Researcher, therapist, and mediator Dr. Robert Emery is my guest on the show today. Dr. Emery is an internationally recognized expert on family relationships and children’s mental health, including parental conflict, child custody and divorce. His latest book is called Two Homes, One Childhood: A Parenting Plan to Last a Lifetime. In it he outlines a new way to share custody after a relationship ends.
As many of you know, this topic couldn’t be nearer and dearer to my heart. I have my own unique approach to co-parenting—I live next door to the father of my kids and his new wife and our kids go back and forth between our two homes in a very fluid way. Dr. Emery has himself been divorced and has been in this field of study for 35 years. He offers wonderful but realistic advice about co-parenting well, based on a Hierarchy of Children’s Needs in Divorce, his own take on the famous Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs.