Why Google Calendar isn’t enough for co-parenting

For a long time, I tried to make Google Calendar work for co-parenting.

On paper, it seemed like the obvious solution. I already used it, and I could create events, share a calendar and move things around fairly easily. But in reality, it just wasn’t working for me.

I found myself constantly taking screenshots, sending them over in messages, explaining what I had changed, checking whether the other parent had seen it, and then making more changes when plans inevitably moved. It became tedious very quickly.

Even sharing a Google Calendar didn’t completely solve the problem. The other parent wasn’t really using it, so although the calendar technically existed, it wasn’t somewhere they were regularly looking.

A shared calendar is not the same thing as a shared co-parenting schedule.

Co-parenting is about more than events

If I add “Saturday — Kids with Dad”, that entry could mean several different things. It might be something we’ve already agreed. It might be a proposal for next month. It might have changed from what we previously discussed, or still need the other parent’s acknowledgement before we consider it final.

That context matters. Google Calendar does support invitations, responses and, for eligible events, proposed new times. Those are useful tools. But in our setup, seeing a day on the calendar didn’t reliably tell us whether that parenting arrangement had been agreed.

We still had to supply that meaning ourselves, through labels, messages and remembering what we had discussed.

The screenshot problem

I would organise the upcoming days in the calendar and send a screenshot over WhatsApp: “This is what I have for next month — does this look right?”

Then we’d discuss it. Maybe a weekend needed changing, one of us had plans, or school holidays changed things. I’d update the calendar and potentially send another screenshot.

At that point, Google Calendar wasn’t really the whole system we were using anymore.

WhatsApp was the agreement system. Google Calendar was where I copied the final result.

The actual decisions were scattered across messages. A few weeks later, I could find myself wondering: did we actually agree to this? Was this the latest version? Did I change that before or after we spoke?

For something as important as when your children are with each parent, that ambiguity isn’t ideal.

Shared calendars need a shared habit

Google Calendar allows you to share calendars and choose what someone else can view or edit. For some co-parents, that may work perfectly well. But sharing access doesn’t automatically create a shared way of managing the week.

Both people need a reliable way to check the schedule, notice changes and understand whether something is confirmed or proposed. In our case, if one parent wasn’t looking at the calendar, I ended up messaging them anyway.

That left us managing the schedule across two places. Any shared tool, including Evnground, needs both parents to be willing to use it. Software alone can’t create that habit.

There isn’t always a repeating schedule

Every other weekend. Monday and Tuesday with one parent. Wednesday and Thursday with the other. A repeating pattern can be helpful, but real life doesn’t always follow one.

In our case, we often work out the following month together beforehand. The overall parenting time may be balanced, but the exact days can move depending on work, school, holidays, weekends away and everything else happening in life.

Trying to force that into repeating events could create more work for me. I would change one weekend, then another, and have to check which entries still represented the plan.

Sometimes it is easier to say: these are the days we’re proposing for next month. Then both parents can see them clearly and agree to them.

Changes need context

Imagine the children are scheduled to stay with one parent on Saturday, and someone wants to move that to Sunday. Editing the date is easy. Knowing whether the change has been agreed is the part I need to be clear.

With editing permission, someone can change an event on a shared Google Calendar. Invitations and responses offer another way to coordinate. What I wanted was a workflow built around the parenting arrangement itself: keep the agreed plan visible while a requested change waits for an answer.

The request should be obvious: “I’d like to change Saturday to Sunday.” The other parent can accept it, decline it or discuss an alternative. Once agreed, the schedule updates.

That creates a small but important distinction between what is currently agreed and what somebody would like to change.

Not everything needs approval

I don’t think co-parenting software should make both parents approve absolutely everything. That could become just as annoying.

If someone adds “School football match — Tuesday at 4pm”, the other parent may simply need to know about it. If it also changes who is collecting the children, that part needs agreeing. Moving an overnight stay from Friday to Saturday is a different kind of decision again.

The distinction I want a tool to make is between shared information, proposals and changes to an existing agreement. It should be easy to see which things actually need a response.

The goal is less unnecessary back-and-forth

When I started thinking about this problem, it would have been easy to add messaging, comments and lots of collaboration features. But I wanted to reduce the amount of communication needed just to understand the schedule.

Ideally, both parents can open the same calendar and answer four questions:

• What’s happening?
• What’s already agreed?
• What’s changed?
• Does anything need me to respond?

Some changes will still need a conversation. The software should make the straightforward logistics easier, so there is less to reconstruct from old messages.

That’s why I started building Evnground

My frustration with this process became part of the reason I started building Evnground. I wanted something deliberately simple: a shared calendar where both parents can organise time with their children, propose days, request changes and clearly see what has been agreed.

The goal is to remove the unnecessary communication around logistics. Less wondering which screenshot is the latest one. Less scrolling through old messages to remember whether we agreed to swap a weekend. Less assuming the other parent saw a calendar change.

One shared understanding of the schedule is what I’m working towards.

Google Calendar is still a great calendar

I still use Google Calendar for meetings, appointments and everyday life. For co-parents with an arrangement that works well in it, it may be completely sufficient.

What I’ve realised is that my co-parenting difficulty wasn’t purely a calendar problem. It was also about how we reached, recorded and changed agreements. The calendar was the visual representation of those decisions.

Once I started looking at it that way, I understood why a traditional shared calendar had never quite worked for me. I needed the agreement to be as clear as the date.