Question About Co-Parenting

I co-parent my 9 year-old daughter with my ex. Co-parenting does not mean that the child sees both parents every day. The time spent with each parent may not even be equal. To me, co-parenting means cooperative parenting where both parents are equally actively involved in decision-making and caring for the child. In our case, this means equal time with our daughter and equal say in the decisions about her activities and well-being.

Our schedule works like this, this is my time with my daughter:
Week 1: Sun, Mon, Tues, Fri, Sat
Week 2: Tues, Wed
Repeat
We switch on Sunday, mid-day

This has worked well for us since we separated when she was 4 1/2. She does not have an unstable or confusing home life. She absolutely has a sense of home. If you ask her, she will tell you that she has two homes, and two parents. She is allowed to take her things between houses as she chooses. She has pets at both houses, adequate clothing and toys at each house, friends in each neighborhood.

This type of arrangement can, IMO, only work if the parents have a good open relationship. Switching more often and during a school week means that the parents need to be aware of the schedule, homework, outside activities, etc. Both have to share the responsibility for having sports equipment at the right home on the right days, homework in the school backpack, library books back when they need to be, etc.

Her dad and I talk, email, or text almost every day about these details.

In our case, no money (child support) changes hands. We have a joint checking account that we each contribute to monthly according to our incomes and all our daughter's expenses are paid out of that account. We reevaluate periodically to see if we have enough money in there and if our incomes have changed. We discuss larger purchases but the day-to-day things we pay for without needing to check in.

I understand that our relationship is not like many divorced peoples'. My ex's first divorce and aftermath was an almost two decade disaster that damaged my two stepkids (now 29 & 27) lives. There was constant fighting, secrecy, deception, lawyers and court actions. He and I worked together through all this, to do the best we could for the kids. We swore that we would never do that to each other and to our daughter, and we have both abided by this.

Not all divorced couples can have as open and flexible an arrangement as we have. We discuss schedule often, make adjustments for special events, switch days if work or other obligations come up, and don't deny our daughter the chance to be part of extended family events because of some rigid schedule.

To me, this is what co-parenting is. It is putting the child(ren) truly first and acting like adults.

I totally agree with Sue W. This is the relationship that I share with my ex. It is all about the kiddo. Dad lives 10 minutes away. Little man has 2 houses and has a full bedroom at both houses. I take him to school and Dad picks up him and has him until I get off work. We have a very open communication system. And if you don't have that openness then co-parenting will not work because someone is always trying to out do the other parent. The way we look at it is our son deserves the best from both of us even though we cannot live under the same roof.

The families that I have personally observed sharing responsibilities like this are in chaos. The kids have no sense of "home". It is an unstable life, like you said.

One friend, who is still legally married but hubby is living with his girlfriend, is having to take her son to a counselor over it. The boy doesn't want to be around the other lady. He is rather a momma's boy so this does not surprise me. The girl wants to come home so she can be in her own room and not in one that she is sharing with the lady's older daughter. She wants her own toys and things.

It is really hard on them.

Another friend had a very messy divorce and he basically has her over a barrel. He had tons of money and got a huge attorney who ran right over this friend. Her oldest daughter is over 18 now but still lives with mom. The brother has Autism and does not speak, he is in the high school special ed program. The girl is just 8. She is under court order to be present at her father's house every other day. The day before, when she is picked up by mom she starts crying and begging her mom to not make her go back to her dads, that night at her moms it's all she can think about, when she wakes up the next morning she is happy for a while then starts thinking about in a few hours she has to go back to dads and starts the crying all over again.

Her dad is just a loud ex husband kind of guy. You see all his bad points and can't remember anything good about him. He is not hurting her, he is not touching her, he's not even yelling or bossing her around. He takes her out to eat, they do do stuff together, there is nothing she wants to do with him.

I think once she is old enough to be allowed to ask the judge to stop the visits that she will be lined up to petition the court to stop them.

Now, on the other hand. If a couple who are both loving and kind parents can get along. If they can both be at the Saturday/Sunday soccer game without fighting, if they can be a dance recital, school play, any activity the kids have then they are doing what is best for their child.

If they can show respect for each other, perhaps even become friendly then the child has the best of both worlds. But I still think a child needs to have a place that is designated as their permanent home. I think switching back and forth and back and forth is crazy, unsettling, confusing, mean, demeaning and should not be done. That is NOT to say that spending the night at one place or the other during the week is bad, just that having no place that is home is hard.

