All right.

You think that the idea of a shared calendar sounds productive?

It sounds fair.

It sounds logical because maybe you used a calendar when you were

married and you shared it, right?

maybe you had a skylight and you got notifications on each other and,

and you just kept track of the kids.

Because let's face it, everybody has one of those calendars.

If you have kids in activities, is color coded.

You are literally a taxi service for shuttling your kids around everywhere.

Not to mention if you have a unhealthy child or a child with

special needs that has a lot of extra appointments, OTPT therapy,

you doctor visit, you know, checkup.

It's a lot, right?

And so when you're getting divorced, you're thinking,

let's do a shared calendar.

A lot of the apps out there offer that feature inside of the app.

I am here to tell you, it's a no for me.

It's an absolute no.

Now again, I'm here coaching you on what it's like to be in a high conflict

co-parenting journey, what it will look like and how it's gonna cause

you havoc if you do a shared calendar.

So let's just dive into it.

First things first, aren't we both adults, like, seriously, we are both adults.

Why are we having to put things.

On a calendar to both see at the same time, I mean, I'm a paper person still,

so I have a paper calendar and then I have, my whole life is also digital

and there's no way in hell I am sharing that thing because that is like a diary.

My calendar online, right?

Has all my appointments, all of my period, everything on there.

I'm not sharing that with my ex. So now that means I would have

to create another calendar right inside that app and use that.

So now not only am I writing it down, putting it on my own personal

calendar, now I'm gonna go take it and put it in a third place location.

No fricking way.

And here's the other reason, we're adults and should know our schedule.

I have clients before they came to me, said yes to a shared calendar,

and then when I went and looked at it, they have their custody

agreement schedule in the calendar.

And this was their response.

Well, yeah, so that the other parent doesn't forget.

I'm sorry, you need someone else to tell you after this divorce, when your

day with your children is like, that shit wasn't humiliating enough that it

didn't get ingrained in your fucking brain the second it got awarded to you.

you need a reminder to go pick up your children on your custody day.

It's a fuck no for me, no.

What that was intended for.

Was for doctor's appointments, but even still, people have taken it outta hand

and now we're uploading 128 baseball games in the summer into the shared app.

It's a no for me, I'm not sharing an app for 128 baseball games.

So it comes down to problem number two, which one of us is uploading.

Which one of us is taking the time to sit down and upload 128 baseball

games, and God forbid I get one of those days wrong, maybe I put it on

a Saturday instead of the Sunday.

I might as well just go put myself in jail because I'll be the worst parent

in the world for getting it wrong.

So what happens when something goes wrong?

I'm telling you right now, your ex will try to crucify you

for not putting something in.

Let's say, you know, you got three kids, you took 'em to the dentist, you made the

next appointment, you started to put the two dentist appointments in, but something

happened with little Johnny, got water all over the floor at the dentist office.

So you stop what you're texting and putting in the calendar, and you go

over and you're trying to help little Johnny with the water and you forget

to add the third dentist appointment.

Well now you're just trying to withhold information.

Now I'm gonna get accused of trying to alienate that child away from that

parent that they didn't get included about their dentist appointment.

I'm exhausted just talking about this.

I'm exhausted talking about the ins and the outs of trying to get an adult

to participate in their child's life.

It's 2026.

Everything.

Everything is digitalized.

Baseball calendars are digitalized.

Therapy appointments are all coming in as reminders on my phone now.

School functions are coming in as emails and reminders.

If your kid gets something, I guarantee it came digitally first, and if it

didn't, this is why I have a copy machine in my home and I will make

a copy and put it right back in that book bag and I ain't writing shit down.

I'm not writing anything down for my ex.

I'm not doing it.

I'm not writing anything down.

I'm not putting anything in an app.

I'm no one's fucking secretary.

You wanna come to that appointment, you write it down on your calendar, how you

keep your life organized, whether that's paper, electronically on a fucking post-it

note inside somebody else's calendar.

I don't care, but it's not my job to make sure you keep track.

I'll inform you.

This is not that you guys, I'm not saying don't inform them.

What I'm saying is make sure.

You just tell them and however they keep track of it is how they keep track of it.

It is not your job to recreate the wheel on getting everybody organized,

getting everybody on the same page, making sure that everybody has access.

No, I told you when the dentist appointment was.

The next one is not for another six months.

Write it down yourself.

Write it down.

Because the expectation here is that if we start with just doctor's

appointments and then that one season, you know, had a lot of baseball games,

so we added the baseball season.

So where does it stop?

Does it stop if I put my daughter in a tap class on a Tuesday?

Do I have to include that now?

Do I have to include the things that I do during my personal time if it's in a

public place to allow the other parent to possibly participate and show up?

It gets muddy, and I'm gonna tell you what, with high conflict people, they

will make it muddy and they will make it feel bad that you did not include it.

