With more parents working, the weekends can be vitally important
to families. If you work Monday through Friday, the weekend
is really the only time that you have to spend with your children,
because they are in school during the week. This is why most
exchanges in joint custody situations occur on either a Friday
or a Sunday. If the weekends don’t work for your family, however,
you can adapt. If you have two consecutive days off during
the week, it can make a lot more sense to have the children
on those two days. Taking time with the kids during the week
can allow you to be there for more of the day-to-day things-
homework, sports practice, dinner and bedtime. It’s usually
not a good idea to split siblings up unless you have older
children who know where they want to live. You should make
every effort to spend time alone with each of them.
If your children are of school age, and you work from 9 to
5 each day, you have a few options. They include: taking them
for a week at a time, from Sunday evening to Friday evening
and every other weekend, or just weekends, or alternating
weekends. Whenever you will spend more than four or five days
away from your children, you should try to spend a few hours
with them somewhere in the middle of that time. If you can’t
make it to see them, call them a few times.
Holidays can be a sticky situation. It’s not usually a good
idea to alternate time within a single holiday; rather, you
should alternate from year to year on important days. Arrange
them so the parent getting one major holiday doesn’t get the
next one. If the parents cooperate, birthdays, Christmases,
and other days don’t have to be an exercise in frustration.
It can be a lot easier to get time with your children if you
both live in the same community, and both parents should share
the job of getting the kids back and forth to visits.
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