Parallel Parenting a Toddler: What Information Should Parents Share?

When young children cannot speak for themselves, separated parents need enough information for continuity of care, without monitoring the other household.

One of the hardest stages of separated parenting occurs when a child is very young and cannot yet tell either parent what happened while they were away. A two-year-old cannot reliably explain what they ate, whether they slept, why their stomach hurts, whether they were given medication, or what happened when they became upset. For an anxious parent, that information gap can feel enormous.

When parents lived together, information about the child may have passed naturally between them or one parent may have assumed most of the day-to-day parenting responsibilities. After separation, neither assumption necessarily continues. The child now moves between two homes, and each parent must gradually become comfortable parenting without continuous access to what is happening in the other home.

That can be very difficult when there is a painful history between the parents. One parent may genuinely believe that the other was uninvolved, irresponsible, inexperienced, affected by substance use, or primarily interested in increased parenting time for financial or strategic reasons. The other parent may have an entirely different account and believe that they have been excluded from parenting or prevented from developing an independent relationship with their child.

Those competing narratives are common in high-conflict separation. They may have been extremely important when the parenting arrangement was originally established, and some aspects of the family's history remain legally relevant where they affect the child's best interests. But once there is an order or agreement providing parenting time, everyday implementation cannot become an ongoing trial about whether the parenting arrangement should have existed in the first place.

The practical question changes. How do we make the parenting arrangement this child actually has work?

The focus is now the child

Section 37 of British Columbia's Family Law Act requires decisions about parenting arrangements and parental responsibilities to be made only in the best interests of the child. The statutory considerations include the child's health and emotional well-being, the child's relationships, the history of care, the child's need for stability given their age and stage of development, family violence, and the ability of each guardian to exercise their responsibilities. The legislation also specifically asks whether requiring the child's guardians to cooperate with one another would be appropriate.

That last consideration matters in highly conflicted families. Sometimes expecting two parents to collaborate extensively simply creates more opportunities for disagreement, monitoring and conflict. A workable parenting structure may therefore require less interaction between the parents, not more.

Once an order or agreement is in place, the day-to-day question should increasingly move from “Why should this parent have parenting time?” to “What does this child need for the parenting arrangement to work?” That is an important shift in focus. It moves the family away from continuously revisiting the adult relationship and toward implementing the child's present parenting arrangement.

Parenting Coordination should not repeatedly decide which parent's history is right

By the time many families reach Parenting Coordination, there is already an enormous history. Each parent can usually explain, in considerable detail, why the other parent caused the problems that resulted in the current situation. Continuing to decide whose narrative is more accurate will rarely solve an ordinary implementation problem.

A Parenting Coordinator's role is not to decide the parenting arrangements again. The Parenting Coordinator works within the authority conferred by the existing order or agreement and assists the parents in implementing the parenting arrangements already established. That distinction becomes particularly important when parents repeatedly return to historical allegations to justify present-day control over ordinary parenting.

If the existing arrangement provides that a child will spend substantial time with both parents, there is a practical reality that neither parent can avoid. This child now has two parents parenting them in two homes. The task is to make that reality as safe, stable and workable for the child as possible.

Parallel parenting is not collaborative parenting

Collaborative co-parenting generally assumes that parents can communicate freely, coordinate routines, exchange considerable information and make many parenting decisions together. That can work extremely well when parents have a functional relationship. It does not work equally well for every separated family.

Parallel parenting starts from a different premise. Each parent takes responsibility for ordinary parenting during their parenting time, while necessary information follows the child between homes. Neither parent ordinarily supervises the other's household.

That does not mean the parents cease communicating about important matters. It means communication becomes purposeful, reciprocal and child-focused rather than continuous. Good parallel parenting creates enough communication to care properly for the child while reducing unnecessary opportunities for parental conflict.

But my child cannot talk yet

This is where the problem becomes more complicated. A parent of a pre-verbal child reasonably needs more information than the parent of a twelve-year-old who can walk through the door and say, “My stomach started hurting after lunch and Dad gave me medicine.” A two-year-old cannot fill in those gaps. Some structured communication between homes is therefore particularly important for babies, toddlers and children with communication limitations.

