Once you have put together a co-parenting plan, it can be difficult when your co-parent doesn’t follow it. In particular, it gets frustrating when their actions impact your parenting time. When these disputes arise, it’s important to know how to settle them. That way, you can get back on track and spend that time with your kids…
Parenting Time: Managing Issues
Find the disconnect
Usually, issues with parenting time are due to miscommunication. Somewhere along the way, you and your co-parent ended up on different pages. However, many times they don’t do this on purpose. Rather, it was just a genuine mistake on their part.
That’s why you should avoid trying to pick a fight with them when this issue starts happening. Instead, try and talk to them about what’s going on. It’s possible that they didn’t realize the mistake due to that miscommunication and can quickly fix it with no drama involved.
Re-evaluate the plan
Your parenting time disputes could also be caused by your co-parenting plan. It might be the case that your plan isn’t working as you had originally hoped. As a result, it’s causing problems with how much time you can get with the kids.
In this case, you’ll both want to take another look at your plan. Now that you have tried it out, you can more clearly see what isn’t working and make changes. It may even be easier to scrap the plan entirely and try out something new which’ll better match your new schedules.
Be flexible
Flexibility is important for any co-parenting plan. It’s also a good way to handle parenting time disputes. Certain unexpected situations can make it harder for your co-parent to fully stick with your plan. However, these may just be temporary setbacks for them until they get things back under control.
Therefore, try and be flexible with them as they get reoriented. So long as it doesn’t become a constant thing, it’s okay for there to be a slight change in your plans. Plus, you doing them a favor now makes it more likely for them to do the same when you need some extra help down the line.
