When you’re a newly separated or divorced parent, figuring out how to navigate the holiday season from Halloween through New Year’s can be pretty challenging – but a little creativity and cooperation with your co-parent can go a long way.
As long as you and your co-parent both want the best for your children, you should be able to negotiate your way through things fairly easily. Just remember that the key to any successful co-parenting arrangement is open and early communication.
Before Halloween arrives, have a conversation with your co-parent about your shared goals and expectations for the day. Here are some talking points:
Costume planning
To keep the potential for disputes down, consider collaborating with your co-parent on your child’s costumes. You can even choose complementary or themed costumes for yourselves and your children, creating a sense of unity and fun. At the very least, you want to make sure that your children’s costumes are age-appropriate and acceptable to everybody.
Trick-or-treating
No parent wants to miss out on this quintessential Halloween activity with their kids – so see if you and your co-parent can agree to take the kids together. Decide which neighborhood works best, and either walk around as a family or split the time you walk with the kids while the other parent passes out candy.
Other traditions
Halloween usually involves a lot of family traditions, from pumpkin carving to haunted house visits or “spooky movie night.” It’s wise to remember that neither parent has an “exclusive” on these things. There’s no reason that your kids can’t do these things at two houses. That way, nobody has to be left out and the kids get double the fun.
A lot of parenting agreements overlook Halloween – forgetting that it’s become a pretty big holiday in recent years. If you and your co-parent are still working on a parenting plan and schedule, find out how an experienced touch can help you establish a functional agreement. If sharing doesn’t work out, you may have to resort to a more unique schedule to keep the peace.
