Empowering Parents: Amanda Irtz On Navigating Divorce

Amanda: A lot of the challenges that I’m seeing right now is this post-decree, “We’ve been divorced for five years and our kiddos were two and four, and now they’re not two and four,” or, “Now they’re approaching the teen years, and now there’s all this technology in our world and we didn’t have that in our parenting plan to begin with, but now my job has changed,” or, “my health has changed,” or things evolve and change. And the parenting plan, regardless of how brilliant your lawyer is, cannot anticipate or predict the changes and the evolution that is going to occur within a five-year, 10-year, or 15-year period.

And so a lot of times, the conflict arises in that post-decree period. That’s what I’m seeing right now, where things were going great for a while, and now all of a sudden we’re fighting like crazy and we’re fighting over this one little issue, and it’s because it’s not clear and we don’t know how to address it in our parenting plan. We don’t know how to address it in real life, in this mix of getting the kids to school and this mix of driving them to this practice and then having this parenting night. That is the dynamic that I see a lot of.

Another piece that I see a lot of is this piece of communication that oftentimes … Any divorce and separation is heart-wrenching. It’s never anything that someone wants to initiate or thinks about when they say I do or when they say, “Yeah, I’m going to step into a committed relationship with you.” We step into that relationship or into that I do world because we have this hope and this belief in this beautiful world of love, and that beautiful world of love can withstand anything until it doesn’t or until our communication skills become so faulty that the world of love is not strong enough.

So communication is what also feeds love, and it is also what feeds respect, and kindness, and it feeds the part of our life that is the everyday. So a lot of what I see is that because the kids are at the heart of things and both parents love their kids, oftentimes there’s a lot of emotional language that goes on between the parents, and that emotional language sometimes turns into accusations, it sometimes turns into negativity or things that shouldn’t be said, get said, and then all of a sudden there’s hurt on both sides, and then that hurt trickles into the way that those parents address their kids, the way they talk to their kids, the way they parent. And so it’s holistic the way that communication piece trickles and ripples into so many areas of our lives.

The other piece of that is that when parents fall in love again, and that’s such a beautiful thing and it’s such a beautiful gift that we can give to our children to say, “Look, love is expansive and I’m going to give it a second go, kids, but this time around, I have other kids coming into the picture too,” and then it’s honoring the work that this other family has done together and what that parenting plan looks like, but it’s also honoring and holding accountable what is already in place for you and your co-parent.

I think that I’ve seen families, blended families or bionic families, whatever term you want to call them, that have dinners together. I’ve seen other families that aren’t as family-oriented, but they still communicate and they go to games together and they sit together. And then I recognize that there are other families still that that is just so hard, and it’s hard because it involves their kids. It’s hard because the values may be different. It’s hard because of the experiences that one of those parents is already having with their co-parent, and it naturally just steps into the relationship, and that’s a natural part.

So it’s about being open and honest with each other about, “Okay. How is this impacting my kiddo or my children, and how is this impacting the relationship that I have with my co-parent?” Because, ultimately, a kid is going to have two parents, and those two parents, regardless of where they live or how they operate, or what they’ve been through, are still the parents. And in Colorado, it is a 50/50 state. So we’ve got to figure out how to make it work. We just do.

So you can either figure out how to make it work and be miserable or you can figure out how to make it work and have a relationship that teaches your children that you can still parent and you can still have a relationship with someone that you’re not married to and that you can still be respectful and you can still make decisions together and you can still have conversations. That is the gift that we give our kids so that maybe when they’re adults, they keep that in mind when they make a decision about entering into a relationship or they make a decision about the type of conversation they’re going to have with their boss or they make a decision about the way that they’re going to communicate when something is difficult. So that’s how I look at this blended family experience. I look at it as an opportunity for our kids to grow from it.

Caroline:  What are the mistakes that you’re seeing most of the time?

