Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John-Payne. In this episode, I'd like to focus on clarifying co-parenting assumptions. You know, we live our lives on a day-to-day basis with our kids, and there gets to be certain assumptions that are made about who is doing what, whether it's we're co-parenting with our other parent in the same home or in different homes.
Same is true. There's certain kind of grooves that we get into. For example, you know, if you're in the same home as your co-parent, there's a certain groove about who takes care of the evening meal, who sets the table, who clears up.
There's certain grooves we get into about how we get the kids into bed where there's other grooves we get into about bigger things, like who arranges vacations, who takes responsibility for that. All these both small and larger things, like who is the primary person in terms of the kids at school, you know, the teachers tend to contact, or, you know, just a general awareness about concerts and plays and things like that that's coming up. That can often rest with one parent more than another.
So there's all kinds of just normal, regular grooves we get into. Then there's certain aspects that can become problematic where an assumption is made and one or another of us in two parent homes becomes uncomfortable. There's an assumption being made that it's not okay.
I don't want to be seen as the single point person for everything that happens, for example, at school. I wish I could share that. Or I don't want to be the single person that is 80% to 90% responsible for getting the children to bed in this sort of rhythmical time that we've both agreed.
So what to do about that? There are times to pause and make what I think of as a very simple three-step clarification. This is very, very basic in a sense that you sit down. Step one is just to sit down with your partner, co-parent, husband, wife, and draw up a list starting from the morning, right from the very first, like who is responsible for getting out of bed and getting the kids, you know, waking the children up.
Like really start right at that level and just walk through the day and just make a list of all the things that you both do. And there it is. That's the list.
And then maybe you expand it out a little bit to some bigger things, like there's things that don't happen every single day, but I mentioned a moment ago, I mentioned like vacations or sporting events, things that don't happen every day but happen periodically through the year, and include those as you get to the end of your daily list. Have a little section at the bottom for others, you know, other things. You know, it might be things that just keep the family running.
It could be who takes responsibility for car maintenance, house maintenance. Well, actually, it's not who takes responsibility. It's just making a list, car maintenance, house maintenance, you know, taxes.
It's just all that stuff. It all goes on the other. It's not strictly speaking to do with the children, but it's sure got to do with the smooth running of a home.
Okay, so there's the list. Now, in a two-parent home or if you're co-parenting with someone in a different home, same, fairly much the same, then take those lists away and do a classic Venn diagram. Now, you could have two circles, like one circle and another if your responsibilities, a second circle of your partner's responsibilities.
Some people have actually found it helpful to have a third circle of children's responsibilities. So, it looks like a three-leaf clover, actually. So, it's a choice, but staying right now just with the two areas, with the two partners.
And there are two circles, and obviously, when those circles overlap, that's the sweet spot of where you jointly take responsibility. An example could be that you both are very, very interested in education, and you both like to go to parent evenings. You both like to keep track of plays, of sporting events at school, and that's an area that you both really jointly, it's just the groove is you do that together, and you talk about it a lot together, and you deal with the homework together, depending on the subject area, who's stronger, which partner is stronger in which area, but homework is something that, now, I'm just inventing that, because that could be something that is not a shared responsibility.
In my home, with my wife, it kind of is. That's, I guess, why I chose that one. But it could be something else.
Start with that sort of sweet spot, and then just look down the list, and just place the place where you think you have singular responsibility way out on the periphery of that circle that you draw on a piece of paper, on the periphery of that, inside the circle, but way away from where they overlap. That's something I think I have 100 or 90 percent of responsibility for. And then you might take another one, think, yeah, I've got 80 percent, and you make that a little closer to where the circles overlap.
And then, actually, I've only got 20 percent of responsibility for that. And just bring it closer and closer and closer into where there's joint responsibility. And just clarify that, and then ask your partner if he or she will do exactly the same exercise.
It's fascinating. I've got to tell you, it's fascinating to see this, because there are some major mismatches that can go on, and then you see things that are absolutely agreed when you bring the two drawings together, and you just look at them. The second step is to then drill down a little bit and say, okay, if we have, like, I've got, I'd estimate, 60 to 70 percent of responsibility for getting the kids to bed, or preparing the evening meal and making sure it's relatively on time.
All right, and the presumption that you're making is I've got 70 percent. Let's really drill down into what that takes to get the kids into bed, and you just make a very simple 3, 4, 5-point list of what that is. Because if your partner has 20 or 30 percent responsibility, 40 percent responsibility, then it's really good to clarify what those points are.
