Parenting agreements in separation

You poor thing! Sounds like you are doing the right thing if you have thought about it for a while.

My sister and her partner broke up when she was 6 months pregnant.

They arranged that he would come over for x amount of time on x days when DS was little. This arrangement stayed until he was around 4ish months I think and thats when he started to take him for an hour 2 days a week. Their son was breastfed so I dont know if that had something to do with it.

Sounds like you are being very fair with what you are thinking of doing, my only suggestion would be that before the older one stays the night with him that he has day visits there getting to know the new house etc - that is one thing that my sister insisted on and it worked well for them.

Good luck not a nice time for you

Good luck with it all!!

One of my friends has separated from his wife and they have 2 kids together. Their arrangement right now is that they have 50/50 care. One week with mum, one week with dad. Both parents work full time. However they are in primary school.

Sorry to hear about you breakup

Friend of mines.. Have a 4 year old and a 1 year old and they broke up just as the new bubs was being born.

The father visits 2 nights a week either Tue and Thu or Mon and Wed and they have a weekend off and and weekned on...
He does all the dinner bed etc routine while his ex goes to the gym and come home when the kids are in bed...

Hope it all works out for you

oh you guys are making me feel so much better about what I had in mind. I really wanted to know I wasn't being unrealistic and trying to hog the kids. I also think that in reality he has no idea at the moment about how to care for one of them on his own let alone two so it would give him time to learn.

Kebakat I can imagine doing the 50/50 thing once they are school age - it's just now while they are so tiny that it seems too much. And from memory, from what I've read kids under about 36 months bond better when it is shorter visits more often - just because they don't have the same memory capacity.

haha - I think I'm multitasking enough so that is great advice Joshierocks!

I think we will need to get an actual parenting order rather than just an agreement given that everything is becoming a war at the moment. That would at least make me feel like he can't take them away from me.

Thank you thank you thank you! I can't tell you how much it is helping to hear from you.

Sorry to hear about your breakup kateandahalf. My husband and I separated back in November when Gabrielle was 11 months old and it wasn't easy. We didn't have an amicable agreement, we had to have councelling through the family court and mediation to try and sort out custody. I also got separate councelling where she recommended that for Gabrielle's sake I was kept as her primary caregiver and she had short frequent visits with her Dad. One of the things the councellor said was that very young children need the security of having a primary caregiver but they also need enough time with the other parent to form an attachement relationship. We started with Gabrielle having 2 2.5hour visits with her Dad and one whole day 8am till 5pm but unfortunately that arrangement has since broken down to just one afternoon and one full day a week. Frequent contact worked well for us as Gabrielle experienced a lot of separation anxiety after we broke up and that way she was used to being left with her daddy.

One of the things I will say about a parenting order is that the mediator told me that you have to have tried all options before the judge grants one (usually) unless there is a question over the safety of the kids (drugs, violence etc). So that means councelling, and then mediation, and then you go from there to get a parenting order. my ex and I couldnt be in the same room with each other so we had our counselling and mediation seperately and the counsellor worked as a "go between" type person. I think any of the people in the January 09 thread with tell you how tense my situation with the ex has become and yet we have still managed to work the custody thing out through having a third party involved.

The mediatior also told me that with a parenting agreement through councelling you can vary any of the terms that aren't working, whereas with a parenting order through the court a judge decides what is best for the kids which may or may not work for you and may or may not be able to be varied. Our custody arrangement is temporary for 3 months, and then we have an arrangement for 6 monthly reviews after that.

If you have any questions or want to chat PM me. I know how hard it is with one child, so I can imagine what you are facing with 2 esp with one of them being so little. Chin up.

Hey I'm really sorry about your seperation.

I split from my ex when the kids were 3 and almost 2 and to start off with he had them 2 nights a week but that quickly went down to one night. We had a few issues because he didn't want them on the weekend (didn't want it to interfere with his drinking) and I really wanted one day I could sleep in but he refused to budge. In the end I realised its about the kids and not us so he has them Thursday nights. If we could get along perfectly we would have never split...

Anyway nine months down the track things are pretty good between us, we get along fine and the kids have adjusted really well. He still drives me up the wall but we still try to hang out with the kids every now and again for a few hours to get whats going on with each other.