Healthy co-parenting can be a difficult thing to do. But, with time, many parents learn to master the art— or move on to parallel parenting. However, creating a healthy parenting plan can be pretty difficult. While co-parenting takes one set of skills, a parenting plan takes time and collaborative effort. So, if you can make it work once a year— you’ll be as good as gold for the time to come. So, how do you do it?
Crafting a Healthy Parenting Plan: How it Aids Co-Parenting
What is a parenting plan?
First things first, what exactly is a healthy parenting plan? It’s not a set of rules, or a how-to guide for being a good parent. Instead, it’s essentially a schedule of all obligations of the child for the year. So, it quite obviously takes time, and a lot of collaboration by both parties to do so effectively. This should happen once a year, include ‘what if’s’, and cover all potential come-ups. So, set a date, set aside a few hours, and bring your personal calendars…
Start by making a list and include holidays
You can prepare for this ahead of time by putting together your personal calendar, and any engagements you know the child might have. So, come to your meeting time with personal schedule in hand, child’s schedule, and requests that you might have. Each parent should compile a list: prior engagements, annual appointments, family birthdays, holidays, work trips, soccer games, school plays… any and every engagement is worth writing down.
Holidays are extremely important to include, because they can be some of the hardest things to negotiate. Everyone wants Christmas, birthdays, Easter… all the holidays. However, they have to rotate, and be agreed upon far in advance. The further in advance that you decide on holidays, the less emotion in that decision. Never ever leave holidays to the last minute, because that’s when they get nasty and turn into a battle…
Get together and re-visit once a year
Setting the once a year rule is super important to healthy parenting plans for one simple fact… Some things change, and some things stay the same. So, plan for this once a year— preferably right after the academic calendar comes out. Bring last year’s calendar, transfer the necessary things— and leave out the stuff that didn’t work for you. Keep the same base plan, and alter what needs to be altered. Doing this early on will cut down on the number of aggressive text messages about who’s has what day, soccer practice, or that annual business trip.
Leave room for adjustments and leeway, but take the agreement seriously
Things happen. This is common knowledge, so allow room for ‘oops’ and unplanned adjustments. Some people opt to include an ‘in the event of:’ section and put a bit of planning into that unplanned moments. Whether it’s new activities picked up, sick days… Consider extenuating circumstances and agree that you’ll work through them together.
Now, sign and print your agreement. Make copies, and multiples of them. Keep one for Mom, one for Dad, and one in a neutral location to revisit in the event of a dispute or a lost copy. Take this seriously, and you’ll be set up for success over and over again!
