Clarksville parents do a lot of heavy lifting for their children – and some parents do a great deal more than others. If you’re one of those parents who serves as the primary caretaker of your child, you are shouldering a tremendous amount of work. If you can prove the work that you perform, the family law court that decides your child custody case will give you preference when it comes to making its decisions. For this reason, it’s essential that you keep a daily journal of your parenting activities.
Here’s what parents should include in their parenting journal to help protect their custody rights:
- A dated entry for every day you did something on behalf of or with your child.
- Information about entertainment activities with your children.
- A notation of work and chores performed on behalf of your kids.
- Notations about doctor and dentist appointments
- Morning activities like waking your children up, breakfast and lunch preparation, hygienic tasks and transporting the kids to school
- Evening activities like picking the children up from school, dinner preparation, bathing, helping with homework, reading bedtime stories and putting the children to bed.
- Notes about behavior and anything else you can think of.
The more detailed your parenting journal, the better, but you don’t have to spend a lot of time on this record-keeping process. Just a sentence or two each day that mentions the most pertinent details should be enough to prove your contribution as primary caretaker – or at least one of the primary caretakers – of your kids. Considering that this documentation could one day save your parental rights, you don’t want to skip creating this potentially vital piece of child custody evidence.
