Kids First Co-Parenting with Dr. Royster
The podcast for moms raising secure kids after divorce & separation, even when their ex makes everything harder.
Kids First Co-Parenting with Dr. Royster
Get your screenshots together: The Ultimate Guide to Documentation in Co-Parenting
Overwhelmed by the advice to "document everything" in your high-conflict co-parenting situation? You're not alone. In this practical episode, Dr. Karalynn Royster tackles the documentation dilemma head-on, offering clear strategies to transform that mountain of screenshots into a manageable, effective system.
Documentation serves three crucial purposes: creating an objective record of events for legal proceedings, helping you maintain emotional clarity, and most importantly, protecting your children from confusion and conflict. But without a proper system, documentation quickly becomes an overwhelming second job that many parents eventually abandon.
Dr. Royster walks through exactly what's worth documenting (and what isn't), sharing a simple question to ask yourself: "Would this matter to a mediator, judge, lawyer, or therapist?" While safety concerns and medical issues always warrant documentation, not everything deserves equal attention. By focusing your efforts strategically, you can build a documentation practice that's sustainable and effective.
The episode offers practical guidance on creating a system that works for your unique brain - whether that's using co-parenting apps, Google Drive folders, organized photo albums, physical binders, or journals. You'll learn the importance of documenting facts rather than feelings, and how proper organization can help you quickly identify patterns of behavior that might otherwise go unnoticed.
Ready to feel more protected and at peace with your documentation process? Download our free guide on handling difficult co-parents through the link in the show notes, and join us in the Kids
If you’re tired of every conversation with your ex turning into a fight, the High Conflict Communication Bootcamp for Moms is for you. In this self-paced 3 day online course, get scripts, strategies, and a workbook you can use right away, designed for moms in high-conflict co-parenting and parallel parenting. Enroll now for just $19 here.
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Welcome to the Kids First Co-Parenting Podcast the podcast for smart, intentional, millennial moms raising resilient kids after separation and divorce. I'm Dr Carolyn Royster, a child psychologist coach and a mom. After thousands of therapy hours with kids caught in the middle of high conflict households, I'm here to help moms like you do it differently From peaceful co-parenting to total chaos. I've got you here. We talk boundaries, regulation and how to raise a great kid, even if your ex is beyond difficult. We blend science with real life and, as always, keep the focus where it matters, on raising great kids.
Speaker 1:This is Kids First Co-Parenting. Welcome to this new episode of the Kids First Co-Parenting podcast. Today we are diving really deep on documentation, because if you've been here for more than five minutes or read any books on co-parenting which I know you have or parallel parenting or high conflict parenting anything in the realm of where I know y'all are living you will know that there's a lot of advice about documentation and that you need to document, document, document, and what I have found is that that's easier said than done, that it can feel very, very overwhelming. So today is a very nitty gritty episode where we're really digging deep into what does that actually look like and mean in practice. We'll talk about what's worth documenting, how to avoid getting really overwhelmed with what you're documenting, and how to create a system that works for your brain and also does what it's supposed to do. This is a question I hear often and that is part of why I wanted to speak on it today. Little update in Dr Carolyn's world this week we did an amazing live masterclass.
Speaker 1:If you don't know, we do monthly trainings that are free for everyone every month on various topics, and so this month we did one on gaslighting. That was this week. Not just what is gaslighting, although we did talk about that, we also talked more specifically about what I'm all about, which is how do you protect your kids from being gaslit, or, when you know that they are being gaslit, how do you handle that? And how do you handle that without speaking poorly about your co-parent, because that's cardinal rule number one, right? You can't be doing that. That class was wonderful. We had great live attendance, really great questions. Some things came up about how do you handle it when someone who is a professional and is involved with the case is I don't want to say contributing to the gaslighting, but in this case that was the question was like the person who's supposed to be supervising the visits isn't listening and isn't taking my child seriously, and how do I handle that? It was really interesting and, I think, very fruitful for the folks that were able to attend.
Speaker 1:Live Gaslighting is a topic that I talk a lot about. It's a very common concern for moms in high conflict divorce. We do feature a lot of conversations on the podcast about that, so stay tuned for that, as well as on the blog. If you missed it and you're like I really want to learn about that, there are definitely ways that you can get that information. What I want to really dive into today is that when you are in a co-parenting dynamic that is, more on the high conflict side rather than the collaborative side you are often told to document. You need to just document everything, and literally that is the advice that you're told document everything.
