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Your relationship as a couple can end. Your relationship as parents

does not.

 

For many separated parents, this is one of the most difficult parts of separation. You may still be grieving what happened, angry about how the relationship ended or struggling to trust the person you once shared your life with. At the same time, you are expected to communicate, make decisions and continue raising your children together.

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Specialist support through separation and divorce

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My work sits at the intersection of therapeutic and family-law support. Alongside my work as a relationship therapist, I am a Family Consultant with Resolution and work alongside family solicitors and within the collaborative process to support parents through the emotional and relational aspects of separation. This means the work can complement the legal process. While your solicitor advises you on the law, my focus is on the family relationships around it: communication, conflict, parenting, emotional adjustment and helping you make decisions from a more considered place.

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I also offer a structured Separating Parents Programme for parents who would benefit from a more focused approach to moving from a couple relationship towards an effective co-parenting relationship.

I specialise in working with parents through separation, divorce and the transition to co-parenting, helping families reduce conflict and find a way of working together that protects their children from becoming caught between them.

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When separation changes the parenting relationship

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Most separated parents genuinely believe they are acting in their children's best interests. Yet hurt, fear and mistrust between adults can gradually find their way into the parenting relationship.

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Communication can become loaded. Differences between homes can feel threatening. One parent may seek more contact with the children when they are away, while the other experiences this as interference or control. A child may increasingly turn towards one parent, struggle with transitions, or begin to feel responsible for managing the feelings of the adults around them.

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These patterns don't necessarily mean that either parent is deliberately putting their child in the middle. Often they develop because everyone is trying to cope with a family system that has changed profoundly.

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My role is not to decide which parent is right. It is to help you understand what is happening between you, distinguish relationship hurt from genuine parenting concerns, and develop a more workable co-parenting relationship.

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Moving from former partners to co-parents

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Successful co-parenting doesn't require you to be friends or to parent identically. It means finding a way to communicate and make decisions that allows your children to have their own relationship with each parent without feeling responsible for the relationship between you.

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Our work might include communication and boundaries, parenting across two homes, transitions and handovers, differences in parenting styles, rebuilding parental trust, new partners, contact when children are with the other parent, and situations in which a child is becoming increasingly aligned with one parent.

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For some families, the aim will be a genuinely collaborative co-parenting relationship. For others, a more structured and boundaried way of parenting alongside one another may be healthier.