Shared Calendars in Co-Parenting: The Control Tactic Nobody Talks About
Feb 03, 2026
Alright, let's talk about shared parenting calendars.
Your lawyer probably told you to use one. The mediator swears by them.
Every co-parenting app has the feature built right in. Sounds reasonable, right? Wrong.
If you're dealing with a high-conflict co-parent, that shared calendar is about to become a weapon against you. And I'm here to tell you exactly why I'll never agree to one.
Here's the thing nobody's saying out loud: shared calendars aren't about organization—they're about control. They're about surveillance. They're about making you responsible for managing another grown adult's life while you're already drowning as a single parent.
In this episode, I break down the real problems with shared parenting calendars that lawyers, judges, and mediators won't tell you because most of them have never actually lived through high-conflict co-parenting.
You'll hear about:
- Why needing a reminder about your own custody days is a massive red flag
- How "just doctor's appointments" turns into 128 baseball games you're expected to upload
- The difference between informing your co-parent (required) and managing their calendar (absolutely not your job)
- How high-conflict exes use shared calendars for surveillance and to know your every move
- Why one forgotten entry can get you accused of parental alienation
- The power struggles, the accusations, and why this creates MORE conflict, not less
- What attorneys really think about calendar drama (hint: cha-ching)
Look, we're all adults here. If you can't remember when to pick up your kids without a digital reminder, we have bigger problems. I'm not your secretary. I'm not laying out your clothes for dinner. And I'm sure as hell not triple-tracking my life so you can stay organized.
You want to participate in your kids' lives? Great. Write stuff down. Set your own reminders. Show the hell up. I'll inform you once when I make an appointment—that's my job. What you do with that information is on you.
If you're exhausted from hand-holding another adult through basic parenting responsibilities, this episode is your permission slip to stop. Let's dive in.
Here’s What You Can Actually Take Away:
- "You're Not Their Secretary, Period - Your parenting plan requires you to inform your co-parent about appointments, and that's it. You send one message when you schedule something, and your job is done. Managing their calendar and uploading events to an app is their responsibility as a functioning adult.
- Shared Calendars Create Conflict, They Don't Solve It - In high-conflict situations, shared calendars become another battlefield where you'll get accused of uploading things wrong or withholding information. Every notification becomes a potential argument and every upload gets scrutinized. The drama multiplies instead of decreasing.
- Informing Once Is Enough. You're Not a Reminder Service - When you leave the dentist office, you message your co-parent once with the date and time. Six months later, it's not your job to send a reminder the day before. They're an adult who can write it down, set an alarm, or deal with the consequences.
- The Scope Creeps From Reasonable to Ridiculous - What starts as "just doctor's appointments" quickly becomes every baseball game, dance class, therapy session, and school event. Before you know it, you're uploading your entire life while they contribute nothing. God forbid you miss one entry or you're accused of being secretive.
- High-Conflict People Turn Every Tool Into a Weapon - They'll delete entries, change times by 30 minutes, or accuse you of scheduling things to exclude them. They'll monitor when you leave work, where you go before appointments, and what you do after. The calendar becomes surveillance disguised as co-parenting.
The Truth Bombs
- "We're both adults. Why do we need to put things on a calendar to both see at the same time? I'm no one's secretary."
- "If you need a reminder to pick up your kids on your custody day, you don't need your kids. That's not what calendars are for."
- "High-conflict people will use a shared calendar as surveillance. They know where you are, what you're doing, and they'll question your kids about every entry."
- "I did my job six months ago when I told you about the appointment. It's not my job to remind you the day before like you're a child."
- "The whole process of uploading stuff to a calendar is for people who just aren't mature. We all need to put our big girl pants on and figure out how to keep track of our own lives."
- "You don't need two adults in a five-by-nine room watching your child get their blood pressure taken. Trust that the other parent can handle it, or don't—but stop going to everything."
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Samantha Boss: 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 you just kept track of the kids.
Because let's face it, everybody has one of those calendars. If you have kids in activities, it's color coded. You are literally a taxi service for shuttling your kids around everywhere. Not to mention if you have an unhealthy child or a child with special needs that has a lot of extra appointments—OT, PT, therapy, doctor visits, checkups.
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.
We’re Both Adults—Act Like It
First things first: aren't we both adults? 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 that's also digital and there's no way in hell I am sharing that thing because that is like a diary. My calendar online has all my appointments, everything personal 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 who 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? That wasn't humiliating enough that it didn't get ingrained in your 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.
Do you 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.
From Doctor's Appointments To 128 Baseball Games
What that was intended for was doctor's appointments, but even still, people have taken it out of 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 got three kids, you took them to the dentist, you made the next appointment, you started to put the two dentist appointments in, but something happened with little Johnny—he 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 because 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.
Because the expectation here is that if we start with just doctor's appointments and then that one season 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.
You’re No One's Secretary
It's 2026. 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 anything 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, however 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—you guys, I'm not saying don't inform them. What I'm saying is 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.
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 until 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 six months ago when I told you when the fucking appointment was.
You're a single parent. You are already run ragged on low sleep, low food, and low finance. And now I got placed in a secretarial position.
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 receptionist 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. I'm not doing that.
Our life is already chaos as a single parent. The last thing I'm here to do is hand-hold somebody in participating in the job that they said they would do, which is show up and parent their children.
It is not my job to make sure that happens, and that's all a shared calendar is.
Shared Calendars Are Surveillance And Control
Here's the other things that can happen: there's no discretion on who can change what. 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, I thought I put that in there."
No, you didn't.
Now can you find out? Yes, you can go get IP addresses and get notification of who deleted and who altered. But it doesn't mean high-conflict people will stop. They will fuck with you every chance they get. Change 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 out of the four hours.
The other half is if you put something in there that's new or not normal or 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? No.
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, she got all rattled and confused and put it on the wrong calendar.
You guys, a shared calendar comes back down to 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.
Sharing a calendar with a high-conflict person, which could be your abuser, which could be your co-parent 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. 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 8:15. Then she has to go pick up the child." They know my whole schedule.
I'm not doing that. I'm not doing that.
Problems with a shared parenting calendar: they don't prevent conflict. If anything, they cause more conflict.
"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 what days do work.
When you're actually at the doctor's office or dentist office and you pick a day during your parenting time—you're thinking, "Well, okay, that's my parenting time, so at least they won't have a problem with it because it's my parenting time. They don't have to leave work. I can just take the kid."
And then lo and behold, now all of a sudden they wanna attend doctor's appointments they never have in fucking six years. But 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 is 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.
Why Lawyers Love It (And Why You Shouldn't)
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.
We hear these judges and 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. 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 don't know how to use it."
It's a fucking calendar. 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 cha-ching.
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 them is using it, one of them's not. And so they're arguing about the calendar.
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.
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 your own life.
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 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 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 pointed at their head—they have no idea. But now we have to share a calendar? Now we have to have every detail?
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 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.
I'm gonna let you in on a little private situation here. I've had two kids 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 put all of our appointments in the summertime. So I did most of it. He'd show up when he could. 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? No. 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 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. Unless you truly believe they're gonna do harm to your child in these appointments, stop going to all of them. 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. 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—to take that child to that appointment.
You wanna participate in your kids' life? Participate and write stuff down. Remember. Set alarms. Set reminders. And show up.
Mark my words.
