What Happens When You Give Your Co-Parent an “A” Grade Will Surprise You
I hear a lot of stories about disappointing co-parents. He won’t show up on time, she doesn’t respect me, he never has a meal plan, she forgets to give me the details. He won’t engage, she won’t calm down, he never pays, she demands too much. She drinks too much, he is so angry, she doesn’t hear me, he doesn’t speak up. These are all valid complaints, and I’m sure you could add many more frustrations about your co-parent to this short list.
What do we do with this laundry list of grievances? What do we do with the every day or every week irritations that seem to sit there aggravating us? We already know that what we focus on expands. When we focus on what is missing from our co-parent, we tend to attract more disappointment in their failings. This is a worn road many of us have already traveled. Maybe it’s time to start a new path?
Gratitude for your co-parent is a baseline behavior that I suggest to most of my clients. I do this to reverse the thinking that happens naturally in a post-divorce family. After a divorce, we typically initially no longer enjoy or appreciate our former partner. Add to this that their inadequacies are not softened by a nice marital date night or a great vacation getaway together, and you wake up to find you’ve zeroed in on everything they are not.
For those of you who struggle with a traditional gratitude practice for your former partner or who would like to deepen or tilt your experience, I’d like to suggest a different angle.
Give your co-parent an “A” grade.
In their book The Art of Possibility, Rosamund Stone Zander and Benjamin Zander put forth the idea that in order to be open to a new perspective about someone, you need to give that person an upfront, unearned “A” grade. I’m fascinated by this idea and see the potential for it to help us reorient to our former partners in ways that serve us and our children. I know that we can naturally give out C’s, D’s, and F’s to our co-parent. What would it look like to try to give them an A, especially when it’s unearned?
Giving your co-parent an A is not an affirmation of everything they have done and still do to make your life difficult or cause pain for your children. Giving them an A is an agreement with yourself to give your co-parent a shot on a different grading scale. Sure, they might fail at a number of extremely important concepts, but is there one genuine area of your life together to which you can point the positive spotlight? Again, what we focus on expands. Can you take that one area of contribution they offer and start to dwell on that? Can you see what shifting your focus might cause you to see more of and appreciate more?
Today, commit to handing out an A. Notice where the pressure leaves your body. As the higher functioning co-parent, you likely often take on the responsibility of trying to get your co-parent to raise their own grade. You coach, comment, and direct them so that they can measure up on your grading scale. What if you let it all go? Accept them for what they cannot be, but also start to accept them for what they actually positively contribute. Give out an A. See what happens next.
