What is 'normal' access for the ex after a split with small kids?

[4some]

I am proposing the below for our 4 small kids (6, 4, 2 and 11 months). DH wants more (he wants 13 days a month) with a weekend 'off' every month. I said that's too much/too bitty. His plan would see them back and forth for odd nights here and there during school week which is my main concern.

I propose:

Week 1 Fri, Sat nigths with dad
Week 2 Sat, Sun nights with dad
Week 3 Fri, Sat nights with dad
Week 4 Sat Sun nights with dad.

If it went to court would they think my proposal is fair, or his bitty proposal with him getting a weekend off every month?

Yes but to be fair I don't think it's reasonable for children to have to get up at some unearthly hour and face a long journey to school because the NRP has elected to live miles away and I don't think it's reasonable for the NRP not to have uniform or gym kit spares at their houses. IME, some adults consistently underestimate how much children hate having the wrong clothes for school, or having to miss out on PE because they haven't got their kit. Or that they have to miss out on parties or invitations just because they are meant to be at the NRP's.

These might be small things to adults, but they are big deals for children.

I agree with badinage. Children often hate being late, hate not having the right clothes etc etc. as adults we can dismiss this as trivial but it is often not remotely trivial to children and to dismiss it is quite cruel I think.

I agree with badinage and Spero.

cinnamon you are right to say that it can work. Everyone agrees that it can work. It evidently works for you.

What we are saying is that it cannot be made to work simply to suit the parents, without any regard to the children and their needs.

Their needs come first, and that is what a mediator will guide the discussion towards regardless of what the parents think is "fair" to each of them.

The truth is, children don't suddenly need to start spending 50% of their lives with or away from each parent, simply for the sake of a "principle".

Especially if it involves them in wholly unnecessary and undesirable disruption/lengthy journeys/unsatisfactory accommodation or care if it is no reflection of their life prior to their parents' separation.

The comments I was making were simply in response to the OP's posts which seem to be all about organising her and her ex's lives, rather than examining what the children's needs are.

That's why I reiterated the unanswered questions about accommodation, logistics, availability of care etc.

My ex has chosen to live in Australia. My daughter was three when he left and he sees her about four times a year. This is certainly far from ideal for her and she misses him a lot - but she clearly has a strong relationship with him.

So too with a mum or dad in the forces who may not see their child for months at a time.

It really isn't about quantity of time to build a relationship with a child.

Agree with everything olgaga says.

Hi there, we both intend to live within a mile of each other, and within walking distance to the school.

I am working more towards what he is suggesting, with lowering the 5 'floating' days to 3 until we see where the land lies. The added difficulty in this situation is that he is out of work atm and we need to wait to see what his working hours are before being more specific.

I will continue to be a SAHM until the youngest reaches school age (so another 3/4 years) so I will probably offer to pick up the kids from school/clubs etc on his nights during the week and take them to his place no later than 6pm...something like that anyway!

I do really appreciate all the opinions and input.

That's really good, should make it much easier to organise if you have the logistics in place. You may have to experiment a bit to find out what works for you all, but as long as you can communicate and are both prepared to be flexible, should be ok.

Good luck! do everything you can to avoid coming to court!

I'm enjoying reading this thread, although perhaps unsurprisingly find myself agreeing with olgaga, Spero and badinage and not just because they mirror my own views.

I read in one 'coparenting after separation' book that children are not to be divided up 50:50 like a record collection. Fine if it happens that your circumstances and prior parenting lends itself to such a division, but the mere fact that it is described in terms of a strict time split makes me think it is more about fairness to the parents than it is to the children, who will have far less awareness of actual time spent than their parents.

With reference to an earlier post of yours Spero, my H has already forwarded me such a colour-coded spreadsheet I fully expect to be shown several more between now and when this messy nonsense is concluded.

cinnamonsugar - I am surprised to hear that you know so many people in your peer group not only divorced but who have a 50:50 split of childcare/residency. Of the divorced couples I know, not one of them has that kind of set up, and I don't think it's that commonplace in general, is it?

It seems to have become the default round here LadyM but it's probably a bit of a self-selecting group; couples who both work and can afford to live near eachother/kids of an age where they can travel between the houses unsupervised/parents who were both hands-on before the split.

I would say we had a 50/50 arrangement with DD's father, if you averaged it over the year. Not that I've ever calculated it because we have flexible arrangements. But our circumstances are totally different. DP and DD's father get on very well.
DD has always lived in two homes and has never had any issue with this, even when those homes were miles apart. It's how you handle it as an adult. But if you refer to your house as home, and Dad's house as Dad's house, inevitably that's how your child will see it.
DD's father has very much been an equal parent from day 1, so the transition is seamless.
I think you just have to do what works for you as a family, even if your family live in two properties. Some routine is good for small children, although I've found kids will adapt very quickly to any arrangement as long as it's consistent and parents don't start playing silly fuckers.

How I wish people would realise that nothing says 'I am a controlling idiot with very little insight into my children's needs' more than a colour coded spreadsheet.

Apart from the question 'How much do I have to let the father see my children after we split up' d'you mean?

If you mean the op, she has actively welcomed discussion and suggestions so I don't think she is either controlling or lacks insight.

Which could of course be a perfectly reasonable question if prior to the split, the kids needs and their well being came way down on his list of priorities and he was as far away from being a 50/50 parent as he could possibly have been......

No, I didn't mean the OP (sorry OP!) - you had said 'people' so I assumed the discussion had gone in a more general direction.

Yup. People need to recognise that there are many, many different types of parents - hands on committed to feckless, couldn't care less. So one size of post separation contact arrangements really doesn't fit all.

