What is your parenting time schedule and what are the pros and cons?

[Penny Lane]

This might be more of a thought experiment than actually helpful to anyone, but I'm curious about people's schedules and how they compare.

The backstory is that as my stepkids get older I really think they would benefit from a week on-week off schedule. And so would we, the parents. I can't imagine that BM would agree to any change that DH proposes so it's probably a moot point. But I'm curious about the benefits/drawbacks.

Our schedule is very complicated, it's over the course of two weeks and the kids switch every two weekdays and then again on the weekend. Drop offs happen at school.

Pros: The kids are rarely with their mom for more than a couple days at a time. They can catch up on sleep pretty quickly when they do come back. She struggles to take care of them for any longer than a couple days, so this helps her be the best parent she can. DH has structured his work schedule around the kids' schedule so he works long shifts when they're with their mom and short shifts when they're with us - I don't think he could do that on every other week.

Cons: I think if the kids were with their mom for a longer stretch she would have to either step up or cede parenting responsibility. Like, they can stay up late for a couple nights but on night 3 or 4 or 5 they'll fall asleep on the couch, and then she has to deal with the tiredness issues (which would encourage her to prevent them, I think). There's very little consistency - the kids are always forgetting who they're going to be with on any given day. Also, since there's no one day we always have them, we have to get BM's OK to sign them up for ANY weekly activity and she makes it very difficult to do that. Since they're with us for such a short period of time they miss out on the benefits of medium term stability - it seems like we just get them into a good headspace when they go back into the lion's den, emotionally. We wouldn't have to deal with so many issues about bringing homework or coats or anything else back and forth. (Basically any kind of spirit day or time when they're supposed to bring anything to school is a nightmare).

I think the schedule made more sense when they were little and struggled to be away from either parent. But now it seems like this schedule causes problems.

What has everyone else's experience been?

[mamato3]

My ex only ever had 'every other weekend' so his time was limited. That being said, DS16 was traumatized by it, and has pretty severe PTSD as a result of his father's abusive behavior and domestic violence witnessed there. He has had zero custody, zero visitation for over 2 years now, and DS is somewhat healing, but the damage has been done. Pros: time was limited; Cons: any amount of time was too much

[Stepping lightly]

Hi PL,

I have always been amazed that you guys handle the schedule that you currently have, I would think it's more or less worst case scenario.  With more frequent exchanges, there is more ability for the PD to influence that activities and behavior during your time.  Not to mention, the kids don't get a chance to settle in and just be at one house for any period of time. 

We used to have one week on, one week of- it was a nightmare for us, but it was better than what I think a more frequent exchange schedule would look like.  The kids have a week at a time to feel like they know what is going to happen and know there will be at least somewhat (at your home) consistent expectations.   In our case it did make it easier for things like childcare on non school days (summer camps) because you just decided what would happen during your week, and BM decides what happens during her week.  It also helps with maintaining school work because you will likely have more ability to manage it's progress or ensure studying is done for tests during your week.  When I first met DH, they exchanged on Wednesdays, which was disruptive for school breaks.  We changed to Friday exchanges, which was much better.   When we were Weds-Weds it was tough to take vacations because of school break timing, you'd only get half the week ever.

I can say though, in our experience, week to week was still HIGHLY interactive with BM.  We are EOW now, something had to give it was so incredibly bad.   BM is still doing very bad things, but the kids aren't in the middle of a war between their parents, and we are in a much better emotional position when they come back to us.  We know she'll likely still try to take our weekends and vacations away, but we threw in towel a bit caring about "what would a judge think" for every decision (it didn't matter a hill of beans when we were in that mindset).  We parent and live now how we would if the custody situation didn't exist...or as much as possible.

[Findingmyvoice]

PL,
When exBPDw first started getting regular visitation it was very back and forth much like your schedule.
The kids hated it, they felt like they were "always" at her house.  They didn't get a long enough break from her to return to normal, they would always come back with conflict and issues that were unresolved.  The day after a visit was usually a write off, I had to spend hours of one on one time with each kid to decompress and deal with the issues.  It was also difficult to manage clothing / school bags / sports equipment.
The few longer stretches where the kids were in my care feel like a nice break, it's nice to have a full week with your kids with no drama.

Our schedule right now has the kids with me 9 or 10 days out of 14.  She gets four nights in a row every second weekend and a mid week overnight.  I rarely hear from exBPDw when the kids are in my care for the long stretch. 
When the kids are with her, I hear from her constantly.  There is always a problem and it is always my fault.

Fewer custody switches results in less conflict with the ex, less anxiety for the kids,the kids have a longer period to adjust and have a normal home life, overall it is less chaotic.  There are less opportunities for the ex to cause issues when she doesn't see the kids for 5 or 6 days in a stretch.
It is also easier on me emotionally, I have become pretty good at dealing with her barbs, insults, accusations, threats, manipulation, etc, but it's easier because I have an actual break from it.

