Creating a Parenting Plan That Works for All of You

In general, most kids are pretty similar when it comes to their basic needs, especially when it comes to their parents. When they’re little, all they want is for their parents to spend time with them. It doesn’t make any difference whether it’s during a grocery store run or while taking them on vacation. They just want bonding time with you. As your kids get older and begin to assert their independence, you may find you’re suddenly the “monster” in the room, or the “mean” parent, or even their new ATM.

It’s frustrating, but it’s natural.

Despite all of the emotions that you experience during a divorce about your soon to be ex, you need to figure out how to continue to coparent – and that means dealing with everything from haircuts and clothing, to medical care, to education and religious upbringing. There are a lot of decisions to make and they take a certain amount of cooperation, no matter how you feel about one another.

Sometimes making it work for everyone can be difficult, but it’s possible to create a successful parenting plan with a little thinking outside the box. Take a look at the two tools below that can help you build a parenting plan that works best for your situation:

Hire outside help to walk you through it

Use a parenting coordinator to hammer out the details and be an intermediary, when necessary. This is a newer concept being used in various states around the country to help parents create and adhere to parenting plans that work for their particular set of circumstances. A parenting coordinator is a legal professional who is trained to guide you through avoiding potential pitfalls of coparenting as divorced parents.

Every family has different needs and hurdles to overcome, and sometimes it can be difficult to sort it all out when you are in the middle of a divorce. A parenting coordinator can help resolve the logistics of visitation, suggest and locate resources for families to make parenting their children together easier on everyone, and help you tweak your plan when necessary to prevent hostile situations from becoming court room battles.

Maintain the status quo – mostly

“Bird nesting” is another relatively new approach gaining in popularity that offers a variation on how to share time living with your children. If you have the financial wherewithal, you and your spouse would take up different residences, but retain control of the family home. Instead of the children moving from place to place, you and your spouse would rotate between the family home (during parenting time) and your new home.  In theory, nesting makes it easier on you and your children in several ways:

• Their lives aren’t constantly disrupted by packing and unpacking and traveling back and forth between two environments.
• They feel less pulled in two directions, including feeling detached from their social circles because they may not be close enough to their core set of friends while visiting one parent.
• You may feel more like you’re at home with your children than just visiting with them.
• You can be more creative about your parenting time.
• It makes it easier for you to maintain friendships that you spent time building in your neighborhood that are sometimes lost through divorce.

No matter how complicated your divorce is, there are resources to simplify your parenting plan that strategically allow you to parent your children separately, but together. Your children will be better off, as will the both of you when you are open to using unconventional methods for creating a healthy, workable parenting plan.

If you have reached the point where you believe it’s time to talk about divorce, the compassionate Bethesda family law attorneys at McCabe Russell, P.A. are ready to provide you with the advice that you need to get started. We understand that divorce is never an easy decision and when you have children, you have an added layer of worry to overcome. To speak with a member of our experienced legal team call 443-812-1435, or we invite you to reach out to us through our contact form.