Effective Communication Strategies for Divorced Parents Using OurFamilyWizard

When divorced parents use OurFamilyWizard, there are many communication issues that they don’t have. Nonetheless, new issues can arise because of the app. One of these issues is when a message is read but not responded to.

If the message doesn’t require a response, for instance, if it is just one parent passing on information to the other, then the feature within the app that allows you to know that it’s been read is great, and there’s no issue.

However, if you’re interested in having a discussion on the app around a particular topic, the non-response can be infuriating.

Perhaps the response you need is something simple, such as nailing down your vacation with the kids in October. Even if you have the right to just claim when your vacation is going to be without input from the other party, it’s good to know that they acknowledge you’ve got vacation coming up.

Here’s what we advise to work the system in that scenario:

1. Provide them notice as you customarily would. If you don’t have a custom yet, a soft reference to the paragraph number of the court order that gives you the right, coupled with the details of your plan (follow the Golden Rule here in regards to what you would want to know if you were being notified by them), should suffice. Perhaps you add on a “Let me know you got this so we don’t have a misunderstanding later.”
2. Three days later, in that same thread, send a message back to them just stating, “Saw you read the above a few days ago. Unless I hear otherwise from you in the next four days, I’m going to assume that you’re fine with this.”

Generally, a vacation notice is going to be given months in advance. You can’t use this approach if it pertains to a serious joint legal custody decision such as a medical procedure or schooling change. Also, you can’t do this at the last moment with the above seven-day timeframe or anything more condensed. Even if they’re getting their act together on the seventh day, there should theoretically be as many days as needed after that for the two of you to continue to exchange messages until it’s resolved. With many things in co-parenting, it’s well-advised to work far in advance.

It’s really frustrating to deal with a co-parent who refuses to communicate around co-parenting decisions to be made. Perhaps this is beyond the scope of this simple summary, but note that there are many times when we put serious teeth in the court orders around how the parties are to communicate within OurFamilyWizard to compel both parties to do better in this regard.