Amanda: Oftentimes, mistakes are grounded in a lot of emotion. So one of the mistakes that I see among co-parents is that they put the kids in the middle of the communication because communication can be hard. I mean, after all, you divorced for a reason, you divorced for whatever reason, and oftentimes you’re divorcing because there’s some misalignment in values, there’s a misalignment in the way you want to raise your children, and there’s a misalignment in the way you communicate. So that doesn’t change just because you get divorced or separated. It only grows and manifests and gets bigger and bigger.

So just because you’re no longer living with that person doesn’t mean that you can’t just not communicate with them. So oftentimes what I do see is that the child is used as the pawn to send messages between the parents. What that teaches the child is that the child is responsible for adult communication and that the child is not granted the opportunity to be a child or to be a teenager, to focus on the latest YouTube or the sports game they want to watch or the bike ride they want to go on, that instead, they also have to own and they have to hold this hurt and they have to be responsible in a way to communicate with the other parent. So we’re teaching our children at a very, very young age that communication, it’s more passive than it is grounded in proactivity and respect.

Amanda: I think many of those challenges come from stepping into attachment science. So this is some of the work of Dr. Dan Siegel. There is a huge body of evidence out there and research and white papers around the science of attachment and that insecure and disorganized attachment that we create for our children based on our own experiences from when we were children.

So there is a little bit of science to parenting. So it’s not just showing up every day and saying, “I’m going to parent with love,” because love is not a strategy, people. Hope is not a strategy. Recognizing the science that goes into the way a child, an adolescent brain, the way it develops over time, that is the science of parenting is understanding that so that you know when a child has an outburst at home, that they are in essence having an outburst because of their prefrontal lobe. It’s not quite all the way fused together. I guide them through the science and formulate strategies for effective co-parenting.

When I became a parent, I walked into parenting as you should thinking, “I’m going to be the best parent I can be. I’m going to love my kid in the best way possible. I’m going to help them understand the world and be curious about things, and I’m going to guide them through those difficult parts,” and I do want all of our parents to have that belief system. I also believe deeply that our parents have to understand why and how our kids respond the way they do so that we can respond in a way that is effective for them to hear us and is a way for them to feel safe and secure as they grow up and grow into young adults.

Caroline: When you have high-conflict divorces, what are some common strategies that you recommend to your clients?

Amanda: Ultimately in a perfect world, I would want both clients, I would want both parents to work with the same parent coach, to walk them through my guided curriculum that is grounded in science, that is grounded in the work that is going to help them step into the best version of themselves as a single co-parent. That isn’t always the case because I get it, we live in a world where that dynamic does not always exist. However, it takes one parent. So this is part of the change model for organizations. It takes one person in an organization to begin change.

So one person can bring toxicity into an office environment and then all of a sudden, that entire environment has toxicity everywhere or one person or one leader can step in and have words that are filled with inspiration and compassion, and all of a sudden, you’re seeing that everywhere within your office space. So that same change model, I believe, is effective in parenting through divorce and separation and in post-decree, that it takes one parent to effectively change the communication model, to effectively change the way that we show up every day. And when one parent commits to it, when one parent says, “I’m going to do this work,” then that is what changes it not just for the parents, but for the kids.

Every client is different, but I do think that my best strategy, my favorite strategy for getting through this is finding a time and a space each week to have a conversation with the other parent, and it’s calendared. It’s on the calendar and both sides are committing to it, if you have to do it in public at a coffee shop, then do it in public at a coffee shop, but begin that process almost in the very beginning of treating it like a business until you can go back to the place of, “This is my child’s father,” “This is my child’s mother, and so I have to show up for them as well,” because by doing that, you’re showing your children your commitment to them and their other parent.

I think that’s one strategy that is the biggest one for me, and to communicate with each other and not to communicate around or through a child, but to communicate with each other. Those are the two biggest pieces that I would recommend. And then, of course, working with a parent coach. I think that you learn those strategies and you sharpen those tools when you have someone who’s holding you accountable to the work and who’s in it with you every day, who’s hearing from you every day, listening to you and saying, “Okay. Let’s work on this one little part so that the next time it happens, it’s easier.”

Caroline: Would you say that in most cases you’re working with only one parent or both?

