4. Understand the need for you to pick up the slack.

 

Parents in your circumstances so often correctly diagnose the problem (“My co-parent isn’t a help”)—and then jump to precisely the wrong conclusion (“Then I quit, too”).

What?

Suppose your children were in a burning building and the only people around to save them were you and your co–parent. If your co–parent stood idly by and did nothing (maybe even started to fight with you about child support), what would you do? You’d run into the building alone.

It’s too late to pick a new co-parent. Your job isn’t to raise or reform your co-parent. (How different things would be if you’d succeeded at that long ago.)

Your job is to save your children by ending conflict they can’t end.

Your children actually ARE in a burning building, and you and your co-parent are the only people who can get them out. The burning building is called your conflict. And if your co-parent won’t stop fighting, then all the more you must.