Kids First Co-Parenting with Dr. Royster

What the heck is Nesting?

• Dr. Karalynn Royster • Season 1 • Episode 14

Share episode

The kids stay home, the parents rotate—simple to say, hard to do well. We unpack nesting with straight talk on what it is, when it helps, and how to make it work without sliding back into the same conflicts that made separation necessary. From early-stage divorce logistics to keeping bedtime steady for a neurodivergent child, we share a practical blueprint anchored in safety, trust, and child-centered routines.

We start with the basics: a clear definition of nesting, common scenarios where it shines—high cost of living, a traveling parent, or a need to preserve medical equipment and school routines—and the invisible load it creates. You’ll hear why privacy protocols, written house rules, and transparent money systems prevent “gotcha” moments that reignite resentment. We also get candid about non-negotiables: if there’s coercive control, abuse, or constant boundary-breaking, nesting is the wrong tool. Parallel parenting from separate homes with structured communication will serve your child better.

Then we move into execution. Set the schedule first and keep exchanges brief and businesslike, like passing a relay baton. Align on routines using the “siblings, not twins” principle so life feels familiar even as parents change places. Lock down a plan for chores, groceries, mail, guests, and tech boundaries. Track expenses and reconcile on a cadence so costs don’t become character judgments. Most importantly, assign an endpoint—30 to 60 days—and review objective markers: on-time handoffs, fewer meltdowns, and lower parent conflict. If it’s working, extend with intention; if it’s not, pivot promptly.

If messages from your ex make your stomach drop, grab our High Conflict Communication Bootcamp for Moms for $19 to get scripts and strategies you can use today. And if you want ongoing coaching, tools, and community, join the Kids First membership—use code ProtectKids at learnwithlittlehouse.com. Subscribe, share with a mom who needs this, and leave a quick review to help more families find solid ground.

BestInterest Co-Parenting App
Join BestInterest App and get 22% off yearly subscriptions with code LITTLEHOUSE22

Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.

Kids First CoParenting System: NOW a MEMBERSHIP!!! If you are co-parenting with a narcissist, dealing with a manipulative ex, or feeling overwhelmed by high-conflict dynamics, you are not alone. These resources are designed to help you protect your child’s emotional health and take back control of your co-parenting experience.

Get More Support

Explore the Kids First Co-Parenting System to learn how to raise emotionally secure kids after divorce, even when your co-parent refuses to change. This is the support system every overwhelmed mom needs.

Social Links:

SPEAKER_00:

