Overview
A licensed clinical psychologist, Dr. Ann Buscho, joins the show to share her expertise on family issues related to divorce, parenting, parenting planning, and co-parenting counseling. So, what is nesting and how does it work? Nesting is a practice where kids remain in the family home, while parents rotate on and off duty according to a schedule that is tailored specifically to the family’s needs. This practice helps children and families navigate divorce in a way that is minimally disruptive to the children. Dr. Buscho has personally practiced nesting during her own divorce and uses that experience, along with three decades as a therapist for divorcing families, to advise and guide families through this transformative process. In addition to having her own practice in the San Francisco Bay Area, Dr. Buscho has presented at state and national conferences for attorneys, mental health professionals, and financial professionals on collaborative divorce, nesting during divorce, and consensual dispute resolution. Dr. Buscho regularly contributes to a popular divorce blog on Psychology Today, and also recently published a new book, The Parent’s Guide to Birdnesting: A Child-Centered Solution to Co-Parenting During Separation and Divorce. Learn more about Dr. Buscho, her practice, and publications, by visiting https://drannbuscho.com/
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Co-Parenting During Separation and Divorce
Marcy:
Welcome, Dr. Buscho.
Dr. Buscho:
Thank you for having me. I’m glad to be here.
Marcy:
So tell us a little bit about your new book. What is bird nesting?
Dr. Buscho:
It’s a great question. For me, I’m passionate about taking the stress out of the children’s experience of divorce. So nesting means the kids stay in the family home, while parents rotate on and off duty according to a schedule that they’ve developed that’s tailored specifically to their family’s needs. So the word comes from the birds nesting. When birds fly in and out, they take turns coming back to the nest to feed their children and to make sure that the babies are safe and secure. So in nesting in families, now, the kids routine stay the same and their lives are minimally disruptive. And there are a lot of different nesting arrangements that can work. And during COVID families are nesting within the home, not necessarily by choice. And so one of the things I try to do is to help them create nesting arrangements during COVID.
Marcy:
That’s a really creative idea. I can see where it might also help families save financial resources. Where does the other parent go when the parent who’s in charge of the kids is at home? Do they rent an apartment or something where they both stay or how does that work?
Dr. Buscho:
Well, there are many different ways, and it does depend to some degree on their relationship, on the condition or size of their home, and on their finances because finances are definitely a factor during COVID. Many families are separating the bedrooms and creating an on duty off duty schedule so they don’t actually have to rent an offsite living situation. Some people can sleep on a fold-out sofa in their office or go to friends or relatives. Sometimes parents will share an offsite apartment, depending on whether they can do that amicably. Sometimes, if they can afford it, they might rent two offsite apartments. There was a sitcom on ABC that ended last year called Splitting Up Together. And in that sitcom, they converted the garage into a small apartment. And the parents took turns, being on duty with the children and when they were off duty, they went out to the garage. It was a pretty nice garage, but it was a garage. So I wrote this guidebook, because I want parents to succeed at nesting. And there are so many ways that they can do it successfully. And there are also quite a few ways they can fail. And so I want to help parents set aside their emotions to prioritize the kids, and then create a very structured, detailed, clear agreement that’s documented about how to do their nesting arrangement.
Marcy:
Well, I imagine that strong boundaries would be really important here because they both need to respect the other’s parenting time, but also respect each other’s privacy within the confines of a home that they used to share without boundaries. So how can you talk a little bit about some of the tools that you recommend, or the tips that you would recommend for making that go smoothly?
Dr. Buscho:
Yes, privacy is a big concern. And so in during COVID, the families that I’ve been working with as they’ve separated into different bedrooms, they’ve sometimes had to move kids around or convert a room into a bedroom, and they have to respect that they each have private space, and when they’re off duty that that space is their space. And so nothing can be taken from the room. They view it as separate, private, sacred space for each parent. When they’re still living in the same home and trying to nest, it can get a little more confusing.
First of all, the kids know that the other parent is in the home, and sometimes they’ll want to go to that parent, even when they’re off duty. So that’s something that the parents need to discuss, how are they going to handle that? There’s an issue of when people are in the kitchen and whether they dinner together or not, do they have to have such complete separation that they literally schedule kitchen time. Most of the people that I’m working with don’t do that. When they’re sharing the home during COVID, they’re able to, at least most nights, have dinner together as a family, which of course is better for the kids. They have to think through every aspect of sharing a home from whether they leave dishes in the sink when they go off duty and they also need to be able to transition smoothly. That means bringing the other parent up to date about the kids before they come on duty.
Marcy:
So you mentioned that this is a temporary arrangement. I mean, obviously people are looking to be permanently separated. How long does an arrangement like this typically lasts? Are we talking six months? Are we talking 18 months? How long do people find themselves in the situation?
Dr. Buscho:
So, when I was divorced or separating way back 27 years ago, we nested for 15 months, and we nested until our divorce was complete. That was the milestone that we used. The main reason we stopped was that my ex-husband had a new relationship that he wanted to move into the home. People will nest for short-term or long term. I interviewed a family of five that nested for six and a half years, and I interviewed both parents and all three adult children now. And they nested for six and a half years in order to carry the burden of the divorce so their kids didn’t have to.
Marcy:
Wow. So the divorce was final, but they chose to continue the nesting.
