single parenting

Parenting can be sort of nerve wracking, especially as your kids get older and you have to guide them through tricky stuff like school performance, relationships with peers, etc, etc. I don't know about the rest of you, but I find myself second guessing myself a lot as they get older (mine are 14, 10 and 8).

When you live with another adult who mostly likes you and maybe even loves you, that other adult can pat you on the back and sort of cheer you on on those days when parenting is hard and you are beseged by doubts as to whether you are doing it right (after all, a 14 year old and even a 10 year old are only too ready to tell you all the ways they believe you are doing it wrong).

But when the only other people in the household are your children, there's no one around to back you up when you need it or tell the kids to leave mom alone because she's tired and needs a martini and a footrub because she's been at work 10 hours and doesn't want to argue right that minute about why a certain video game is verboten.

It's even worse when you have a not-so-good relationship with your ex, your kids' father, who no longer lives with you. This is because that other person is ALSO all too happy to let you know when he thinks you are doing a crummy job or failing as a mother or sending the children on the road to a ruinous adulthood. So on top of the normal self doubt and second guessing that all conscious mothers have sometimes, there is an adult in your life who sometimes massages and inflates those doubts until they are quite burdensome.

Yet another reason for parents who share children to stay in the same household whenever humanly possible. It just works better. Of course sometimes that's not possible and then you work with what you have and try to find the positives (and there are some ways that single parenting is easier).

Random thoughts for the day from...

-katie