Parenting Plan
The traditional legal outcome without a parenting plan is: One parent wins the child custody. The loser gets visitation rights only. Making decisions about where children will live is one of the most difficult tasks of parents going through a separation or a divorce. The idea of no longer being with your children all the time or even the thought of losing your children is scary.
However, good parenting isn't a game or a contest. With a solid plan, parents can take a different, more child-friendly approach to the legal negotiations.
If you're looking for a parenting resource on positive parenting tips and advice to help you make parenting a journey of both pleasure and high awareness, you might like this parenting article by Positive Parenting Ally.
Developmental Milestones
A parent who understands basic child growth and development knows what to expect in terms of when their child should be reaching their developmental milestones.
A parenting plan spells out a clear, specific schedule for children as well as guidelines for each parent's coparenting responsibilities and role in decision making.
When you start constructing a parenting plan, there are several key issues you need to recognize:
- There is no such thing as the single ideal schedule. Joint physical custody, traditional every other weekend visitation, bird nesting (where the children stay in one place and the parents move back and forth), or the hundreds of variations in between can all work or none of them can. Making your plan work depends upon you, your ex-partner, and your coparenting relationship. (see parenting plan example topics)
- Nobody, not even judges or psychologists, possess special wisdom or mysterious tests that tell you what is best for your children. You, the parents, are in the best position to make these decisions. Remember just one thing: This is about your children and your responsibilities as parents, not about your rights.
- When setting up the plan think about the time with your children in termes of months and years. Your plan can be a living agreement, that can alter as your children grow older and your family circumstances change. What you decide for a 2 year old may not be best for her when she's 14 (or 4 or 7). You probably want to experiment with your ideas about a schedule, so you can see how your child reacts to a schedule. Guessing what will or won't work is not the best method.
- Set up and stick to a parenting plan meeting schedule
- Different schedules work better for children of different ages. Younger children benefit from having more of a home base. School aged children can manage more complicated schedules. For teens you need a third schedule: Their own.
With more than one child, you have to deal with both opportunities and complications. Your 16 year old teenager may rebel about a week to week schedule, even though the plan is working fine for his 9 year old brother.
- Your co-parenting partnership style is critical to making any parenting plan work. There are different schedule needs for parents with a cooperative, distant, or an angry divorce. You have many more options for children of a given age – and over time – if you can to develop cooperative, businesslike relationship with your children's other parent.
- No matter the age of the children you are coparenting, a consistency in the routines at both homes is important. This does not mean everything must be exactly the same everywhere. You should keep your own style, but there should be this comfort level of consistency for your children. More about coparenting.
- There are 5 types of divorced parents. These 5 types are: Perfect Pals, Cooperative Colleagues, Angry Associates, Fiery Foes, and Dissolved Duos.
The first two are referred to as functional co-parenting. The next two are dysfunctional relationships that can manage parallel parenting at best. The Dissolved Duos consists of 100% solo parenting. More details about divorced parents.
- Communication between the ex-partners must focus on the children. It must be peaceful, consistent, and purposeful. Learn more about divorced parents communication.
- The divorced parents syndrome is as much a syndrome for the adult children of divorced parents as for the divorsed parents. The article about the divorced parents syndrome contains a couple of scenarios to help you get through in the best possible way.
- When you build your parenting plan, take some time to study the different child development stages. The needs of the children depend on the stage of their development. An emotional attachment to a primary caregiver in the first six years of life is very important. A disturbance in the relationship with the primary care giver in the early years can create problems in childhood, adolescence, and adult life. The understanding of the Child Development Stages can help divorced parents making decisions about their children. More on Child Development Stages.
Recommended reading
The Complex Family Foundation has published a series of excellent books about Effects of Divorce on Children at each development stage:
- A single parent is a parent who cares for one or more children without the physical assistance of another parent. Mostly they result from an unforeseeable occurrence, such as death, child abuse, child neglect, or abandonment by biological parents. Many factors influence how children develop in single parents families.
- A step mom has a special position in the parenting plan. These six steps help the step mom in her relationship with the children of her husband.
- For single dads, it is important to stay in the children's lives. Single dads must assure their children that they love them by taking an active role in their lifes. Single dads must also make sure that their own needs are met.
- It is important to take good care of the relationship with your child. The following section explains why and gives you tips about what you can do to optimize the parent child relationship.
- For men, divorce has its own challenges and pitfalls. The very first things to do to protect your interests, Tips to keep your divorce costs low, Mistakes made most often, How to get child custody? Read all about these topics in men and divorce
- Why you should get visitation rights for young children. Divorce with children is complicated. In particular when the other parent gets the child custody, you should always negotiate visitation. Visitation should be covered in the parening plan. Here are some tips on how to obtain child visitation rights for young children.
- If one parent lives far away, additional difficulties arise. There are many tips and hints about how to cope with the distance. If divorced parents do not fight over the children but collaborate, long distance parenting can be successful.
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