Speaker 1:And so what happens and I actually just had a call with a dear friend about this recently and what happens is you have thousands of screenshots on your phone or thousands of screenshots of text messages or something from a co-parenting app, or you're holding your camera up to the Facebook screen to get a picture of what they wrote on your mother-in-law, your mother's, you know, not your mother-in-law's, because that would be their parent, maybe your ex-mother-in-law's. Or you're holding your phone up to take all these pictures, whipping out your phone to record something your child is saying, you're taking videos of things, you're saving all these emails and before you know it, especially in these really tough dynamics, you have 200, 300 in a day, in a week. If you don't have a system in place, you end up having just this kind of hodgepodge, excess of information, and it's not helpful for you because then when you want to go back and go through it, it gets really overwhelming. It's very disorganized. And then when you're trying to find something, when you're like, no, no, this has been a pattern. Every time I don't take this person's call, they then call me 20 times. You have a screenshot of that from Monday, tuesday, wednesday. Then we have several weeks that didn't happen and you're like, wait, when was that? That was in April. We had just had Easter, we just went on that trip. Like okay, I think it was around April 10th or so, and you're searching back through endless images Gets to be not as useful as we would like for it to be.
Speaker 1:The other thing that I see happen a lot is that moms get really overwhelmed by just the sheer volume of things that they know they need to document and that are toxic and they want someone else to see, and they end up then giving up. What I hear a lot is I started doing that. I started following your advice. I was documenting, you know, every message and honestly, dr Reusser, it just got to be so much and then I just had thousands of things, tiny little screenshots here and there, and one I don't want to be looking at that every time I open my app. But two, it's not very useful. And three, it's exhausting. It's like a second job and I don't have the time for that.
Speaker 1:That is what we are diving deep into today. I'm going to give you a little bit of a framework that will help you know how and what to document and why you need to do it, why it is worth your time, even though it can feel very overwhelming. Clear mission, for lack of a better word for you to move through and decide what is worth your time to document and what's not. All the while, as always, I want to be protecting your sanity and protecting how you protect your peace in regards to this documentation process, we'll dive really, really deep on practical ways to build that system into your already very busy life, and the hope is that you feel a little bit more protected and a little bit more at peace because you're resting in like there's a method to my madness. It's not just madness. Let's start with the basics.
Speaker 1:Why does documentation matter? Why do you need to be doing it? Okay, there are three reasons for this One. It is it's a record of events, right. It protects you in a legal and emotional and mental health state, right? So when your judge or your attorney says how many times has your co-parent showed up late for an exchange and you say, well, it's almost every time, that's a lot less strong than you being able to say something like 80% of the time, 90% of the time we're more than 15 minutes late and 95% of the time we're at least five minutes late. If you have it documented, you could run a percentage, for example. The other way that this works, aside from being able to produce hard and fast numbers, is that it can show a pattern of behavior.
Speaker 1:If you're bringing a case to your judge and you're saying something along the lines of you know, it seems as though there's a lot of undermining of my rules. There's a lot of talking poorly about me and I have a lot of concerns about gaslighting and manipulation. The judge or your attorney is going to be like okay, well, what do you have to support that? Do you have evidence of that? If you are then able to produce a screenshot of, perhaps, an email that went to a mutual provider, or a note that you wrote after your child came to you and said well, dad said that you are really irresponsible and that you don't take good care of me. How you handle that is a separate conversation that we will have, but that your child said that should absolutely be documented. But think about what's a stronger case that you were documenting that all along or that three months from then, when the CFI asked you for examples, you then started to think and write down those examples. If you're doing it as it happens and you're just writing it down in a factual way we're going to talk about how to do that then it holds more weight.
Speaker 1:We also know that memory is a really fluid thing. We could get into this at some point, but there's some really interesting studies about eyewitness, testimony and suggestibility. When you ask someone to just recall something, and so the longer you wait, the less accurate your memory is, and the folks working on your case with you are aware of that. So if you're like the exchange happened at 10 am and you have a note in your phone or you have it documented in your written journal at 10 12 my child said this to me and this is when I wrote it down it appears to be more valid then that's what I would say. Whether or not it actually is, we don't know it. There's a level of protection from a good documentation system that in these high conflict scenarios, you just have to have.