Dr. Buscho:
That’s right. That’s right. And people will identify milestones like a graduation from high school, or that the house needs to be sold, or there’s a new relationship. So there are a lot of times it’s open-ended when they start, but they have to keep communicating with each other. If one of them starts to want to bring it to an end, they can’t just blindside the other parent with that. They need to work out a smooth transition to two homes if that’s the way they go. Some people who nest actually reconcile and the nesting has given them a break and they can work on their marriage and then you know there are steps to reconciliation that I also talked about in the book.
Marcy:
How do you know this is a potential solution for a family? Are there certain characteristics of the relationship that you look to? And you think, Oh, this would be perfect for nesting. Whereas if you have other factors like domestic violence or something else, you’d think, Okay, this really isn’t an option. How do you decide whether it’s right for a family?
Dr. Buscho:
Well, there are a number of different factors. And in the book, there’s actually a self-assessment questionnaire that I encourage parents to take and look for areas where they agree and don’t agree, and their questions like I respect my parents, my spouse’s parenting style, or I don’t worry about my children when they’re with my spouse or maybe like we have terrible arguments when we drink that would be a red flag question.
So the red flag questions are going to be things about abuse, addiction, neglect, mental illness, that sort of thing. I believe that if parents can set aside their own emotions and prioritize the children, that is the biggest first step. If they’re able to do that, then the next question is, are they able to work out agreements? Are they able to keep the agreements that they work out? Because making and keeping agreements will build trust and respect between them. It’ll strengthen the co-parenting relationship, it’s really important. So if they can’t keep an agreement, if there’s been neglect or abuse or an untreated addiction or mental illness, then that’s not going to be the best option for them. The other I think requirement is that both parents want to be actively involved in parenting. If one parent is traveling a lot for work and career really is the most important thing to him, then nesting may not be the best arrangement for them. Both parents need to want to be involved.
Marcy:
Yeah, for sure. Let me ask you a like a really practical question. So I have a 14 year old and a 12 year old, and we’re divorced. And we’ve been divorced for almost 10 years. And one of the things that we don’t always see eye to eye on are consequences for the kid’s behavior. So whatever it is, we try to be consistent at the two households, but we just fundamentally differ in our philosophy about punishment and consequences, etc. How does it work if you’re nesting for six years after you get divorced, and you know, you’ve got one child who’s just not following rules? How are you able to reconcile some of these philosophical parenting differences, if everybody’s still in the same space?
Dr. Buscho:
Yeah, it’s a good question because I don’t think I’ve ever seen a marriage where both parents have the same parenting style. And it’s so common for one parent to be more lenient or permissive and another parent to be more authoritative or authoritarian, even. So that’s pretty typical. The primary goal of nesting is to end the conflict. And so whatever it takes to end the conflict is what you do. So, if, in order to end the conflict, there needs to be a firewall between the parents, that’s the extreme. That means that the parents do their own parenting in their own way, and they probably won’t agree about discipline or they won’t agree about screentime or bedtime, or meals. If that’s what it takes to keep conflict away from the children, then it’s actually not a bad solution. Ideally, people are more at the other end of that of a continuum more toward co-parenting where there’s more communication. There’s more negotiating. There’s more problem solving and coming to agreements. But there are times when there’s just not going to be an agreement about things like consequences. And I guess, if you can’t come to an agreement, it’s a question of picking your battles, you know? And I also think you can explain to the kids that, you know, mom does things differently than dad. And that’s something that the child will eventually have to learn to understand and accept.
Marcy:
So at what point, though, are the differences in philosophy so different that it’s a couple that just shouldn’t nest? How do you draw the line?
Dr. Buscho:
If they can’t manage the conflict. That’s really the bottom line. Because I do think that people can do this parallel parenting, that’s the firewall idea. If they can do that and end the conflict, then they can nest. The question is if they cannot end the conflict, and there’s so much stress and tension between them that the children are absorbing, then nesting is not a good idea.
Marcy:
So have you ever seen a nesting situation fall apart where a couple decided, Okay, we’re going to do this and then for whatever reason it didn’t work out and what lessons, if you have experienced that, could you share?
Dr. Buscho:
That’s why I wrote the book. I’ve learned a lot from my own experience and also from the experience of many, many clients. Nesting has failed for a huge number of reasons. Whether it’s, you know, issues like coming into the home and the place is trashed, there are dirty dishes, there’s no food in the refrigerator. The linens haven’t been changed, you know, and they can’t work that out… that could end nesting because people get so angry about that.
The worst one was when The mother came back into the home and found a used condom in the bedroom. Oh, and that was bad that ended the next day. What all of these told me is that you have to have very specific agreements about things like not bringing in dates into the home, about what condition you’re going to leave the home in when you leave, about how you’ll communicate with each other about the children especially if problems come up. About how the nesting will be funded and and what’s okay to purchase and what’s not okay to purchase. And having a very clear schedule about holidays, birthdays and sort of regular days, the default days, if people can make those kinds of very detailed agreements and anticipate as many issues as possible, and if they can keep those agreements, the nesting is going to succeed. But you can’t predict everything that’s going to come up. So they also have to agree that if something comes up that they haven’t worked out an agreement around that they will, and if they need help doing that, they will sit down with somebody to help them problem-solve around a new agreement.
Tune in to the episode to hear the rest of my amazingly informative interview with Dr. Ann Buscho.
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