My ex lives about 5 minutes away but he does not see our daughter every day. It's not that he doesn't want to, but he works late and often times, he doesn't get out until she's asleep. I would never agree to have her switch houses on a weekly basis. I think that's unfair to her and does not provide the stability she needs at this age. Basically we have a set schedule for weekends, where she goes to his place every other weekend, and then we have sort of an open door policy, where he's welcomed to come over (calling first to make sure it's ok) or if he has a day off from work, he'll let me know and he'll pick her up from school and spend the rest of the day with her. That usually happens once every other week. Sometimes, he has off in the morning but she has school, so he'll at least pick her up and bring her, which isn't a lot of time, but it's something. Believe me, seeing him as much as I do is not something I necessarily want, but I want our daughter to have her dad in her life so I'm ok with it.

My husband and I have come to the verge of splitting up (he moved ou for 10 days last year) and agreed that if we split, he would get an apartment in our town, preferably in walking distance to our house, and the kids would primarily live in this house and would come and go as they please between the two places and that he would come and go too. We envisioned that on the nights I work late, he would come here in the afternoon and do the normal night routine and would leave when I got home after they were in bed. Same with Saturdays - get here early, I leave for the day, and I come back later and he leaves. This is actually what we did for a couple of weeks and it was weird and stressful.

When we were seriously discussing this, my thought was that we could get a small apartment nearby (there is a small group of townhouses literally at the end of my street) and that we, the parents, would rotate in and out of the house. I think that kids should be able to sleep in *their* room in *their* bed most of the time. He thought that this would be weird because we don't have room in our house for each of us to have our own room, so we would each be staying in our master bedroom every other week. Of course that would make future relationships difficult too and probably wouldn't work.

That said, I think it's kind of odd that parents splitting up think that it's OK to shuttle kids to and from different houses every few days or every other week but would never do the same themselves. I would think that adults are more capable of handling constantly moving around than kids are.

Anyway...the logistics and finances involved are two if the reasons we keep coming back together and working on this. At the end of the day, I'm not willing to go a week at a time without seeing my kids and neither is he. I'm not willing to tell my kids that they have to pack their bags and go sleep somewhere else every other week and neither is he. Neither one of us would do one night a week/every other weekend visits. We're not willing to give up our house and move to apartments to that we can afford two places to live, and we would both be so involved with our kids and in and out of each others' places and lives so much that we wouldn't be able to form new relationships, so we might as well stick it out until they're older.

At this point both my oldest son and my step-daughter have been abandoned by their other bio parents so we don't have to deal with visitation for them anyway, but for many years my SD lived with her mother and we had her on weekends. The arrangement was OK at best - she lived far enough away that my husband was totally unable to participate in her life during the week and it was hard for her to socialize with her friends on the weekends because she was at our house. It's definitely not something we're willing to put our other kids through though at this point.

I honestly don't know anyone whose custody situation is ideal - you either have the kids moving around constantly with 50/50, or one parent feeling like he or she is getting a raw deal with the traditional 1 night a week/every other weekend deal, or the kids are more hurt because one parent has checked out entirely. It all sucks.

I think for most, it is not possible for both parents to see a child daily. I think that most kids benefit from a routine that gives them time with one parent or the other for a duration. If the parents can truly coparent and live local to one another, they can do week on/week off. My sks' mom was not local long, so by the time they hit school age, it was not possible for them to go to her during the week (she did not have primary custody). They saw/see her EOWE, breaks and most of the summer. As they got older, it became more loose. Last weekend SD had something at school so she was here. Both DH and her mom were OK with it. Another weekend she might want to see her cousins and ask to trade. BM was always invited to all the sks' activities. Some nights I sat on one side of the gym and she on the other, but we never told her to butt out if it wasn't "her" night. Technically on her "off" week, she could have taken the kids out after school, but she rarely used it. In the summers, DH got a week of vacation and EOWE (the reverse) and one night on his "off" week.

I personally think that stability is key. Kids need a "home base". Whatever you do, give them that as a priority. It will benefit your relationship with them for them to know what to expect and not feel like they are living out of luggage.

I agree with Sue that coparenting is cooperative parenting vs parallel parenting where one parent has to do their own parenting without the help or collaboration of the other parent (say they have vastly different ideas of appropriate rules). Coparenting is not defined by time spent in each home.

It is probably different for every situation. My parents divorced when I was 10 and we had weekends at dads. Dad was at all family gatherings, and we celebrated his birthday with everyone as well. It's the best part of the situation I remember. Long weekends might be better - Friday after school till monday at school - that's almost an equal week for both parents, and gives a nice balance of consistency for everyone.

You have to be flexible with vacations, special events, etc. "Keeping score" too much is just bad for all involved.