And you're trying to withhold things and you're trying not to let them know, and

you're trying to keep things from them.

They're gonna end up knowing your whole calendar.

I had a client one time who put her own personal appointments on the

wrong calendar and her ex found out some health news that was none of his

business, but in the midst of chaos.

Shit happened and she got all rattled and confused and put it on the wrong calendar.

You guys, a shared calendar comes back down to we got emotional

immaturity and physical immaturity.

Somebody just can't keep their life in check and it's not

my job to keep you in check.

You wanna participate in your kids life, participate and write stuff down.

Remember, set alarms, set reminders, and show the fuck up.

I'm not saying don't inform.

You will inform.

You have to inform, it's part of your parenting plan.

You have to keep the other parent informed.

So if you're the one going to a dentist appointment, you don't leave that dentist

appointment office till you've messaged, however it says in your parenting plan

about the next dentist appointment.

It's not my job six months from now to be like, Hey, reminder, the kids

have a dentist appointment tomorrow.

I did that shit six months ago when I told when the fucking appointment was.

Our life is already chaos as a single parent, the last thing I'm here to

do is to handhold somebody in fucking participating in the job that they

said they would do, which is fucking show up and parent their children.

It is not my job to make sure that happens, and that's

all a shared calendar is.

Here's the other things that can happen.

There's no discretion on who can change what in the parenting plan.

There's nothing saying that one parent can't go out of their way to just

delete something, change something, take something out and then be like,

oh shit, I thought I put that in there.

No, you didn't.

Now can you find out?

Yes, and go get IP addresses and get notification of who

deleted and who altered.

Yes.

It doesn't mean high conflict.

People will stop.

They will fuck with you every chance you get changed the time by 30 minutes.

It is a surveillance thing.

High conflict.

People will use it as surveillance on you.

Because they know every time you take your kid to the doctor, you

do a little something before, or you go somewhere after.

Now they know what you're doing.

Three outta the four hours.

The other half is if you put something in there that's maybe you

know new or it's not normal, or it's just something a little different,

your kids will be questioned, well, why is this in the calendar?

What does this mean?

What's going on here?

Why are you doing this?

Do we really need to have our kids play mediator and play, Hey, let's

fill everybody in on what's going on.

No.

So this whole problem with shared calendars is people are telling you

to do them that have never used them.

We got lawyers and judges and mediators out here that have never

really been in the thick of a high conflict co-parenting journey saying,

yeah, use this fucking calendar.

Use it.

You're a single parent, you are already run ragged on low

sleep, low food, and low finance.

And now I got placed as secretarial position to insert that and it happens

so casually you leave an appointment that you and your ex are both at and you

schedule the next appointment right there with both of you present with that nice

little secretary and all of a sudden she says, do you need me to send a reminder?

Your ex high conflict quickly says, don't worry about it.

They'll put it in the app.

And I just got elected app manager.

We're both grown.

We both participated in making this child, but now all of a

sudden, I'm the fucking secretary.

We're not doing that.

I'm not doing that.

Some of you have a 2-year-old, you're gonna do that for the next

16 years, putting things in an app.

No.

Sharing a Google app.

No, I'm not doing that.

So problems with a shared parenting calendar.

They don't prevent conflict.

If anything, it causes more conflict.

If anything, it's miscommunication of, well, I put it in the app.

Well, you didn't remind me.

It's not my fucking job to remind you.

And now you're arguing about that.

It's too much communication.

I got a notice that you put something in the app.

You didn't ask me about that.

Well, I was gonna ask you next time I saw you, and just kind of combine everything.

It's six months out, so I have plenty of time to tell you.

Well, why'd you put it in the app?

If you didn't tell me first, why didn't you ask me first?

Ugh, no gross.

It's a power struggle on who gets to be the person in charge of the calendar.

And here's the other thing, high conflict.

People will always say, oh, that day doesn't work.

The day you put in doesn't work.

They won't get back to you on set days anyways, that do work.

When you're actually at the doctor's office or actually at the dentist office

and you pick a day that you're like, well, okay, that's my parenting time, so at

least you know they won't have a problem with it 'cause it's my parenting time.

They don't have to leave work.

I can just take the kid.

And then lo and behold, now of a sudden they wanna attend doctor's appointments

they never have in fucking six years.

But now all of a sudden, now they're at every appointment and now they're pissed

that you picked your day midday over your lunch hour because they have a meeting.

Now you have to cancel that appointment and now you're three more months out.

It's a shit show.

Sharing a calendar, it's a shit show.

Hear me again.

The accusations will fly.

They're doing this intentionally.

They're putting things on the app and not telling me they're using

the calendar to abuse my time.

You wouldn't believe the depths that high conflict people will go to make you

the bad guy for trying to be organized.

Look at her, trying to control my life.

Look at him.

Just putting things in there.

