Difference between revisions of "Parenting Apart"

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Things to think about:

====Unequal time====

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By the time the child is in his or her early teens, the week-on/week-off arrangement can be extended to two weeks with each parent. This will change as the teenager gets older, and his or her preferences should be taken into account around age 14. Some parents even wind up working on a month-on/month-off arrangement with older teens; again, though, this will depend on the parents and the child.

A ''parenting plan'' is a written agreement describing how issues involving the care of children will be handled, typically with a long-term view which addresses how visitation and other arrangements should evolve as the children grow up and mature. Parenting plans are most common when the children are very young when their parents separate, say age five or less.

In other words, a visitation schedule can't be static, it has to be able to evolve with time. This is precisely what a parenting plan is intended to address.

Parenting plans can be included in separation agreements or, but not usually, in court orders. (The best you're likely to get in a court order is a statement about guardianship rights and visitation for the present, with a provision requiring a review of those arrangements in a fixed amount of time.) Parenting plans can also stand on their own as a separate document altogether.

#much of the legal language in the Benchbook plan is suited to American law and won't be suitable for British Columbia parenting plans; you'll have to adapt the terminology accordingly;

#this plan only describes one visitation schedule. Nothing is stopping you from playing with the parenting plan and changing it to include visitation schedules that will evolve as the children grow up.

There are lots of stumbling blocks that can crop up in preparing a visitation schedule, and it can be very difficult to anticipate all the "special days" that you might want to address. Most often, these special days are things like Mothers' Day or Fathers' Day, the children's birthdays and religious holidays.

====Weekends====

It is important that weekends be shared to avoid the children developing a bad parent/fun parent view. It is rarely a good idea to come up with a schedule that gives one parent all of the children's weekends.

Make sure that statutory holidays and school Professional Development days are taken account when you work out a visitation schedule. Many schedules which require a parent to return the child on Sunday evening, for example, allow that the child be returned on Monday evening if the Monday is a statutory holiday.

When you're working out your visitation schedule, don't forget about special days like birthdays, Fathers' Day, Mothers' Day, religious holidays and so forth. Some (but not all) parents do things like alternating the children's birthdays, or making special arrangements for extra time on Fathers' Day and Mothers' Day.

For religious holidays, like Christmas, many parents work out a plan so that in even-numbered years, one parent will have the children from Christmas Eve to the afternoon of Christmas day, and the other parent will have them from the afternoon on Christmas to the evening of Boxing Day, a schedule which reverses on odd-numbered years. Be creative about scheduling these sorts of special days. In the case of Passover, for example, some parents alternate the first and second nights each year.

The main school holidays are the winter break (usually about two to two-and-a-half weeks), the spring break (a week or two weeks) and the summer holiday (slightly more than two months). These holidays can be split up, shared between parents every other year, or treated as if the child was in school.

Particularly during the summer, both of the parents should have a fair chunk of time with the children during school holidays. Summers don't have to be split equally — some people's work schedules just won't give them that much time off — but each parent should at least have a solid week with the children. During times like this, the usual visitation schedule is suspended so that each parent's holiday visits are uninterrupted.

No child, particularly children under the age of twelve, should be able to dictate the time they spend with the other parent. Sometimes children will not want to leave a parent because of a sort of separation anxiety, at other times reluctance is meant intended to show loyalty to the parent the child is leaving.

If the child's refusal is sudden and the child is highly resistant to the visit, you may want to take the child to a counsellor to confirm that the reasons for the child's refusal are not serious.

Children need stability and constancy in their lives. It is disruptive to both them and the other parent when a parent misses a scheduled visit, cancels at the last minute or just fails to show up at all. This is an absolute no-no. Both parents need to be able to rely on a fixed visitation schedule; this benefits the child by giving them a reliable routine, and it benefits both parents by allowing them to plan their life apart from the child. Some flexibility both both parents is a wonderful thing, but a situation where one parent is constantly backing out, cancelling or changing dates is not good for anyone.

From the point of view of the parent expecting the children to be picked up, there is precious little that can be done to enforce access on a disinterested parent. The court cannot compel someone to see their children when they don't want to. What you must consider is whether the disruption and disappointment the children experience warrants stopping the other parent's access altogether.

There are quite a lot of public and community resources available to help parents deal with parenting issues, including issues arising while the parents are together. No matter what your circumstances are, if you are having problems, get help. Whether that help involves reading a book or a pamphlet, or going to a seminar or meeting with a support group, your children are worth it.

The Parenting After Separation Program is offered in Cantonese and Mandarin in Surrey, Richmond and Vancouver, call 604-684-1628. The program is also offered in Punjabi and Hindi in those areas, call 604-597-0205.

<blockquote>604-291-3548 phone<br>

604-291-5846 fax</blockquote>

There are lots of good books about parenting after separation available at your local bookstore, included the following (my favourites are in bold):

*Helping Children Cope with Divorce, by A. Teyber

===Recommended Reading for Children===