What would you suggest? What are the possible alternatives? It is either this or what I do where the kids' week is all chopped up between mom and dad which is not ideal either. Kids need both parents equally and I think the every other week set up is as "healthy" as it can be, whatever that means. I think it is sad that you want your husband to substitute money (child support) for love and attention (every other weekend).

I think a week on and week off is a pretty horrible schedule. As someone else said-IMO it only works well if you've got two parents who are willing to coparent. You need similar rules, routines, parents who get along, ideally the two homes would be physically close to one another.

Smaller kids, especially 0-3 do need more frequent visits rather than longer visits, IMO.

I don't think that's sad at all xtina! "I think it is sad that you want your husband to substitute money (child support) for love and attention (every other weekend)."

Wishful thinking or not, you're absolutely right. Being in a different house every other week makes it impossible for either of you to adjust to anything! Your mom is right, it's more confusing for the kid and they act out worse.

Having done a crazy way alternating days every other week, then one week on and one week off Monday -Monday. I don't recommend 50/50. Having full custody of SS the last year, has been wonderful for him. I would recommend every other weekend honestly. I know Fathers have rights, and mothers have rights. But, these kids are bounced around and act like it. The behavior issues and self esteem problems all come from them never feeling like they have a safe place. I do think that they can live with the Dad's or the Mom's either. Depends on the better home and who can provide a more stable life. In our case, that would have been DH, since he works around the corner and BM works many hours and I work from home. But, they have 50/50 from the time of separation and that is the way they felt was in the best interest of the kid.

It is not, having lived with the chaos of that, I would not recommend it to anyone. Someone has to have primary custody.

I am starting to think that EOWeekend is the best schedule. The courts should have the kids reside with the parent who is truly best able to take care of them.

One week on/one off works the best for us so far . We have a wed switch day.... Before the kids dd9 ds6 were confused about where they were going and when they would see the other parent next Etc. now they look on the calendar and know what is what and that every wed they switch. The wasband and I don talk hardly at all and less transitions has meant less drama all around... It has definitely added peace to our situation .

I think it depends on the family. My dh and bm have had 50/50 EOW for 2 1/2 years now and it worked great for sd10. She loves going back and forth each week. We live 10 min apart, she has all the same friends, same school, everything. Sd10 has no behavioral problems, Honor Roll student, class president etc. They always worked out schedules without a problem. Then..... Dh married me and bm went batshit crazy. On the day we got married she filed for full custody saying 50/50 wasn't working. It would still for great if she wanted it to but she doesn't so she makes everything as difficult as she can. Its really a shame because they had a great thing and now she's put it in the family court system to decide and screw up. I'm sure it doesn't work that well for everyone but it did for us and now crazy jealous psycho bm is screwing it up. Been in court for 18 months now so as of now nothing has been changed. We'll find out in January. Good luck to you!

I would love full weeks, poor SD10 sometimes doesn't know where she is going to be sleeping that very night because decisions are so last minute between BM and SO. She puts up with it well, as this is the only life that she has ever known, but honestly for the 3 years BM and SD lived an hour and a half away and we only had her on weekends, it seemed her life had more structure and stability. She knew weekdays with an occasional weekend were with mom and weekends were with dad. Unfortunately, that made her feel like more of a visitor at dad's house and he didn't really have much to do with day to day parenting and since he only had her for 2 days a week, there was absolutely no discipline and everything he could do to make it fun.

Now that it truly is back to 50-50, she has chores, he is more involved in school, he actually gets to parent her and teach her good habits and manners, etc. BUT so do I, I will not live in a house with a slob, I don't care if she is "Only 10, she's just a kid". I will not live with a whiny brat that expects everyone to cater to her, buy her everything she wants and I especially hate it when she is rude and disrespectful to her father (which is more and more frequent these days). BM hates that we have more influence over her daughter and certainly lets me know it. But guess what. . . everybody (including BM's family) tells me how good I am to that kid, what a good influence I am and how wonderful I am, all out of the kindness of my heart because Lord knows, I certainly do not have to be.