One of the most challenging aspects of being a divorced parent is that your children are moving between two separate households. To make matters more complicated, one of the most challenging times to be a parent, whether you’re married, in the process of divorcing, or divorced, is back-to-school season. Put those things together, and you have two parents who need to coordinate and communicate to make sure their children have all they need to be ready for a new school year.
It’s also a great opportunity, if the previous school year presented any kind of co-parenting challenges, to make a fresh start. Remember, first and foremost, that the focus should be on your children and giving them the best experience they can possibly have. That said, if you can do things in the process to make it go easier and better between you and your co-parent, that’s a plus.
The first thing you want to do, if you’re not doing it already, is to get on the same page — the same literal page, as in a calendar page. It’s likely that you already have your own calendaring system to keep track of your parenting time, but if you don’t have a shared calendar with your co-parent, it’s an absolute must to have clear communication regarding your child’s schedule.
It’s obviously important to know when your children have school-related events and other time commitments for extracurricular activities. Having a shared calendar system allowing both you and your co-parent to see it puts you both on notice for which kids need to be which places when, and it also helps guide conversations about what works best for the kids.
Let’s say one parent has parenting time on Thursday night but lives closer to where your child has a Wednesday evening commitment that runs fairly late. If you’re both cognizant of that, maybe trading that parent’s night from Thursday to Wednesday makes sense for everyone — especially the child who’s balancing school and extracurricular activities!
You don’t want a calendar to get too cluttered, but as your children get older, they’re also more likely to have final exams and major school projects. Using a calendar for big-ticket items like those will make sure you’re both keeping your kids on task and not leaving one parent to deal with a big scramble the night before something significant is due.
While apps like Our Family Wizard are specially designed for divorced parents, a shared Google Calendar can also serve your needs — it just needs to be something that both parents can access readily, read clearly, and add to as needed.
Communication is key, and depending on you and your co-parent’s communication style, you might want to schedule regular meetings or, in lieu of that, have a regular email or text thread going so you both can communicate essential things to each other.
One thing you’ll find, as your children get older, is that extracurricular activities are more likely to cost money, and money disputes can get out of hand if you’re not communicating about payments and deadlines. If you’re in the process of getting divorced, it’s an issue worth talking to your lawyer about as you’re shaping the decree.
If a student has a backpack or bag with essentials for the school day — many kids, from an early age, have folders with homework assignments from their teachers — make sure it doesn’t get left behind when the child moves from one household to the other. It’s helpful for the parent with the child to be able to talk about what’s due and monitor homework time — and as many parents can attest, a backpack left behind means coordinating a drive to get it from one parent to the other. That’s not an ideal thing to work out when it’s 8 or 9 o’clock!
While it’s ideal to get all these things in motion before the divorce is final — that way, it can be written into the decree — it’s really never too late to take steps with your co-parent to make communication better and better foster cooperation. This time of the year, when everyone’s focused on new beginnings, is an excellent time to do that.
At the Law Office of Lisa A. Vance, we can hear your specific parenting concerns from the very first consultation, and then work to make sure those are incorporated when your divorce is finalized — or, if you’re coming to us after your divorce, once it’s modified.