As parents set up a custody agreement, the child generally lives with one parent and has visitation with the other parent. Parents who have this type of custody situation can take action to make the most of their child visitation. If you are the parent who the child is visiting, here is some custody advice about how to make your visits successful.
Visits should be long enough for the child to bond with the parent. When you are working with the other parent to come up with a visitation schedule, keep in mind that visits should be long enough for the parent and child to spend time with each other and bond. In fact, the purpose of child visitation is to keep the parent/child relationship strong. This isn’t going to happen if you have one hour visits once a month. Weekends are a good time for visitation, because the child and parent can plan fun activities and do things with each other. It’s also good to schedule visits for the parent to have opportunities to take care of the child. For very young children this includes activities like putting them down for naps, feeding them, etc. For older children it means helping them with schoolwork and other activities, establishing routines, etc. Visits during the week are good for this (either evening visits or an overnight visit during the week).
Parents should help child with responsibilities. The first thing a parent should do when the child visits is to take care of any parental responsibilities. This means helping the child with schoolwork (if the visit is during a weekday afternoon, the parent should make sure the child is prepared for school the next day), projects, etc. It also means that if the child and parent need to talk about certain issues (perhaps the child has been having discipline problems at school, or is struggling with other things) the should do so. When children visit, the parent needs to establish the standard that they are in a role of responsibility and can help the child.
Spend quality time together. Once business is taken care of, parents should make sure that they have fun with their children. This doesn’t mean that the parent needs to spend a lot of money every week going to amusements parks and such, but they should make an effort to have a good time with the kids. Usually, kids are happy playing outside and going to the park with the parents, playing board games as a family, having a family movie night, etc. All of these are simple things that parents can do during child visitation. This also gives the child and parent new experiences to grow closer together.
Have your children make plans. If the children are older, they can be included in making plans for visitation. This is helpful for the children to get excited about going to visit the parent. The parent and child can sit down together and make some lists of things the child wants to do. They can plan out the next few visits with some fun things to try. These can be simple activities like the parent teaching the child to hit a baseball, catch a football, showing the child where the parent works, making food together, etc. The parent can also make suggestions to the child about some activities and see how interested the child is. The parent should make sure that they are thinking of things the children will enjoy and not trying to push their own interests on the child.
Schedule in phone calls and keep in touch through email. Most parents want to see their kids more than once a week. Children also change very rapidly, and if parents don’t have much visitation time they can miss out on important milestones with their children. There are ways to bridge this gap though. Parents can keep in touch with their children through the phone (and through text messages with their teenagers). They can also email their kids and find out what is going on in their lives that way. If the parent makes the effort to be involved, the children will be more likely to respond and enjoy their visitation time.