Why It’s More Than Okay to Set a Schedule for Your Child?
Set a new schedule, it’s okay. Think of your schedule in the same way any business has to think of its schedule. Sometimes the schedules, timelines, and plans change. Your life, even your blended family’s life, is your business and you have a schedule, timelines, and plans that will change. One must be pliable and able to adjust to the changing world all the more.
You must learn how to change your schedule.
Early in our blended family and blended-family parenting, Pamela and I found ourselves frustrated with not having a schedule. In other words our time with our child was constantly changing. This was a frustrating time until we did something. You want to guess what we did? We changed and I’d like to explain how.
Because we’d never been in this position before, we like every other normal person continued to do life like we’d always done it; with very little adjusting. Your family, your life, is like a business. Like any business, it can be impacted in ways that alter it’s schedule to do business. In that case, we had to learn how to change our schedules.
The plans of the diligent lead to profit as surely as haste leads to poverty. [1]
-bible.com/bible/111/PRO.21.5.niv
You might not feel you can set a schedule.
One of the issues we faced is we didn’t actually have a schedule for our shared parenting time. You see when you have no schedule, you have no plans. When you have no plans, you plan to fail. You’re at the mercy of someone else’s plans. So, when there was a shift in the other parent’s shared time, we weren’t able to say…’we have specific plans’ and by default could accommodate their plans. You have to get beyond the feeling that you can’t make plans even when things are constantly shifting. You must, like any business, continue to operate in a way that brings you success. You must continue to operate your family so that your child(ren) can see that your family is a stable, successful family that produces the results you desire.
You will get better at scheduling your time.
Scheduling gets better with each passing day. We often tell other parents who share time to take comfort in knowing that scheduling time gets better. Each day that passes, your child gets a day older and will soon enough influence each parent towards the plans established by the other parent. As time continues to progress, the child will begin to help each parenting party to maintain better schedules and a schedule that works out for all.
You have a schedule because they have a schedule.
If you have a schedule, the other parent has a schedule as well. By the way, if you don’t honor your schedule, the other parent won’t either. If you don’t force the other parent to honor your schedule by having one, they won’t honor it. Make sure your time with your child(ren) is priority and seen as absolutely necessary. Whatever the arrangement, you schedule your other activities that don’t involve your child(ren) around your shared-parenting time. Regardless of what you might think and how you might feel, the two schedules are married. You’re faced with two choices: 1) the common, work against the other’s schedule or 2) the uncommon approach, work with the schedule. No matter what choice you make the other schedule will impact yours. The question becomes do you want to make it easy for yourself or hard for yourself? It comes down to choice.
- Working against the other parent’s schedule.
When you work against the other parent’s schedule, you are playing tug-of-war with your child. Your child in this case is the rope and depending upon how hard each parent pulls will determine if the rope will break. Are you willing to risk your rope, your child(ren), breaking? Working against the other parent also, provides your child with reasons not to totally trust you. This is important. If your child loves their other parent as much or in some cases more than they love you, then what does it say to them when you’re always tugging against the person they love?“Hate is created by something that affects the things we love.”
Could you be setting yourself up for your child(ren) to hate you, simply because as a parent we are unwilling to work with a schedule.
- Work with the schedule given.
The easy route is to work against the other parent’s schedule; that’s normal. The normal behavior is to fight because we feel we are 100% entitled to our child(ren)’s time. While in theory that might be true in practice it’s not the case. Therefore, wasting your time working against the other parent’s schedule is a double-edged sword that not only undercuts them, but at the same time it injuries your relationship with your child(ren). Apply your energy, thoughts, and actions towards the time you are given. In this way, you can make a few hours more enjoyable than weeks. It’s the uncommon choice and if you desire to be an uncommon parent, then there is only one choice.
In business, conditions aren’t always what you want, so it goes life. Conditions will not always be controllable, but you can control how you respond to the ever changing conditions of life for your family. Just because the conditions aren’t perfect doesn’t mean you can’t be successful and even profitable.
Today is Friday!
The way you do business and the way that you do family, your life, are alike in that it runs by a schedule. The question is whose schedule? Yours or someone else’s?
Question: are you maintaining a schedule for your shared-parenting time?
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Find out more about the Family plan here.Reference #1: Proverbs 21:5 NIV, Bible.com, accessed January 26, 2021, https://my.bible.com/bible/111/PRO.21.5.niv
All Scripture references used by permission, see our Scripture copyrights.
