and being actively involved in their lives.

Perfect example, I have a client right now, 15-year-old boy. He plays football and he’s got all his gear. Football, like I was an ice hockey player. There’s a lot of stuff that goes along and you really want to be as a kid, you’re schlepping this stuff back and forth. He wants to stay over at mom’s house. So dad said, “Great, no problem. I’ll be an assistant coach.” So dad is an assistant coach of the football team. Then they get parenting time at practices and games and they go out for pizza or ice cream afterwards, drop off, hang out. There’s parenting time. That’s real quality parenting time, not when a kid’s sleeping over or getting schlepped back and forth from house to house.

That’s the emphasis to the parents and also with the kids. It’s usually the parents who are wounded. You say to them, “Look, it’s not that he doesn’t love you. It’s just he’s a kid. He’s a teenager. He’s trying to exert his independence. You can still be actively involved in his life.” That’s how we do it. We find ways to be actively involved in their lives so that you’ve got situations like that and you can engage.

You have to put your ego aside and recognize in a way – and this is a compliment by the way to parents – look at the independent person you’ve raised. This kid is strong enough to make their own decisions to verbalize them and has given this some thought. It’s like, “Well good for you. I respect your decision.” That’s going to go a really long way towards bonding you in a relationship rather than “You have to come to my house because I said so.”

That’s a lot of what we see and that’s usually what works best.

More about Joe and his practice.

Christina: So many great insights today. If people are resonating with what they’re hearing and they’re like, “Yes, we love Joe,” how could they get a hold of you for your services to get help and anything that you can lead them to the right direction so they can go through the divorce in a more amicable way?

Joe: The best place is probably our website. Just like our company name, Equitable Mediation, it’s equitablemediation.com. Make sure to spell it mediation, not meditation. We get a lot of spam emails thinking we’re a yoga studio. On there, there’s a couple of things that you’re going to see. One is you’re going to see a button that says “talk to us.” If you’re in the process and you’re thinking about it, you can click that button and you can schedule a free call with my partner who is also my wife Cheryl. She’s our divorce coach. You can schedule a free call with her. She’ll talk to you about the divorce process if mediation is a good fit for you, stuff like that.

But really the key is our learning center. We really believe that an educated individual is a good client for us. There are a host of free resources, blogs and podcasts and video courses. There’s some paid courses in there too about planning for divorce. But there’s a free course on divorce mediation and the divorce process. Just go sign up for it. Take the course. It’s a half hour out of your day. You can watch the videos if you’re not tired of listening to me already. You’ll get to see my lovely face again.

We really want to just give that information because I know when my mom went through her divorce, she was a nervous wreck. She was talking to friends and family and there was no Google back then and she was getting all kinds of misinformation. Your friends are like, “Oh no, you should ask for way more than that.” It’s like, “Well, is your friend a divorce lawyer? No they’re not.” Take it from a professional like me. Here’s how it works. Here’s what to talk about. Here’s how to ask for it. I think by doing that it can allay a lot of fears.

Really just go to our website equitablemediation.com. You’ll find a host of resources. We practice in Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. We practice in six states. If you live in any one of those states, we can certainly work together as well. But again, all the resources are nationwide. It’s an all-you-can-eat buffet, so dig in, help yourself. We’re just always happy to help people however we can.

FREE EBOOK

Christina: I’m super excited because you have a freebie for our audience today, too. It’s an ebook. Can you tell us about that? What is it?

Joe: The ebook is about the divorce mediation process. In there, it talks a lot about how you can get through your divorce in a different way. We’ve been talking about that and I appreciated what you said before about how there’s not just one way to go through this. Educating yourself and learning that there are alternatives and learning there are options certainly is the best way in my opinion.

Not everyone can mediate. I’ll be very clear. You need to have certain conditions. You need to be willing and able and there’s no domestic violence and there’s no substance abuse. There are certain things that limit people from doing that. But just learning about these alternatives I think is really key.

If you’re interested in that and you go in that learning center, there is a whole guide on how to compare the five divorce options. After you read the ebook, go grab that guide. It’ll ask you a whole bunch of questions to figure out what’s right and wrong. From there, you’ll be able to make an educated decision, saying, “Gee, is this the right option for me?” You’ll have at least some level of certainty. There’s always going to be that thought in the back of our heads, but grab that ebook, read it. Of course, there’s contact info in there, so let us know if you have any questions.

Christina: Education is power. Go get that ebook today, you guys. You’ll find it free inside the Impactful Parent app. The Impactful Parent app is free also. This is going to be in the divorce section of the app. Super easy to find. Will be right there on the top if you’re getting this episode soon after it was published. The app is free. Go find that on your phone’s app store to go check out this ebook and download it for yourself. You can even print it out from the app. So it’s super easy.

What are some of the most common mistakes you see parents make when creating a parenting plan?

Christina: Joe, one last question for you before I leave you with the audience, and that is, what are some of the most common mistakes that you see parents make when creating this parenting plan or trying to go through a divorce?

Joe: The first mistake is “We’ve got everything figured out.” That’s fallacy number one. Any parent will tell you if they say they’ve got parenting figured out, good luck to you. The same applies for divorce. There are a lot of moving parts that people don’t know about. Same goes for parenting plan. “Oh, we figured it out. They’re going to be with me during the week and they’ll be by so and so on the weekend.” I’m like, “Well, okay, there’s 17 other things that you forgot.”

The other piece we always say is don’t do the deciding before the discovery. That’s important. A lot of people make financial decisions without putting all their financial info on the table, without doing thorough budgets, without doing balance sheets, without looking at their tax returns and understanding tax implications.

Those kinds of decisions that they preemptively make. Unfortunately, what’ll happen is they’ll come in, they’ll say, “We’ve got X, Y, and Z figured out. I’m going to keep X. I’m going to keep Y.” I ask one simple question, and then it’s like, “Huh? We never thought of that.” Then someone changes their mind and now we have an argument because they said, “Well, you agreed to this. No, you can’t go back.” Yes, you can. You are entitled to change your mind.

That’s an important message. Those are the two big things. “We got it all figured out” and “We’ve preemptively made decisions without the lack of full information.” If you avoid those two, I think you’ll be pretty okay in the process.

Christina: Thank you, Joe, so much for being here. I really appreciate it. That was a wealth of knowledge. Go ahead and go get that ebook, you guys, and reach out to Joe if you need his services because this is another great parenting resource. I’m glad you decided to be here today.

Free parenting resources

Begin your Impactful Parent journey by downloading the Impactful Parent app. The Impactful Parent app is free so that you can carry help, tips, and parenting resources right in your pocket. Discover answers to your parenting questions and download the app today because it’s free so you can discover how you can step up your parenting game and become a more impactful parent.

Also remember that this episode is just a small part of what the Impactful Parent offers. Also available are online courses, parent support groups, coaching services, and of course the app. Find out more by going to theimpactfulparent.com. But until next time, you got this. I’m just here to help.

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Contact Information:

• Website: equitablemediation.com
• States served: Washington, California, Illinois, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania
• Free consultation calls with divorce coach Cheryl
• Comprehensive learning center with free and paid courses
• Free ebook available through The Impactful Parent app
• Five divorce options comparison guide available
• Host: Christina Compost, The Impactful Parent (theimpactfulparent.com)