Divorce, Separation & Co-Parenting Coaching & Therapy

Thinking Clearly During Divorce

Divorce can require consequential decisions at a time when emotions, uncertainty, and financial or family concerns can make clear thinking more difficult. We have developed a short guide to some of the patterns that can make an already difficult situation unnecessarily harder—including emotional urgency, escalating the wrong conflicts, the meaning attached to financial decisions, and keeping children out of adult problems.

Read more: Guide to Navigating Divorce & Separation

Divorce and separation can bring several difficult issues to the surface at once. Questions about a relationship may overlap with parenting, finances, changing family roles, grief, anger, and uncertainty about what comes next. Swartwout Group works with individuals and couples at different stages of this process—from uncertainty about a relationship and decisions about whether to stay or separate, through separation, divorce, co-parenting, and establishing a new family structure.

Depending on a client's needs, support may take the form of therapy or co-parenting coaching.

• Therapy may focus on relationship and communication patterns, difficult decisions, managing conflict, adjusting to change, and developing healthier boundaries. In situations involving ongoing or high conflict, therapy may also focus on reducing escalation, responding more deliberately, and distinguishing what can and cannot be controlled.
• Co-parenting coaching is more focused on the practical challenges of parenting across two households. It can help parents think through communication, boundaries, transitions, recurring disagreements, and ways to reduce children's exposure to adult conflict. Coaching may be particularly useful when parents need a more structured, forward-looking approach to navigating difficult co-parenting dynamics.

When Co-Parenting Requires More Distance

Not every separated or divorced family benefits from frequent communication or close coordination. When interactions repeatedly lead to high-conflict co-parenting, a parallel parenting approach may provide a more workable structure. Parallel parenting reduces unnecessary interaction between parents while allowing each parent to practice authoritative parenting in their own home—combining warmth and responsiveness with clear expectations, appropriate boundaries, and age-appropriate independence. Co-parenting coaching can help parents clarify what requires communication, what can be handled independently, and how to keep children from becoming caught in adult conflict.  

When children are involved, the aim is to help parents make more deliberate decisions, reduce avoidable conflict, and keep their children's needs in view while adapting to a changed family structure. When appropriate and with client authorization, we can coordinate with attorneys and other professionals involved. Therapy and co-parenting coaching are separate from legal representation, custody evaluation, mediation, parenting facilitation, parenting coordination, and other forensic or court-appointed services.

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