Self-work makes sense

Many single parents feel this powerful tug. It is the tug of needing to get into a relationship. There is a belief attached to this tug. The belief is that when a relationship is struck up, then there will be happiness and satisfaction. There will finally be some help with parenting. There will financial help. There will be companionship that cna be counted on.

This tug makes a lot of sense. However, this tug can get so intoxicating that the most important thing can be forgotten: yourself.

What cannot be forgotten in the single parenting life is the self-work. This comes in two forms. First, self-work is similar to character development, self-discipine, and self-confrontation. These are hard things. and it may seem that the hard work of healing is work enough. Thing is, these are the same thing.

Second, self-work is taking time to be a human. That might mean NOT being a parent for a few moments and instead spend some time being a person. You might need some decent childcare in order to pull this off, but it will be worth it.

Self-work through discpline and treating yourself will go a long way to toward preparing you for that wonderful person who might be coming your way. At the same time, it will prepare you for being on your own should that person not come your way. It's a no lose way to live.

Mosaic Parenting

Single parents do not have luxury of the other parent there with them to share the parenting load. It is by definition this way. So, in order to provide what is missing, the single parent has to get creative and do some mosaic parenting.

Mosaic parenting is giving your child access to bits and pieces of people who offer parent-like qualities. Teachers, coaches, youth ministers etc all help. Uncles, aunts, older cousins, grandparents are in the mix as well.

It is important to provide positive adult connections to children that go beyond yourself. It is not that you are inadequate, but rather that the diversity of positive adult relationships provides a net of strength that no one person is capable of giving.

Go ahead, do some mosaic parenting.

Smart Single Parents Speak #4: Guard Your Kids From Media Driven Loneliness

What's more important than your children? Of course, nothing. There is nothing in the world that would be worth trading for your kids.

And yet, sometimes we fail to guard our kids. We leave them alone emotinoally when we should be engaging them. Now, children are not going to up and scream, "Help me, I feel alone." Rarely will a child disclose feeling alone. In fact, they might not even recognize that they are alone becasue they are kept at bay with media.

TV, internet, texting and IMing can fill the lonely spaces in the heasrts of our children, but these technologies do not fill that space very well.

No child needs to be left alone with the internet. Here is what I mean:

The internet is unfiltered, which means that kids need to make choices that are often times beyond their capacity. There is fear (though it might be experienced as excitement) when they face something they do not understnad or something that is dangeorus. Parental engagement is super important when it comes to the internet.

Furthermore, media is impersonal. Media driven lonleiness is often pervasive and undetected because the child is soothed by the media. Don't think that because your child is not complaining he or she is not lonely.

Guard your kids from media driven lonliness.

Smart Single Parents Speak #3: Make time for yourself

Do you ever run out of gas? How often do you have absolutely nothing to give, and then that one last request comes in and you blow a gasket? Can you feel your blood boiling all the time, not because you're an angry person, but because there is too much list at the end of the day?

You need a break.

You might think you're invincible, but you're probably headed for a heart attack.

Take a break. You need a little refueling time. Hot bath with candles going. Cup of copffee in silence. A quick dive over to the sporting goods store or maybe the local craft store. Maybe you need a whole day. Whatever it is, you might just relieve enough pressure to make it through the next week.

Oh, that selfish you say?

Think about it like your car. You never think your car is selfish when you have to fill it up with gas. No, it just makes sense. Now, if you just spilled gass all over the ground like it didn't matter, then that is wasteful and selfish. But just doing for the car what it needs in order for it to run properly, that is not selfish.

It is not selfish to do what your body, mind, and spirit need in order to operate properly. Now, probably don't need three weeks in Maui (although it would be nice), but you might need a day to yourself. Find a way to get it.

Everyone will be better off if you do.

How do you know?

How do parents know what their children are doing?

There is a lot of research out there that says that parent monitoring predicts parent knowledge of their kid's behavior. It makes sense, right? Watch them and keep tabs and then you will know.

But there is a problem. Recent and more sophisticated research says that the number one way parents know what their kids (teens in the study I am thinking about) are doing is that their kids tell them what they are doing.

So, the question is, what kind of relationship would predict a child desiring to disclose information to his or her parents?

Any thoughts?

Smart Single Parents Speak #1: Lower your Expectations

Last month I asked for your collective wisdom and you did not disappoint. Click here for a list of everything you said.

This month we are going to give each of these great pieces of advice some attention. These are not presented in any order.

#1: Lower your Expectations

There is a difference between being optimistic and having unattainable expectations. Generally speaking, optimism is a good thing and predicts good results. However, having impossibly high expectations predicts just the opposite.

When a person expects something that is very hard to be very easy, disappointment or feelings of failure are not far behind. Ths disappointment or feelings of failure almost always leads to misplaced blame. Blame is placed on the difficulty of the situation or the inability of the person. The real culprit here is niether. The villian is expectation that does not match the situation.

Expectations are subjective and really amount to a sort of fortune telling on the part of the expector. There is often a whole lot less information or evidence supporting the expectation than is believed or that most people would admit.

The biggest problems occur when people base their expectation on their wishes or absolute best case scenario. The higher the requirement for an expectation to be satisfied the higher the chance of dissatisfaction or disillusionment.

