Len Stauffenger

Does Your School Have Your Ex's Contact Information?

When you're divorced, a good plan for parenting is to create a file with all the important information about each of your children that the important people in their lives will need - their teachers, their grandparents, their child care giver. Here is a list of important topics to get you started.

If you are divorced, it's very wise to create a Parenting Plan so that all the important people in your children's lives are aware of all they might need to know.

I'm going to suggest a list of topics to be considered here and then leave it up to your good intelligence to fill in the blanks and distribute as necessary to those who need this information the most.

Use caution when you distribute this information. Make sure the person you give it to treats it as Personal and Confidential. Consider providing a copy for your ex, his parents, your parents, your children's school and your children's child care provider. Omit information not needed by the one you give it to - You'll know who needs what. Because of the incidence of Identity Theft, exercise caution. Mark the file as Confidential Information.

Child's Name

Date of Birth

Current age

Sex

Social Security Number

Allergies

Doctor's Name

Custody Options/schedule - weekly, vacation, holiday

Homework Agreements

Primary Residence Address, Phone, Cell

Secondary Residence Address, Phone, Cell

Exhange Agreements

Who has permission to pick up from school?

School, medical, and court records sharing

Communicating Emergencies

When a parent is moving

Activities - scouts, little league, dance classes etc.

Transportation

Dating Considerations

Extended/blended family Authorization for medical treatment form

Communication between divorced parents can be very challenging. If it's at all possible, and to avoid confrontation, make an effort to communicate in writing. If you use the ideas here to draft a form, it could help make the communication in the relationship you have to maintain with your ex smoother. By using specific fields above versus writing large paragraphs of data, you can avoid miscommunicating.

Be courteous when you communicate with your ex. Keep it factual. You owe it to your kids to communicate with as much harmony as you can muster with their other parent.

Ask the school to send notices to both parents. You both need this information. You both need to read it and make yourself aware of what is going on with your child, particularly if you share custody across the school week.

If the information and communication sharing causes flare-ups of your emotions, please don't share these emotions during communication interfacing. Run your ideas by a close friend, or talk to your ex about it after you've cooled down because the facts you need to talk about are too important to get lost in emotion. Use common sense; be mature and save the emotional communicating for another time.

Another practical tip: don't count on your children to carry this information to your ex for you. Be a big girl/boy and do it yourself. It's a burden for your children and they don't need that from you. Communicate this parenting plan when those little ears cannot hear you so as not to bruise their souls.

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