Using TalkingParents to Help You Co-Parent a Teen
How to use TalkingParents to manage your teen’s schedule, freedoms, health and wellness, expenses, special moments, and more.
- 4 min read
- child development
- custody
A child’s teenage years are unlike any other time in their life. This stage is when children undergo important developmental changes, face new challenges, and experience many firsts. It’s key for co-parents to stay on the same page as their teenager navigates this transitional period. Luckily, TalkingParents can help you and your co-parent communicate and coordinate regarding your teen’s schedule, freedoms, health and wellness, expenses, special moments, and more.
Coordinating your teen’s schedule
Once your child enters their teenage years, it’s important to reevaluate your custody schedule. By this point in your child’s life, you have probably tried a few different arrangements and/or splits based on the needs of all involved. Now that your child is a teenager, their growing independence should be taken into consideration when deciding the custody schedule. Talk to your teen about some of the custody schedules you’ve tried previously, as well as their current schedule, and see what might work best for you, your co-parent, and them.
TalkingParents is the perfect place to manage your teen’s schedule. With the Shared Calendar tool, you and your co-parent can easily document and coordinate the custody agreement. You can also keep track of all other aspects of your child’s schedule through single or repeating events. Single events allow you and your co-parent to coordinate one-time occurrences like sports games, dances, performances, and other unique activities. Repeating events allow you and your co-parent to coordinate regular occurrences such as practices, lessons, study groups, club meetings, your teen’s work schedule, and more.
Deciding your teen’s freedoms
As children get older and more independent, they’re often granted new freedoms. It’s important for co-parents to establish permissions and ground rules together to create consistency between homes. Here are some questions you and your co-parent may want to ask yourselves and discuss once your child enters their teenage years:
- Does your teen have a curfew, and if so, what time?
- Will your teen receive an allowance, and if so, how much?
- What are the rules/guidelines your teen must follow when it comes to driving?
- Is your teen allowed to have a job, and if so, what are the parameters?
- What are the rules/guidelines your teen must follow when it comes to dating?
You and your co-parent can use TalkingParents to talk about important matters like this and document decisions. Discuss these topics through Secure Messaging or Accountable Calling, so you’ll automatically have a Record of all communications. Messages within TalkingParents are searchable, so you can easily find a conversation if you need to reference it later.
Addressing your teen’s health & wellness
During your child’s teenage years, they will undergo many developmental changes that could impact their health and wellness. At this age, it’s very important for co-parents to make sure their teen is getting regular care from health professionals. Doctors recommend yearly physicals for teens to help ensure their wellness as they navigate these mental and physical transitions.
TalkingParents can help you and your co-parent communicate and coordinate regarding your child’s health. Keep track of doctor’s appointments with the Shared Calendar so that both parents stay informed of upcoming medical visits. Document your teen’s important health details, such as illnesses, medications, and/or allergies with our Info Library feature. This tool allows you and your co-parent to create shared cards holding vital information about your teen that you both need access to. The Info Library also allows you to create private cards to hold any information you’d like to document for your eyes only.
Handling your teen’s expenses
You and your co-parent will likely have additional expenses to coordinate once your child becomes a teenager. These costs may include extracurriculars, an allowance, social activities, car insurance, gas, and more. It’s important to try to anticipate these expenses ahead of time so you and your co-parent can form a plan of action. Will each co-parent always pay for certain things? Will you split costs evenly? Will expenses be broken up based on a percentage of each parent’s earnings?
Once you have an agreement laid out, you and your co-parent can coordinate all your teen’s expenses within TalkingParents. Our Accountable Payments tool was designed specifically to help co-parents manage these costs. This feature allows co-parents to make payment requests and securely send or receive money. All requests and payments are timestamped, so both parents will know exactly what was paid, when. You can even schedule monthly recurring payments to handle any regular expenses your teen might have.
Sharing your teen’s special moments
One of the hardest parts of co-parenting is missing your child when they’re with their other parent. Your child’s teenage years will be filled with firsts, and your teen may not always be in your custody when they happen. Whether it’s your teen’s first day of high school, first job, first time driving, or first school dance, you and your co-parent won’t want to miss a thing.
TalkingParents makes it easy for co-parents to document and share special moments. You and your co-parent can take photos and send them to each other with Secure Messaging. We also offer Video Calling, which allows both parents to witness special first as they happen, even if one or the other can’t be physically present.
TalkingParents is here to help you and your teen
Co-parenting a teen can be stressful, but our tools are built to make the journey easier. At the end of the day, you and your co-parent are both working toward the same goal—raising a happy, healthy teenager.