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First published in 2014, with a second edition in 2017, "The Co-Parenting Handbook: Raising Well-Adjusted and Resilient Kids from Little Ones to Young Adults through Divorce or Separation," by Karen Bonnell, is a useful resource for anyone looking for a guide to co-parenting.

It took me two months to finish this book, even though it isn't that long, and I had a high desire to read it. I found the book incredibly triggering to read, since my life experience and my lived reality are erased from the pages.

The author lives in a world in which severe child abuse and complete parental abandonment do not exist, and are not situations that need to be mentioned or accounted for in any way. The author truly believes that all parents "love" their children, and that mentally ill parents (narcissists, sociopaths, etc.) will "come around" and learn how to communicate better if the other parent simply practices accepting them as they are.

The author truly believes that there are not parents out there who literally tell their children that they hate them, beat them until they require hospital treatment, and abandon them at various ages.

I could go on, but... blech, no. It's painful and it's a waste of my time.

I think this book is ideal for people who were themselves raised by "good enough" parents (as the book describes the term) and had healthy communication in their partnerships before their children were born. If you and your co-parent are "good enough" parents already, before separation: then this book is for you.

Earlier this year, without my consent, a judge appointed me to be a parental supervisor for an 8-year-old child who has been in a high-conflict custody battle ever since her parents separated, which happened when she was four months old. For eight years, these parents have launched pure hatred at each other, every single day. Their contempt and violence toward each other have led to police involvement, restraining orders, constant terror, and court orders that are consistently disregarded and violated at every turn.

Both parents have been court-ordered to take co-parenting classes and get counseling for themselves. Both parents adamantly refuse. They are incredibly abusive, treat their child as weaponized property, struggle with substance abuse and undiagnosed, severe mental illness, cannot hold down a job or pay their own rent, both require family members to house them and provide for their basic needs.

Upon finishing this book, I know that neither one of them could ever read "The Co-Parenting Handbook." Not only because they already think they know everything there is to know about parenting, and each one thinks they are the most amazing parent ever (and proudly proclaim themselves to be so), but everything about this book would be massively enraging to them, because each page assumes that *all* parents *already know* how to put their child first in their life: to prioritize their child's needs over their own. And I'm sorry, but no. That is not accurate. Reproduction does not cure mental illness. Reproduction does not cure a person's emotional immaturity or suddenly make them able to have empathy for another person, including their own children.

I know this author is a good person. And I know this book is a good book for the right audience.

But that audience does not include me, or anyone who grew up in the type of chaotic, abusive, completely dysfunctional home I grew up in, with bouts of homelessness and severe mental illness, sexual violence and addictions.

"The Co-Parenting Handbook" does not exist in a world in which both parents of a child might be actively damaging their child, a world in which both parents are completely incapable of learning, growing, and "doing better" due to untreated mental illness.

This is a book for best-case-scenario separations, in which the worst thing a one-home family is dealing with might be a secret affair that broke up a marriage. Would that we could all live in that kind of simplicity.

Three stars.