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"A few months ago, I was doing some research about different facets of single parenting, and I came across a blog from a counselor who was really not pleased with the term &amp;quot;single parent&amp;quot; when it applied to divorced people with children. She felt, quite vehemently, that divorcing doesn&amp;#039;t make you a &amp;quot;single parent.&amp;quot; Your children still have two parents, they just happen to live apart from each other. As long as you&amp;#039;re both contributing time, money and love to your children, you are not &amp;quot;single parents,&amp;quot; not really. She&amp;#039;s got a point. The only time you&amp;#039;re truly a single parent is when the other parent isn&amp;#039;t participating. I definitely have &amp;quot;single parent&amp;quot; moments, days, and stretches of days where I&amp;#039;m feeling the burden of being the only one around, especially since I have primary custody of the kids. I do still know that if I need backup that Peter can give via telephone or in person when he sees the kids, he&amp;#039;ll generally agree. Last night was one of those times. I had a rotten commute home and a lousy headache and I couldn&amp;#039;t wait to walk in the door, make dinner and sink into the couch. It was not to be. It turns out that Anna had &amp;quot;borrowed&amp;quot; Maddie&amp;#039;s iPad when she was visiting her Dad the night before and taken it to our house. Unfortunately, Maddie needed it back for a school project. I had to turn around and drive with the kids the whole 40 miles back to the town where my office is located because it&amp;#039;s a good halfway point for meeting Peter, who was having to drive from his house to pick it up. We were both good and put out with Anna over it, too. When he walked over to the car, he leaned into Anna&amp;#039;s window and handed me money for my gas and tolls. I told him that Anna probably ought to be the one paying and he said &amp;quot;Oh, she is. I took it out of her money jar in her room. I took some for me, too.&amp;quot; Anna got very angry and I reminded her that she had done something irresponsible that had inconvenienced us both. Peter asked if she&amp;#039;d apologized, and when I rolled my eyes he looked at Anna sternly and said &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;d better show your mother more respect than that.&amp;quot; (And I&amp;#039;ll admit, for a minute there, I thought &amp;quot;Who are you, and what have you done with Peter?&amp;quot;) She looked at both of us mutinously, a united front of parenthood, and wisely decided to apologize and not touch the subject of reimbursing our gas money. He smirked at me, I smirked at him, and hopefully, a lesson was learned about responsibility and consequences. Co-parenting: 1 Careless pre-teen: 0 Here&amp;#039;s hoping that score doesn&amp;#039;t tilt. Can you think of a time when co-parenting went well? What are the factors that make it work, do you think? "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.womansday.com/relationships/dating-marriage/a47864/co-parenting-is-cool/>