Age Appropriate Parenting Plans

{3:30 minutes to read} At the 2017 Annual Conference for the New York State Council on Divorce Mediation, I heard from someone who has studied custody arrangements and determined what works best for children when their parents are no longer living together.

According to University of Virginia Professor Robert E. Emery, Ph.D. who has either conducted or reviewed a variety of studies over the past thirty years, there is no one parenting plan that works for children of all ages.

His conclusions:

• Joint legal custody and shared decision-making are best for children;
• Children tend to “attach” to one parent; and
• Parents should adjust their parenting schedule to meet the needs of their children as they grow and mature.

Joint Legal Custody

Dr. Emery proposed that Joint Legal Custody was not only appropriate but preferred for most children. With joint legal custody, each parent fully participates in any important decisions made for or about the children.

But more than simply fully participating, he recommended that each parent regularly spends a significant amount of time with the children. I usually refer to this as “shared parenting.”

Attachment

Generally, children “attach” primarily to only one parent. This is the parent that a child will turn to when he or she feels threatened or hurt.

According to Emery, a child may love each parent but is likely to “attach” to the parent that the child spends most of the time with during the formative years from birth to around age 5.

Parenting Plans

Professor Emery felt very strongly that parents should be willing to adapt their Parenting Plan to the age of the child. Specifically, in the various studies he has either conducted or reviewed, he has found that:

• Young children (newborns to school age) benefit from moving back and forth between mom and dad frequently so that they are not away from either parent for more than a couple of days at a time.
• School-age children benefit from fewer transfers and longer blocks of time with, and away from, each parent. However, they still need frequent contact with the “nonresidential” parent during the time the child is away from that parent.
• When a child reaches teenage years they benefit from making their own schedule. Depending on the child’s activities, Professor Emery suggests that parents of adolescent children allow the child the freedom to choose when and how much time they will spend with each parent.

Dr. Emery’s conclusion: Children benefit from having both parents in their lives in a significant way, and from a parenting plan that changes over the years, adapting to their ages and needs.

Of course, the best way to achieve such a flexible and “child-centered” parenting plan is to work with a trained divorce mediator to help find the best plan for your children. Not only will doing so allow you to control the outcome, but it will allow you to create the flexibility that your children need from a parent!