3 Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Life as a Single Parent

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 3 ways to get the most out of your life as your children become grownups:

1. Visualize and pursue a rewarding future that you can realize once you have an empty nest.

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 supportive of your goals when your goals are in your best interest and will let you know when they are detrimental to your best interest.

Acquaintances 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.

When your children are young your most important obligations are to make sure that their needs are met and that they learn the self-reliant skills sufficient enough to become responsible and productive adults. 

While you are providing the required love and discipline for your children, you should have fun with them. 

When they become adults, your role as a parent changes. You become more of an advisor and a confidant. 

Make sure that they understand your new role and boundaries and begin to use the 3 Ways to Get More Out of Life. 

Single Parent Guide for Building Your Child's Independence

Your challenge is a parent is twofold. You have to prepare your child to handle life situations as they arise. 

And, you have to learn to recognize when your child is ready for new freedoms, and be willing to grant them.

Understand and teach your children that some failure is inevitable. Treat any setback as a learning experience – – for you and for them.

Here are 4 ways to build your child's independence.

1. Watch for readiness and respond to the signs you see and hear. If your child is asking about letters, then you child is ready to learn the alphabet. If your child is carefully watching you prepare dinner, then your child is ready to help in the kitchen.

2. Don't wait for your children to ask for additional freedoms. Don't make the mistake of holding  out until your children rebel before giving them a later bedtime, increasing their allowance, or permitting them to do things in their own.

Continually evaluate how much freedom you can give your children. Around the time of their birthdays, discuss increasing their allowance and giving them an extra hour before lights go out.

3. Let your children know that if they abuse their freedoms, if their grades suffer, of if they get involved in drugs, drinking, or other irresponsible behavior, the privileges can be revoked.

4. Watch the child carefully who tries to bend the rules. Reward that child with more privileges only after he or she has demonstrated the ability to responsibly handle the freedoms  that they have already been granted.

It takes a lot of love, patience, guidance, and wisdom, and willingness on your part to allow your children to make their own mistakes. But, as your child gains independence, so do you, and your life becomes simpler.

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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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Give Chores Based on Child's Age and Personality

Get your children involved in household chores beginning in the preschool years. 

Expecting children to be responsible for certain tasks helps your children to believe in themselves.

Now, review this list below, consider your child's age and personality, and select chores that are appropriate for your children. 

Preschoolers can handle one or two chores. As they gets older and more capable, they can handle a larger quantity of chores as well as those that are more complex.

Ages 2 to 3: Put toys away, fill pet's food dish, put clothes in hamper, wipe up spills, dust, pile magazines, choose clothes and dress self.

Ages 4 to 5: Above, plus, make own bed, empty wastebaskets, bring in mail or newspaper, clip weeds, use hand-held vacuum to pick up crumbs, water flowers, place plastic dishes in sink, and fix bowl of cereal.

Ages 6 to 7: Above, plus, sort laundry, sweep floors, handle personal hygiene, set and clear table, make and pack lunch, rake leaves, keep bedroom tidy, pour own drinks, answer telephone.

Ages 8 to 9: Above, plus, put away groceries, vacuum, help make dinner, make snacks, wash table after meals, put away own laundry, sew buttons, run own bath, make own vegetables, cook simple food (such as toast), mop floor, take pet for a walk, pack own suitcase.

Ages 10 and up: Above, plus, unload dishwasher, fold laundry, clean bathroom, wash windows, cook simple meal with supervision, iron clothes, do laundry, babysit younger siblings, mow lawn, clean kitchen, clean oven, change bed, make cookies or cake from box mix, have neighborhood job such as yard work or shoveling snow.

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Single Grandparents Raising Grandchildren - A Growing Situation

Across the country, more than 2,400,000 grandparents, regardless of income, background, or race, are responsible for meeting the basic needs of their grandchildren.

In Illinois more than 103,000 grandparents are responsible for meeting the basic needs of their grandchildren with over 41,000 of these grandparents living in Chicago alone.

These grandparents, many of whom are single, are caring for children whose parents cannot or will not care for them due to substance abuse, illness and death, abuse and neglect, economic hardship, incarceration, divorce, domestic violence, and other family and community crises.

If you are among this growing number, no matter why or how they came to live with you, your grandchildren will benefit from being in your home. When children cannot be with their parents, living with a grandparent may provide:
- Fewer moves from place to place
- The comfort of a familiar language and culture
- A chance to stay with siblings
- More contact with their parents, depending on the situation

 Nevertheless, despite these benefits, the children will face some unique challenges:
- They may feel insecure and unsure that you will take care of them.
- They may act out or challenge you.
- They will miss their parents.
- They may be anxious or depressed.
- They may seem young or act too old for their ages.

As grandparents caring full time for your grandchildren, you will encounter many of these emotional and psychological issues faced by the children. The world is much different for children now than when you as a parent raised your children. Consequently, you may need help not only in meeting the emotional needs of your grandchildren, but perhaps also with the legal, financial, medical, and educational issues that come with this new role. If you need help, don't hesitate to seek it.


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Leave them 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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