Shared Parenting: 9 Keys to a Successful Partnership

1. Make decisions together.

2. Share childcare responsibilities.

3. Strive to agree on who your children are, what they need and want, and how you’ll go about giving it to them.

4. Value the other parent for his or her differences, and accept the differences as part of what makes family life interesting.

5. Recognize and appreciate gender differences that lead you both to think, feel and behave in distinct ways with respect to childrearing and how you express love, anger, fear, and sadness.

6. Put your child’s wellbeing first when disagreements arise.

7. Find a way to talk about conflicts so that you both feel heard and understood.

8. Stick together even when the going gets rough; make your relationship’s health a clear priority.

9. Commit to finding ways to grow individually, and in tandem, in response to your ever-changing family’s developmental stage.

– Reprinted with permission from Partnership Parenting: How Men and Women Parent Differently – Why It Helps Your Kids and Can Strengthen Your Marriage, by Kyle Pruett, M.D., and Marsha Pruett, Ph.D.)

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