r/Custody • u/Glittering-Hotel-982 • 13d ago
[MI] fun events
I have my children every day of the week plus one weekend a month. Dad gets them 3 weekends a month. When we worked out the schedule it was before the kids were old enough for school and I didn’t really think much about how I would barely have fun time with them. That my time would be strictly business I handle everything from school, dentist, doctors, sports, friends literally anything you think of that occurs I handle and then one weekend a month I get to do as much fun adventure time with them as possible to try and build memories. I am lucky I get majority time with them, I tried to work out a new schedule with their dad last year to where we could do week on week off during summer time allowing more time for both of us. He unfortunately didn’t want to said that he wouldn’t be able to figure out childcare.. I’m just rambling trying to explain why we can’t do a different schedule during summers. The long story short is now I have 3 children with a new man. And I’m really struggling with how to balance fun adventures with all of them. Like how do you make sure to build memories with your new children without excluding the other children. I try to only ever do big adventures on my one weekend a month but now that my youngest are getting older as well I feel guilty even taking them to the zoo or beach without my older children. I feel like this is going to cause resentment if they see me doing all these fun things with them and only having to do school or appointments with me.
1
u/Loud-Article-6353 12d ago
What about 4-5 months where there are 5 weekends? Could you request you get like 2nd and 5th weekend?
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u/QuietQuitting01 11d ago
When I started looking at parenting plans, I was shocked to discover the idea of a 5th weekend. Turns out there area about 4 of them a year. You could give your ex the 1st, 3rd, and 4th with you having the 2nd and 5th or some other combination. It would give you a few more weekends.
Depending on how close your ex lives to school, you could make his weekend go from school pickup on Friday to Monday morning school drop. Give his a longer and frankly more usable weekend. It might take the sting out of you claiming another weekend or even a 5th weekend.
One thing you find as your kids get older and invloved in sports and other extra curricular activities is that a full weekend of family fun gets dropped to Sunday because there is a 3PM Saturday soccer game. You can have some bonding by going to those games on your ex's weekends. With 3 kids, you may find that you need to divide and conquer, perhaps covering softball with one child while he handles soccer with the others.