Co parenting with an NPD

[How to communicate after a contentious divorce...]

I'm having a hard time parenting with my ex husband who has npd. He's taking court ordered reintegration therapy with our daughter, he suggested to the judge that I take co parenting classes, I'm doing that. Next month we will go to court clinic, then in August we will go to family court for timesharing for our 12 year old daughter.
Problem is, my ex has a difficult personality and opposes my decisions for our daughter. When he was living in the house, he wouldn't spend time with or pay attention to our daughter but now all of a sudden he's concerned. I believe it's all about control and he is complying with the court so he can look good to the judge.
I have heard about parallel parenting, can anyone tell me more about that and how I can ask the court clinic if we can do that. My ex is literally impossible to co parent with and I'm afraid if we don't have anyone to be accountable to, he will continue to try and bully me. He literally wants his way no matter what the circumstance.

[purple01]

I'm having a hard time parenting with my ex husband who has npd. He's taking court ordered reintegration therapy with our daughter, he suggested to the judge that I take co parenting classes, I'm doing that. Next month we will go to court clinic, then in August we will go to family court for timesharing for our 12 year old daughter.
Problem is, my ex has a difficult personality and opposes my decisions for our daughter. When he was living in the house, he wouldn't spend time with or pay attention to our daughter but now all of a sudden he's concerned. I believe it's all about control and he is complying with the court so he can look good to the judge.
I have heard about parallel parenting, can anyone tell me more about that and how I can ask the court clinic if we can do that. My ex is literally impossible to co parent with and I'm afraid if we don't have anyone to be accountable to, he will continue to try and bully me. He literally wants his way no matter what the circumstance.

[Turkish]

Is parallel or co parenting defined by the courts?

These links from the reading at the top of the board may help:

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=67574.msg697656#msg697656

https://bpdfamily.com/message_board/index.php?topic=90742.0

You are only obligated to meet the conditions of the custody stipulation.  What can look like co-parenting from the outside might be just that.  Parallel
Parent as you see fit within your home. 

I would define what I do as co-parenting, but I often toss it out the window given my private interactions with the kids (without alienating them,  of course).

Take a look at the discussions and tell us what you think.

T

[Panda39]

During my SO's divorce from his uBPDxw he had not heard of parallel parenting, didn't know what it was and did ask for it.  But the judge who obviously had been around the block a few times actually set he and his ex up to be parallel parents.  My SO was able to show a pattern of poor decision making and in some cases neglect on the part of his ex.  It also helped that the custody evaluator called her house disgusting.

The judge gave my SO Education, Medical and Dental decision making and the ex Therapy (I know talk about putting the fox in charge of the hen house!), vision, and gynecological decision making.  Looks fare each person got three things, but look again who got the important stuff?

It took awhile of trying to co-parent before he slowly on his own began to adopt parallel parenting.  He did what he did at his house and she did what she did at her house.  There will be some unavoidable times where cooperation is required sometimes it can work and unfortunately for the kids sometimes it doesn't work.

So maybe a way to approach this is to try to get decision making (for at least the important stuff). 

Document his poor decisions show a pattern of behavior.  We used school attendance as part of our argument (pre divorce mom pulled oldest daughter out of school to "home school" which turned into no school... .that would be 0.0 GPA her first year of high school  , younger daughter had a stomachache so she kept her out of school for a week!   ), I know another member used homework (the kids did all their homework with him, mom wasn't able to get it done when she had their kids) start documenting these kinds of scenarios.  My SO's ex also could not get her kids to the dentist, or doctor in part because she didn't/doesn't drive but also in part because of her own inability to coordinate the visits (she would schedule, re-schedule, change doctors, want a second opinion, schedule and reschedule some more... .meanwhile youngest daughter had a toothache that went on over 2 months!).

All this stuff went on before a custody decision was made at that point he was EOW and one evening a week for dinner.  Mom had primary custody.  It was a really hard time for everyone but the ex took the rope and essentially hung herself with it.  She is a pretty low functioning pwBPD.

Once his divorce was final my SO parallel parented for 3 years, then his ex screwed over both daughters (at that time D14 & D18), they had enough and voted with their feet an moved in with dad full-time.  D18 is essentially no contact with her mom and D14 is low contact with her mom.

Panda39

[david]

I was EOW and one dinner night during the school year. Our boys did over 95 % of all their homework when with me. I filed to modify custody and started copying all their homework. Our boys were in elementary school and I talked to the school about the situation. My plan was to get them to do their homework by themselves as they got older, middle school and high school, as a back up and let the school know what I was doing. I signed every homework and ex naturally signed the few done at her place since it became a contest in her head. She never noticed the quantity difference. It took close to three years before ex could no longer delay court. I copied all homework during that time. The pile was quite tall. I condensed everything on one sheet of paper. Total number of hw, percent done correctly at moms, percent done correctly at dads, etc. I highlighted the ones at moms that were soo incorrect that even my attorney found it difficult to believe especially since my ex was a college graduate and a registered nurse. I'm talking 2nd, 3rd, and 4th grade homework.
I had to have three of everything in order to introduce it as evidence. It is a process and courts don't like it because it slows things down. However, judges MUST make their decisions based on the evidence and paper/documented evidence holds more weight than verbal testimony. The judge looked at the pile and asked ex if she agreed with the top sheet. Ex agreed so the top sheet was the only thing introduced as evidence. If she didn't, then we would have had to look through each piece of paper. That would have taken a very long time and ticked the judge off since the top sheet was correct.
I never tried to discuss the homework issue with ex because that would have led to an argument as everyone on this site could see happening. Our boys did every homework not done at their moms with me. It wasn't fun but I stuck to my position. Eventually they realized I wasn't changing on that point and started doing their homework at their moms. That happened after I got more time from the court and also both of them getting older. I stayed consistent and kept pointing out how much easier their life would be if they just did what they were supposed to do. Our oldest just graduated high school with a 3.97 GPA and our youngest is in middle school.
We had court ordered co parenting and after 3 or 4 meetings the counselor realized ex was the problem. Ex constantly told the counselor I was trying to control her and she had no examples. I actually told the counselor I switched to parallel parenting and found it easier to help our boys. We only communicate through email and I brought several with me to show how difficult it was
Ex actually started a fight about getting our son a school bag in  the meeting.  She sent an email to me saying she was buying him a school bag because his old one was damaged. Two weeks later no school bag and I simply asked if she was still getting him a school bag. If not I would buy it. I said it was no big deal and ex accused me of undermining her parental authority ? That triggered her and she went off in the counselors office. I sat there and let the counselor calm her down. It was as ridiculous as it sounds and the counselor "got it". We were ordered for 10 months and the counselor, after calming ex down, looked at me and asked me if I wanted to end the sessions. I asked about the court order and he said he would write a letter to the judge explaining the situation.
Parallel parenting and email only communication helped me immensely. It took a while for me to figure out what to say in my emails and what to ignore completely. I used to get 40 to 50 emails a month and replied to about 5. I now get about 10 to 15 a month and reply to about 5. I consider that progress. That took from 2010 until around 2014.
I believe the less I engaged with my ex the better things got. It used to be said on this site a lot, "negative engagement is still engagement." That really helped me see my role in the dysfunction. The less I engaged the less ex engaged. I guess she found new sources to engage. I was concerned that she would be using our boys but that did not happen.