Co-Parenting Through Divorce or Separation | South Bay | Hermosa Beach
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Co-Parenting Through Divorce or Separation

Putting your children
first

The end of a marriage is not the end of a family. When two people share children, they remain connected for life, and co-parenting counseling helps you build a relationship that lets your children thrive in both homes.

Let's Work Together
Co-parenting counseling in Hermosa Beach with Regina Abayev LMFT

For parents who care
deeply about their kids

Co-parenting counseling is for parents who want to protect their children's wellbeing, regardless of what is happening between the two of them. We are not here to repair the romantic relationship. We are here to help you parent well together, side by side.

Sessions combine individual time with each parent and joint meetings. I work with each of you on communication, understanding what causes strain or frustration, and your approach to parenting, then bring you together to create parenting plans and agreements that are in the best interest of your children.

Children need to know that they are loved, protected, and that their needs will come first.

What Brings Parents Here

"We cannot be in the same room without it becoming a fight, and our children see all of it."

"We are passing messages through our kids and we know it has to stop."

"Our two houses have completely different rules and we cannot agree on anything."

"We just separated and we want to protect the kids before any damage is done."

"I need to talk to my co-parent about something hard without it turning into a battle."

What We Work On

Building a parenting
partnership

Co-parenting counseling is practical and structured. We work through each of these together, in individual and joint sessions, depending on where each parent is and what your family needs.

Communication between parents
How you talk to each other shapes what your children feel. We build a way of communicating that lowers the conflict, keeps contact clear and contained in heated moments, and gives you reliable channels for the decisions you have to make together.
Consistency across two homes
Children do best when the rules, expectations, and routines in both homes line up as much as possible. We work toward a shared approach you can both sustain, so the differences between households stop becoming a source of conflict.
Keeping children out of the middle
When children carry messages, hear one parent criticized, or get pulled into adult conflict, it stays with them. We work toward clear agreements about what your children are protected from, so they get to just be kids.
Making big decisions together
School, healthcare, activities, travel. When parents are in conflict, every shared decision can turn into a standoff. We build a structure for these decisions so you can make them without negotiating from scratch each time.
Easing transitions
Pickups and drop-offs are often the hardest moments, and the ones children watch most closely. We work on making these handoffs calm and easy, so your children can move between homes without holding their breath.
Supporting your children
Children going through a family change have their own feelings and needs. We look at how each of you can be present and steady for them through this, on your own and together.
What Children Need

Children can feel
so much

Children feel so much, often more than they can put into words. They sense the warmth or the tension in a room long before anyone speaks. This does not mean they are fragile or that you have done something wrong. It means they are watching the people they love most to learn how love, conflict, and repair are supposed to work.

Children are also remarkably resilient, especially when the adults around them are doing their best. When you do this work, you give your children something that stays with them for life: the feeling of being safe, protected, and cared for by both of you, and a childhood that gets to simply be a childhood.

To feel safe and know what to expect
Children settle when life is predictable. Steady routines, clear expectations, and calm transitions across both homes give them the ground to stand on. When things feel steady between their parents, children get to relax into just being kids.
To love both parents freely
A child should never feel that loving one parent hurts the other. When we protect them from adult conflict and let them care for both of you openly, we free them from a weight that was never theirs to carry.
Parents who are really there
Children need you present with them, not pulled away by the stress between the two of you. Part of this work is helping each of you find enough steadiness that you can show up fully for your kids, even on the hard days.
Honesty and transparency, shared with care
Children do better with honest, age-appropriate answers about what is happening in their family. That does not mean knowing the details of what went wrong between their parents or who did what. It means being told what they need to make sense of their world, in a way that fits their age, without being pulled into adult matters. We work on how to talk with them so they feel informed and secure rather than burdened.
Background

Personal and
professional experience

My years practicing law and my training as a mediator shape how I approach this work. I understand the legal and financial complexity that often runs alongside a separation, from custody arrangements to dividing assets to the logistics of building two homes. I am not a divorce attorney and I do not give legal advice, but I know this landscape well enough to help you hold the full picture of what you are managing.

In sessions, that means I can hold both the emotional and the practical sides of what you are working through. The goal is a co-parenting partnership that works in your actual life.

Feeling loved and protected is one of the greatest gifts a child can be given.

Begin the Work

Your children
come first

This practice serves co-parents in Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach, the South Bay, and across California via telehealth.

Let's Work Together

Other areas of couples work

Communication and Conflict Lack of Intimacy Physical Intimacy and Desire Betrayal and Infidelity Discernment Counseling Pre-Marital Counseling High-Conflict Dynamics Couples Intensives