How to keep your kids' activities on a calendar the whole family can see
To keep children's activities straight, give each child a calendar of their own rather than scattering their entries across the parents' calendars, and record on every activity not just the time and place but who is taking them and who is bringing them home. Almost every argument about a Tuesday swimming lesson is about the second half, which an ordinary calendar entry has nowhere to put.
This page covers what an activity entry needs to hold, the three ways households usually do it, and the clashes that only show up when someone checks.
What an activity entry has to answer
A football training session at 17:30 on Thursday raises four questions, and only the first one fits in a normal calendar event:
- When and where is it?
- Who is driving there, and who is collecting?
- Does an adult have to stay, or is it drop-off?
- Did it actually happen — and is it on next week too?
Households that run smoothly answer the middle two in advance. The ones that do not spend Thursday afternoon working out whether anyone is free, usually while one parent is in a meeting.
Three ways families do this
On one parent's calendar. Fast to set up, and it makes that parent the single point of failure: the other one cannot see what is on without asking, and cannot take over at short notice.
On a shared calendar both parents can edit. Google Calendar and iCloud both do this well within their own service — a "Kids" calendar shared with the other parent, who can add and edit. It answers question 1 for both parents. Questions 2 and 3 end up in the event title, as "Swimming (Dad takes, Mum collects)", or in nobody's hands at all. It also needs both parents on the same service; a private iCloud share needs the other person to have an Apple Account and use iCloud (Apple Support).
On the fridge. A whiteboard or paper planner is the only one of the three that everyone in the house reads without being asked, including the children. It is also the one nobody has with them at work.
Whichever you pick, one rule is worth keeping: a child's activities belong to the child, not to whichever parent happened to book them. When a child's things live in one place, the other parent can pick up the week without a handover.
The clashes worth checking before you sign up
Signing up for a new activity is the moment to check the week, because these problems are cheap to avoid then and expensive later:
- Two children, one car, the same half-hour in two different places.
- An activity a child cannot get to alone where both adults are at work.
- Not enough time between two places — a 17:00 finish across town from a 17:30 start.
- Things that run past bedtime for a younger child, in term time.
None of these show up in a calendar that only records times. They show up when someone reads the whole household's week side by side, which is exactly the reading nobody has time to do on a Sunday evening.
How to do it with Alfie
Alfie is our product, and children are first-class in it. A child is added as a profile with a name and their own calendar, managed by a parent — no account, email address or password, and no app on a phone they may not have.
An activity in Alfie is one shared thing with people attached to it, rather than a copy of an event in several calendars. Each participant is either taking part or accompanying, and the activity is written onto each of their calendars: the child's, and the calendar of whichever adult is driving. Change the time once and it changes on everyone's.
Alfie also checks the next two weeks for the four problems above — overlapping times, a child who needs accompanying while no adult is free, not enough time between two locations, and anything against a household rule such as a bedtime — and tells you which ones it found.
Afterwards it asks whether the activity happened, so "she has stopped going to Tuesday gymnastics" gets recorded rather than staying in one parent's head.
The adults keep their own calendars throughout: each person connects Google Calendar, Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com, iCloud or any CalDAV server, work calendars can show as busy only, and the household week is made of all of it. You can ask the assistant when a child's next lesson is, or who is collecting on Thursday, in plain language.
To set it up, create a household, add each child as a profile, and put this week's activities on. It takes about ten minutes, and Alfie is free to use.