Speaker 1:The second reason that this is so crucial is that it really does help you emotionally and it helps set the record straight and keep it very clear. You're able to reflect on what was said and how it was said. You might look at something that you're documenting later and be like, ooh, that was not my best self. Or I'm noticing that every time we have to talk about extracurriculars, things get real heated really fast. I need to unpack a little bit about why this is such a triggering situation for me, why I can't seem to respond in a super calm way or more productively. It may be that you're thinking then well, it's clear to me that every time this topic comes up, around this holiday, for example, that I have a hard time with it. Therefore, I'm going to kind of make a rule for myself about how I respond to those messages, when I respond to those messages and whether I use some of my other tools, for example ChatGBT. You may not want to put every message that you send your co-parent through the ChatGBT lens, but you may decide that every time we talk about Thanksgiving, they know this is really important to me, it's such an issue for us it always gets ugly. Then you might be like, okay, well, before I respond to this message, I'm going to put the string through a chat GPT prompt and let it make sure that I'm, you know, very thoughtful in my responses. The third reason that it's so crucial that you have a good documentation system and this is ultimately what we're all about here is that it protects your kid. It protects them from conflict, it protects them from confusion.
Speaker 1:Let's say it's a well-intended mistake. This happens a thousand times across the course of a kid's life. I was going to say a thousand times a week, but that's a little extreme. This happens all the time. I thought that the soccer game was at six and the soccer game was actually at 630. Oh my gosh. But see, I sent you that message that said they had moved it to six o'clock. Or in our co-parenting app we have these great calendar features and in a calendar this happened this week. One parent had put in an appointment. The other parent didn't agree with that appointment, so they rejected it. The appointment then became really confusing, whether or not they still had the appointment, because the original co-parent was like well, I don't know what that means by you rejecting it, like, does that mean you can't make it? Does that mean that you disagree? And that hadn't worked itself out by the time the appointment came and went? There are absolutely some situations in which it's just a miscommunication and you're able to refer back. No, look, I said on our text that I needed you to do pickup today and you said yes, it's fine, you forgot, but I just you know there's an actual record.
Speaker 1:It reminds me of this old Friends episode. If you don't know this, I am a huge fan of sitcoms. I am a Parks and Rec Office, friends, big Bang Theory girly. I mean, I will watch them on repeat. I will quote them a lot. If you follow me on social media, I will use those memes every chance I get.
Speaker 1:But anyways, there's this old classic episode where Phoebe is like journaling about Chandler and Monica, who are married at this point in the show, and I think she's like writing a screenplay. So she's pretending it's not them but it is them and they're very annoyed about this. And they come home from being out and there was a kerfuffle because Monica thought the movie was at six and Chandler thought the movie was at seven. And eventually they're like well, phoebe, like we've been so annoyed. You've been documenting everything we say and do. What time was the movie at? And she's like let me refer to my notes. And then they get upset with her because they're like why didn't you tell us that we were going to miss each other on at the movie? And she's like well, because you were telling me not to say anything.
Speaker 1:There are times when it's just clearly a miscommunication and you can go back and look. There are a lot of times when the same sentence to the same people will produce different interpretations. If you're in a very high conflict situation, this will happen a lot, or it is a purposeful action to ignore confirming the appointment, for example, and so we want to be really thoughtful about why you need to do that. Because you want to be documenting. No, I did share that. This is what time the appointment is. When you didn't respond, I confirmed that you knew this was the appointment. You had access to the portal of the MyChart and you did log in. You're confirming all along. Then, when your co-parent comes back and says, well, I had no idea that appointment was that day, you're like well, let's check the receipts here, my friend, because here's all the times I informed you in the way that our parenting plan said that I need to.
Speaker 1:Let's talk a little bit about the strategy behind documentation. So you're told to document everything, and there are some situations in which this is a very good idea and you should be documenting everything. There are also times where and you know, I kind of teach parents about this in terms of behavior as well there are also times that you need to be selective with your attention and your intention. You may not have the bandwidth to be documenting everything that your toxic ex is doing or is not doing. You may be finding that it's overwhelming and or it's like beating your head against a wall in the way that it's not going to change anything.