Amanda: That’s a really hard question, and it depends on where parents are in the process. Some parents do come to me, but other times in contentious court cases, the lawyers see that this is going to start to involve a CFI or a PRE, and so both lawyers would recommend it. So it can be also a proactive measure.

And then I also have parents who reach out to me and say, “I can’t bear this anymore. I don’t know how to do this, Amanda, and I feel so alone in the journey, I feel like my lawyer is working so hard for me, but I don’t know how to parent in this world of separation and divorce and child custody. I don’t know how to do it.” So there’s a mix, and it does depend on the dynamic of each family.

I think that’s part of the human experience is that, of course, we’re always going to relate to someone a little bit more than we do the other, but the way that I like to approach this is that I can always learn something from my families as well, that they may give me a nugget or an experience that I hadn’t thought about before that are going to enhance the way that I serve other families or enhance the way that I move them in their practice.

One of the things that I see sometimes even before divorce and separation is that parents come to me because the child’s behaviors are tearing them apart, and so that is the work that I truly love to do because it’s before the parents have said, “That’s it.” If I could get to every family before we get to that place and help them recognize that it’s not the child’s behaviors, it’s the way that you’re responding to their behaviors and it’s the way that the two of you are communicating and talking about those behaviors that are tearing you apart, and it’s less about what the child is doing and more about the way that you can enhance your response and get that child some support and then work with me intensely for 12 weeks so that we don’t have to get to that place, that’s the ideal world. It doesn’t always happen that way though. Oftentimes, it happens that people find me after they’ve made a decision.

Amanda: Some of the signs that I can see in parents or just the evidence that’s written into a CFI report, for instance, is that recently, I had a client whose journey did result in a CFI investigation, and it was really hard. During that time, she partnered with me and we worked hard on attachment science, and we worked hard on emotional intelligence, and we worked a lot on the way communication was not just felt but how it was delivered. The CFI was able to see during her six-week investigation the positive changes that had occurred with my client and the way that this client communicated with the co-parent. So that’s one example.

Another example is when my clients report to me that they finally understand the why behind why their kids behave the way they do or they finally understand why they have this really big response or they feel a certain way when they see something happen at home, and so they become mindful of it, but then they also become very educated. And when you have those two things in place and you have the mindset that you can become better, that’s where you see the spiral of things just keep getting better and better and better and better.

Amanda: Oh, that’s a beautiful question because I recognize the work of the family lawyer is to hold accountable the letter of the law to their client and to the situation that’s in front of them. So that is ultimately their job, and that job is so, so hard because you have to procure this huge body of evidence, and if it gets contentious, then you have to provide all these reports and all these expert witnesses. It can be such a challenging journey. I mean, it’s so much work to hold all that for your clients.

I think the piece of advice that I would offer to any lawyer is that your clients have come to you because they trust you to make the decisions for them that they cannot make for themselves, and that when they call you or there’s a period when you feel like you hear from them twice a day every day, that that is your opportunity to ask, “Why? What more don’t I know?” Because oftentimes, parents will come to a lawyer and say, “This just happened,” but unless the lawyer understands why it just happened, how it just happened, if there’s a pattern of why it continues to happen that oftentimes they can feel like, “Oh, my god, this client is just weighing me down. They’re just weighing me down because they call me every day twice a day with their problems and I’m trying to get through their case, but I can’t deal with this part.” So really to stay connected to, “My client is giving me this information, but what more do I need to know? What more is there behind all this that I could understand to shed more light on the child custody piece?”

 And I also think the other piece that I oftentimes hear from my clients is, “Well, my lawyer just filed this motion,” or, “They just filed an appearance,” or all these terms and they’re like, “I don’t understand what that means, Amanda.” So really making sure that as a lawyer, you are providing your client with the resources as well to break down what the statute means, to break down why you have to go through the process to get to the outcome, that you can’t go from a to Z, that that’s not how the law works. So make sure that if you can’t provide your client with that information, you’re partnering with someone who can help break that down for them so that they feel as though they’re not flailing in the wind per se, and that there is a strategy behind every single decision and every single move that a lawyer makes.

That is also one of the benefits of having a parent coach who works with your clients and can also work with you or with the lawyer to help understand some of those statutes and some of the processes that you have to go through to get to that result.

