Co-Parenting Strategist

What You'll Get From the Training:

• You will be equipped to analyze, adjust and facilitate the establishment of safe and supportive transitions for both the child and their parents.
• You will learn a complex and critical nature of competing attachments and how they can be managed to move these complex families toward positive relational outcomes.
• Practical strategies to enhance co-parenting and step parenting relationships.
• A clear set of therapeutic tasks to facilitate the implementation of these strategies.
• Concepts, principles and practices that will help you respond to the unique family needs of divorced, never married, and remarried co-parents.
• A personalized certificate for display in your office and a strategic addition to your professional resume.

In the end you will have a comprehensive understanding of what healthy, complex families should look like and how to move the families you work with toward that goal.

Session 1: Defining Co-Parenting

We'll start by defining Co-Parenting. We talk about what it is, what it is not and how to adjust the language we use to facilitate a sense of belonging in the hearts of children regardless of which parents' home they are in.  

Session 2: The First 2 Years

There can be good news after divorce! We'll explore what that is in this session and how you can help clients reduce both the intensity and duration of their post divorce adjustment. Healthy parents = healthy families = healthy transitions.

Session 3: Indicators of Healthy Co-Parenting

Here we'll explore what healthy co-parenting looks like and provide you with an assessment tool that will help clarify the positive/negative interactional patterns and how children are experiencing Mom/Dad's co-parenting relationship. 

Session 4: The 5 Categories of Co-Parenting and the Impact on Kids

Let's dig deep into the 5 categories of co-parenting and learn the implications these categories have on the kiddos as we explore the quality and consistency of parental interaction and communication. 

Session 5: Child Centered Videos for Counseling & Teaching

Here we will explore the emotive power of our multi-media resources and how they become powerful tools of change in whatever context you may choose to use them. 

Session 6: Handling the Hand-Off & Communication Strategies

In this session, Tammy will focus on one of the most critical and challenging parental interactions and the power it has to foster a sense of well being, or to produce a cycle of toxic stress for children. 

Session 7: Apps and Electronics

Today's parents are struggling to stay ahead of the curve with cell phone and electronic devices, even when they are happily married. In this session, Tammy will unpack ideas and strategies to help divided co-parents as well as step-parents navigate the ever-changing landscape of kids and technology. 

Session 8: The 6 Risk Factors for Children of Divorce

Jay breaks down the 6 risk factor that impact children of divorced or divided families and how we can "flip the script" on this research to discover strategies and ideas to mitigate these factors and move families and children toward positive outcomes. He'll also discuss the therapeutic tasks that will help facilitate the transition from stereotypical negative outcomes associated with children of divorce to creating a positive trajectory for these children. 

Session 9: Experiential Group Discussion

Tammy explains in detail how to create one of the most impactful experiential exercises that you can recreate with parents or leaders to truly help attendees understand what is is like to be in a divided, co-parented and/or step-parented family. This "experience" will stay with your attendees for life!

Session 10: Understanding Emotional Abuse

Although not an easy topic to cover, a very necessary one. In this session you will learn about the intricacies of emotional abuse and how it can show up in co-parenting. Tammy will help you understand the differences between an uncooperative/unhealthy co-parent and an unsafe co-parent. You will also learn about how to help parents who have left unsafe relationships in the past to have healthier tools in their future relationships. 

Session 11: Hot Topics

Tammy tackles a wide variety of challenges with practical on-point resources and solutions that can be implemented right away with various family types. What about family pictures, how should co-parents handle holidays, what if there was a death in the family, understanding parent alienation and much more.

Session 12: Stepfamily Dynamics

Stepfamilies are a little more complex by nature. Here, Jay will break down those dynamics like competing attachments, parenting roles and more. In a playful but powerful family role play, we demonstrate the far reaching and complex dynamics of competing attachments. 

Session 13: Co-Parenting Emerging Adults

Is there co-parenting after child-support? YES, and lots of it! Tammy helps us express the longview of the co-parenting journey in a way that draws parents into the on-going narrative that is their adult child's post divorce experience. 

Session 14: Growing Churches Through Ministry Relevance

With over 20+ years in ministry roles, Jay has a passion in helping churches understand the complexities of co-parenting and step families and the importance of meeting community needs as a vehicle of authentic organic church growth. 

Session 15: Implementation Strategies & Applications

Ready to put what you've learned into practice!? In this session Tammy will provide you with some practical strategies and application that you can apply right away! Whether you are doing individual counseling, teaching group or classes or simply digging deeper to help you navigate as a leader, this session will expand your platform and (hopefully) inspire you to continue thinking outside the box a you grow into being a Co-parenting Strategist. 

Session 16: Concepts, Practice and Principles

You've made it! It's bittersweet but this is the last session of the course. Here you'll learn the concepts, practices, and principles moving forward. Along with a little quiz to bring the most important things you've learned with you!