For example, let's continue with the bedtime one. You might say, you know what, it's my, I agree, I tend to sort of call it, I tend to say, kids, after we finish clearing away, it's time to start packing up and getting ready for bed. So, okay, I tend to give the heads up that bedtime is coming.
Then I tend to get the kids up into the bathroom and then into bed. Then you will often come up and read the story and quiet them down and just take over from that point when you can. You tend to, you sort of, I do the beginning part of it, pick it all up, and you tend to sort of close it.
Okay, so that's what we do. That's the agreement. That is the groove we've got into.
You just basically go through the thing and you drill down into three or four points of what it takes to actually make that work. Now you've got your list of specific areas. What's really interesting about that is that in the conversation that you have when you're just looking at that list, there's often assumptions made that one or another of you are just not comfortable with.
For example, you might not be comfortable. Let's go to a bigger scale one now. You might not be comfortable with these vacation plans.
Maybe your partner loves to go on vacation and says, let's go somewhere and we're going to camp and we're going to have a great time. We're going to go to a national park and feels that he or she has good ideas. And so that's maybe 10% of his or her input into that is that they think up an idea to go to.
And then it's over to you to make sure it happens. So you have to book the campsite. You have to make sure all the tent and all the camping equipment is in place.
You have to organize all the food. You have to make sure that the car is in good order to go. You have to make sure the children are bright and shiny and perfectly dressed as you set off on the camping trip.
Now you could be really just uncomfortable with that. You don't want to have your partner come up with a grand idea and then you fulfill every last step and it becomes an area of tension. And it gets worse and worse as the months and years roll on because what previously was something that you were doing to go on a camping trip now is becoming, there's a little bit of resentfulness that creeps into it or a lot creeps into it.
Through this exercise, you can start to recalibrate and say to your partner, look, if we want to go on these very detail-oriented camping trips, a lot of stuff to take care of, you either need to step up and help me with organizing all the camping gear and I'll organize the food. Do you see the example? You've got the camping gear, I've got the food. And if your partner says, look, I'm maxed out, I don't know that I can do that, then, and here's where the simplicity comes into it, dial the trip back.
Just make it less ambitious. Maybe have a stay-at-home vacation where it's not so ambitiously done. Maybe a little bit less time.
Maybe go to a place where there are cabins and you don't have to, if your husband or wife, partner says, I can't possibly organize all the camping equipment, say, well, okay, well, let's look for a place that has cabins and would you take responsibility? You don't have to organize all the camping gear, but over to you to find a place that has cabins, I'll still do the food, I'll still, and so on. I'll still get the kids all their clothing organized and rain gear in case it's going to rain or whatever. Do you see how this particular fairly simple exercise helps not only clarify assumptions, but it helps us dial expectations back to having it feel much more doable, much more simple and balanced.
So there's not that feeling of tension, for example, as you go off on the holidays where there's been real tension between the two of you and the kids pick that up and it's really tricky. It's hard. The whole thing gets off on the wrong foot.
So you kind of dial it back, dial it back. It could be about bedtime and you just simply dial it back and say, you know what? We need to transition the kids at least 15 to 20 minutes earlier because that will give us a bit more of a feeling of spaciousness because right now you've got those things, I'm doing these things and it's feeling really rushed and you're getting frustrated with me because the kids are not in bed and I'm ready to take on over and they're not there. Let's simplify, dial it back, and you check your assumptions by drilling down into them.
And, you know, myself and my wife Catherine, we do this periodically, particularly as the children are growing up because there's this third circle that I haven't mentioned. That's where the children participate. And, of course, as they grow up, that circle also is drawn, as I mentioned, like a three-leaf clover, but that circle is drawn of things that they're responsible for.
But here's the thing. And who is overseeing that they actually carry out those responsibilities? So that then comes into play, doesn't it? Because, yes, you can allocate your child the responsibility of setting the table for the evening meal, but who is the person that has primary responsibility for reminding them to do that? Because that can become a rub between partners. So this is a way of clarifying assumptions and over the years reclarifying it as the children grow, as they're able to do more and more, then obviously more and more responsibilities go into that circle, but who is actually overseeing it as well? So, clarifying co-parenting assumptions.
Hope that's been helpful. Okay, bye-bye for now.
