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How to document co-parenting without making it worse

There are two ways to keep a record. One protects your child's history and your own clarity. The other slowly turns you into someone who experiences their family through evidence-gathering. The difference is discipline about what, and where.

Record facts, not commentary

"Collected 5.10pm, forty minutes late" will still be true in a year. "Late AGAIN because he doesn't care" is an argument, and it dates badly.

Write it the same day, privately

A contemporaneous note in your own logbook beats a reconstructed timeline every time — and writing it down is also how you put it down.

Never document at your child

Children should not be couriers, witnesses, or subjects of interrogation after handovers. If a record can only be built through your child, leave it unbuilt.

Separate the record from the conversation

The message thread is for organising the week. The private logbook is for what you observed. Mixing them — messages written as testimony — poisons both.

Where Manon helps

The logbook is yours alone: nobody sees it, it is dated, and it can be exported for a lawyer if it ever comes to that. Messages, meanwhile, cannot be edited or deleted by either of you — so nobody has to keep screenshots.