The answer, however, is usually better-defined information sharing rather than unlimited information sharing. Parents should identify the information the other household reasonably requires to continue caring for the child. That creates predictability without requiring either parent to provide a running account of ordinary parenting.

For a very young child, that might include illness, significant symptoms, medication, vomiting, diarrhea, injury or an allergic reaction. It might also include a significant disruption in eating or sleeping, the introduction of a relevant new food, or another event outside the child's ordinary routine that could affect care in the other home. These are examples of continuity-of-care information.

Information is not an accountability report

There is an important difference between information necessary to care for a child and information requested so that one parent can evaluate how the other parent performed. In a high-conflict family, that boundary can disappear surprisingly quickly. Information sharing then gradually becomes supervision.

Consider a two-year-old experiencing gastrointestinal problems. It may be entirely reasonable to tell the other parent that the child had diarrhea twice, ate very little lunch, complained of stomach discomfort, or tried a new food. That information could help the other parent understand symptoms that continue after the transition.

That does not automatically mean the parent needs to provide a detailed inventory of everything the child consumed throughout the day. Whether the child ate six crackers, half a banana or three-quarters of a piece of toast will ordinarily be part of everyday parenting. A different conclusion may be appropriate when there is an actual medical reason for detailed dietary tracking.

If the child's physician or another treating health professional recommends keeping a food diary, the parents have an objective reason for doing so. The same diary can travel between the homes and both parents can complete it during their parenting time. A genuine health need becomes a shared parenting task rather than a mechanism for one parent to monitor the other.

The reciprocity test

There is a simple test parents can apply before requesting additional information:

Would I consider this information requirement reasonable if I had to provide exactly the same information after every period of my parenting time?

If the answer is no, it may be worth reconsidering the request. Information that is genuinely necessary for a child's health, safety or continuity of care will generally be equally important regardless of which parent currently has the child.

Reciprocity also prevents an unintended hierarchy from developing between the parents. One parent should not gradually become the person who requests information while the other becomes the person required to account for their parenting. Unless an order specifically creates different responsibilities, parallel parenting generally requires each parent to be treated as a parent rather than one as the supervisor of the other.

A sick child needs information to travel with them

Illness is particularly difficult with babies and toddlers. A worried parent may understandably believe that a sick child should remain with them because they know the child's symptoms, routines and comfort needs best. The emotional instinct to keep a sick young child close can be very powerful.

An existing parenting arrangement does not necessarily disappear every time a child develops an ordinary childhood illness. The particular order or agreement always matters, as do the nature and severity of the illness and any medical recommendations. Unilateral decisions about parenting time should not become the default response to every fever, cough or upset stomach.

A useful distinction is this: Illness may increase the amount of information that needs to pass between the homes. It does not necessarily increase one parent's authority over the other's parenting time.

If a child has a fever, vomited during the night and received medication at 8:00 a.m., that information should ordinarily follow the child. The other parent needs it to provide appropriate care and to determine when medication can next be given. That is exactly the type of communication that supports parallel parenting.

The goal is not identical parenting

Children have always experienced differences between caregivers. Parents, grandparents, daycare providers and babysitters may serve different foods, comfort a child differently, follow slightly different routines or have different levels of tolerance for mess, noise and risk. Children are capable of developing relationships with caregivers who do not do everything identically.

Separated parents often become unusually sensitive to those differences because they cannot see what is happening in the other household. A different meal, bedtime routine or approach to soothing the child can start to feel like evidence that something is wrong. The temptation is then to try to regulate the other household through increasingly detailed instructions and information requirements.

Parallel parenting requires some tolerance for difference. The goal is not to reproduce one household at two addresses. The goal is to provide sufficient consistency around the child's important needs while allowing each parent to actually parent.

Ask why you need the information

When deciding whether information should be requested, a parent can ask one important question: Does the other parent need to give me this information so that I can care properly for our child, or do I want this information so that I can evaluate how the other parent cared for our child?

