7 Back-To-School Tips for Divorced Parents
It’s almost time for back-to-school, and for parents that means a flurry of activity buying school supplies, getting sports uniforms ready, and helping children adjust to earlier bedtimes and new routines. For divorced or separated co-parents, however, preparing for a successful school year comes with an added checklist of important to-do items.
How ready are you and your child’s co-parent for that first bell to ring? Here are 7 tips to help make the start of the new school year a seamless adjustment for all of you.
Review your parenting time plans
Most co-parents have a distinct summertime parenting time/visitation schedule that divides time with their children around work and summer camp schedules and/or vacation time with each parent. Once the school year starts, it’s typical to then switch to a school year schedule for the next 10 months. Review how your parenting schedule may be changing and ask yourself whether this schedule still works for you and your child. If your child now has soccer practice on Tuesday nights until 8 pm, when that is your allocated evening with your child to eat dinner and do homework together, you may wish to switch nights, or come up with other alternate arrangements. Now is the time to start making plans for any upcoming changes. Many co-parents are able to work adjustments in parenting time between themselves, putting their revised agreements in writing.
Get organized
Once you have the school’s calendar for the year (typically available on a school district’s website), schedule a meeting with your ex at some neutral locale where each of you brings a paper calendar or uses your favorite calendar app to map out your family’s schedule from September to June — including parenting time plans for school breaks, holidays, long weekends, extracurricular activities that require pick ups and drop offs, and/or early release days, keeping in mind your child custody agreement. Things may change as the year progresses, but having a basic plan in place is a good starting point. If you want to make changes in your parenting schedule for more time with your children, this meeting is a good chance to intimate a discussion.
Special note: We’re not quite out of the Covid woods yet, so part of your “get organized” meeting should be spent making an emergency plan on how you will both respond in the event that a public health emergency (Covid or otherwise) forces school closures or results in the need for online learning from home. Also create additional plans for snow days and other bad weather days, and days when your child may need to come home from school sick.
Make a list of expenses for back-to-school and the school year
Buying new clothes, school supplies, soccer uniforms, equipment for the science fair, and more. Spending money on school quickly adds up, which makes August a good time to review how well child support covers school-related expenses. This is especially important if you have a child making the leap between elementary and middle school or middle and high school when supply requirements (graphing calculator, anyone?) and extracurricular activities usually become more costly. Look to your child support agreement for how much is currently designated for school expenses. This can usually be found on a line in the child support calculation labeled “entertainment,” “miscellaneous,” or school. You can work out an agreement with your ex on sharing increased expenses or ask the courts to recalculate your order with updated expenses.
Is your child planning to take private lessons or participate in an elite program to nurture an academic or athletic talent they may have? The courts sometimes consider these “exceptional” costs as ones that parents need to share. You may wish to approach your ex first to see what you can work out on your own (and get it in writing) or go back to the courts to formally change your support order to include sharing of any “gifted and talented” expenses.
One extra tip: Be aware that as the parent with the strongest desire to enroll the child in “above and beyond” extracurriculars that you may need to shoulder more (or all) of the costs. The same goes for one parent choosing to send a child to a private school. If you want this, but your co-parent does not, the courts may or may not share the costs between you.
Verify all phone numbers and addresses
You know that a flurry of school paperwork awaits parents at the beginning of the school year, requiring names and addresses of each parent, emergency contact information, and other relevant information. Have you decided which one of you will be responsible for filling out this paperwork? Does the parent filling out paperwork have the correct phone numbers and address for the other parent? Make this a priority to nail down before the first day of school.
For some families, there are strict orders about who can and can’t pick the child up from school. Make sure this paperwork is up to date and filed with the school prior to the first day.
Make contact with the guidance counselor
If you are newly divorced, or you and your spouse have gone through a separation since the end of the previous school year, let the school know about these changes in your child’s life as soon as possible. Your child’s teachers may still be on vacation right up until school begins, but other school personnel are there throughout the summer, including the school principal and guidance counselors. Try to make an appointment with the guidance counselor, in person or over the phone, to share information — a general summary of how your child is doing and your custody situation can be helpful. If he or she is not available, speak to the principal. The guidance counselor may wish to have a check in appointment with your child or be able to make a therapist referral.
Don’t Make Your Child a Messenger
Make plans for how to keep in communication with the school. Should the school send out announcements to both of you? Or is one of you the “point parent” for keeping track of snow days, concert dates and field trips? Come to a decision now to avoid frustration or confusion later. And if you are the one in charge of school information, remember it’s you who are responsible for communicating dates to your ex, not your child. “Mom says we have an early release day next week so you need to pick me up.” “Our class field trip is an overnight one so I won’t be here next Friday.” It seems easy enough to task your child with letting your ex-spouse know about upcoming schedule changes, but this information really needs to be coming from you. Want to talk to your ex as little as possible? Send a text or email – this also creates a written record, so your ex can’t later claim, “but I didn’t know.”
A+ co-parenting — it’s possible!
The start of a new school year is a chance for everyone — you, your ex, and your child — to have a fresh start. So take advantage of it! Make this the year that you and your former spouse attend school concerts and sporting events together in support of your child, and attend joint meetings with teachers without the added tension. Talk to your ex directly about this goal and how it will benefit all of you.
Your assignment this coming year? Decide to work together to help your child succeed, and then do what’s needed to make this happen.
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