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 acts is beyond difficult. We blend science with real life, and as always, keep focused where it matters on raising great kids. This is Kids First Co-Parenting. Hello, my darlings. Welcome to another episode of the Kids First Co-Parenting Podcast. I am delighted to tell you that we've actually been gaining quite a bit of traction. I so appreciate y'all sharing and commenting, requesting topics, asking questions, leaving reviews. It is really helping get the word out to more people, which is, you know, kind of the whole point. I am so grateful you're here that today is a good day wherever you're listening to this. Maybe it's not, but I hope it is. You will hear, there will be a little insert later in the episode where I talk about how we've made some huge changes inside the kids' first co-parenting system, really adapting the program for more of what people need. It is now an extremely affordable membership because I was thinking about myself as a mom and just what it would take for me to throw down several thousand dollars on something and how much easier it is for me to be like, I could spend a hundred bucks on that versus I could spend a thousand dollars on that. Not that it's not worth it, y'all. It 100% is. But when moms are going through all the financial upheaval of separation and divorce, we of course need to be thoughtful about finances. And I respect them. Originally, when I made the kids first program, I also had it as a three-month thing. And then my first group of moms said, absolutely not. This needs to be at least six months long, maybe longer, depending on how things are going with our exes. And most of those moms that did the three or the six months then stayed on into a membership. So just really listening to my community and hearing what you guys need and want from me is where this idea came from. And then honestly, a very deep acknowledgement, I guess I would say, of my intuition. Because if I'm being a hundred percent honest, I have been thinking about this for a while and sort of hesitant to do it. And I think it just goes back to that deep sense of what we know to be true deep in ourselves. Think of that as a lot of different ways, whether that's intuition or founded in spirituality, whatever it might be, that it's important to listen to that. Glenn and Doyle always talks about it as the knowing, and you have to slow down enough to listen to your knowing, which I am certainly guilty of not doing a lot. And I think when you're aligned with something about me, I don't know. Anyways, today's topic is part of our foundational topics regarding different styles of co-parenting because there are many. Okay. And so we're going back to the basics today. We've done an episode already on what is parallel parenting. It's really good for folks that are kind of entering in and figuring out what they want to do and what makes sense for them. Today we're gonna talk about nesting. I get asked about nesting all the time. I mean, constantly. Nobody really knows what it is unless you're doing it. Um and if you're doing it, you probably still don't really know what it is or how to do it well, which I get. So we're gonna talk a little bit about what it is, when it helps, when it makes sense for people, and a couple guidelines for how to do it well if this is your situation right now. By the end of our episode, what I want you to be able to walk away with is knowing or having a good sense of what nesting is, whether it makes sense for you and your co-parent and your kids right now. And if you are gonna do it, what are some good guardrails for you that make it workable for you and for your kids? Because of course, that's what we're always focused on is how to help your kids and make sure that they're okay through all of this. What does nesting mean? Let's start with a really basic definition. Nesting is the the kid or the children stay in one home and the parents rotate in and out for their parenting time. Think about it like the home, the family home in most cases, is the bird's nest. And one parent flies out and the baby bird stays in the nest, and that parent goes somewhere else, and one parent stays, sits on the egg, feeds the birds, however you want to use it in the metaphor. Then when the parenting time is ready to switch, the other person flies back, and the mama bird or the daddy bird flies away, and that person takes over sitting on the eggs and feeding the babies and scaring off hawks and things like that. So typically there this happens in the original family home, and I'm using that term family home, that's what the courts use. Family home meaning your original home that you shared with this person. And it often you have either a friend that one of the parents stays with, or an apartment, or sometimes even like a hotel or family, whatever it might be. There's another feasible, less expensive option that the parent that's not at home is using as their dwelling. Sometimes parents will share that other home too. So the apartment is whoever's not with the kids is who's staying there. As you can see when I'm talking about this, this requires a lot of coordination. This requires a lot of trust. This requires a lot of collaboration to some degree and conversation. Who's supplying toilet paper at the apartment? Who's buying groceries? Who's taking out the trash? Who is responsible for getting the sprinklers set up and snow removal and all of those things? So it it is a very high level of collaboration. I would say it's one step under being married, basically. When in when does nesting work? That is our first concept we're gonna talk through. A lot of families do nesting when it's pretty early in the separation or divorce. So you've just asked for a divorce, you're still living together, you don't want to be married anymore, and things are tied up at court and we're waiting. So a lot of people do this kind of initially. Sometimes it's one person's down in the basement or in the guest room, and the other person's in the master bedroom. It can look a lot of different ways, but usually it's when it's very early in the routine before assets are divided, essentially. I see it more in high cost of living areas. So where I am in Denver, you know, it is, it costs a lot of money to buy a house, especially if you are high earners or you bought together and now you're going to downsize and you're both going to have smaller homes. That's fine, but you might need to sell your family home first. It's a little bit different story if you can foot two home costs, whether that's a rental payment or mortgage payment or whatever it might be. And so we do see this in some of those areas. I also see it when parents kind of agree that they are very good with boundaries. So this is another time that this works well. So they can really follow structure and routine, they get along fine, they're maybe just not in love with each other anymore, and they can handle kind of limited contact, can be pretty calm, pretty emotionally regulated. There are sometimes folks will do this because they