When you have a child with someone you are no longer in a relationship with and you still both want to play a role in the kid’s life, it’s important to designate communication as a top priority. Tensions can quickly rise if you’re left out of the loop on your child’s updates or if you fail to forward information to your co-parent. 

Having clear expectations in place from both parties regarding how your child’s information is communicated is good for everyone. Miscommunication is less likely to happen between the adults, and the child doesn’t have to be the informational go-between. So as you’re getting communication procedures in place with your co-parent, here are a few suggestions.

1. Use and Share Your Electronic Calendars

Depending on the relationship with your child’s other parent, there might be times when custody is swapped by mutual agreement. It might be because the scheduled parent is unavailable due to an emergency or a required work function. Alternatively, it might be more convenient for the child to stay with their other parent because of proximity to a school or extra curricular activity event. 

There can be a great deal of back and forth when figuring out schedules and drop offs and pick ups. Some of that direct communication will always be necessary, but using and sharing electronic calendars can minimize miscommunication and provide additional documentation as to what changes have been proposed and agreed upon. Sharing calendars is a simple process and is usually available with any major electronic calendar. Just a quick search on how to share Outlook calendar or Google calendar information will have you connected in minutes.

Maybe you have a situation where you need to take your mother in for a routine surgery. If the surgery is scheduled during your custody time, you can look at the shared calendar with your child’s other parent and see if they have availability during that time. If the other parent’s schedule is open, you can message them to see if they would be open to taking the child during the surgery so they don’t need to sit at the hospital all day with you. 

If the other parent agrees on the updated arrangement, send them a calendar invitation. Once they accept, the updated custody time and any related drop off and pick up changes will show up on your shared calendars. It might seem like an extra step, but it shows additional evidence of the change being proposed and accepted by the other party. Not only that, but your calendar will send both parties notifications so no one should forget the updated schedule.

2. Send Regular Scheduling Summaries in Writing

Even when parents live in the same household, there are times when miscommunication happens. The child might have informed one parent about something they need to bring to school, but the other parent hasn’t been made aware of that update. Cue the morning of the school event when the child doesn’t have their required item because one parent forgot and the other didn’t know anything about it.

When parents don’t live together, there are even more opportunities for information to not make it to both parties. That’s why it’s a great idea to send regular summaries to the other parent on a set schedule. For example, if each parent has the child in their home Monday through Sunday and swap every other week, the parent who had the child during the previous week could send a summary email or text to the other parent on the transfer day.

The correspondence should cover any information or scheduling updates the child mentioned during the week and a recap of the parent’s understanding of the upcoming week’s schedule. That way, any new information is passed to the other parent, and if there are any discrepancies in expectations for the upcoming week, they can be addressed.

Doing so in writing is much better than having a conversation. It allows each parent to reference what was sent and ensure that the email or text did include everything that needed to be shared. If one parent becomes uncooperative for any reason, the other parent can continue to send summaries, therefore providing support for adherence to the original communication agreement should the issue ever be raised in court. Verbal communication is easy to misrepresent or fabricate, but written communication is much more solid. 

3. Minimize “Info Forwarding” 

Updates and last minute scheduling changes for school, extracurriculars, and other child activities typically get announced to parents via text and/or email lists. If only one parent is on the mailing list, that means information is constantly required to be forwarded on to the other parent. Forgetting to do so can mean the other parent might have the wrong pickup time or be unaware that an event has been canceled. These lapses in communication can cause frustration for parents and instability for children.

An easy fix for this that often gets overlooked is having a mutual agreement that all email and texting communication lists need to include both parents. If one parent is more involved with school pickup and the other parent is the one who enrolled the child in dance lessons, it might seem logical that the more involved parent is the only one who needs to be included in correspondence. It might work well until there’s a single change or update that the other parent would like to be aware of but is left out of the loop.

Requiring both sets of contact information on all activity and school communication lists is a good policy for multiple reasons. It eliminates the need for parents to be the “middleman” in forwarding information. Also, it takes away the stress of other parents and organizations making judgment calls on who to include for different activities. If the joint communication requirement is a policy for both parents, then it gets done every time no matter how much or little each parent is involved in the activity.

Communicate Like a Responsible Adult

Co-parenting can be difficult. Different households will have different expectations for their kids, but parents should try to be on the same page for important decisions and updates. Adhering to set communication rules can go a long way toward keeping co-parenting relationships amicable and providing stability and security for the children.