Tips for Making the Divorced Family Dynamic Work

Parents who are in the process of getting divorced or who have already finalized their divorce need to take special steps to ensure that their parenting partnership remains solvent. This will mean developing a new relationship with their former spouse, setting up schedules and organizing their lives to make it work with the needs of the new family dynamics. While challenging to do, if done properly, this divorced family organization process will ensure your family unit supports the needs your children throughout their childhood and adolescent years.

Challenges of Being a Divorced Family

Today there is no such thing as a "normal" family. There are numerous different groupings of adults and children that now constitute a family. One of these groupings include parents that are divorced and their collective children. This family dynamic offers a few more challenges than the "traditional" family dynamic, but it can still be highly functional. The most common challenges that you will face as a divorced family unit include: scheduling, spending equal time with your kids and communicating with one another.

Setting Up a Schedule

One of the easiest ways you can minimize the conflict and confusion in a divorced family is to set up a schedule. This schedule will list everything that needs to be done in a month and it will designate who is responsible for what. To start your divorced family schedule you will want to buy or make a large desktop size calendar. Then use your kids' school schedule to fill out when then have days off, when they have special events, when they have early out and when they normally need to be dropped off and picked up from school. Then add in extracurricular activities like lessons, games and practice times.

Step two is to focus on mom and dad's schedules. You will need to work as a family to figure out how to get everyone to their appointments, to school and back home again. This can take problem solving skills, and you may need to rely on third parties to take care of some of the transportation and child care needs that your family has, but if you work together as a family you will be ahead of the game.

Organizing Important Documents

Another challenge that you will face as a divorced family is accessing important documents when an emergency occurs. For example, in case of a natural disaster where you need to evacuate the area you need to bring with you important documents like birth certificate, insurance cards, passports, etc. When you are a "traditional" family, you most likely have a central container where the documents for the entire family are kept, however, when your family is divided, the kids may be with one parent during an emergency while the documents are at the other parent's home. If possible, keep one copy of the most important documents at each parent's home.