Surviving Holidays and Vacations
Holidays are supposed to be a pleasant time for families and friends to come together and celebrate religious or other traditions. For children, holidays are supposed to be magical and relaxed. Reasonable parents figure out ways to share holidays so children can develop traditions with both sides of their family. Unreasonable parents fight over birthdays and major holidays and make everyone dread what should be happily anticipated events.
Be Reasonable
Some parents alternate holidays, while others celebrate the same holidays with their children every year, either to develop traditions or to accommodate traditional family gatherings. If Christmas is a big event in your ex-spouse's family, you might agree to divide the winter school break so Christmas falls in his half every year. Then you and the kids can develop your own special event for your half of the school break. Kids don't object to celebrating a major holiday or birthday twice. It's the parents who have a hard time with this.
Sometimes a holiday may fall during the other parent's scheduled weekend. For example, your spouse might be scheduled for the first weekend in every month, which in September ends up being Labor Day. You're supposed to have the kids on that holiday, so what do you do? Reasonable parents switch weekends.
When drafting parenting plans, it's important to include language that states that holiday and vacation periods will supersede the regular scheduled parenting plan. By doing this you make sure you will get your scheduled holiday or vacation period even if it falls during the other parent's scheduled parenting time. You need to think about these schedules carefully in order to make sure everybody is getting what they need.
You can never be too careful or too detailed in drafting a parenting plan. While flexibility works well if you have a good relationship with your spouse, it will not work well if you do not. Sometimes it is worth sacrificing flexibility for predictability in your parenting plan in order to guarantee that you will have specific holiday and vacation periods with your children.
In planning holiday and vacation periods, you will want to consider how they fall with respect to the regular parenting time schedule. For example, let's say you have parenting time every weekend from Friday to Monday and you tack your 10-day vacation period on to the end of your regularly scheduled parenting time. Now the other parent doesn't get to see the children for a 14-day period. This may work out well for you, but does it work well for the children?
Consider the opposite result. Let's say the other parent has parenting time every Monday through Friday and he tacks his 10-day vacation period on to the end of his regularly scheduled parenting time. Now you are the one who doesn't get to see the children for a 15-day period. If this is the result that works best for you and your family, that's fine. Just make sure when you make the deal, you understand what it means and how your parenting time will be impacted.
Cozy, But Not Too Cozy
Some restructured families get along well enough to celebrate holidays together. This is great because the children get to have a pleasant holiday with both parents present. If no disputes erupt and everyone focuses on the event, the strategy can be a pleasant experience for everyone. But beware of giving your children false hopes about your family reuniting.
