HOW TO ENSURE THAT YOUR PARENTING PLAN IS SUCCESSFUL
TOP TIPS
There are some steps you can take to ensure that your parenting plan is successful.
PARTY WITH WHOM THE CHILDREN LIVE.
DO’S
Be Positive About Contact
It is the responsibility of each parent to prepare the children mentally, emotionally and physically for contact with the other parent. This is done by expressing positive views about contact and encouraging the children to participate fully and wholeheartedly. You may not feel this way, but nevertheless it is in the children’s best interests if you convey to them this view or desire.
Have the children ready on time
It will assist the smooth working of the contact if you have the children ready for collection at the arranged time and respect’s the other parent’s time.
Supply necessary clothes
The children should be sent for contact in clothing and footwear suitable to the time of year. Also, if contact involves staying overnight, they should have with them necessary changes of clothing, nightwear, toothbrush etc. The precise requirements will depend upon the arrangements with your former partner.
DON’TS
Don’t change the contact arrangements arbitrarily
The contact collection arrangements will be at a specific time from a specific place. The same will be true of the return arrangements. Please stick to these arrangements unless is it absolutely necessary to make a change. Any such change should be after sufficient notice to the former partner.
PARENT SEEING THE CHILDREN
DO’S
Be consistent and reliable
Make sure to keep the contact arrangements. Otherwise, you will risk causing great disappointment to the children and damaging your relationship with them and the other parent. It is very distressing for the children if you turn up sometimes, and not at others.
Be punctual
Late collection and return will cause inconvenience to your former partner and will result in unnecessary frictions and difficulties in respect of contact.
Be responsible
Make the contact a special time with the children. Give them your time and attention. Do things of interest with them. Do not treat the contact as a burden or chore. Do not dump the children on some other person, such as a grandparent. The contact has the purpose of building and maintaining YOUR relationship with the children
Return the children in a clean and Tidy
Children will get dirty. However as far as possible you should try and return them in a clean and tidy condition. The return of dishevelled and dirty children will not do anything for the relationship and co-operation with your former partner.
DON’TS
Don’t undermine the other parent’s authority
The other parent has to discipline the children on a day-to-day basis. It helps not to undermine the discipline. Rather, you should support and add to it to the best of your ability. It is not in the children’s best interests if they are to place one parent against the other. They need to be faced with a united front.
Don’t over treat the children
It is often tempting to spoil the children when they visit. This temptation should be avoided. It is not helpful if the children see you as the parent providing the “treats” and the other parent as the one who disciplines them. Such treatment may boost your ego or fulfil your view of your relationship with the child, BUT it will do nothing for their fundamental upbringing and training.
BOTH PARENTS
Do’s
Keep the arrangements
The arrangements which have been agreed for reasonable contact should be treated as very important and given due priority. You should make every effort to stick to the arrangements. Any cancellation or alteration should only be for a good reason.
Advanced notice of change
Inevitably, occasions will arise when for a good reason one parent will need to cancel or alter the contact arrangements on a particular day. If you need to do so, then please give your former partner as much notice as possible. This is only normal courtesy. No one likes to be messed around at the last minute. Hopefully your former partner will observe the same courtesy.
Communicate
Difficulties over contact are best sorted out directly between the parents if at all possible. This means building communications between you. You may have to work at this. Suspicion, distrust, resentment and hurt may all have to be overcome. Be positive, be open to communication, and be reasonable.
If you reach a point where it is proving impossible to sort out difficulties directly, you should both consider consulting a mediation service. This is a voluntary process which aims to help former partners work out the differences and difficulties between them.
Alternatively, or a last resort, you can consult solicitors who can advise on the options, correspond with the former partner’s solicitors and/or make appropriate applications to the Court.
Dont’s
Don’t use the children as pawns
You may have been very hurt by your former partner. He or she may have made you very angry or bitter. However, please try not to use the children as “pawns” in your relationship with your former partner. In other words, don’t use the children, and in particular the contact arrangements, to get back at your former partner. There can be a great temptation to do so but such actions are, at the least, upsetting and damaging to the children. Please think of the children before giving vent to any resentment or desire for revenge against your former partner by involving the children.
Don’t poison children against your former partner
The children have to maintain a relationship with both parents. It is not helpful to them if one parent is constantly criticising and belittling the other. Whatever your personal feelings about your former partner may be, please try to keep them to yourself.
Parent’s who turn their children against their former partner generally find, that when their children grow up and are late teenagers or adults, their conduct poisons their own relationship with their adult child.
Don’t interrogate the children
Sometimes one parent asks the children a lot of questions about the other partner – what he or she is doing, who they are seeing etc. This kind of interrogation should be avoided. It is again involving the child unnecessarily in the relationship problems between the parents.
Don’t cause unnecessary frictions
Even in ordinary circumstances, the smooth working of contact arrangements can be difficult to achieve. It becomes all the harder to achieve if one parent is being unreasonable and causing unnecessary friction. Rather, do everything you can to promote good relations and the smooth working of contact arrangements.
Small talk
Do remember that both children will try and keep both parents happy. Therefore it is important to consider carefully, before becoming agitated with the actions of a former partner, that what you have been told by your child may not necessarily be wholly accurate.
Similarly, children really do say the strangest things so proceed with caution if your child says something that causes you some alarm. Try and find a neutral way of raising the issue with your partner if you do have this concern focusing on open questions.
Top Tips in contact disputes (following Channel 4′s Dispatches programme) Practical Tips by Julian Bremner