Our pickup and dropoff happens at our homes, which adds some opportunity for drama. exBPDw doesn't let me know if pickup or dropoff is changing.  At times she will decide to pick kids up earlier or later or at a different location without letting me know.  She has also randomly dropped the kids off at my home during her parenting time without letting me know.  Sometimes it is to pick up belongings, other times it has been for them to meet friends.  My children are older so it's not as weird as it sounds aside from the fact that exBPDw has no respect for boundaries on this sort of thing.

Pickup and dropoff at home makes exchanging the kids belongings much easier.  The kids basically keep everything at my home as a home base, so when they go to exBPDws they just take what they will need for the overnight or weekend.

[Penny Lane]

Thanks guys. I don't know what I was really hoping for here (like I said, I can't imagine that BM will agree to a change). But Stepping Lightly THANK YOU for the validation that this schedule is ridiculous.

I forgot to say the thing that I personally like least about the schedule, which is that it requires every other day drop offs over the summer. BM uses this rare chance to try to engage DH REGULARLY. Stuff like, pounding on the window of his car yelling at him while he tries to pick up the kids. The unknown of what she's going to do this time is really stressful.

FMV I remember some of your story but do you mind telling us how you ended up with so much more parenting time? Was there some kind of incident or did she agree to it during the divorce, or something else?

I've thought a lot about what my personal ideal schedule would be. Like if it didn't have to be 50-50. To mamato3's point I don't think our BM is so bad that (even if I had the power) I would restrict her completely from seeing the kids. I think something like your schedule FMV would allow her the opportunity to be the best parent she can be. She can usually hold it together for about 2-3 days before she loses her shit. But again if that were the schedule she would probably use those weekends to try to alienate the kids, make every weekend special and expensive, and try to convince them that they'd want to live with her full-time. So there's no winning with a PD.

Ultimately she'd try to cause problems no matter what so I guess the schedule isn't really the culprit. Interesting stuff though, to see the differences in how it works out.

[Whiteheron]

FMV's schedule is the same one we started out with. stbx would get four nights in a row eow and one night on the off week. So a total of five nights out of 14 days. The reason we started out with this reduced schedule was the psych evaluation. They wanted to start off with this to see if stbx (with his dx mental illness) could handle it. It was (is) supposed to be temporary.

We do all drop offs and pick ups at his house for now. I can't mentally handle him anywhere near my house. He wanted a neutral location and suggested someplace very private. I suggested the Town Hall (which houses our police station). He balked.

My kids also treat my house as home base. They leave most of their stuff here and used to take things to his house as needed.

[sevenyears]

PL - wow that is a really tough schedule for all involved. We have a week on/week off schedule. it was supposed to be temporary but has been in place for over a year now with no end in sight. The children skype nightly with the other parent. We have been doing this for a year. While the children have adapted to it, it is still stressful for them. DD7 gets stomach aches and tells me that she wants to stay with me. (uocpdxh is controlling and authoritarian - he says she wants to stay with me because I am too permissive). DS4 gets quite angry with me.

Stepping LIghtly summed a lot of this up for me too.

During the week they are with their father, he winds them up, treats them as SG/GC, and complains about me to them. One of the other difficulties for them is that they never know when he will erupt with anger. And, our parenting styles are vastly different, to say the least. When they come to me, they have a lot of steam to let off and issues to work through. Because of this, it takes extra time for the children to learn new habits.  When I first moved out, our place was far away from DD's school, making it hard for her to play with friends afterwards. A few months ago, I moved to a place close to her school - so she can play with her friends afterwards, and even some friends from her other neighborhood (my old one before moving out) have come over to our place.

The week to week is also expensive because children need two of everything, or they have a tremendous amount to transfer back and forth. Right now, our transfers are during the weekend, which breaks it up quite a bit. I hope that once our custody is settled, we can arrange the transfers before and after school.

Ideally, I would like a schedule like others have where the children are with me 9/10 days and with him 4/5 days during a two week period. It would let uocpdxh be at his best and give the children a lot more stability. Unfortunately, I doubt the court will decide in my favor on this.

