A calendar is never just a schedule. It’s also language: every card needs a name, and that name carries something with it, whether you intend it to or not. “Dad’s house” sounds different from “the other house”. “Our week” sounds different from “my week”. For an adult, that might be a detail. For a child who sees a card every single day, it’s repetition — and repetition counts.
This is explicitly not about what you say to the other parent, or what the custody arrangement should look like. This is only about what’s written on the page.
Why words on a card carry more weight than a conversation
A conversation happens once. A card on the wall gets looked at daily, sometimes several times a day, by a child who’s still actively learning to connect words with meaning. A word printed on a fixed, visible object carries a different weight than the same word in a sentence that passes by. That’s exactly why it’s worth thinking through the words on a calendar deliberately, even if you’d never phrase it that way out loud.
A few concrete examples
- “Dad’s house” / “Mum’s house” instead of “over there” or “the other place”. Both homes get their own name instead of one being the default and the other the exception.
- “Our week” instead of “my week” — even when the card only hangs in one home. The child still belongs to it, even in the week it isn’t there.
- “Changeover day” instead of “the day you have to go again”. A neutral word for the moment itself, without a judgement on how that moment feels.
- Two homes, no ranking. On our own calendar sheets, Home 1 and Home 2 are therefore exactly the same size, the same kind of icon, and given equal space. No home that looks bigger, brighter or higher on the page than the other — that’s a design choice, not a coincidence.
Your own names, not ours
What shouldn’t appear by default on any card are words that lock in a family structure that isn’t yours. That’s why we leave the name, role and home fields blank on our calendar sheets: no pre-filled “mum” and “dad” if that’s not how it works for you, no required setup. You fill in who lives where and what to call it — two mums, two dads, a parent and a carer, grandparents, or something else entirely. The digital icon picker included with both packages works the same way: you give the cards their own name, and that name stays put even when you switch language.
What this does and doesn’t solve
Word choice on a calendar makes a schedule more neutral on paper. It isn’t a substitute for a conversation, no guarantee of how a child feels, and no advice about the relationship with the other parent. It’s one small, concrete thing you can settle in advance, instead of having to think it through again every single time.
Both the Core pack and the Complete pack show Home 1 and Home 2 with equal visual weight, with blank name fields you fill in yourselves — on paper or digitally through the icon picker.