Speaker 1:We see this a lot with things like gaslighting. Just one of the things we talk about is that gaslighting is often not recognized in many situations as abuse or as something that really can damage a child, and it's very hard to prove, especially when it's very subtle. You may have tried to do this, you may have pursued how do we manage this issue and you might be at a point where your attorney's like this is kind of the end of the road here. They're going to have to go to visits even though this is happening, which is a very difficult place to be. Again, that's something you need a lot of support around. We welcome that issue and talk a lot about that inside Kids First. So please think about that if that's kind of your situation, because that's a really tough spot to be in as a mom.
Speaker 1:However, you may be noticing a pattern around transitions that they're showing up earlier and earlier or later and later. That's a very clear objective, an able to be proven fact. That is, it's on the ring camera that this person came 20 minutes late again, or it's on the ring camera that they arrived at my house 30 minutes early and sat in my driveway and made everybody really uncomfortable. Maybe not the uncomfortable part is on camera, but it's objective. If you're thinking to yourself I want to pursue stopping this type of behavior. I want to pursue that we really stick to that like 15 minute window for both of us, but before that, you know, the dogs are going crazy. I'm still working. Kid's not even home from school yet. You know that's a different story and we don't want that kind of dynamic. And so you may think again with your legal counsel which we do not pretend to be here at Kids First, maybe that's what we're trying to work on.
Speaker 1:Then that flows directly to your documentation goal. That becomes the priority. Then that topic, that area, that specific issue that you are worried about then becomes the big thing that you're prioritizing around communication, the timeliness of communication, anything that falls under that umbrella then becomes what you're hoping to use and to document and to be careful about. Things you should always document, of course, are safety concerns and your response to them, medical concerns and your response to them. Anything in those areas you should always be documenting. There's no time that I would ever be like, yeah, just let that one slide.
Speaker 1:But perhaps let's say you get 20 messages through your co-parenting app or via text which you probably shouldn't be texting. Get on an app if you can, but sometimes you're not at a place where you're able to do that yet. Like your pre-parenting plan, you're getting 20 messages in response to you saying like pickups at four, and you are concerned and feeling as though this person is really kind of attacking you. Of course that's problematic, but if that's not your primary thing, that you're trying to prove or trying to get adjusted or changed at this moment, then that would be the one that I'd be like okay, maybe, like take a screenshot of it and you can return to it if you need to in the future, but you may not be as diligent about organizing that and putting it into a bigger context. The biggest question that you can ask yourself in these sorts of situations is would this matter to a mediator, to the judge, to the lawyers or to the therapist? And if the answer is yes, you need to document it. If the answer is no, it may not be worth saving Right?
Speaker 1:Let's take a minute to talk about how you build a system that works for you. Different strokes for different folks. My friends, there are a lot of ways that you can do this. The most popular by far is within your co-parenting app. I talk about co-parenting apps all the time because they are the greatest things since sliced bread, as my dad used to say. They are very helpful to organize. In some of them you can have sections where, like, we have this message thread around health, we have this message thread around school, we have this one around extracurriculars. Doesn't become an issue of we have like 20 different conversations going at once. Some people can do that. Some people have the executive functioning to do that. My best friend and I can have a conversation going over social media, like on Instagram, about a post. We can be texting and then I can see her or be chatting with her on polo or out walking in the neighborhood and we have an entirely different conversation. So we may have all of these and sometimes we're like let's move this all to text. Lots of moms can do that. I don't really want you doing that around co-parenting, especially with someone who is challenging for you and for your kids. Co-parenting apps probably the most widely used.
Speaker 1:The next one is to use Google to your advantage. Google, if you're listening, I am available for sponsorship opportunities. Just kidding, google Drive is your best friend. You want to be organizing things. Either you have a folder and you are dropping things into each folder. Within your folder, I have Moms and the Kids First community get access to, and also the High Conflict Bootcamp a communication log where it's a Google sheet and each page has a different topic. So it's health, it's education, it's extracurriculars, what I did, what I didn't do, how I let my co-parent know, depending on the topic, what my kids said.
