There are lots of stumbling blocks that can crop up in preparing a parenting schedule, and it can be difficult to anticipate all the special days, events and occasions that you might want need to address in addition to on top of the children's basic week-to-week schedule. Most often, these special days are things like Mothers' Day or Fathers' Day, the children's birthdays, and religious holidays. Other problems can come up when the parenting schedule is ignored by a parent or refused by a child. Some solutions to issues like this are discussed below. More information can be found in other sections in this chapter, especially the [[Children Who Resist Seeing a Parent]] section.

I'm not going to lie. Figuring out parenting schedules for with parents who work shift work is really difficult, especially for parents whose shifts change all the time and parents who get only one or two days' notice of their shifts.

There are no good options for planning a parenting schedule around shift work. At a min minimum, the parent with the shift work will need to tell the other parent about their work schedule as soon as they find out about it, — the more notice that can be provided the better! — and  the other parent must be prepared to be as flexible as possible in accommodating the children's time with the parent. The parent with the shift work must accept that the children and the other parent have schedules of their own that may limit the time the children can spend with the parent. Both parents need to think about how care for kids can be arranged when neither of them can do it, since few daycare providers work on a drop-in basis. And both parents must learn to be patient, tolerant and forgiving toward each other.