Those with experience of EOW contact plan...

[scooterbee82]

I wrote on here recently about needing to move, as I can't afford where I am at the moment. Ex has agreed but we are both going to sit down and write a proper contact plan for our 2 year old.

Because of distance it would be:
EOW
Alternative bank holidays
Alternate christmas and New Year
Share child's birthday (we have previously)
Each have child on our birthdays if we wish.
As I am resident parent was going to suggest a week every quarter of the year, so ex can use his holiday. Or is that too specific?

Is there anything obvious I am missing from this? We are going to meet half way for pick up and drop offs. If I can and convenient I will drop off full way.

The only thing that springs to mind is where in the school year DC's birthday is, depending on how long term you want this plan to be. Might be easier for your ex to have the weekend before/after birthday if it's likely to be a term time date. Otherwise it sounds like a good agreement. Maybe 2 weeks in the summer once DC starts school too?

Yeah mark out school holidays, half terms and summer/christmas holidays.

Also be prepared to have issues later on with all sorts of things. DD sometimes won't want to go to dads, sometimes she'll be sad she's home and would rather have stayed at dads, and everything in between. Unless there's actually a problem it's best not to alter things each time, just let your child get used to the routine.

We do 2 weeks in the summer, that sounds fair. When she gets older you might even want to increase it, or maybe not, but 2 weeks to start sounds reasonable once DC starts school.

The big piece of advice i'd give is to try and include video calls in this where you can, if it's EOW visits, maybe the other weekend or Friday evening dad has a short video call where he tells DC about the upcoming weekend visit, and just bond a little. It's hard going sometimes because video calls are a tricky medium for kids, but I think it pays off. Two weeks with no contact and little mention of the other parent to suddenly being shipped off to the other parents house is probably not easy. Similarly, if ex has DC for more than a week, say during summer, it might help DC and you feel better if you include a video call the other way during that.

Obviously going to be different for each child though (and each set of parents).