Communicating With Your Ex: Children's Schooling

Making decisions about school is a major responsibility and your Parenting Plan needs to designate which parents are taking on this responsibility.

Regular communication is imperative if you’re making decisions together. Designating a time to talk about your children’s education, like after each report card, is a good approach. Beyond that, attending meetings jointly with your kids' teachers is also a very good idea.

Even if you have sole custody or decision-making authority for you children, you should still keep the other parent informed of any major decisions you are making regarding the children’s schooling. Communication is critical to avoiding major conflict in separation and divorce and that applies here. One parent will need to notify the school about your child’s situation of going through a separation or divorce. Depending on the circumstances, you may need to ask the teacher to reach out to each parent separately.

However, you and your ex might make an agreement where one person communicates regularly with the teacher and then shares that information through phone, text or email and keeps the other parent in the loop.

Unless you have extenuating circumstances, both parents should usually be allowed to access their child’s school information regardless of these arrangements.

You can learn more about this topic and other Parenting Issues in divorce in my free Parenting Module Workbook and Video Series