How to Exercise Your Mind and Body

Although, as a busy single parent, you  carve out time to read with your children. However, you must find time for your own reading. The old adage, you are what you read, still rings true. 

When your reading materials are success-oriented and optimistic, your achievement level will be high. 

Read Regularly
If your reading materials are pessimistic or depicts people as victims of circumstance, your achievement level will be low. It seems that achievement oriented literature will help you to think in terms of goals and success. It can be most supportive of you in your pursuit of inner strength and self-reliance. 
 
Keep the book you never get to read either in your car, your briefcase, or your purse. If you are waiting in a long line some where, or if you are caught waiting for a tardy child, it will become an opportunity to read.

And, finally, think about a book that you absolutely loved when you were in college and reread it. Great literature is every bit as great the second time around.

Exercise Daily
Nearly six out of ten people experience no daily exercise. However, like any other activity, it takes both choice and commitment. Walking, jogging, biking, or working out regularly on a home exercise machine such as a stationary bike can have a positive impact on your physical and emotional health, but you have to choose to do it and commit to doing it. 

Do it even if you think you don't have time for it. It's good for the mind, good for the soul, and it doesn't have to cost you a cent. Also consider walking with a friend. It's a perfect way to do two things at once: exercise and create an opportunity for good conversation. In addition to a regular exercise routine, get extra exercise by walking up a flight of stairs rather than using an elevator.

Positive Benefits
Back to the simple home exercise machine. It works fine. Forget the fancy looking exercise machines you see advertised on television and forget joining the local health club. You don't need either before you start exercising. In reality, the foundation of any good exercise program needs to be no more complicated than taking a walk or a jog for free and adding a few other activities such as sit-ups, push-ups, or jumping on an exercise bike if you just want to work on certain parts of the body and to give yourself some variety. This is all that is required for you to have a positive effect on your health.

To get the maximum enjoyment from life, you need to pursue the care and feeding of both your mind and your body. Think about health as a broad goal for both your mind and your body.

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Choosing Between Loneliness or Aloneness as a Single Mom

As a single mom, loneliness has to be coped with properly or it can lead to symptoms related to depression. 

It is faulty relationships, or in this instance, a lack of healthy relationships that lead to those undesirable consequences.

Here are 3 steps you can take right away to deal, with the situation:

1. Stop Being Dependent
However, when you take a closer look at the experience of loneliness, it indicates dependency upon someone to meet your need for enjoyment, fun, and self-fulfillment. 

While it is desirable to have healthy and caring relationships which indeed help your mental health, dependency upon someone else to meet your need for enjoyment, fun, and self-fulfillment may in fact be unhealthy.

In that loneliness is an emotional experience based upon your thinking and perception of the situation, it can be coped with by changing your perception of the situation and then acting upon the changed perception.

It is important to reflect upon the question of, do you really need someone else to find enjoyment in your life? 

2. Do Some Creative Thinking  
Think creatively about activities that you find enjoyable whether it's dancing, going to musical events, going to museums, or whatever and begin going to these events. You will find that these events will meet your criteria for enjoyment and uplift your spirits. 

Not only that, you may meet someone at these events who share your interest in fun and entertainment.

Do some creative thinking about areas in your life that you want to improve. It may be that you are shy speaking in front of groups. If so, joining Toastmasters might be a good idea. You are obligated to make speeches and in turn have them critiqued. Everyone in the group is on the same level. 

It may be that you have always wanted to learn a new dance. Taking a dance class might be a good idea. Again, you are on the same level as everyone else and you are out with others and putting yourself in a position to make new friends.

In addition to this, use your aloneness by pursuing a hobby that is fulfilling, and augments the fun and enjoyment you are experiencing with your outside pursuits. 

I have an acquaintance that enjoys trying out new recipes and inviting people over. I have another acquaintance that knits hats and scarfs and give them away as presents.

3. Follow with Action
Again, the feeling of loneliness is an emotional state. And an emotional state cannot be addressed directly, it has to be addressed by clear thinking followed by action. 

Action which results in a change in behavior with pleasant results will begin to lessen the feeling of loneliness.


