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→Special non-holiday days
Don't forget about other special days that aren't public holidays when you're working out your parenting schedule. These include the children's birthdays, the parents' birthdays. Fathers' Day, Mothers' Day, Halloween and some religious holidays. Creating exceptions to the parenting schedule after the fact, to deal with special days you've forgotten about, can create an awful lot of conflict.
*'''Fathers' Day and Mothers' Day:''' The easiest way of handling Fathers' Day and Mothers' Day is to agree that if Father's Day falls on a Sunday when the children are not with their father, their father will be able to have them for a few hours or the whole day. The same approach works just as well with Mothers' Day, but won't work at all for kids with two fathers or two mothers. In a case like that, the obvious solution is solutions are for everyone to celebrate the day together, if that's possible, or to just divide the day in half, or to alternate the day so that each parent has them every other year.
*'''Children's birthdays:''' There are four basic choices for managing the kids' birthdays. You could just follow the ordinary week-to-week calendar, so that whichever parent the kids are with on their birthday has them for that day, and the other parent makes special plans to celebrate the next time they have the kids. Or, you could decide that you'll each have a couple of hours or a half-day with the kids on their birthdays. You could also decide to rotate the children's birthdays so that they're with one parent one year and with the other parent the next. Or, you could all spend the day with the birthday child together. Whatever you do, don't forget about deciding who is going to be responsible for planning birthday parties!
*'''Parents' birthdays:''' While some parents don't worry about making sure their kids see them on their birthdays, others do. The easiest way to handle that is to either agree that if a parent's birthday falls on a day when the kids are with the other parent, the birthday parent will be able to have them for a few hours, perhaps for the whole day or perhaps just for dinner. If the birthday falls on a weekend, maybe the birthday parent can spend the entire day and an overnight with the kids.
*'''Halloween:''' Do ''not'' forget to address Halloween in your parenting schedule if you have kids who are ten or younger! The easiest way of dealing with Halloween is to share trick-or-treating duties so that one parent has the kids in even-numbered years and the other parent has the kids in odd-numbered years. In general, the parent who has the kids will take them for two or three hours, just long enough to walk them around the neighbourhood. Don't forget to talk about who will be responsible for making costumes!
*'''Religious holidays:''' Most parents agree to rotate one-day religious holidays, so that one parent has the kids in one year and the other parent has the kids the next. For two-day holidays, like Rosh Hashanah, parents will usually each take one day. For holidays that are a bit longer, parents often split the holiday down the middle. Christmas, for example, is often handled with the parents rotating Christmas Eve to the early afternoon on Christmas Day, and early afternoon on Christmas Day to Boxing Day.