YY cloves of garlic, crucifixes and repellent spray at the ready when confronted with a Man With a Colour Coded Spreadsheet.

Thing is, there will always be parents who are selfish twats but even though I work with troubled teens and have lots of life experience and unfortunately the grey hairs to prove it, it is actually pretty rare to encounter a mother who doesn't want her children to see their father. Most women are only too glad of a break or if not, are sensible enough to realise that their loneliness when their kids are with dad, simply doesn't trump the kids' rights to see him.

Conversely, I see a lot of very short-sighted women posters on here lambasting ex-wives and the mothers of their stepchildren with very little direct evidence of these other people's alleged wrongdoing. The excuses women make on here for why their partners don't see/pay for their children from former relationships are often hair-raising in their stupidity. The fathers are completely left off the hook.

Spero's right of course that it's best to avoid court if at all possible, but if and when a co-parent is being a complete dick, the law is there to be used to enforce children's rights but so often a feckless parent who's now busy creating another family can't be bothered to champion those children's rights and instead bleats to anyone prepared to listen about how psychotic the mother is and how his rights have been suppressed. And all this delusion gets backed up by daft new partners who've been dumb enough to accept this version of events without question.

Until it happens to them of course

My Ex tried to show the family court judge his colour coded spreadsheet....

Did she produce a garlic clove as he approached?

What we are saying is that it cannot be made to work simply to suit the parents, without any regard to the children and their needs.
Olgaga I completely agree with that. It must always be about what's best for the children and the pitfalls and possible problems with all types of contact arrangements must be considered in every situation. I don't disagree with any of the points made by Spero or Badinage either. My objection is when shared parenting is presented as usually or inherently problematic in the first instance. There are clearly a number of situations where it clearly can't work (e.g. living far apart) and doesn't work, but that's a minority of shared parenting situations.

Ladymuckbeth I'm guilty of using '50/50' as a shorthand when really I mean shared parenting of any time ratio (i.e. having two homes where children spend time being parented as opposed to 'contact' or 'visits') I miscounted by including my own ex in the number of people I know with shared parenting so it's 5 rather than 6 - myself and my ex who do pretty much equal split, my step-brother and another 3 friends. Of those 3 friends, 2 of them have situations where the mums and dads work unusual or flexible hours so they each look after the child for a substantial period daily when the other is at work. The other friend out of the 3 doesn't have 50% but still has a substantial amount of time with their child. Shared parenting is definitely becoming more and more common though as Badinage says. I don't know any separated couple in my social group with the old style EOW set-up. Out of the 5, 1 is extremely high conflict, 1 used to be moderately conflictual (not sure of the situation now) and 3 are very low conflict and amicable.

Spero Shared parenting in high conflict situations isn't quite as straightforward as 'bad idea' though. McIntosh's work is definitely interesting, but it's only one perspective and, as you must know, Australia has some problems with shared parenting specific to their legal presumption of it which luckily we don't have in the UK. There's a lot of research and meta-analysis about this and it paints quite a lot more complicated picture when it comes to high-conflict situations and what to do about them. I've read a lot about shared parenting to have the best understanding I can do for my DC and am very grateful I don't have to try work out what to do in a high conflict situation! Must be very hard work that you do.

She makes him wait til the end of EVERY session after he told her he would prefer to be seen first as he is much too important and influential to be kept waiting. I rather suspect she keeps a whole string of garlic just in case. And has placed a trap door straight to the cells under his chair given the number of times she's threatened to remove him from the court He gives Self Rep clients SUCH a good name

Ooh I bet he hates a woman having all that power Fleecy!

Too right. My solicitor is also female, the social work manager is female as are 2 of the facilitators on the NSPCC caring dads course that he is doing. He is positively frothing at the mouth with the injustice of it all when these women should bloody well know their place.

From my experience there is no complexity about the impact of high parental conflict on children. It is universally and unremittingly bad, from what I can see.

But I accept there always has to be a balance of harms, and not seeing parents can be harmful.

However, as I have said on other threads, expecting the family courts to be able to deal with the fall out of toxic relationships is a very Big Ask.

Why should it be worse to get divided 50:50 than say 10:90? You can't replace children like you can virtually any other marital 'asset' (although I do know one family where one child stayed with each parent, which seemed a very terrible option to me). Families separating is bad for children full stop. Children in general would like their parents to be happy together in one home. Sadly that's not always possible and sometimes separation is the only option (sometimes the only safe option).

If you have two homes you have two homes, it doesn't matter the proportion of time you spend in each it is still a difficult minefield for parents and children. It can be managed very well or very badly dependent on many many factors.

When dh and I were separated our children had two homes and our joint parenting split down the middle so we 'hands on parented' for half of the time each. There were no spreadsheets involved because there was no conflict about the idea as we both agreed it was the only way to manage the situation. If dh had suggested that he should have the children living with him and they could visit me I would have been incredibly upset, and then spreadsheets and legal action might have come into play.

I don't think that our practical difficulties were really any more than families that have a midweek stay, a bit of organisation and goodwill for when one of us messed up a bit sorted out the running out of school uniform type problems, and financial arguments wasn't in the picture as the cost of 'hosting' the children was equally divided so neither of us had to give the other any money.

From my experience there is no complexity about the impact of high parental conflict on children. It is universally and unremittingly bad, from what I can see.
But I didn't say that there was complexity about the impact of high parental conflict!!! I said it was about the issue of shared parenting in high conflict situations, not about whether conflict was bad for children. Obviously, it always is. See this for example.