There is something about September that has a habit of exposing problems that were easy to ignore in July.
The school holidays are over. The new timetable arrives. Uniforms are bought, clubs are booked, PE kits appear from nowhere and, suddenly, everyone needs to know exactly where the children are going to be, and when.
For separated parents, this is often the moment when an arrangement that worked well enough before starts to come apart. Football on Tuesday. Dance on Wednesday. A school trip on Thursday. One parent has a meeting that cannot be moved, the other has assumed they were doing the pick-up, and neither of you agreed to any of it in writing.
The problem with “we’ll just work it out”
Most separated parents begin with an informal arrangement, and for a while it holds.
It holds because the summer is flexible and because both of you are still making an effort.
September takes the flexibility away. There are fixed times, fixed places, and other people who need clear answers: teachers, coaches, clubs and schools. That is when the gaps appear, and they are almost always the same gaps.
Who does the pick-up when work overruns?
Who pays for the trip, the kit and the club fees?
Whose number is first on the school’s contact list, and who takes the call when a child is unwell?
Who tells the school about a change of address?
Who goes to the parents’ evening, and what happens if you both want to?
None of those questions is difficult on its own. What makes them difficult is having to answer them at seven in the morning, by text, with a child already in the car.
One father we worked with had an arrangement that ran smoothly for two years. His son then moved to secondary school, took up rugby on a Wednesday evening and the whole thing came apart inside a fortnight. Neither parent had done anything wrong. The arrangement had simply been built around a timetable that no longer existed.
That is worth saying plainly because most people assume the opposite. An arrangement failing does not mean either of you has failed. It usually means the arrangement is out of date.
September can also be a moment of decision
For some parents, the problem is not new at all. They may have spent the summer thinking: this isn’t working anymore.
Perhaps the children are older, their needs have changed and they want to do their own thing. Perhaps one parent has moved house. Perhaps a new relationship, a new job or a new school year has made the existing arrangement impractical.
September can be the point at which somebody finally decides that “making it work” is costing too much in time, money, stress or goodwill.
That does not mean going to court.
It is a choice about process
There is no single route for sorting out disagreements about children. There are in fact as many as TEN, and the right one depends entirely on the circumstances.
Some parents reach an agreement through a conversation or a structured negotiation. Others do better with mediation or another form of dispute resolution. In some cases legal advice is needed, and occasionally a formal court process is the only route left. Each of those options carries a different cost, takes a different amount of time, and does a different amount of damage to the relationship you will still need to have at the school gate in five years time.
Next month we will go through all TEN options, identifying the advantages and disadvantages of each, so that you can see where your own situation might sit.
So, as the children head back to school this September, it may be worth looking at the arrangement you have been operating under and asking a simple question:
If we were agreeing to this arrangement today, knowing what we know now, would we choose the same one?
If the answer is no, that does not mean you have failed. It may simply mean the arrangement has reached its expiry date.
If it has, you have a choice about how to replace it, and the choice you make about how you go about that will shape the cost, the timescale and the temperature of everything that follows.
One thing worth doing this week
Write down the arrangement you are actually operating, rather than the one you agreed to.
Then take the five questions above and see how many have a clear answer that both of you would give the same way. Most people find at least two that do not. Those two are the conversations worth having, and it is a great deal cheaper to have them in September than in December.
If you would like to talk any of this through, you can book a free, no obligation conversation with me.
If you know somebody facing a September like this, please share this post to them.
