Holiday Schedule for Parenting Plan

When you are working out a parenting plan with your child’s other parent, a holiday schedule can be a great place to start. Although you may have disagreements, disagreements on holidays can usually be worked through. After you work through those disagreements, you feel more empowered to tackle larger issues.

Here are some things to consider when coming up with a holiday schedule for your parenting plan:

First determine what is a holiday for you as a family. This will probably depend largely on the parents’ ability to get off work on holidays. For some families, only Easter, Fourth of July, Thanksgiving and Christmas seem like holidays. Other parents might get more days off work so Martin Luther King Jr. Day, President’s Day, Veteran’s Day and many others are included.

Here are some to think about : New Year’s Day; Martin Luther King, Jr. Day; President’s Day; Lincoln’s Birthday; Easter; Mother’s Day; Memorial Day; Father’s Day; Fourth of July; Labor Day; Halloween; Veteran’s Day; Thanksgiving; Christmas Eve; Christmas Day and New Year’s Eve.

What about birthdays of the parents or the children?

There is no right or wrong when it comes to including or excluding a holiday from your schedule. Do what seems most logical to you. Probably if one of you sees a day as a holiday, it can be included in the discussion.

Parents have options for sharing time with their kids when developing a holiday schedule for their parenting plan. If you already know what you want to do, great! If not, here are some things to keep in mind and some ideas that have worked for other families. In general, you will want to have the dates and times figured out for each holiday.

Alternate the day — Usually this looks like “Mom will get Thanksgiving every even numbered year from 9 am to 6 pm. Father will get Thanksgiving every odd numbered year from 9 am to 6 pm.” In other words, one of you gets the holiday one year and one gets it the next.

Split the day — When both of you want to see the children on the holiday every year, splitting the day can work. This might look like, “Mother will have the children every Thanksgiving from 9 am to 2 pm and Father will have the children every Thanksgiving from 2 pm to 7 pm.”

Designate the day — If you agree that one parent will get the same day every year, you can designate that holiday to them every single year. This is commonly done with Mother’s Day and Father’s Day, but can be done with other holidays too. In families in which one of the parents is a veteran, we have seen agreements in which the veteran parent gets Veteran’s Day with the kids every year. Does one of you have a family reunion that always happens on Memorial Day weekend? Designating the holiday to that parent every year can be an easy way to make sure the kids always get to attend the reunion. Maybe the other parent can always get Labor Day in exchange.

Get very practical when you make this holiday schedule for you and your kids. You don’t just want something that looks good on paper. You want something that will work in real life.

The most important thing to remember is to enjoy your time with your kids. You only get so many holidays with your children during their childhoods. What you celebrated and when will be less important than the fact that you celebrated. That you enjoyed each other. That you made memories. A parent who can remember that will be able to make a holiday schedule that works for their family.

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