Under the law, when you make any decision about parenting, you should only consider what is in the child's best interest. This means that you're going to want to take a child-centred approach and think about what's best for the child and not necessarily what's best for the parents.

There many different factors to consider. The first is the child's health and emotional well-being, which is specific to your child. You want to ask questions about health concerns, any special needs that they might have, and mental health considerations. You'll want to think about what's best for them now and in the future.

Having regard to those concerns, you'll also want to consider your child's thoughts and wishes. Your child's views are important, and any parent knows that a child will make their thoughts and feelings and wishes known anyway. The law says that they should be considered when you're determining what's in their best interest.

There's a rumour out there, though, that a child can make their own decisions and determine where they're going to live when they're 12. It's a widespread rumour, and it’s unclear where it came from because there isn't anything so clear under the law. A child's view will be given more and more weight the older and more mature they get.

So, it's true that once a child reaches 12 years old, they'll be given a little bit more weight in terms of what they think and feel because at that age, they're going to be seeing things through a more mature lens. But kids, regardless of their ages, aren't legally in a position to make decisions. The decisions always remain with the parents.

It’s also important to consider the love and affection between a child and other important people in their life. For the majority of families, a child will benefit most from receiving love, care, and support from both parents. And feeling a continued involvement from both parents is generally accepted to be best for most children, unless it causes harm in some way. It's also important to have time with both parents and continue that loving bond.

You and your spouse may be very different and have very different parenting ideas, but your child gets the benefit of that diversity. They learn and they grow under the guidance of both parents. And if you're able to work together as co-parents, they'll see you modelling positive relationship dynamics, communication skills, and conflict resolution. And most importantly, they're going to see that you can come together for them.

You'll also want to consider your child's needs given their age and stage of development. A child's age and developmental stage really matters in determining what's in their best interest because what you talk about today in making your agreement might not be relevant when your child is 10 or 14 or 17.

So it's important to make the best decisions now and also have a mechanism to keep making ongoing decisions so that you can adjust things as they get older.

The child's cultural identity, language, and religion should also be considered. You'll continue to make decisions with regard to impact on their culture and language. These topics relate to a child's experience of their community and impact their psychological and emotional safety as well as security and well-being.

How the child was brought up and how well each parent looked after the child during the relationship is also important. What a child is accustomed to and the roles that each parent played in the child's past is important in keeping things stable and consistent. But it needs to be balanced against the realities of a new living arrangement.

It may be that one of you was the primary caregiver to the child during the relationship, which is factor that is important and should be considered, but it's weighed against the other ideas around maintaining a loving bond with both parents.

It's generally accepted that new arrangements will be necessary and that even though you distributed roles and responsibilities between you in the relationship, there's a general acceptance that both parents have the capacity to take on new roles and take on new responsibilities unless there's a really serious reason why they shouldn't. Both parents should be given space to each take on greater parenting roles.

You'll want to consider how well each parent will be able to care for and meet the needs of the child in the new arrangement. A good parenting plan should be mindful of providing predictability and security to the child and making sure that each of you has a stable and secure home.

You'll want to consider quality of time, principles for sharing time, and ways to minimize the impact of transitions. And you'll want to consider whether arrangements need the child's parents to cooperate or interact with each other and whether it's appropriate.

Psychologists acknowledge that certain traumas from childhood can have long-term impacts on the health, opportunity, and well-being of children. There are seven main childhood traumas. They're called adverse childhood experiences or ACEs. And one of them is separation and divorce.

We know that these ACEs can lead to health concerns with higher rates of disease and injury, higher rates of depression, anxiety, and personality disorders, and lower rates of high school graduation or other economic opportunities.

It's important to understand that those possible outcomes exist for your child, but it's also important to know that the research shows that it's not the separation itself that causes these outcomes. It's mainly the conflict that comes from separation that causes the outcomes. When a child experiences their parents in high conflict and feels pressure to please both parents and protect both parents, they experience measurable amounts of stress – And that stress is the main contributor to their long-term negative outcomes.

Here you'll find an important video on the impact of separation and divorce on children. It's a short TED talk that really explains all of this quite well. Ultimately though, it's positive and it's hopeful because it means that your child's experience of your separation is in your control.

When you take a proactive approach and you carefully plan how you're going to communicate and deal with each other, you can minimize the conflict that you'll experience and expose your child to.

It's really critical that you make sure you keep them away from adult issues, have adult conversations out of earshot, and speak positively about the other parent to your child and around your child. It's important to keep them out of the middle of your disagreements.

Sometimes it's not possible to have relatively good communication or even structure the arrangement so that even though you don't see each other, you're able to maintain low levels of conflict. And in those cases, one person may have more parenting responsibilities or even all of the parenting responsibilities because to have any amount of communication would be damaging or unsafe.

But for most people, most of the time, you can define your new co-parenting relationship and simply establish boundaries and expectations that each person has to adhere to. It's especially ideal to have a good working relationship between spouses so that you can keep each other informed and share the load of parenting together.

There may be a circumstance where it's not in the best interest for a child to have contact with both parents. In those situations, particularly where a child would be harmed, it's best not to allow parenting time.

These circumstances are rare, and if you feel that your child should not spend time with your spouse, you should seek legal advice to fully understand your legal position. There are measures that can be put into place like supervision or different sort of stepped approaches to parenting time that might be appropriate in your circumstances.

As you're making decisions about parenting and changing the way things can be done, it can really feel hard and even scary. But try to remember as you're making these decisions that parenting plans can change.