have a really high value on something like schools or routines. If you have a child with complex medical needs, for example, or neurodivergence, or mental health needs, and that kid really, you know, perhaps you have medical equipment that is not easily transferable, or you have all the medications, or you have a child that loves routine, you know, these would be a good reason to think about trying this out, at least. You know, I think about kiddos on the autism spectrum disorder and how some of those kids have a really hard time adapting to new routines, new homes, new smells, new sounds. That that type of kid might have a really hard time if you're asking them to transition back and forth every few days or go to a new place. And maybe that's where you're going and you cross that bridge when you get to it. But initially you might start out with something like nesting. If y'all can get along enough to do it. To do nesting, there really has to be a foundation of trust. And that trust cannot and cannot include or have a part of it that has safety concerns, right? If you are actively concerned that your ex is, you know, abusive, using substances, not able to take care of the children, not able to provide a safe environment, isn't safe with you, isn't safe with the kids, then obviously you're not going to do nesting. That's not a good move for you or for anybody. Because it requires such a high level of trust. You have to be able to trust that your kids are okay there when you're not there. Right? That is when and how nesting works. If you've ever opened a message on your co-parenting app from your ex and felt your stomach drop, you are far from alone, my friend. High conflict co-parenting plays by a completely different set of rules. And if you keep trying to just be reasonable, you're going to keep feeling blindsided. This is exactly why I created the High Conflict Communication Bootcamp for Mobs. It's a short, self-paced, three-day training that will teach you exactly what to say, how to respond to toxic or manipulative messages, and how to keep your child out of the middle. You'll get scripts, strategies, and a printable workbook you can use right away. And it's only$19. You can grab your spot by following the link in the show notes, or go directly to learnwithlittlehouse.com slash bootcamp and start today. That's learnwithlittlehouse.com slash bootcamp and start today. Protect your peace, protect your child, and stop letting someone else control the energy. This kind of segues nicely into our next topic, which is when not to do this. So I spoke about this a little bit already, but if there's violence, if there's coercive control, stalking, abuse, sabotage, parental manipulation, parental alienation, anything like that, obviously that's not, you're not going to be able to have this high level of collaboration and continued connection to this person. You need to move on to more of a parallel parenting from separate homes. It's really the only option to co-parent with someone like this. Severe conflict or somebody that really has no respect for or really likes to bend rules. It gets confusing for kids when it's like, well, you know, all of a sudden dad stays for dinner most nights, or some nights he sleeps over, some nights he doesn't, or he's checking, you know, your search history on Netflix and digging through the trash to see what you were up to. Like that kind of stuff indicates we're not in a good space. We're not in a emotionally mature enough space to be having somebody have access to your private space, which is your home. Where it also doesn't work is when there's really no exit plan. So, in my opinion, and this is not the opinion of everybody, but I think nesting is a temporary solution. I don't think long term it really makes a lot of sense. You're still living together then. I think that it works if you're like, we're gonna do this for six months, or until we have our permanent orders, or until kiddo goes to high school and we change schools, anyways, until we sell the house. You know, there's many things you can do, but it can't be a forever ambiguous solution. At some point, we need to have an endpoint for this to work, or it's gonna kind of fall apart a little bit. How do we make this work? What are really important core principles that we don't waver from, that we really keep in the forefront of our minds as we are doing or approaching this nesting thing? And I'll talk about some more specific guidelines in a minute, but always we want to really keep the focus on kids. We want the child's routines to stay as as consistent and as simple and as typical as possible. Now, this is things like when we get up to go to school, what it looks like when we get home from school. You want to try to make bedtimes similar. Think about them as siblings, not twins. Even if you're happily married and raising kids together, your bedtimes are gonna be different. Mom's bedtime is gonna look different than dad's bedtime. It just does. And so you're never gonna have the expectation that's very unrealistic, that they are both 100% the same. They're gonna be slightly different, but we wanna try to keep them on a bigger scale as consistent as possible. Meaning we kind of agree, we agree that we go upstairs at eight o'clock. I and then we read a book, and this is kind of what our routine looks like. Now, dad might read a different book, dad might lay in bed and read the book, or sit in the snuggly chair, and you might sit on the floor. Like you can have variations in that, but how the routine would look similar is we generally try to keep this eight o'clock bedtime, and the bedtime sort of looks like this every time. There's slight variations in how I do it versus how dad does it or how your co-parent does it. Okay. You want to keep nesting lower contact, right? You don't, this is isn't a marriage. It isn't a relationship that is romantic and involved. You don't need to be having these very long, drawn-out conversations. You want to keep it pretty business like. You want to treat it more like ships passing in the night or like a relay baton pass rather than a team huddle. Okay. Clarity and structure are your friends in making this work. So having some pretty specific things you talked about. You know, this is what we do for the groceries. This is how we split the cost for the groceries. This is who handles the mowing and the snow removal. You can tell that I'm from the Midwest and the mountains because I always include snow removal. This is how we handle these things. One of my best friends lives in the South. She talks about like bug mitigation, like they spray for bugs. I'm like, Jesus Christ. The South. Holy cow, y'all. Um that is also, by the way, why I say y'all sometimes is because of my very, very long-term relationship with her. So, you know, I'm not handling bug mitigation. I don't shovel snow unless I have to. I would probably hire someone to do it, honestly. But these tasks that you want to be thinking about ahead of time. Well, what happens when you're at the house and the snowstorm hits? Do you shovel the snow