Sometimes the honest answer will be both. That does not automatically make the request inappropriate. It does, however, help identify when legitimate concern about a young child may be drifting into oversight of the other parent's parenting.

Parents of pre-verbal children should generally err on the side of sharing meaningful health and care information. At the same time, information sharing should not become surveillance. Communication should assist the person who next cares for the child, not provide one parent with continuing authority over the other's household.

You do not have to approve of the other parent

This may be one of the hardest realities of post-separation parenting. You may believe the other parent should have been more involved when you were together. You may believe you carried the parenting load, know the child better and understand things the other parent still does not understand. You may even believe that the parenting arrangement established by an agreement or court order is unfair.

Those feelings do not disappear simply because an order has been made. They may also contain important truths about the family's history. But a child's daily life cannot become a continuing referendum on whether the other parent deserved parenting time.

Once an arrangement exists, both parents need room to develop their own relationship with their child. A parent who previously did less may need to learn things that the other parent learned years earlier. Preventing ordinary parenting because one parent is more experienced can make it impossible for the other parent ever to acquire that experience.

Structure can help where trust cannot

Parents in high conflict are often told that they need to communicate better. Sometimes that advice misses the problem entirely. More communication between people who fundamentally distrust one another can produce more conflict rather than better parenting.

The alternative is structure. Parents can identify the categories of information that must be exchanged, when the information must be provided, and what ordinarily does not require reporting. They can then stop renegotiating the boundaries every time another issue arises.

For a very young child, the structure might be simple: report medication, significant illness or symptoms, injury, new foods where relevant, significant eating or sleeping concerns, and anything unusual that is reasonably likely to affect the child's care in the other home. Ordinary meals, activities, minor variations in routine and everyday parenting decisions remain with the parent exercising parenting time. Both parents follow the same rule.

Moving from history to implementation

The question “How did we get here?” can consume separated parents for years. There may never be a version of the answer that both parents accept. Parenting Coordination cannot depend upon achieving agreement about the past before the family can function in the present.

The more useful question is: What does this child need from both parents now?

For a young child moving between two highly conflicted homes, the answer is often remarkably practical. The child needs predictable parenting time, appropriate health information, safe care, stable transitions and parents who communicate what is necessary without using communication to continue the conflict. Most importantly, the child needs permission to have two relationships that do not have to be identical.

Parallel parenting is not necessarily a lesser form of parenting after separation. For some families, it is the structure that finally allows the child to be removed from the centre of the parents' disagreement. The parents do not have to become good partners again in order to become workable parallel parents.

The guiding principle

For parents of babies, toddlers and children who cannot reliably communicate their own needs, information matters. More information, however, is not always better. The goal is enough information to care for the child, not enough information to supervise the other parent.

That distinction protects both the child's need for continuity and each parent's ability to develop an independent parental relationship. It also provides a practical way to apply the child-focused principles reflected in s. 37 of the Family Law Act to the everyday reality of parenting across two homes. The focus moves away from blame and toward implementation.

The parents may never agree about what happened in their relationship or how they arrived at the parenting arrangement they now have. They do not necessarily need to. The child needs them to make the arrangement work.

General information only

This article provides general information about parenting after separation and Parenting Coordination in British Columbia. The wording of the particular court order or agreement always matters, and circumstances involving family violence, genuine safety concerns, serious illness or other risks may require a different approach. Nothing in this article is intended to replace legal or medical advice about an individual family. This article describes a common issue in my 28 year legal career and it is not written specifically for any particular family.

Written by Cori L. McGuire, family law mediator, arbitrator, collaborative family law lawyer and Parenting Coordinator with a family law practice in British Columbia since 1998. Further related reading includes: Children Need Safe Transitions, Not High-Conflict Exchanges, What High-Conflict Co-Parents Need to Know About Parenting Coordination and Parallel Parenting, and The "Goldilocks" Window: Why 24 Hours is the Sweet Spot for Co-Parenting Communication.

© 2026 Cori McGuire. All Rights Reserved. Proprietary Workflow.

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