A Parental Guide to Making Child-Focused Visitation Decisions
Unless special circumstances exist, children generally fare best when they have the emotional support and ongoing involvement of both parents. Ongoing parental involvement fosters positive parent-child relationships and healthy emotional and social development. It is also beneficial to parents because it makes it more likely that the parents will have positive relationships with their children when the children become adults.
For parents who do not live together, it is important to cooperate with each other for the benefit of the children. Children adjust more easily to crisis and loss if their parents work together to develop healthy ways of communicating, resolving problems, and reducing conflict. It is important for parents to remember that formation of a positive parent-child relationship is a life-long process. The key to a successful parent-child relationship is the quality of time, rather than the quantity of time, spent together.
Establishing a visitation schedule is an area where parents may experience conflict. This pamphlet is designed to assist parents in creating visitation schedules that focus on their children's developmental needs from infancy through adolescence. It identifies key tasks that children normally accomplish at each stage of development, and then identifies suggestions for visitation practices aimed at promoting healthy development at each developmental stage. Emphasis is placed on the importance of parents accommodating their children's changing needs by creating visitation schedules that are routine and predictable, and yet flexible enough to change in frequency and duration to accommodate their children's needs as they grow older.
Parents are encouraged to recognize that a visitation schedule that is best for one child may not be best for the child's brothers and sisters. Parents are also encouraged to understand that visitation schedules that are best for their children may not be best for the parents. For the best interests of their children, parents may need to tolerate disruption of their own schedules and more or less visitation than they might otherwise choose. Many parents may also need to address their own feelings of loss, envy, anger, or disappointment when setting visitation schedules that are best for their children.
The information in this pamphlet:
Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, and Chemical Dependency
Establish a Workable Means of Communication
Resolve Conflict Quickly
Parents can help their children by cooperating with each other and by quickly resolving their conflict. Children whose parents are involved in ongoing conflict over visitation, child support, or other issues may experience anger, anxiety, depression, or developmental delays. Parents may resolve conflict in a variety of ways, including consulting family members, religious leaders, mediators, visitation expeditors, county child support officers, attorneys, or others. Parents may also wish to seek help for their children by consulting a child psychologist or by seeking services from the local social service agency. Court administrators maintain lists of local mediators and visitation expeditors. The local association of attorneys maintains a list of attorneys.
Separate Visitation and Child Support
Parents can help their children by not withholding child support or visitation. Children generally fare best when they have the emotional and financial support and ongoing involvement of both parents. A parent does not have a right to withhold visitation or child support because of the other parent's failure to comply with court-ordered visitation or support. In other words:
Rather than withholding visitation or support, there are more productive, effective and, if need be, legal ways for parents to resolve support and visitation issues. Parents experiencing conflict over visitation or child support may wish to consult a mediator, attorney, visitation expeditor, or county child support office.
Encourage Telephone and Other Contact
Parents can help their children by calling and writing to them and by reasonably encouraging and assisting them to call and write to the other parent. Children do best when they are able to maintain contact with both parents. While visitation is one way to maintain that contact, other ways include telephone calls, letters, e-mail, and other forms of communication. Telephone calls between parent and child should be permitted at reasonable hours and at the expense of the calling parent. Unless restricted by court order, parents have a right to send cards, letters, packages, e-mail, audiotapes, and videocassettes to their children. Children have the same right to send items to their parents. Parents should not interfere with these rights.
Establish Similar Household Routines
Parents can help their children by following similar routines for mealtime, bedtime, and homework time. Parents can also help their children by accepting that they have limited control over what happens in the other parent's home and by respecting the authority of the other parent. From a very young age, children learn that their parents have different parenting styles. Children can adjust to some differences in routines between their parents' homes. Developmentally, though, children cope better when there is general consistency between their parents' homes because it helps them have a sense of order.
Provide Child's Belongings
Parents can help their children transition between their parents' homes by sending along the children's important belongings, such as clothing, medicine, and equipment. Parents can also help their children by sending along personal objects, such as blankets, stuffed animals, photos, or memorabilia of the other parent.
Support Contact with Grandparents and Other Extended Family
Parents can help their children maintain important family ties by arranging for the children to visit their father's family when they are with their father, and by arranging for the children to visit their mother's family when they are with their mother. Children who have had loving relationships with their grandparents and other extended family members need to maintain those ties, otherwise they may experience a sense of loss.
Facilitate Temporary Schedule Adjustments
Parents can help their children by giving as much advance notice as possible when requesting a temporary adjustment to the visitation schedule. Family emergencies, illness of a parent or child, or special events of a parent or child may require temporary adjustment to the visitation schedule. Parents can help their children by scheduling an alternate visitation time to take place as soon as possible.
Accommodate Vacation Plans
Parents can help their children by understanding that it is important for each parent to vacation with their children. Parents can help their children by scheduling their vacation times so that they do not interfere with the other parent's time with the children or with the children's schedules. Vacation, whether during school breaks or during the summer, can be a time for parents and children to expand their relationship. Vacation is also important because it gives the other parent time off from the demands of parenting. Vacation time takes precedence over regular visitation unless a court order or an agreement of the parents provides otherwise.
Establish a Routine for Picking Up and Dropping Off Child
Parents can help their children by agreeing on who will pick up and drop of the children and where this will take place. Parents can also help their children by having the children ready and by being on time. When picking up and dropping off children, it is important to avoid communication that may lead to conflict. Neither parent should enter the home of the other parent without permission. Parents should take all necessary safety precautions when transporting, picking up, and dropping off their children.
Children generally fare best when they have the emotional and financial support and ongoing involvement of both parents. Establishing a visitation schedule is one way to ensure and foster that contact. The child's needs are the key factors for parents to consider when establishing a visitation schedule. These needs change as the child grows older and moves from one developmental stage to the next. The developmental needs of an infant, for example, are different from those of a toddler or a teenager.
This section identifies key tasks that children normally accomplish at each stage of development before moving on to the next developmental stage. In considering these developmental tasks, it is important to always keep in mind that each child is unique, that all children do not progress at the same rate, and that "normal" development has a tremendous range at each age. Thus, some six-year-old children progress quickly and do what might be typical of an eight-year-old child, while other six-year-old children progress more slowly and do what might be typical of a five-year-old child.
This section also identifies visitation suggestions that promote healthy development at each stage. Rather than rigidly applying these visitation suggestions, parents are strongly encouraged to apply them in a way that best meets the specific developmental needs of each child. This may mean that parents establish different visitation schedules for each of their children.
The child's developmental stage is only one factor parents should consider when deciding which visitation arrangement is best for each child. Other factors parents need to consider when establishing a visitation schedule include:
Infants and Toddlers (Birth - 2 1/2 Years)
Preschoolers (2½ - 5 Years)
Elementary School (5 - 12 Years)
Adolescents (12 - 18 Years)
Prepared by the Minnesota Supreme Court Advisory Task Force on Visitation and Child Support Enforcement
Approved by the Minnesota Conference of Chief Judges January 1999
This pamphlet is not copyrighted and may be reproduced. For further information, contact:
Minnesota Supreme Court
State Court Administration
Court Services Division
120 Minnesota Judicial Center
25 Constitution Avenue
St. Paul, MN 55155