Family
Breaking the Impasse
Transformative Mediation in a Co-Parenting Dispute
- No compromise position
- Feelings under positions
- Empowerment and recognition
Whenever there is a looming government shutdown, I think about how entrenched both political sides have become. It is often like a game of chicken or a staring contest to see who blinks first. Impasses like these are quite common in co-parenting disputes and they can seem unsolvable.
Two schools, one child
One such situation involved a couple that was separating and had a young child. The Mom and Dad each wanted the child to go to different schools. The Mom had moved about an hour away and wanted the child to go to a school near her. The Dad wanted the child to remain at the current school which was near him.
A seemingly unsolvable dilemma without any compromise position.
After all, they could only send the child to one school. Even King Solomon wouldn’t be able to use his famous “split the baby in two” solution here.
This is a classic example of incomplete communication. To solve this impasse, it was necessary to have the parents understand each other more clearly instead of merely assuming a hardened position.
The transformative style
This is why I like the “transformative” style of mediation. It encourages focusing on the person and their feelings (e.g., feeling disrespected, scared or powerless) rather than simply debating the positions of one another. Engineers might call it “root cause analysis” (a subject for a future article).
By addressing these underlying feelings, I was able to assist each parent with rediscovering their own decision-making confidence (empowerment) as well as genuinely listening (recognition) to what the other parent has to say. When these two things happened, it led to a natural softening of each parent’s rigid positions. Only then could a workable solution be found.
Beyond winning or losing
Transformative mediation is not about enforcing compromises. It is about rebuilding the quality of communications between the parents so that better conversations will lead to better agreements and ultimately to healthier outcomes for both parents and their children.
In this case, the parents escaped the vicious cycle about winning or losing, They ultimately came to an agreement and did so by acknowledging what was going to be best for their child.
