June is the official start of summer vacation for most kids. However, it is also the beginning of two and a half months of scheduling drama for many divorced families. This year instead of stressing over your children and divorce take advantage of the strengths of your divorced family unit.
The first strength that you can use when trying to figure out your family’s summer schedule is the expansiveness of your family and friends network. Not only do you have family members and friends that can help you drive kids to activities, pick them up, provide child care and provide supervision while you are at work, but you can also turn to the people in your former spouse’s life that can also provide these services. To make this situation work you will need to find people in your communal circle of relations that are trustworthy and who are willing to pitch in.
Developing a call tree of potential babysitters, drivers and supervisors is a good idea for divorced families. This tree will include the person’s name, their relationship to one of the parents or kids and what they can help you with. You will also want to include their phone number and home address.
If you are interested in designing a calling tree then you will want to get together with your exspouse and come up with numbers and people to add to your tree. You can create your calling tree in a word processor and print out a copy for each parent. You can also add lines to the side of the tree for write ins.
