Children of all ages need time to adjust after making the switch from one house to the other. Many need preparation or quiet time to make the transition – to gather clothes, backpacks, books, special blankets that travel with them, and to get ready emotionally. The children will pick-up on your tone, so make sure you sound enthusiastic about their upcoming time with their other parent.

It’s normal for children to be irritable and have difficulty when they first adjust. They may not seem excited to see you because they may have had a hard time leaving their other parent. Transitions bring up a child’s wish that their parents could live together and have a good marriage.

There are ways to make it easier for your children to move between your place and your former spouse’s. Make a calendar and mark one parent’s time with one color and yours with another. Consider “getting ready” time to be in a third color. Or, you and your former spouse can keep identical calendars and consult them with the children, so they know when the next transition is to take place. Very young kids may not understand the concept of time and this is the visual way to explain it.

The children should probably keep toys at both places, but they may still want to have a bag with special clothes, toys, books, or even a schedule that they can tote back and forth. Ask them if there are things they would like to have at both houses.

Rituals are important for children. The ritual of packing a beloved bag they can take with them can provide a sense of control over at least part of their situation, as well as the belief that certain things – even something as little as the bag – in their world are unchangeable. If they take their favorite book, they will know they can read the same bedtime story at both homes. Your children will likely worry they will have their blanket or stuffed animal at the other house. Keep as many duplicates as you can afford and help them collect these things. A checklist that travels back and forth between parents could benefit everyone.

Interestingly enough, it is during direct exchanges of the children that parents are most likely to have open battles because this is often the only time they see one another. What makes this even worse is that children are very aware of their parents’ tension and often times witness these battles right before their very eyes.

Accordingly, this is one reason that there is wide agreement among experts that it is generally better for children to spend a longer block of time with a parent than to frequently move between the two warring homes. The following illustrates one of Attorney Irwin M. Pollack’s favorites:

If the children’s schedule with the non-resident parent is rotating weekends and a Wednesday overnight, try replacing the Wednesday dinner or overnight with a Thursday overnight, so that it blends with the weekend time in a less disruptive block on rotating weekends.

Other possibilities are replacing a midweek contact with either a longer weekend (Friday to Monday morning) or three weekends a month to minimize the number of transitions. Note, however, that the one exception to this is very young children whose developmental needs conflict with spending longer blocks of time because of their age.

Finally, in those cases when parents are in emotional warfare, consider making the exchanges without any parental contact whatsoever. Exchanges at school or at curbside (where one parent remains in the car) are worthwhile solutions worth considering.