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How All Single Moms Can Raise a Self-Reliant Child

Never miss an opportunity to allow your child to do something he or she can and wants to do independently. 


Sometimes you are in too much of a rush or concerned that your child might spill something, or do it wrong. 
But, 

• whenever possible your youngster needs to learn, error by error, lesson by lesson, to do better;

• every time your child  organizes and then complete a chore;

• spend some time alone without feeling lonely;

• get lost in play for an hour;

• or refuses to go along with peers in some activity your child feels is wrong, he or she will be building meaning and a sense of self worth for himself and harmony in his family.

Your Child's Sense of Self Worth
You need to allow your child to develop “struggle muscles.” This is developed the same way any other muscles are developed -- through regular exercise.


If they can’t, then they are simply reacting to daily events, responding to the needs of the moment for pleasure, affiliation, or acceptance.

To be motivated to sit at home and study, children need a sense of themselves over time  – – they need to be able to picture themselves in the future. 

Your Patience as a Parent

My challenge to you as a parent is to be patient enough to allow your child to take ten minutes to do something that would take you two seconds to do.

What are your thoughts about developing self-reliance? I'd like to hear from you. 

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Here's What You Need to Know About Your Child's Developmental Stages

Numerous studies have shown that those adults who feel the most frustrated by children – – and least competent as parents – – usually have one thing in common.

They don’t know what behaviors are normal and appropriate for children at different stages of development.

This leads the parent to misinterpret their children’s natural behaviors and to have inappropriate expectations, both for the child and for the parent.

Behavior as Communication
Understanding child development takes the emphasis away from your child’s character – looking at your child as good or bad.

The emphasis is put on behavior as communication. Discipline is thus seen as problem solving. Your child needs to be helped to learn a more acceptable manner of communication.

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 who are allowed to develop at their own speed will usually win the race of  life.

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As a Single Mom by Choice or Fate - Your Children Need Love and Discipline

Let's face it. You can't change what happened between you and your spouse or your child's father, but as a single mother, you can change your attitude about it. And, by doing so you will benefit both yourself and your children. 

Forgiveness doesn't mean that what your ex did was right or that you condone what he or she did, it simply means that you no longer want to hold a grudge and choose to put it behind you. 

You have many choices. You can choose forgiveness over revenge and action over apathy. You hold the key to making to your emotional adjustment to the elimination of the other parent and consequently how your children will adapt.

Your Children's Distress
Children react differently to this elimination depending upon their ages and the intensity and duration of the conflicts prior to the breakup. But all children react with some degree of distress. 

Children often feel somewhat vaguely responsible for this depending upon the intensity of their relationship with the other parent. They may also be frightened because they are apprehensive about the future.

In addition, they frequently may lose interest in their schoolwork; they may become hostile, aggressive, depressed, and, in some cases, even suicidal. 

Moreover, many physical symptoms of stress often appear in the children, such as irritability, insomnia, loss of appetite, and skin disorders.

After about two years, however, a new balance develops and the acute distress the children experienced earlier lessens. They learn to adjust and to carry on their lives. In many cases where there was a marriage which was marked by severe conflicts over a long time, the children seem better off some two years after the divorce than they were prior to or shortly after the breakup.

Reassure Your Children
No matter how children came to be living with just one parent, they must be told, again and again, that their family's situation is the result of an adult decision or an act of fate that has nothing whatsoever to do with them. 

The most important help you can give is to reassure your children that they are not responsible for the break up or divorce and to help them to adjust by establishing and maintaining regular routines in your home and not letting the children take sides in your adult dispute.

Give Equal Doses of Love and Discipline
Many single parents say that they need to be both a mother and a father to the child. This is impossible, so rule out the idea. As a single parent, you cannot be both a man and a woman. You are a parent. 

Forget dating early in the divorce and don't emphasize striking a balance between work and family until later.

Most single parents, whether they are divorced, widowed, or single by choice, say that discipline is by far the toughest issue. Focus on providing at least an equal amount of love and discipline. In fact, if you love your children you will discipline them properly.


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