[cant turn back]

My DD is 16.  We have week on-week off.  We exchange on Mondays after school, we have a midweek visit of 5 hours (after school and dinner) when it is not the custodial week.  After almost two years.. it works alright.  My ExH has done well enough, though DD16 tends to have less structure and rules at her father's house (he can't risk upsetting her) which inevitably makes me the parent who she gets mad at more often (the bad guy).  It is very good to have a week at a time with her, though after I take her back to her dad's house on alternating Mondays, well, those Monday nights are very quiet and empty.  On the upside, I know she is happy enough to get back to her dad's house, if nothing else, to see their puppy whom she loves.  When I moved out I bought her all sorts of clothes and makeup and stuff so she wouldn't have to schlep her stuff back and forth every week.  It didn't work.  She has things she likes that she wants to have with her all the time, which of course I totally understand.  Also, given that she has her cell phone, we remain connected throughout the week, I text her good morning and goodnight every day, as well as whatever other stuff comes up during the day.  I know she and her dad text like this as well.  I can see that he texts her pictures and videos of their puppy and how much the puppy misses her when she's at my house, blah blah blah (nauseating and transparent).  Either way the puppy creates a warm and soft landing for DD16 at her dad's house , so it's all good.  Meanwhile my ExH and I don't communicate much, never in person.  He is the wounded child/victim and he avoids me at all costs (which has its upside)... except in email where he can throw his barbs.. unbeknownst to everyone else, most of all DD16.

Penny Lane,
As the kids get older it goes make more sense to go for longer periods of time, though, it seems unlikely that bio mom will cooperate, if for no other reason than because she knows this is what you guys want. 

[Findingmyvoice]

PL,
I chose to leave with my kids and stay at my parent's home.  I was able to get a ex partie restraining order and interim parenting order based on her history and mental condition.
exBPDw had just been released from the psych ward (she went voluntarily) and her behavior was escalating.
Our current schedule is also temporary, we have no agreement and divorce seems a long way off at the current pace.
exBPDw has been getting progressively more parenting time even though she is still a disaster as far as parenting is concerned.
Initially it was short supervised visitation, followed by longer visits supervised by a family member, to overnights with drop in family member supervision, to no supervision at all and then to the current schedule.

In hindsight, I should have applied for the restraining order while I was in our home and she was in the hospital, but I could not bring myself to do it.
I felt that I had to give her yet another chance to see if the new medication and therapy would work.
If I had stayed in the home it would have given me control of the home and belongings. I would have been fair with the belongings in our home and allowing her access to her belongings and all of the things that go along with dealing with separation.
But since she was left with the home it took me a year and a half to get my personal belongings, some things I will never get back and I have decided to stop trying.  I basically got most of the things I started out with 20 years ago, which is not much, and whatever scraps she decided to leave behind.  The home is still a major issue, she showed no signs of going anywhere until I got a new home then she announced she was moving out within a few months (strangely enough she only moved a few blocks away from our marital home to a home that is very similar).  She left a huge mess for me to clean up and stopped paying any of her bills.  Last week she left her disconnection notices at my house for bills that are in her name and she hasn't paid for 3 months.  Unfortunately I now have to keep up the vacant property until it sells.

Dropoff and pick up at her home were disasterous for the first 6 months or more.  My daughter asked me to come to the door of her house because it made it easier for them to leave.  exBPDw would not let them leave the home when I got there and would get angry if they wanted to leave.  That gave exBPDw the opportunity to shout and cause drama on the doorstep regularly when I came to the door.  Even when I was just waiting at the curb she would come out to my vehicle and make a scene, stand inside the door of my vehicle and make it difficult for me to leave.  I agree that it is very stressful.  I would go cold and sweaty each time I had to pick the kids up.

It's better now, but she still does the same things occasionally.  Two weeks ago I had a few things to return to her and I put them on her doorstep.  She must have been waiting at the door because she opened the door and started insulting me and calling me a coward (for leaving her belongings).  Then she came to my vehicle and started accusing me of stealing money and hair products from her and she threatened to call the police.  She wouldn't let my daughter close the door and she stood there making accusations while recording video on her phone.  No one stole anything from her, she was demanding that my daughter return money that exBPDw had given to her (some of it had been spent by my daughter).

I don't know how I would be holding up if we still had to do exchanges every couple of days.
It's a lot of extra time and mileage to do the exchanges as well.  We don' live too far apart now, its about a 10 to 15 minute drive.

My new SO has also moved to a week on a week off.  She has a very amicable separation, lives within walking distance of her ex and they tried a few different schedules but the switches back and forth are hard on the kids and parents no matter what.
PL, I would think that lawyers and judges know this and would decide in favor of having longer periods of time with fewer switches.

[Magnolia34]

When I first met DH he had the kids Monday-Friday and BM had them Friday after school until Sunday evening. That actually went pretty well (obviously, because he had the most influence). When DH and I got engaged she took him back to court for full custody (accusing us of various kinds of abuse). No one bought it but they did give her 50/50 custody. The kids go back and forth on Sunday evenings.
As the child of parents who are still married even this makes me super anxious but I really think it's best case scenario. Our kids are pretty good and don't have much of a "transition" period. Sometimes they'll come back slightly grumpy or tired but we try to take things really easy on Sundays so everyone can readjust.

