The Issue Is Not the Issue: Why High-Conflict Parenting Disputes Persist

A Different Way of Understanding Conflict

One of the most important lessons I have learned as a Parenting Coordinator has very little to do with parenting plans, communication agreements, counselling referrals, or court orders. It has to do with how human beings process conflict. 

For years, I assumed that high-conflict parents were fighting about the issues in front of them. The dispute might involve an iPhone, a missed phone call, a baseball tournament, a reimbursement claim, a counselling appointment, a travel itinerary, or a communication protocol. Each issue arrived dressed as a practical problem requiring a practical solution. 

Over time, however, I noticed something curious. The issues changed constantly, but the conflict remained remarkably consistent. 

Parents who spent weeks arguing about a communication device would soon be arguing about a sports activity. A dispute about a reimbursement would be followed by a dispute about a holiday schedule. A disagreement about counselling would evolve into a disagreement about communication. The topic changed, but the emotional intensity did not. 

Eventually, I began to suspect that the issue itself was not driving the conflict. 

The issues change. The story does not. 

Human Beings Process Conflict as a Story Problem

The breakthrough for me was realizing that high-conflict parents may not be uniquely dysfunctional. In many respects, they may simply be demonstrating a very human tendency in a particularly intense form. 

Human beings do not naturally process conflict as an implementation problem. We process conflict as a story problem. 

When we experience betrayal, rejection, disrespect, humiliation, fear, loss, or disappointment, we naturally try to make sense of what happened. We want the story to fit together. We want our suffering to mean something. We want validation. We want witnesses. We want someone to acknowledge the injury and say: "Yes, that was wrong."

There is nothing unusual about this. It is profoundly human. 

The difficulty is that we often confuse revisiting with resolving. We assume that if we return to the injury often enough, explain it clearly enough, gather enough evidence, or finally persuade the other person to understand our perspective, we will achieve closure. 

Unfortunately, that is rarely how conflict works. Instead, the original injury often attaches itself to new events. The conflict appears to be moving forward, but the same story continues to be told through different issues. The missed phone call, the reimbursement dispute, the counselling referral, and the communication disagreement all become additional evidence supporting an existing narrative. 

The issue changes. The story does not. 

Why the iPhone Is Not About the iPhone

Consider a common modern dispute. A child receives an iPhone. The disagreement appears to be about technology. Parents argue about who purchased the phone, who controls it, who pays for it, who the child can contact, whether location tracking should be enabled, whether messages should be monitored, and whether the device should be available during the other parent's parenting time. 

At first glance, these appear to be practical questions. However, the longer the dispute continues, the more obvious it becomes that the technology is not the real issue. 

One parent experiences the phone as a way to stay connected to the child. The other experiences it as surveillance. One parent views location sharing as a safety measure. The other experiences it as monitoring. One parent sees communication as reassurance. The other sees intrusion. 

Before long, the phone is no longer serving the child. The phone is serving the conflict. The device becomes a tracker of conversations, movements, parenting decisions, and perceived slights. Every notification becomes evidence. Every missed call becomes evidence. Every delayed response becomes evidence. 

The iPhone becomes the latest delivery vehicle for a much older story. Underneath the practical dispute, the emotional narrative often sounds more like this: You never listened to me. You always controlled me. You never respected me. You hurt me. You betrayed me.

The parents believe they are arguing about technology. In reality, they may be trying to resolve years of accumulated emotional injury through a parenting issue that cannot possibly carry that weight. 

The issue changes. The story does not. 

Why Education Alone Often Fails

This insight fundamentally changed the way I think about Parenting Coordination. Professionals often respond to conflict by providing education. We teach communication skills. We teach emotional regulation. We teach BIFF responses. We explain triangulation, loyalty conflicts, and the impact of parental conflict on children. These interventions are valuable and often necessary. 

However, education has limits. If the real function of the communication is to continue telling the story, additional information rarely solves the problem. Parents may understand the concepts perfectly. They may be able to explain them to others. They may even agree with them in principle. 

Yet the conflict continues because the practical issue is no longer the real issue. The story is.

This helps explain why intelligent, capable, well-meaning parents can become trapped in cycles of conflict that appear irrational from the outside. The problem is not necessarily a lack of knowledge. The problem is that knowledge alone cannot interrupt a story that has become emotionally self-sustaining. 

