Can I Do Whatever I Want during My Parent Time?

Within Reason, Yes

Generally speaking, you can do whatever you want to do with your child during your parent time. Obviously, you can’t break the law during your parent time—for instance, you can’t take your under-age child to the bar to get drunk—and expect the courts to be fine with it. However, within reason, you are typically free to do whatever you please during your parent time. If that means that you and your child just sit in front of the television and watch entertainment news, you can do that. If you don’t want to use your parent-time, and just let your ex have it, you can probably do that too—but you may end up having reduced custody. Although, it should be understood that children are only young once and constantly avoiding spending quality time with them may result in adult children who aren’t interested in a relationship with the parent who didn’t spend quality time with them when they were a child. While the rules about what you can do during parent time are pretty unlimited, they aren’t totally unlimited. There are some things that you cannot do during your parent time.

Disrupting School

Many divorce decrees have specific language about disrupting a child’s academic routine in favor of a frivolous activity. This may mean that you might not be able to randomly pull your kid out of school for activities. There may be exceptions for vacations, but you may need to notify the school ahead of time and notify your ex ahead of time as well. If you do need to allow your child to take the day off from school, you’ll likely need to get your ex’s permission beforehand. Depending on the language in your decree, you may need to get written permission from your ex. It is important for both the child and your co-parenting relationship that school is not disrupted too frequently. If you are consistently removing the child from school without the other parent’s permission and without good reason, you may have your amount of parent-time reduced, and you may even lose custody.

Do I Have to Spend Time with My Kid?

If you have a court order regarding the custody arrangement, you do have a legal obligation to care for your child. However, your ex may not force you to spend time with your kid if they want the extra parent time, but if you’re constantly showing up only to drop them off and Grandma’s house, that may be a problem in the future that may lead to loss of parent time. Your ex may use that as evidence that you aren’t interested in being involved in the child’s life. As far as spending quality time with your children, you aren’t expected to be attached at the hip 24/7, especially if you have teenagers. Sometimes just watching a movie together during your parent time is enough. Not everything has to be an elaborately planned event. If your kid plays with toys while you watch TV, that may also be okay every now and then. While it’s important for children to have quality time with their parents, not everything has to be an extremely enriching experience.

What about Video Games and Movies?

If you want to buy your child video games or allow them to watch certain television shows, that is completely up to you. Sometimes parents will attempt to “keep the peace” by avoiding games/shows/movies that their ex wouldn’t want the child to watch. Assuming the ex has reasonable restrictions, keeping the peace may not be a bad idea. However, if you truly wanted to, you could generally allow your kids to watch whatever movies/shows or play whatever video games they would like. There are, of course, exceptions for cases where your choice of entertainment is inappropriate for the child—especially if it’s been shown to cause the child harm. For example, if you watch The Purge with your six-year-old and she now is having a lot of anxiety and nightmares, that’s likely a sign that the movie was not appropriate for your young child and you should refrain from such content until the child is mature enough. However, it should be noted that there is a difference between a child who is old enough to watch a movie and understand what is going on, and a child who is not old enough (a baby, for example) to understand what is going on in the movie. Also, just because something is “scary” or creates nightmares and/or bad memories, doesn’t mean that the content isn’t appropriate.

No Rules!?

You don’t necessarily have to make your kids follow all the rules that your spouse has. If you want to be the fun dad or the cool mom, you can do that—within reason, of course. At a certain point, refusal to enforce boundaries and/or rules can be a form of alienation. Some parents really do buy their underage kids alcohol, which could have serious legal consequences, both civil and criminal. The more extreme the lack of boundaries and rules are, the more likely it is that there will eventually be consequences, especially if you’re allowing the children to do something illegal.