Speaker 1:Do I have other things to add to this? Do I have a photo? Do I have a screenshot? Do I have, you know, something that needs to be linked to this specific incident? That is one of the best ways. Incident that is one of the best ways.
Speaker 1:If you're doing screenshots, you want to have folders within your Google Photos or your Apple Photos, wherever you're storing them, that you can organize them. Pay for the extra storage because, my friend, you're going to have like a terabyte of screenshots. I hope we're impressed that I knew what a terabyte was, because I am, anyways. So you're going to need to have a system. You can't just have a bunch of screenshots. You need to have a folder or an album. If you're only doing the Google Drive or the Google Photos, you're going to want to have an album that says toxic messages about my parenting disagreements, about drop-off communications, about medical appointments. I want you to think about it like the big umbrella is the overall area that you're concerned about, and then you have folders within that that document and have more specific goals so you can just drop things into it. Think about it like an email folder, which I have a bajillion, but you know it's business documents, it's marketing materials, it's expenses categorized by each year, and then, as I go through the year, I just drop them in there. It helps keep you sane if you have a system in place. Yes, it takes a little bit to set up, but you will thank yourself.
Speaker 1:Some people use old school. I say old school, but I'm not that old. You can just print out stuff, keep a file folder or a. What do they call them? Fill a file, fill a file. That's not what they call them. Like those expanding folders, you can do something like that. You can have a filing cabinet that you just stick paper stuff in over and over.
Speaker 1:If that's how your brain works, that's what I want you to do. I've had folks and I've seen them when I've been on the stand with a binder and the binder has dividers and it has every email that's ever been sent and it's organized. You must have organizational tabs in it. Good Lord, don't just put them all in a binder. And if you are going to do that, have a separate binder for each thing Health issues, school issues, arguments about the IEP, whatever it might be. You have a binder for it. You know exactly where it goes.
Speaker 1:If you get a piece of material that you want to document you don't know where it goes, it means your system is lacking and you need to include something more. Some people prefer to write. You can also write things out. Again, don't just keep a journal. Have a system for it. Have a different journal or a different divider in that notebook for each section. What I want you to do is pick a system you want to be able to methodically and systematically use it. Use the way that works best for your brain. There's not going to be a perfect system. I just want you working on it and that you won't abandon it. It won't get too overwhelming and you will forget to do it. We're going to talk a little bit more in another episode about how you want to actually document the words you want to use. We'll take a deep dive on that very soon.
Speaker 1:But basically your rule of thumb is documenting the facts, not the feelings, unless it is a feeling from your child. Like my daughter said, she felt sad, but you would put quotes around sad because that is her language, not yours. She was crying. That's objective. That's what was happening. Otherwise you're not talking about. I felt so angry that he said this. That's not very helpful. You can say co-parent arrived late.
Speaker 1:This was the time In your journal that you're doing in your therapy practice or as a way of grounding yourself and taking care of yourself. You can talk about how that made you feel In your co-parenting documentation. You will not be talking about how you felt in that moment. I just want you to know that this is a really important piece of navigating high conflict co-parenting. It's very difficult and we're well aware of that and that's why I want to give you some tools to take it kind of out of that place of overwhelm so that it feels like less of a daunting task. Documentation matters, and it matters very much, but you don't necessarily need to document everything you want to really define your mission and what's useful. Create a system, stick to the facts, keep it as much as you can focused on your child, and you will start to feel calmer and more in control. If this was helpful for you today, I highly recommend that you spend a little time looking through our free guide on how to handle and co-parent with a difficult ex. If you haven't already, I will link this free guide for you down in the show notes, as always.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening to this episode of Kids First Co-Parenting. The best way you can support the show is by following, rating and reviewing wherever you listen to podcasts and by sharing it with another mom who could use the support. You can also connect with me on Instagram and Facebook at Learn With Little House, where I share daily tips and encouragement for moms raising kids through high conflict, divorce, and if you're ready to go deep and get more tools, scripts, personalized support and coaching, come join us inside the Kids First co-parenting community. You'll find the details at LearnWithLittleHousecom. Until next time, remember your kids don't need you to be perfect. They just need you to be steady and grounded and, as always, to put them first. Thanks for being here.