You know the moment. Your co-parent sends a text that makes your stomach drop. Your kid comes home and repeats something they should never have heard. Or you are sitting at a school event trying to hold it together, making sure your children cannot feel the tension sitting just below the surface of your smile.
Co-parenting is one of the hardest parts of this journey. You are raising kids alongside someone you may still be hurt by, still grieving, still learning how to exist near. And your kids are absorbing all of it, the tone of every handoff, every conversation that happens just a little too loudly.
Robert Beeson, Founder and CEO of Solo Parent, and Elizabeth Cole, single parent, sit down with Traci Koster, a family law attorney, Florida state legislator, and single mom who has navigated her own divorce while also representing clients through theirs. Traci is a co-founder of Tampa Bay Pro Bono Partners and a mom of two. She brings a rare combination of legal expertise, lived experience, and genuine vulnerability to a conversation that most co-parenting guides only scratch the surface of.
The real struggle of co-parenting is rarely one dramatic moment. It is quieter than that. It is biting your tongue when your kids come home raving about something at the other house. It is the sting of missing a milestone because the schedule did not work out. It is the guilt after you said something in the car you immediately wished you could take back. It is doing the generous thing, again and again, even when you are not sure it is being reciprocated.
The challenge is not just managing the logistics. It is managing yourself, your insecurities, your grief, your instinct to protect your own territory, while keeping your kids at the center of every decision.
Key Insights from This Episode:
- Collaborative co-parenting is not about getting along perfectly. It is about returning to the same intention, again and again, of keeping your kids at the center.
- Avoiding negative talk is only half the work. Actively speaking well of the other parent protects your children’s sense of identity in ways you may not realize.
- Kids need to feel at home in both places. The small, intentional choices you make about language, belonging, and stability matter more than any parenting plan.
Collaborative Co-Parenting Is Not About Getting Along Perfectly
When Traci was asked what led her to prioritize collaboration even when the divorce itself was hard, her answer was direct: the research told her that was what was best for her kids. Not her feelings. Not her preferences. Her kids.
What stood out immediately was her honesty. Traci said she makes every decision by trying to put her children at the center, and she acknowledged that she does not always succeed. There have been moments of selfishness, moments of falling short. What has not wavered is the intention.
Robert connected this to research he had been reading around identity. When children feel tension between two households, they begin to moderate who they are depending on where they are. They start performing different versions of themselves for different parents. They lose something. Robert described it as almost a kind of split, a psychological fracture that happens when a child knows they cannot show up fully in either place.
That framing resets the stakes. This is not just about being civil for the sake of appearances. It is about giving your children permission to be whole. To bring all of themselves to both homes. To love both parents without feeling like that is a betrayal of either one.
Traci also named something that does not get talked about enough: the role of parental insecurity. It is hard to speak positively about someone who might be better at certain things than you are. She talked honestly about the fact that her kids’ dad is a better cook. That was not easy to say out loud, let alone to say to her children. But she does it because she knows that her kids carry both of them inside, and when she builds him up, she is also building them up.
Avoiding Negative Talk Is Only Half the Work
Traci’s approach to keeping her kids out of the middle goes further than most people think to take it. Yes, she avoids saying unkind things about their dad. But she also actively looks for things to say that are good.
She talked about pointing to traits her children inherited from their father. Great hair. A love of cooking. A particular kind of humor. She is deliberate about it because she understands something that takes most parents years to learn: children’s identities are formed from both parents. When you speak poorly about the other person, you are not just talking about an ex. You are talking about half of your child.
Traci shared what she called her mantra for moments when her kids try to play messenger or bring conflict to her door. Her response is consistent: that is a conversation for mommy and daddy, and we will let you know what we decide. It removes the child from the equation without dismissing what they brought to her. It keeps the decision-making where it belongs, between the adults.
She was honest about the times she has slipped. There was a story she told about her daughter shaving her armpits for the first time at her dad’s house, a moment Traci had wanted to share with her. Her reaction was not her finest. She sent messages she regretted. She apologized. And then she did something worth noting: she used it as an opportunity to ask herself a harder question. In the big picture of her daughter’s life, how significant was this, really?
That kind of recalibration, the ability to step back from the emotional heat of a moment and ask what actually matters here, is one of the most practical tools Traci offered in the whole conversation. It does not make you less human to feel the sting. It just keeps you from letting the sting make your decisions for you.
Kids Need to Feel at Home in Both Places
One of the most tangible pieces of this conversation came when Robert asked Traci how she helps her kids feel belonging and stability when they are moving between two households.
Her answer was simple but specific. Both houses are called home. Not mommy’s house. Not daddy’s house. Home. Their things go with them. Their clothes, their water bottles, their belongings are not divided and claimed by either parent. They belong to the kids, and the kids take them wherever they go.
She acknowledged that this was hard in the beginning. Divorce triggers a deep need to reclaim control, and possessions become one of the ways people try to reassert some boundary around their lives. Traci said she sees it constantly in her cases. Parents fighting over a size six outfit that technically belongs to neither of them. She tries to remind her clients: you bought that for your child, not for yourself.
What stood out even more was how far Traci and her kids’ dad have extended this idea of shared belonging. Most of their children’s activities are near his house. Rather than creating a logistics battle out of that, there are now days when Traci goes to his house while he is not even there, just to help Sadie get her uniform on before practice. Because that is what makes Sadie feel at home. Not a particular address. The presence of her people, wherever they are.
Elizabeth added something from her own experience: when a co-parent is not as engaged, it creates a different kind of pressure. She has wondered whether always being the one who shows up is inadvertently crowding her son’s dad out of spaces he might otherwise step into. It is a generous question to ask yourself, and it is the kind of question that only comes from genuinely putting your kids first rather than your own need to be present.
You Are Not Raising Them for These Eighteen Years
One of the most grounding things Traci said in this entire conversation was this: you are not raising your children for the eighteen years they are under your roof. You are raising them for the future. For the adults they will become. For the parents they will one day be.
The co-parenting relationship is temporary in the sense that it has a defined season. What is not temporary is your relationship with your kids, and that relationship is being built every day, not just in the big moments but in the small ones. In the way you talk about their other parent. In whether they feel free to love both of their families without guilt. In whether they carry the weight of your conflict or the freedom of your intentionality.
Nobody gets this perfectly. Traci said that clearly and more than once. There will be texts you regret, moments you wish you could take back, and insecurities that get the better of you. What matters is that you keep coming back to the same question: is this decision about me, or is this decision about them?
You are doing something hard. It asks more of you than it probably should. And the fact that you are here, asking these questions, looking for a better way, matters more than you know.
Resources Mentioned in This Episode:
- Traci Koster, family law attorney and Florida state legislator
- Tampa Bay Pro Bono Partners (co-founded by Traci Koster)
