5 Tips for Co-Parenting in the Holiday Season
The winter holidays are right around the corner. Here are some tips for co-parenting in the holiday season. By being proactive and working with your children’s other parent now, you can make the season happy and bright for everyone.
Tip #1: Commit to Co-Parenting Cooperation
The holidays are often a confusing mix of celebrations, busyness, and stress. It can be easy to fall into the old habits and antagonism that ended your marriage or dating relationship with your co-parent. For your children’s sake, if not your ex-spouse’s, double down on your commitment to cooperate with your co-parent in the holiday season to address issues that arise early and with a cool head.
Tip #2: Plan Ahead for Holiday Season Events
The holidays involve coordinating a lot of different schedules, with family members, families, schools, and friends. Celebrations that pop up at the last minute it can throw everything off and force your children to miss something important to them. Share your must-attend events with your spouse as soon as they are scheduled, adding church services, school concerts, and family gatherings into your shared calendar, even if they don’t happen during your parenting time. Ask your children what events they are most excited about. Then talk to your co-parent (ideally outside the kids’ hearing), to make sure they can attend the most important holiday events.
Tip #3: Be Flexible Where You Can
The world’s schedule won’t always line up with your parenting plan. You will need to be flexible to allow your children to attend holiday celebrations, religious services, and social events with both parents. This could mean trading days, allowing slightly longer visitation, or agreeing to celebrate Thanksgiving or Christmas on a different day. You should always put your kids’ best interests first in deciding whether to say yes to a visitation adjustment.
Tip #4: Coordinate Desired Gifts with Your Co-Parent
Visitation isn’t the only topic for co-parenting in the holiday season. Gift giving can create several co-parenting problems of its own:
Problem: Uneven Giving Budgets
When one parent has more discretionary income than the other, kids may not understand why all the best gifts come from Mom or Dad. Child support can help, but the less-privileged parent may still face accusations that they “don’t love” their children as much because they can’t afford to buy the best toys.
Problem: Duplicate Gifts & Returns
If you don’t communicate with your co-parent about gifts, there is a high chance you will duplicate one another’s efforts. This can be disappointing for kids (who “already got that”) and time consuming for parents (who have to handle the returns).
Problem: Gift Choices Creating Favoritism
Not everyone is good at choosing the right gift. If one parent is a more talented gift-giver, it could lead to children, especially teenagers, feeling like the other parent “doesn’t get them.”
Solution: Consider Combined Gift-Giving
The best solution for all these problems is to coordinate or combine gift giving. Depending on how well you and your co-parent get along, you could:
- Agree on a budget or combined pool of money for gift-buying
- Schedule a combined gift-giving session
- Put both parents’ names on the most wanted / most expensive gifts
- Label all gifts as from “Santa”
- Divide up the top wanted items, so both parents get to give a hot-ticket item
- Help kids buy, wrap, and give gifts to your co-parent (that you pay for)
Tip #5: Make Space for Negative Emotions
If this will be your first holiday season co-parenting, remember that it will likely be emotional for both you and your children. Acknowledge if your kids are sad Mom isn’t there on Christmas morning or are upset because you don’t make cookies like Dad does. Do what you can not to take those feelings personally or speak negatively about your co-parent. Instead, take this chance to create new traditions that are unique to your family, so they don’t feel the loss as acutely.
Get Help Resolving Trouble Co-Parenting in the Holiday Season
At the Cox Law Firm, our experienced and compassionate family law attorneys know how to resolve holiday co-parenting disputes. We will help you negotiate with your co-parent to help you resolve your child custody disputes. We also provide mediation services for parties who are represented by attorneys and for individuals who are representing themselves. Melanie D. Cox is a North Carolina Dispute Resolution Commission Certified Family Financial Mediator and trained to mediate custody and financial issues. If you are ready to get started, please get in touch with the Cox Law Firm by calling 704-243-9693 or visiting our Contact Page.