It's messy.

And again, the idea at first is like, okay, we'll be on the

same page, but think about this.

Do you all honest question?

Honest question.

Do you all put your work schedule on your calendar?

Like if you have a nine to five job, say you work at a Fortune 500

company, you go in every day, you have been for the last 15 years.

You go in at eight o'clock and you leave at four.

Do you put that in your calendar?

No.

You fucking show up at eight and you leave at four.

You haven't thought twice about it after the first couple days of work.

It's just your standard rotation, right?

It's what you do.

It's your routine.

Why are we putting our visitation schedule in a calendar?

If you need that kind of reminder, you don't need your kids.

I said it.

You don't need your kids.

If you can't remember what day you have them and what time you pick them up.

You don't.

We hear these judges lawyers saying, Hey, we're gonna use a parenting app.

We're gonna make you guys put your whole lives digital into an app so he

knows what you're doing with the kids, and he'll forget to upload everything

and you'll be screwed and roll reverse that if you need to, because every

high conflict parent will expect every detail of what you do with the kids in

that app, but they won't upload shit and here's what they fall back on.

I don't know how to use it.

I, I dunno how to use it.

It's a fucking calendar.

How do, what do you mean you don't know how to use it?

you're just better at it.

So, yeah.

Sorry.

I forgot.

And it's like no big deal when they forget.

But if we forget, it's contempt.

If we forget, we're a horrible co-parent.

If we forget, we're trying to alienate the children.

But this is why attorneys love it for you, because everything

I'm talking about is conflict.

Which means litigation, which means chaching.

Chaching.

We're going back because Susie and Steve can't come to an agreement

about how to use the parenting app that was told to be used on them.

They don't wanna use it.

One of 'em is using it, one of them's not.

And so they're arguing about the calendar.

Now, calendars are a control tactic.

You're not gonna ever get me off that hill.

They're unneeded.

It's basically saying two people can't be adults and track their own lives.

Somebody still needs to have their belt and clothes laid out for

them for, an outing for dinner.

We're not doing that.

It's time for everybody to realize you are a single parent.

Figure out how to be organized, figure out how to keep track of shit.

Or here's the other half of it.

The other parent will go and step up for everybody and make sure the

kids never miss a beat, and you'll be lacking from behind and that's okay.

That's probably where you've been.

Stay there.

It's warm there.

You're used to it.

This concept that we need to now share a calendar with a person who, I'm sorry,

probably has not even been to the doctor's office, couldn't pick the child's doctor

or dentist out of a fucking lineup with a GUN to point it at their head.

They have no idea.

But now, now we have to share a calendar.

Now we have to have every detail.

I'm gonna let you in a little private situation here.

I've had two kids, right, with my ex-husband.

I was mostly the one that took people to things and I was the

primary when it came to appointments.

I was a teacher, so I had a little bit more flexible time off in the summer, so

we, you know, put all of our appointments in the summertime, blah, blah, blah.

So I did most of it.

He'd show up when he could, right?

Minimal to none.

I am now remarried to a man that has been to every doctor's appointment, has not

missed any, and I've missed 95% of them.

I don't go.

And I don't go because I don't care.

I don't go because we don't need two fucking grown adults in a five

by nine room watching our child get their blood pressure taken.

I trust my ex-husband to go, or my husband to go and get it done.

That's it.

And this whole idea that you feel like you both have to go to all

these appointments is hogwash.

You don't Yeah.

Your ex is a piece of shit.

Yeah.

Your ex has problems.

Yeah.

Your ex is this.

Unless you truly believe they're gonna do harm to your child in these

appointments, stop going to all of them, which again is getting me off my point.

But I just want you to know good people sometimes don't go to appointments either.

I'm a good mom, I'm just choosing.

That's not how I wanna spend my time, and I don't want have both of us

at every single appointment I work.

That's his job to go to those appointments.

It's not my job right now, so don't feel bad because you have to

work and you miss an appointment.

That's that parent's job that day is to take that child to that appointment.

But sharing a calendar again with a high conflict person, which could

be your abuser, which could be your that just does not like you,

is not how I wanna spend my time.

I'm uploading it for the benefit of them to know my

whereabouts and where I'm going.

And so is the child.

Yeah.

The child's with me to those appointments.

That ex also knows, okay, well if the appointment's at nine, then that

means she's leaving work at eight 15.

Then she has to go pick up the child.

Then she's gonna be, they know my whole update.

I'm not doing that.

I'm not doing that.

The whole process of uploading stuff to a calendar is for

people that just aren't mature.

We're all mature here.

We went through a really bad divorce.

It's all time for us to put our big boy pants on, our big girl pants

on and buck up and figure it out.

How are we gonna keep track of our own life?

How are we gonna be organized?

And it's not Through a shared calendar, you'll have more

problems than what it's worth.

Mark my words.