As someone else suggested, it also makes it easier to schedule activities. BM has never agreed to  let the kids participate in an activity we've suggested so we just do the best we can to sign them up for activities on our time. Summer camps, etc. We just make sure it's something that falls on our week.

The only downside I have for this schedule is somewhat situational, I think. The parent coordinator who became involved to help sort out our custody mess suggested a "midweek visit" which BM has hung onto for dear life. Our kids are older, 10-15, so it's not like they're tiny kids who get "homesick" for a parent in a week's time. I'm sure they MISS their mom or dad when they're at the other's house but we mostly get the sense that the kids just want to "be" wherever they are. Interactions and back and forths (even phone calls) with BM are usually difficult and chaotic so the more distance and separation we can create usually means things go a little smoother. However, for the last year she has insisted on taking the kids for dinner one night during our week. That makes it REALLY hard, especially with other activities, to get into a groove during the week. We have to make sure homework and other things are caught up before Wednesday because she refuses to do those things on "her time" insisting that it's our week. So instead of helping the kids get those things out of the way earlier in the evening, they come home at 8 and we have to scramble to do homework, get showers, etc. It's not the worst, but just a heads up, if you attempt to switch to week on/off the midweek visits are a PAIN.

With "normal" divorce/custody situations I don't think it would be AS big of a deal to do a dinner at the other parent's house in the middle of the week. But BM has clearly held onto this as a way to have some control over our weeks/lives and it can just get really frustrating. It's a shame it can't be more collaborative and cooperative. Oh well.

[Penny Lane]

Thanks again everyone! It's really interesting to hear the different ways that people do it.

FMV, thanks for coming back to share. DH's ex is not as outwardly troubled as yours, so I guess we're probably not at the threshold where a judge would order a change like that. I would, however, describe her as "a disaster as far as parenting is concerned" - but as you all know it's really hard to convince a judge of that. Also, I REALLY hear you about the restraining order thing. Sometimes the most strategic option, court-wise, isn't a good choice overall. But then you end up kicking yourself like, would the kids be in a better position if I hadn't made this choice? I try to remember that we always do the best we can with the information we have. But it's HARD.

Another thing I forgot to mention: Basically every holiday is listed in their parenting plan, and they have a ton of vacation time. I get why DH did it like that - he really likes to travel and so do I and this gives us some extra long stretches - but it makes for a LOT of schedule changes, which makes everything even more confusing. That's kind of a separate issue from the weekly schedule, but it contributes to an overall feeling of chaos.

BM has been doing really badly lately and escalating a LOT. I think court is almost inevitable, if not now then in six months. I'm going to start talking to him about pushing for a schedule change. I'm so tired of this schedule, I don't think anyone likes it including the kids. It sounds like you are all saying, week on-week off with a PD still sucks majorly, but decreasing the number of exchanges might make for slightly less stress on a day to day basis. Well, I'll take anything we can get!

This is probably still me trying to "fix" things that are unfixable. So maybe I'll work on some radical acceptance stuff in the meantime.

[Arkhangelsk]

Hey Penny Lane,

We do week on, week off for summers - which is great.  During the school year we are 2-2-3 (M, T with me - send the kid to school W morning, W,Th with Dad.  Weekends alternate.  So, one weekend he keeps them F, S, Sun and they come to me after school M, then other, I get them afterschool F).  I like this - because M and T are always mine.  This lets us plan activities for each kid that can happen each of those nights.  And it lets us stay in touch with homework and the rhythm of their school week.

My ex fought the summer schedule.  The judge ordered it.  I was glad to get to test it summer only and realize it would be hard to manage for the school year.  In the summer, it is pretty great.

[Penny Lane]

Oh wow Arkhangelsk. That schedule actually sounds like it makes a lot of sense. I would looooove to have less exchanges in the summer and more consistency in the school year, while keeping the benefits of our current schedule. Yours might accomplish that, maybe more than even every other week year round.

The right of first refusal issues have continued to bubble up (she is violating it just about every day, it turns out, and refuses to offer that time to DH while at the same time increasingly harassing us to try to "catch" us violating it, which we don't.) I see them being headed to court over this and it could potentially lead to a schedule change. I guess at this point H and I need to talk about what our goals would be if it does get there.

In the meantime, radical acceptance!

[sevenyears]

"Sometimes the most strategic option, court-wise, isn't a good choice overall. But then you end up kicking yourself like, would the kids be in a better position if I hadn't made this choice? I try to remember that we always do the best we can with the information we have. But it's HARD."

PL - yes, this. 

[Arkhangelsk]

Penny Lane,

My judge lets my ex get away with all kinds of violations of our order.  Just sending sympathy for the fact that you have this set of rules hanging over you and she gets away with not following them.