Single Parent Guide to Managing Your Children and Maintaining Your Mental Health

Single parenting is a challenge to say the least. Managing our children's behavior alone and finding time to pursue personal interests and development are some of the greatest demands that you face as a single parent with no spousal support.

Your Child's Individual Needs
As children progress through their developmental stages, they present different set of needs in addition to their basic needs and it is incumbent upon you to identify your children's individual needs and address them appropriately as they develop.

Equal Dose of  Love and Discipline
During the stages of their development it is important that an equal dose of love and discipline be used in managing your children's behaviors.Children are never too "cute" to be disciplined. However to be clear, this does not involve whippings or any type of physical punishment. Rather managing your children's behavior includes both logical and natural consequences as well as positive discipline - role modeling by doing what you expect the children to emulate.

Logical and Natural Consequences
An example of a logical consequence is if a child acts stubborn and don't want to quit playing and go to bed at the expected time, the next day the toy the child loves to play with will not be available until he has gone to bed at the expected time for the next two days.

An example of a natural consequence would be not allowing a child to have a dessert or a treat if he chooses not to eat dinner and instead just want to eat the dessert. The next day there would be no dessert or a treat until the child eats dinner as expected for the next two days.

Or if the child chooses not to share a toy or a game with a sibling or to play a game fairly according to the rules, then the child would have to be temporarily isolated until he understands why the isolation had to occur. The word choose is very important because you want the child to take ownership for either the good or bad consequences that will occur and to change his behavior accordingly.

Quality Time and Self-Discipline
In the early stages of development, children have to learn social skills in addition to developing emotionally and intellectually. Moreover, while the children are internalizing these expectations, you as a single parent, must let the children understand that at certain times of the evening or day or, if it's on the weekend, that you and the children will spend some time together doing something enjoyable. Otherwise, they are expected to read, play alone, play with his siblings, or engage in some other productive activity without being a disturbance.


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Single Parents Guide to Getting More out of Life

As a single parent, you are the most important individual in your children's lives. Keep yourself in good physical condition. 

If you have young children, you realize how important it is to keep yourself in good shape to deal with the needs of your active offspring. 

If getting a membership at the local health club or YMCA is out of the budget, then find a way to at least get an exercise bike and work out at ten minutes a day and eat a balanced diet.   

Now, here are three ways to get the most out of your life as a single parent:

1. Visualize and pursue a rewarding future  
Do not allow yourself to be in position of acceding to your grown children's demands because you have an unfulfilled life. Grown children generally have no qualms about asking you to babysit your grandchildren or becoming an unpaid chauffeur. 

However, if you have pursued a new direction prior to having an empty nest, then you can easily let your grown children know that on certain dates and times they can come by with the children for a visit, to have dinner, or to enjoy a pleasant conversation. 

But, they will know that at an agreed upon time they will be expected to go home. With this understanding, your grown children will have increased respect for you.

2. Develop and keep quality friends and relationships. 
Good friends and quality relationships are good for your mental health. However, it is essential to make the distinction between friends and acquaintances. A friend is someone who cares about your well-being and loves you unconditionally. 

And, furthermore, a friend is someone who is supportive of your goals when they are in your best interest and will let you know when they are not. Acquain-tances often do not have your best interest at heart. Moreover acquaintances are likely to waste your time with idle and useless conversation and get you involved in wasteful activities. 

As a final point, acquaintances often want to use you to meet their own needs whereas in a friendship you and your friend are mutually supportive.

3. Consider your interest and skills and build on them. 
Life is worthwhile when you continue to grow  throughout your time on this earth. Think about the interests you had when you were in your teenage years that have remained in the back of your mind and never pursued. 

Perhaps you want to own your own business, go back to school to get your degree, become a nurse, social worker, or teacher, or even become a singer or motivational speaker if you have the talent. 

The point is to consider your interest and your skills. If you have one or more interests and some skills which match those interests, then build on those interests and skills and let them take you to some new self-fulfilling goals.

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What are you doing to get more out of life. Leave your comments below.

Single Parents Guide to Children Developmental Stages

There’s one basic rule you should remember about developmental stages and charts that will save you countless hours of worry. The fact that your child passes through a particular developmental stage is always more important than the age in which your child does it. In the long run, it really doesn’t matter whether your child learns to walk at 10 months or 15 months – – as long as he learns how to walk. 

Your Child's Unique Inner Timetable 

Every child has an inner timetable for growth that’s unique to him. Growth is not a steady upward progression. Instead it is three steps forward, two back, a run around in circles, and often simply standing still before another leap forward.

Also, gaining a better understanding about how children’s minds work at different ages will allow you to make more sense of your child’s behaviors. This understanding can decrease your stress and increase your pleasure from being a parent. It lessens your frustrations that come from expecting things that a child simply cannot do and incorrectly interpreting your child’s behavior in adult terms.

Rapid Growth Can Also Be Hard on Your Child
As a parent, understand and accept your child’s more difficult stages as necessary times of growth for your child. Appreciate your fact that your child’s phases are not easy for him to live through either. Rapid growth times are hard on a child. Perhaps it is a small comfort to know that your child’s harder to-live-with stages do alternate with the calmer times, Count on getting periodic breaks.

Information about child development enhances your capacity to respond appropriately to your children. Informed parents are better equipped to problem solve, more confident in their decisions, and more likely to respond sensitively to their children’s developmental needs.

Children Allowed to Develop at their Own Speed will usually Win the Race of Life.


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