I think that the more we can support our parents, the better the outcome is going to be. We’re all doing this work for some reason that’s deeply connected to our hearts. We’re doing this because we believe the world can be a better place. We’re doing this because we believe in families, we believe that children deserve a chance. We’re doing this because we believe the letter of the law has to be upheld even in the middle of something so ugly that was once rooted in love.

So lawyers can lean on a parent coach for that gray area. So a lawyer can reach out to me and say, “Hey, I’ve got this client who’s just really struggling with their day-to-day communication, and they’re struggling with communication not just with their co-parent, but also with their children because they’re feeling so stressed out right now, and I know that they need some support.” So that’s where I come into play or I come into play when a lawyer, when they’re approaching a CFI or a PRE examination and they need to make sure that their client is getting the resources that they need to enrich the way that they show up as a parent every day because that can be a really scary experience.

It’s not that the work that I do is a storyboard for how to act with a CFI or a PRE. It’s more or less like, “Hey, let’s tap back into your confidence as a parent. Let’s tap back into just how incredible you are and let’s focus on your strengths as a parent so that is what comes across in that investigation.” So that can be the part where a parent coach comes into play.

And then I also provide certification to parents. So my letters can be provided as evidence to the court that a parent has taken 12 weeks of their life to work one-on-one with me so that they can be the best parent possible, that they have improved in the way that they talk to their kid or that they have decided that they’re no longer going to use punitive measures, but they’re going to use curiosity as a way to effectively provide discipline for their kids. So there’s a lot of different angles you can take.

Caroline: Do you have situations where you have clients asking you about legal advice?

Amanda: Absolutely. I don’t act as a lawyer. I don’t know all the statutes by heart. I’m not barred, so I can’t practice, but I do recognize that I’m an educated woman and that I can help to make sense of things. I can help to make sense of what doesn’t make sense at the time. And I can also easily say, “Hey, this is a matter for your lawyer. This is a matter that you need to make sure they know about.” Sometimes our clients get to a place where our parents feel like, “Oh, I don’t know if I want to bother my lawyer with that. They’re so busy,” or, “I don’t know if my lawyer’s going to even think that’s a big deal,” and that’s where I can come in and say, “Hey, this is a matter that you need to make sure your lawyer understands,” and also helping parents to harness that confidence again that they are the expert in their children’s lives.

Amanda: I think that going through a divorce or separation is one of the most difficult decisions that you can make. It’s a decision that not just impacts you personally, but it can impact your job, it can impact your finances, it can impact your happiness, or the way that you deal with stress, and it does impact your kids because all of a sudden, your kids are now trying to learn how to communicate with mom and dad or mom and mom or whatever the dynamic is when they’re living in two homes. Our kids are already navigating adolescence, they’re already navigating how to reach that next milestone or they’re already trying to figure out how to solve that math problem or why they can’t make a friend to sit with at lunch. They already have these pieces in their life that they’re trying to understand and to recognize.

And then when this happens too, we have to recognize that our kids also need a lot of support, and we have to recognize that the way that we talk about our co-parent in the home is the way that our kids are going to learn to talk about their parents or the way that they’re going to learn to talk about their friends or the way they’re going to learn to communicate with others. So as useless as an opportunity to learn how to respond in a way that is effective as well as graceful, you are modeling for your children what it looks like to walk through a difficult time because let’s be honest, in human life, there are trials, there are rocky paths that we’re going to have to be on to feel the sunshine. It’s the way life is built. My biggest recommendation is that you stay focused on the kids and you stay focused on taking care of yourself so that the way that you interact with your co-parent is grounded in respect rather than in contention.

Amanda: I’m here for those parents who feel like there’s no one else who’s going to understand, and that’s why I do the work that I do. As hard as it is for whatever you’re going through right now, there is a coach who can support you in the journey, and if it’s not me, then there are other coaches out there too. I do advise and recommend that you find someone that you can fit in with, that you don’t have to be on this journey alone because when you do it in isolation, it can feel like you’re carrying the world on your shoulders.