Virtual Family Calendar

Create Parenting Schedule

In the age before the internet, many families kept paper calendars that noted all the important dates and agenda notes for the family. Kept in a central area of the home, everyone would pass through and perhaps glance over at the calendar.  Maybe they’d remember that they had a dentist appointment the next day, or that Mom’s birthday is coming up.  The kitchen calendar was a central hub of information vital to keeping the whole family on top of their schedule.  

Keeping a family calendar today might feel different, but in reality, only the medium has changed.  Now when visiting the kitchen, parents and kids alike have their eyes locked onto a smartphone or tablet, checking updates, posting photos, playing games or whatever else. The internet has taken over as the central hub of all kinds of information, and many people choose to use a virtual family calendar in place of paper ones.  Online calendaring especially works well when more than two or more people need access to the same schedule but cannot be in the same place, like divorced or separated parents.  

While co-parents may be living apart, they must work together as a team to keep their family in the loop of the same schedule.  Online calendaring is the most effective way for co-parents to share information about their shared parenting schedule for many reasons.  The most obvious reason is that information is easily shared and available from nearly anywhere.  Also, there is no waiting period for viewing new details.  When updates are made by one parent, the new information is available instantaneously to the other.  This makes is easy for parents to quickly address any possible discrepancies in the schedule.  

When co-parents discuss possible changes that need to be made to the schedule, a lot of what is discussed can sometimes get lost in email chains or forgotten while talking on the phone.  This can turn into a huge problem that can cause conflict that could have been avoided if things were clearly explained and properly documented.  To help avoid this issue, co-parents may choose to use an online calendar specifically designed for divorced or separated parents to document their family’s schedule.

Calendaring tools offered by the OurFamilyWizard website give parents the ability to create an organized schedule while details like what was posted, by whom, and when are always archived.  Details like the shared custody schedule, holiday custody schedule and events for the kids can all be viewed at a glance from one place.  Even when a change needs to be made to the custody schedule, there’s a simple tool that makes this an easy task.  The schedule change request tool is unique to the OurFamilyWizard calendar and offers a simple solution to proposing and making schedule changes.  These requests are made using a concise form where only the most important details about the proposed custody time swap can be entered.  This eliminates the risk of important details getting lost among other correspondence, plus the calendar will update itself when requests are approved.  

Even when parents and children are spread across two homes, it is important for everyone to stay on the same schedule to promote consistency and stability for the kids.  A virtual family calendar is an indispensable tool for really any family, but divorced or separated families can particularly benefit from this type of planner.  You can learn more about these tools and much more that can be done using the OurFamilyWizard website here.

 

NOTE: Many state and federal laws use terms like ‘custody’ when referring to arrangements regarding parenting time and decision-making for a child. While this has been the case for many years, these are not the only terms currently used to refer to these topics.

Today, many family law practitioners and even laws within certain states use terms such as ‘parenting arrangements’ or ‘parenting responsibility,’ among others, when referring to matters surrounding legal and physical child custody. You will find these terms as well as custody used on the OurFamilyWizard website.