Managing Co-Parenting Schedules

When you were married there as probably a time (or many!) when you thought that keeping track of schedules was difficult and time consuming. Now that you’re divorced managing schedules can feel downright daunting! Your family is now divided into two schedules, and possibly being pulled into even more directions if either spouse if remarried and have added even more children or step children into the mix. It’s perhaps every divorced parent’s worst nightmare – imagining their child waiting at school or another activity and no one picks them up. Depending on the age of your children this can be a very scary scenario, not only for the child, but for both parents, and can certainly cause a lot of friction and conflict amongst co-parents. So how do you keep schedules strait to avoid this sort of issue? Many former spouses may not feel comfortable sharing their full personal calendar such as Outlook or Google, which doesn’t merge the two schedules anyhow, or maybe you still haven’t upgraded from the paper calendar on the wall?  Luckily for you there are many online tools devoted to just that – managing divorced and blended family schedules. Websites like cozi.com and many more, offer free online access to a shared calendar, and you can also authorize stepparents, grandparents, etc. access to the calendar. Your co-parent may not be as committed to the idea of online communication and planning as you are. If you are in the beginning stages of divorce, your communication and schedule sharing is an important piece to add into your parenting plan. If your children are a bit older – preteens and teens, they would likely appreciate an online calendar that they can also access to give them a bit more stability in knowing their schedule. One could argue that it shouldn’t be difficult to manage a set schedule, say, if you have your children Wednesdays and every other weekend, however kids are much more over scheduled then they were years ago, and when you add activities, and more children into the mix you can never be too prepared.