The converse is also a problem. Expectations that are too low might all a person to be satisfied with much less than was possible.

What yo might want to try is taking stock of your expectations and ask yourself if they are likely to result. If they are, then go for them. However, if you find that they are based on your best wished scenario, then you'd better ratchet is down a coupld notches.

What is wisdom and who can grasp it? Where can one go to purchase this thing called wisdom? Does one ever have enough of it? Once you get some of it, does it remain with you always?

I would say there are few people who would argue against the idea that wisdom is a good thing to pursue. And yet, there is so little space for wisdom in our culture that finding space for it is a daunting task. "Yes, wisdom is a good thing, but who has time for it?"

Here are a few foolish musings on wisdom:

1. There are two sources of wisdom. Personal experience and other people's experience.

Personal experience is often times pretty straight forward. If you do something, you know that it is like to do it. Then you choose whether or not to do it again. Or you choose to modify the way in which you did it in order to alter the outcome.

The experiences of others is not as straight forward nor are they as easily to internalize. Who the "others" are matters. Is it friends, family and co-workers and that's it? What about historical figures? What about Biblical figures? The storehouses of historical and sacred wisdom are so vast, so expansive that we hardly notice them. They are like intricate and highly detailed wall paper that you might notice at a glance, but seldom look at for it deep design or message.

2. There are pre-wisdom steps that are necessary in order to gain wisdom.
A. Acknowledge that there is such a thing as wisdom.
B. Assess its value relative to your life and find yourself lacking.
C. Decide that it is worth pursuing.
D. Pursue it in the course of daily life, not merely as a cognitive exercise outside of daily life.

3. Practice all the wisdom you gain.

4. When you fail to do number three, reflect on those times and assess what it is about you that wars against wisdom. If this becomes an exercise in guilt, then you're not doing it. In failure, wisdom transcends guilt toward a more wholesome and less toxic motivation.

5. Pass along your wisdom, but only when it has become part of who you are. Resist the temptation to immediately tell everyone about the great new thing you learned before it is really who you are. Sharing gained wisdom too quickly, before it is who you are, will result in embarrassment and hypocrisy.

6. When you fail to do number 5, reflect on those times understanding that guilt may be a temptation.

7. Develop relationships with people younger and less experienced than you are and live your wisdom in their presence. You do this for them, but you do this for you, too. If you have gained a sense of wisdom, being in relationship with someone who perhaps thinks you are wise raises the bar for you and challenges you to be persist in your wisdom.

What does all of this have to do with being a single parent? Hopefully you see that it has quite a bit to do with being a single parent. If anyone needs to pursue wisdom it is people who find themselves in complex situations wherein the rules are not clear, the playing filed is not level, and the cultural context works against them. Single parent families, in large measure, fit this definition.

Pursue wisdom a little and you will find it a little. Pursue it a lot and you will find it a lot. Never stop pursuing it and you will never exhaust its vast storehouses.

The finalists

The ideas you all have shared are terrific. Let's do this: everyone vote for three and we'll see which ones move to the top. This is just for fun since different advice works better or worse for different people. But I do want to see which ideas work for the most people.

Go head and make three choices on the comments section.

A. Putting others needs ahead of your own
B. Set a good example
C. Consistent routines
D. Boundaries
E. Make time for yourself
F. Guard your kids
G. Family traditions
H. Routines
I. Lower your expectations
J. Know your limitations and accept your limitations

What are the top 5 tips for single parents?

OK my friends, it is time for you to shine. We are going to spend February exploring the top 5 tips for single parents.

What I am most interested in this month is what you are doing that is working well. So, go ahead and make a comment here and brag a little. Share your success, no matter how big or small.

In later posts I will throw out a few suggestions, but I think we should start with you all and yor successes.

So please, brag a little.

To Own A Dragon

I am reading a book right now that every single mother who is raising a son should read. It is called, To Own A Dragon. It is the story of a man who grew up without a father. His insights are terrific and somewhat unexpected.

For most single mothers, raising boys can be a mystery. Having never been a boy, she's going to have to guess. Reading this book can give insight into what your son is going through or will go through at some point in his life. The book also gives hope as to what it might mean to be fathered by God.

A point of comfort for single moms should be that she can know God is determined to father her children. Fathering is so important and it is not something a mother can do. So, when single mothers are working their rear off to fill in the gaps left by the absent father, it is nice to know that God is in the details.

Being aware of how God fathers (albeit piecemeal sometimes) will help the single mother to allow that process to play itself out.

Please read this book if you are a single mother raising a son.

Don't Do It

It's the holidays. For many people, Christmas and New Years are so romantic. And yet, as romance floods the season as we hear the countdown to the New Year, ohers feel left out and lonely.

At times like these, people sometimes long for the best of the old relationships, and consequently forget the worst of those old relationships. It can be tempting to make a call that should not be made, send an e-mail that shouldn't be sent, make a forbidden text message. If this is you, then

Don't Do It!!!!!!

Seriouly, you'll hate yourself in the morning. That old relationship ended for a reason. Romantic feelings are not what is going to make that old relationship work. Trust your common sense.