Sorting school holidays as co-parents? Easy in Harmoneaz

The autumn holiday is coming up. Who has the kids on which days? From which Friday does that actually start? And was the holiday even in your calendar? With the latest Harmoneaz update, you add the official Dutch school holidays to your shared calendar in one go — and turn any of them into a temporary care schedule just as easily, surrounding days included.

Holidays are exactly the weeks when your regular schedule doesn’t work

A fixed care schedule brings peace of mind: everyone knows which days the kids are where. But six times a year, a school holiday breaks that rhythm. No school means arranging childcare, taking time off, or agreeing on a different split than during the rest of the year.

And that’s precisely where things go wrong in practice:

The holiday is in one parent’s calendar but not the other’s — or with slightly different dates.
North, Middle or South? With children at different schools, the regions (and therefore the dates) can differ even within one family.
The agreement “you take the first week, I’ll take the second” lives in a chat message from three months ago.
And the handover day: does the weekend before the holiday count or not?

Many co-parents know the result: last-minute arguments about something that was set in stone months in advance.

An example: the autumn holiday

Say you have a week-on/week-off schedule and two children at school in region Middle. The autumn holiday officially runs Monday to Friday, but in practice the freedom starts on the Friday afternoon before and lasts through the weekend after.

You agree: the kids stay with one parent for the whole holiday, because the other parent works that week. Until now, recording that properly meant looking up the exact holiday dates yourself, working out which day the different arrangement should start, and entering that period by hand.

That can be simpler.

Import the holidays, and the care schedule fills itself in

Since the latest update, Harmoneaz does this work for you, in two steps that connect seamlessly.

1. The school holidays come to you. As soon as a new school year’s holidays are published, you get a notification and Harmoneaz offers to add them to your calendar. You confirm each child’s holiday region (North, Middle or South — it may differ per child) and that’s it: all holidays appear as calendar items labelled “School holiday” in your shared calendar. One parent imports them, the other sees exactly the same.

2. From holiday to temporary care schedule in a single choice. When you create a temporary care schedule, you can now simply pick a school holiday from the list. Harmoneaz fills in the period automatically — with a smart margin: if the holiday starts or ends during the weekend, the schedule runs from the Friday before up to and including the Monday after. Exactly how holidays work in real life.

The edge cases are covered too:

Different regions? The suggested schedule covers the full range across all your children.
A study day, or a holiday that isn’t in the official list? Tick “This is a school holiday” on any calendar item of your own and it appears in the selection list.
A long summer holiday? A temporary care schedule can now cover 90 days instead of 60 — enough for the whole summer with room to spare.
Joining halfway through a school year? Only the holidays still to come are added.

How it works in Harmoneaz

Step 1 — Import the school holidays

You’re asked automatically as soon as a new school year is available. Confirm the region per child, import, done. You can always update or import later via Manage group → School holidays.

A whole school year’s holidays in your shared calendar in one go.

Step 2 — A temporary care schedule for the holiday

New temporary care schedule → “Fill in from a school holiday” → pick the holiday. The period is filled in instantly, surrounding days included. Then divide the days the way you’ve agreed for this holiday.

From autumn holiday to agreed arrangement in under a minute.

What about the other parent?

They see the same holidays in the calendar right away and get one tidy “School holidays added” notification — not a shower of separate alerts. The temporary care schedule goes through your usual approval flow, so both parents agree before it takes effect.

Why this is more than convenience

For children of separated parents, holidays are often the most unsettled weeks of the year: a different rhythm, a different split. The earlier and clearer the arrangements are, the calmer it is for everyone. By taking the official holiday dates as the starting point, you no longer debate *when* the holiday falls — only how you divide it. And you can have that conversation months ahead, with the schedule recorded in the one place you both check.

Try it yourself

Importing school holidays and creating temporary care schedules are part of the free version of Harmoneaz, for groups with the country set to the Netherlands.