I cannot tell you how much time I spent in hostile and abusive text and email exchanges with my ex. When you and your ex share kids you really have no choice but to communicate. An app like Talking Parents or Our Family Wizard can go a long way. It helps to keep things on the right track. I chose to use Talking Parents. Keep reading to learn more in this Talking Parents review.
So what is Talking Parents and how does it work?
At its heart, Talking Parents is a way for two people to communicate via a third party. All of this communication is recorded by the third party and CANNOT BE ALTERED by either participant.
This is the fundamental benefit and feature of Talking Parents. When you communicate via text, email, phone, etc.. it is recorded. There is little chance that the other party could claim they did not say what you allege they said. With Talking Parents, your conversations are being etched in (virtual) stone.
The great features of Talking Parents are that:
- It’s free
- It is secure and very easy to use
- It contains a calendar you can share to keep track of kid events
- You can get a copy of all of the parts of Talking Parents. You can use this for any legal or logistical needs you may have
If you have been through a split with an ex, you are well aware of the hostility that can exist. This is often seen as part of your conversations. When both parties know that everything they say is being recorded things change. With no ability to change anything well suffice to say it can really keep things civil and positive.
In the past, I posted about dealing with a hostile ex. One of the things I did not mention in that article was the specifics of HOW we actually communicated.
I was really at my wit’s end communicating with my ex during my divorce. My attorney suggested both the Talking Parents app and Our Family Wizard. At that point, I frankly would have tried anything.
The Talking Parents folks like to say that their service works:
- Anywhere
- Anytime
- On Any Device
- With Unalterable Records
The best part of Talking Parents? The basic plan is FREE.
I never paid a dime for Talking Parents. What is more, it served as a terrific tool for my communication with my ex. That is not to say that all hostility and accusation was eliminated from our conversations.
What Talking Parents did was to lessen these types of conversations to a great degree. Why? This was all going to be part of a running record that COULD be taken to court at any point.
Have a gripe about your child custody arrangement? Have a gripe about an ex that is hostile and makes threats?
This is where tools like Talking Parents or Our Family Wizard are great. Here is a tool you could take to a judge and say “here you go”. “This is not my opinion, this is what ACTUALLY occurred.”
This Talking Parents review will show you it is easy to use, secure, and confidential.
So how do you get started with Talking Parents
I started by simply entering my own info and then my ex’s full legal name in Talking Parents. She then created her own account and entered my full legal name and our accounts were matched. We could then start communication on their platform.
No communication info like phone numbers or email addresses is shared with the other party during this process.
From that point on no other changes can be made. It is just the two of you communicating. A third party cannot be added. You cannot substitute one of you with someone else.
If you do want to, for example, change the email address where you get notifications you can. Talking Parents will first need to verify your identity and then they do that for you.
If you don’t want to continue using the service, just stop using it. Even if you stop, the history of everything you have done remains. That is the fundamental point of Talking Parents:
What you say and do on Talking Parents cannot be altered, erased, modified or deleted. That includes your account with Talking Parents.
The Talking Parents service would not be of much benefit if one party can quit. If they deleted their account and everything they said and did was gone, what is the point?
How communication works
The biggest part of a Talking Parents review will be how you communicate. If you have ever sent a text or email message, Talking Parents will be a piece of cake. Either party can start a new thread and then both parties can add to the thread.
You can add seven entries to one thread without a response from your ex. It is not limited to you send something and then you have to wait for a response.
If you want to add attachments like pictures or .pdf files you can add them to messages. This can be very useful when you want to discuss something you received from your child’s school or doctor.
One of the newest features they offer is their Accountable Calling. This lets you record calls with your ex without disclosing your phone number to them. This helps to truly “cover all the bases” since this lets you make sure that ALL communication between you and your ex is recorded and stored.
Have I already mentioned this is all Free???
Talking Parents has a service where they charge you money on a monthly basis. They also have one-off charges for things like requesting a .pdf or written version of your history.
Since I never availed myself of any of this I won’t really go into that. For the monthly charge you can use their app, I did not want to pay soI was happy to just login to the website to communicate.
How do you know when the other party has communicated?
You know when you talk but any talking parents review will include how you know when the other party responds. Well, quite simply you can get a text notification, an email or both. I would then log into the site and see what was said and then take any appropriate action.
Now I will say that there were some limitations to this if it was for very everyday things.
If you only sign up for email notifications, or you do not turn on notifications, it can make communication frustrating.
Of course, even with the notifications on, either party can just choose not to log in to the site.
One good thing is that the conversations show if and when a message was viewed by the other party. So at least you know if your message was seen and ignored, or just not seen at all.
Any drawbacks to the service?
In this Talking Parents review, I would say it is not all that great if you need to communicate immediately. Say you are running late to pick up the kids and your ex is somewhere waiting with no internet access.
They will not be able to see what you have said on Talking Parents. The notifications that are sent do not contain any message you have sent, just that you have sent one.
If there was a situation where I needed to communicate outside of Talking Parents, I would do it via text. I would then put a screenshot of the text exchange on Talking Parents with no added commentary from me.
In that way, you can communicate more quickly but still keep the running record.
Is all this really necessary?
I guess it all comes down do how you and your ex deal with each other and communicate. For me, this really was a last resort but it turned out to be a great tool….for me. I doubt my ex liked it much. So I put it in such a way as “why are you hesitant to use this service ”? I think it is fair to say any reasonable person will go along with this.