Co-parenting program aims to reduce pains of divorce in central Minnesota
New research shows the program is 'highly acceptable and effective at targeting a key mechanism of change — reducing animosity between co-parents.'
BUFFALO, MINN. — Chrystal Fischer wants to help parents learn to negotiate their conflicts and reduce their time in court.
A new co-parenting program at Parenting with Grace in Buffalo, Minn., aims to do that through a 16-week curriculum with one-on-one coaching, meetings with both parents, and group support sessions.
Research published in early July found the program, called BeH2O, to be “highly acceptable and effective at targeting a key mechanism of change — reducing animosity between co-parents.”
It’s a vote of confidence for the coaches who use the curriculum, like Fischer. She appreciates that it centers children.
“If we can get more families ordered to this (by a judge) early on, we are reducing the conflict and the cost – emotional cost, the financial costs,” Fischer said. “That is where my passion lies. Because, at the end of the day, that all brings better outcomes for your kids.”
Programs to meet the needs she sees
Fischer opened Parenting with Grace in October 2023 to help families navigate high-conflict transitions and protect children in the process.
The nonprofit provides a lot of education, including anger management classes, a sex trafficking prevention program for teens, divorce coaching, and the new co-parenting class.
The Buffalo office also hosts in-person, family court-ordered supervised visits. This filled a gap that Fischer had experienced first-hand. There hadn’t been a place for these visits in Wright County for 15 years before she opened the nonprofit.
It’s a small organization operating with volunteer support, donations, grants, and some fees for revenue. Fischer is always looking for programs to meet the needs she sees.
Tour Parenting with Grace with Chrystal Fischer, its founder and executive director, on April 20, 2026, in Buffalo, Minn. (Nora Hertel for Project Optimist)
She launched her first cohort with the BeH2O co-parenting program in January. They completed the program in May.
It’s different from the divorce coaching and parenting skills programs she offers. It focuses on reducing conflict through classes and coaching sessions.
“We want to be strong in our values and grounded in those. And we want to be fluid in our mindset. It's all about the mindset, and changing pathways in our brain, to get out of our ‘stinkin’ thinkin,’ I like to call it,” Fischer said. “We're stuck in the emotions. We're stuck in the anger. And we can get out of that and be child-focused.”
The refined divorce rate in the U.S. has declined since 1980 – that’s the number of divorces divided by the number of married women, according to Pew Research. Yet nearly 1.1 million children experience parental divorce each year, according to a 2011 report.
Divorces are considered an adverse childhood experience due to the stress and conflict involved. And contested divorces can cost tens of thousands of dollars and last for years.
The start of BeH2O
The co-parenting program Fischer uses was developed by Trina Nudson in Kansas who drew on experiences as a social worker, attorney, guardian ad litem, and divorce coach. She wanted to help parents change their mindset rather than just practice a few new behaviors.
Part of the process is getting parents to find shared goals and navigate conflict, rather than expect their problems to go away completely.
This is a solutions journalism story! Here’s how you can tell
This story includes the four pillars of solutions journalism needed to make it a solutions story, according to the Solutions Journalism Network.
Response: The story focuses on a response to the problem of relational and financial stresses caused by a divorce or parental separation. The solution is a co-parenting program that teaches parents to build a new “operating system” and keep kids out of the middle of conflict.
Evidence: New research into the BeH20 curriculum and testimonials shared by its creator tout its ability to reduce animosity between co-parents.
Limitations: Parenting with Grace Executive Director Chrystal Fischer launched her first co-parenting cohort in January. She would like to have judges order parents to take the class to reduce conflict in their court proceedings.
Insights: Learning to co-parent after separation could help a family save time and money in the legal system, Fischer says.
“We're human, so there is no perfection,” Nudson said. “We will have a bad session. They'll qualify it as a bad session. Parents will feel like, oh, there was a lot of reactivity. … It's usually session 4, 5, or 6, we'll get really messy.”
She welcomes that as a chance to work through the issue together and see resilience.
Nudson served more than 200 families before she started to train other coaches in her method. The journal Family Court Review published independent research into BeH2O on July 6. It included a survey of 102 parents who’d been through the program and observations of 11 parents.
“We found that participation in BeH20 was associated with gradual reductions in animosity and immediate increases in constructive conflict behaviors,” according to the research.
The impact on kids
Nudson shared that a recent client had been reluctant to participate in the program. By the end of the 16 weeks, Nudson asked their child how they were doing.
The 10-year-old told her: “Mom and Dad are doing a really good job,” Nudson recounted.
“And I said: ‘What does a really good job look like?’”
The 10-year-old replied: “They're starting to understand each other…. And they still get upset. But when they get upset, they take a deep breath, and they walk away.”
Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten
That was the strategy the parents developed with Nudson, she said.
Success looks different for each family. But the BeH2O program is based around four values that make the acronym ROCK. It promotes resilience, open-mindedness, competency (always learning), and keeping it real (accepting that conflict won’t magically disappear).
Constructive conflict between parents, “characterized by a calm, respectful, and solution-focused perspective, can be protective” for kids whose parents are separating, according to research cited in the Family Court Review article.
Fischer chose the BeH2O curriculum because it was focused on children. It helps the parents too.
“Parents are able to negotiate and navigate their struggles without having to go back into court repeatedly,” Fischer said. “We're just seeing less court hearings, less motions, less attorneys fees in the big picture.”
Creating a space for supervised visits
Chrystal Fischer started Parenting with Grace to fill a gap in Wright County – the lack of a safe place for family court-ordered supervised visits. These are visits between family members, typically due to allegations or presence of abuse, neglect of a child, domestic violence, or mental health concerns that pose possible harm. These cases are outside the child protection system.
When local families wanted these visits previously, they would have to drive to the Twin Cities or St. Cloud for a space with a court-ordered professional supervisor present. A lot of people don’t know about supervised visitation unless they’ve been involved in a case or have a family or friend who has.
It allows for children to maintain a relationship with their parent while keeping kids safe, Fischer said.
“We are in the room the entire time. We hear all the conversations,” she said. “Our monitors are professionally trained by the Supervised Visitation Network on how and when to intervene: We don't talk about grown-up stuff. We don't talk about past or future. We talk about right now.”
Parenting with Grace provides support for the parents too and considers it a success when families don’t need to come back and are safely able to parent without supervision.
This story was edited by Becca Most. It was fact checked by Nora Hertel with help from Chrystal Fischer and Trina Nudson.
Jen Zettel-Vandenhouten