Supporting Clients Through Co-Parenting Challenges Over the Holidays
By Heather Hyland
The holiday season, while often filled with joy and celebration, can present unique challenges for co-parents. As therapists, it’s crucial to offer support and strategies to help your clients navigate these times smoothly.
Here are some key approaches that you can use to support your clients, specifically those clients who are co-parenting, through the upcoming holidays.
Encouraging Open Communication
Effective communication is the cornerstone of successful co-parenting. You can work with clients to develop healthy communication practices, ensuring that both parties feel heard and respected. Role-playing scenarios in your clinical sessions and practicing assertive communication can help prepare clients for potentially difficult conversations.
Assertive communication consists of expressing thoughts, feelings, and beliefs in direct, honest, and appropriate ways that respect the other person’s boundaries and rights. Open communication assists in building a healthy, mutually beneficial co-parenting relationship, especially around the holidays.
Setting Clear Boundaries and Expectations
Holidays often come with increased interactions and shared responsibilities. You can guide clients in setting clear boundaries and expectations with their co-parents. These are great topics to focus on in your clinical sessions as the holidays approach.
Boundaries are what a person does themselves in the face of something that feels unsafe or uncomfortable for them, not what we do to another person. Expectations should be realistic and age-appropriate. Boundaries and expectations should be considered when planning holiday schedules, discussing gift-giving arrangements, and agreeing on holiday traditions.
Focusing on the Children's Well-being
It can be helpful to remind clients that their children’s well-being should always be a primary focus. Encourage them to put aside personal differences and work collaboratively with their co-parent to create a positive holiday experience for their children.
This might involve flexible scheduling, attending events together, reducing expectations, alternatives to busy or multiple environments, or finding ways to maintain consistency for the children.
Managing Emotional Stress
The holiday season can be emotionally taxing, especially for those dealing with recent separations or ongoing conflicts. You can provide tools and strategies for managing stress and emotional triggers.
This might include mindfulness practices, stress management techniques, or simply offering a safe space for clients to express their feelings. Try the Spaghetti Body progressive relaxation with parents and children.
Creating New Traditions
For many co-parents and their children, the holidays can be a reminder of past traditions and family routines. Parents may be experiencing grief or loss around past traditions, requiring additional support in creating new traditions. As a therapist, you can jump start this to happen!
You can encourage clients to create new traditions that reflect their current family dynamic. You can also talk through or provide activities about the grief that may surface from past to present changes. This can help foster a sense of continuity and positivity during the holiday season.
Offering Support and Resources
Sometimes, clients may need more support than a single session can provide. You can offer additional resources, such as support groups, co-parenting classes, additional sessions, or literature on effective co-parenting strategies. Providing clients with a network of support can help them feel more equipped to handle holiday challenges.
Navigating co-parenting during the holidays doesn’t have to be daunting. With the right support and strategies, you can help clients create a harmonious and joyful holiday season for their children and themselves. By fostering open communication, setting clear boundaries, and prioritizing the children’s well-being, co-parents can create new, positive traditions that enhance their holiday experience.
How we can help
If you are interested in seeking clinical supervision for your work with families and children, reach out today and schedule a free phone consultation! We provide licensure supervision for counselors and social workers in Colorado, and reflective supervision for agencies specifically relating to working with children and families.
Author Bio
Heather Hyland is a clinical supervisor with Firelight Supervision. She supports therapists and mental health professionals who work with children and families by providing clinical supervision and clinical consultation for child and family therapists. Heather is also an advocate for children, specializing in early childhood mental health.
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