Why My Parenting Coordination Model Focuses on Structure

This realization led me to a conclusion that has increasingly shaped my Parenting Coordination practice. Many high-conflict disputes are not knowledge problems. They are structure problems. 

Traditional approaches often assume that if parents gain sufficient insight, they will behave differently. In some cases that is true. In many high-conflict cases, however, the parents already understand the issue. They understand the parenting plan. They understand the recommendation. They understand the communication guideline. They understand the children's needs. 

What they often cannot do is stop attaching the current issue to the larger story. 

This is why my approach increasingly focuses on implementation, issue containment, and structure. In my experience, many high-conflict files are process problems first and issue problems second. 

Structure limits the opportunity for the story to expand. Structure narrows the focus. Structure prevents every disagreement from becoming a referendum on the entire relationship. 

Structure says: We are not discussing the entire history. We are not deciding who was right five years ago. We are not deciding who is the better parent. We are deciding whether counselling will occur. We are deciding how the iPhone will be used. We are deciding the next implementation step. That is all. 

The goal is not to resolve every emotional injury that occurred during the relationship. The goal is to implement the parenting arrangements that exist today. 

The challenge is often not identifying the solution. The challenge is preventing the conflict from continually expanding beyond the issue that actually requires resolution. 

The Hidden Cost of Conflict

Many people assume that the greatest cost of conflict is financial. Certainly, legal fees, expert fees, court applications, and Parenting Coordinator fees can be substantial. In my experience, however, those costs are often symptoms rather than the core problem.

The greatest cost of conflict is not financial. The greatest cost is the amount of your life it consumes. Conflict occupies mental real estate. It becomes the background soundtrack of your life. It takes up space that could otherwise be filled with joy, connection, growth, and presence with your children. It follows people to work, on vacation, into new relationships, and into conversations that have nothing to do with the original dispute. Most people think they are paying for conflict with money. They are not. They are paying for it with attention, emotional energy, and years they will never get back. Long after the practical problem has been solved, the conflict remains alive because the story remains alive. Court files can stay open for years. Childhood does not.

One day the conflict ends, the file closes, and the arguments stop. What many parents discover too late is that childhood does not wait for any of those things. The years pass anyway. Most parents do not reach the end of the conflict wishing they had won more arguments. They reach the end wishing they had been more present for the years they cannot get back.

What Children Actually Need

Children do not need their parents to fully understand one another. They do not need every grievance acknowledged, every historical wrong corrected, or every argument won. 

What children need is for conflict to stop being the centre of the family system. 

The counselling issue is usually solvable. The technology issue is usually solvable. The scheduling issue is usually solvable. The communication issue is usually solvable. The greater challenge is preventing the conflict itself from becoming self-sustaining. 

When that happens, the objective shifts. The goal is no longer complete understanding. The goal is containment, implementation, and forward movement. At some point, the issue has been discussed enough. The positions are understood. The story has been told. 

The healthiest thing a family can sometimes do is stop giving the conflict more attention than it deserves. Children benefit far more from adults who can move forward than from adults who can perfectly explain why they are still stuck. 

Research Support

A qualitative study by Stolnicu, De Mol, Hendrick, and Gaugue (2022) offers support for this framework. Interviewing experienced professionals working with high-conflict post-divorce families, the researchers identified a fourth dimension of high-conflict co-parenting that was absent from their earlier work on low-conflict families: "Healing the Separation." The study suggests that parenting disputes are often influenced by unresolved emotional, relational, and psychological processes extending beyond the immediate issue under discussion. As a result, practical disagreements may acquire emotional significance that is disproportionate to the issue itself. The authors further suggest that interventions must address not only the parenting dispute but also the broader processes that keep conflict alive. 

For Parenting Coordinators, lawyers, judges, counsellors, and parents, the implication is significant. The issue may not be the issue. The issue changes. The story does not. 

Court files can stay open for years. Childhood does not. 

The question every parent must ask is whether the story is worth missing the years that can never be recovered.

Reference

Stolnicu, A., De Mol, J., Hendrick, S., & Gaugue, J. (2022). Healing the separation in high-conflict post-divorce co-parenting. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 913447. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.913447

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. 

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

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