then? Is whoever is there responsible for it? Or is that other person expected to come by and shovel the walks? That might seem really obvious to you, but I can think of right now and talking about that, about 20 different ways that you could have agreed for that to go. You want to have these things sort of identified ahead of time so that you're not in conflict over them as they come up. Again, I want to reiterate this point that this works well when it's temporary by design. And I definitely recommend if you think you're gonna do this, set a trial date. Not court, not court trial. That's probably already set for you. What I mean is let's try this for a month. Let's try this for two months. Then we'll come together at the end of those two months. And if we agree it's not working, then we'll figure out our next steps. This is Dr. Royster coming in to you to let you know, my wonderful listeners, that we've made some really exciting changes to the kids' first co-parenting system. Because co-parenting with a difficult ex is not something that you go through a program and you come out the other side and it just magically works. And so we've revamped the kids first co-parenting system to be a membership. Come in, get your first month half off, get all the lessons, get your video coaching with the group and myself, of course. Stay as many months as you need. Use the code ProtectKids at checkout at learnwithlittlehouse.com. Get the support you know that you need. We're inside the community. We've made it a membership so that it can be so much more accessible and affordable for moms just like you. Join us today. What are some actual tangible steps that you can do if you want to make this work? First, you need to decide on a structure. So, what does that mean? How often are you going in and out? What, you know, I should add too, another time I've seen this work is when one person travels a lot. That's a pretty easy way to make it work because they're just not there, right? So choosing a structure. So, you know, who, what days do we do this? What time do we do it? Do we do it after bedtime? Do we do it at dinner? Do we eat dinner together? And then we go our separate ways. How are we making this work? Okay. Write down or at least jot down together what your house rules are. Who takes care of the tasks? What do we do with mail? Packages. Do you open mail? That's not to you. Who takes care of the pets? How who controls the thermostat? I like my house frigid. A lot of people don't. Who gets to do that? Who cleans up the leaves in the backyard? Um, and bigger rules, such as who is allowed in the home as a guest when we're not there. How do we feel about overnight guests or new partners? Trust is probably probably a no-no on that one. But different strokes, different folks. As long as you've discussed it, perhaps it's a non-issue. It probably is an issue, but perhaps it's a non-issue. Okay, so like what what are the rules? Who walks the dog? Who cleans out the dog poop? Who does the laundry? How to, you know, how do I handle it if I come in and the clothes are in the washer and they're wet and they've been there for a day. Like, am I gonna be salty about it, or am I just like, I'm gonna go ahead and wash them again and get going? You wanna think about all those things because as you're thinking about them and you're kind of working through them, you're getting ahead of potential conflicts. I think it's a good idea to have some privacy plans in place. Just like when you stay at an Airbnb, there's a locked closet of the people's personal stuff you can't go in. You know, because people like to snoop, a locked file cabinet for each person, or, you know, have a rule that, like, we're not gonna look at each other's iPads if they stay here, or laptops, or work materials, or kind of anything that gets, you know, if your retirement statement gets sent to the house, even though your ex's name is on it, you're not gonna open it. So you want to talk about privacy and you need to be able to trust that this person is respecting that. Because again, if you can't, then nesting's probably not for you. But again, I'm just giving you the ideas of how this works. A little bit outside of my domain, but something that I obviously know you need to do and have a good system for, would be tracking the finances and tracking money very clearly and plainly. Who's paying for rent, utilities, groceries, repairs, cleaners? It's a good idea to have a time that you're gonna square up and think about reimbursements and like how do we want to do that? Are we using Venmo? Is one person paying for everything? What have you agreed? Don't go into this not having that conversation. Because when you come back from flying out of the nest in your apartment and there's a new couch sitting in your living room, you better be better have already talked about it. Because then you can't be like, well, what? How did we the person's like, well, we needed a new couch and you're responsible for half of it. Like, no, no. Or maybe yes. Maybe you've already discussed it. These are the things you need to know. I'd like for you to keep routines for your kids as stable as possible. We did talk about that a little bit already, and your communications. This is your opportunity to start learning how to move out of that marriage lens and into that co-parenting lens of we're no longer in relationship anymore. You're not my partner anymore, you are my co-parent. And I do have to talk to you about a lot of things, but there are ways and strategies that I do that and keep that very businesslike. This is just a little taste about nesting. I don't coach a lot on nesting because, quite frankly, these are not usually my clients. My clients that I work with often have people that they wouldn't dream of nesting with. However, there's a lot of great resources. I'll give you a couple in the show notes that I like to hand out to folks about how to do this and how to do it well. That being said, it is something a lot of people ask me about and have questions about. Just like, what is that and how do we make it work? Or we're doing this. I don't want to do it, but we're doing it for a little bit. So then you need to think about some of the other ways that you do that and do it successfully. It works sometimes with really clear rules, limited contact, a budget, firm exit plans, firm strategies, you know, and seeing if it works well for you, a trial period, so to speak. Start pretty small, pretty manageable, be kind, keep it child-centered, write everything down, and we'll see what happens. If you've tried nesting and you want to share a little bit about that experience, we would welcome that inside our private Facebook group, or you can just send me a message. I always love to hear people's stories about how they've navigated these really tricky things. So thanks for being here. We'll see you on the next episode of the Kids First Co-Parenting podcast. 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. 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 Learnwithlittlehouse.com. Thanks for being here.