Bringing Up Your Children on Your Own

Being a parent is exhausting enough in a family that has the benefit of two parents involved in the day-to-day care of children, but on your own it can be a real uphill struggle as the buck stops with you. This can be an advantage as you often don't have to consult the absent parent, and get into unnecessary disagreements. However, doing everything, often without anyone giving a helping hand or giving you an occasional lie-in, can be very tiring and lonely. This means that the real bond is with your children, and it is their love which is so important, which keeps you going.

You may have started your single parenthood from day one of your child's birth and therefore have the benefit of planning your life around the fact that you are the sole everyday parent. However, the majority of single parents have had a period of time bringing up their children in a two parent family. The definition of what the two parent family entails is very wide, and over the last 50 years the roles of men and women in the family gave have changed radically. Bringing up your children on your own is simply defined as doing practically everything, and if society defines by the law of nature that you need two parents to bring up a child effectively, 'on your own' means that you have to be prepared to do two jobs in the home, and possibly three if you go out to work. In fact many single parents have to do a number of jobs in order to carry out their home role, as they cannot fit a full-time job around the care hours. It is very hard work and should not be underestimated.

The key is to see the family as a whole unit. In fact, you are not on your own, but live with your children, and as a family you develop with each other. You are the parent and in control, but your children are partners and helpers. You are on a road of adventure together. It isn't them against you.

Looking Positively at the Benefits

Being the number one parent has many disadvantages but also many benefits. The biggest benefit is your children. You have created these wonderful, at times annoying, individuals who have the ability to make you laugh and cry in a matter of seconds. On an everyday basis you do not have to cope with adult arguments, threatened or actual violence, and picking up the pieces of the adult child, your ex-partner. You may at times, late at night, cry out for adult company, but you will never be alone, because when you do cry, you will be surprised when a little hand will reach out to touch you.

What is it like to be a child? How do your children see you?

To understand the benefits of bringing up your children alone, you need to understand them a bit better. Start enjoying them and see them as good fun rather than a trap or a noose around your neck. Try and remember how you felt when you were a child. How would you have liked your parents to bring you up? Then consider what it is like to be your children. What is it like for them to have you as a parent?

What do you want your children to grow up like?

Life as a single parent often seems to involve only the day-to-day survival business, of washing, cleaning, getting them to school, cooking, feeding, mending, shopping. It is easy to lose sight of what you want for them in the future, as well as understanding what they want.

Balancing Your Children's and Your Needs

You are important and your needs are just as essential as your children's. You need to make time for yourself and get your children to take more responsibility for themselves. New-born babies can do nothing for themselves. They depend on you totally for survival. They cry, you comfort them; when they are hungry, you feed them; when they are dirty, you change their nappies. However, as children grow, they become more capable of leading their own lives, and meeting their own needs. It may be only holding their cup or crawling to get a toy, or eventually walking to school on their own. They are making decisions all the time.

What am I doing for me?

Write down your ten favorite activities, things you really like to do just for yourself and would do even, or perhaps especially, if you didn't have kids. Then make a list of how often you now do each activity. The point of this exercise is to reaffirm that you have needs and need the time to fulfill them. Now think how you will make this list possible.

Everyone has needs and children can be very clever in getting them met. Think of how your child gets his/her needs fulfilled and how you do.

Key Points

New-born babies depend on you to meet all their needs. Older children do not.

Your role as parent changes over time.

Handing over responsibility for doing things provides valuable practice for life.

Looking after your needs teaches a child to be more receptive to their own.

Taking care of yourself and getting what you want gives a good example to your children.

If you get too good at looking after your children's needs and solving their problems, you prevent them solving their problems themselves.

When your children are arguing you do not have to get involved.

Negotiating with the Other Parent

This is a very tricky subject and when you have been through a traumatic and bitter split-up, the mere thought of seeing your ex-partner is enough to drive you into a sweat. You have to decide what is best for your child. But don't forget they have views, and even a child who has never seen their other parent one day asks the fatal question, where is my daddy/mummy?

Usually the children have not been part of the decision to become part of a single parent family. Even if they have benefited from it, you need to understand their needs in wanting to have contact with their other parent and to feel loved by that parent. Eventually it is preferable that you are able to establish a bitterness-free zone, and a way that the children can benefit from access to the other parent.

Understanding the Emotional Effects

There are two main emotional events on the road to single parenthood; first the splitting up from or death of a partner and second the simple reality of being alone with your children. Every situation is different and each of us will feel a range of emotions which can leave scars on you and your children if you let them.

You need to find a way of understanding your feelings, and that they are very natural. As the parent who is simply left behind, it is natural for you to take the whole world's problems on your shoulders and this can create an unseen black rain cloud to follow you around. You need to find ways of bringing the sun out, and pushing other people's problems back to them. The past is the past and whatever we do we cannot change it. Hindsight is a perfect science. We act as best as we can in any given situation and often on reflection afterward we probably would have liked to do things differently. The 'what ifs' will always haunt us. You need to move forward and put the past firmly back in the cupboard, learn from past mistakes but not fret over them.

Linking Home and School Life

Children usually enjoy school and school is the second greatest influence on their lives. Children enjoy learning, doing, taking on challenges, having a sense of achievement. It is important for them to share these experiences with the adults who are important in their lives. This includes you, their other parent if around, and their teachers. It can also mean other relatives, grandparents, older brothers and sisters, youth workers. But the home-school link is of prime importance, and along with sharing the good news, children also want to share the bad news. A child's parents splitting up or a parent dying does have a traumatic effect on any child and the school will find out about it, whether you like it or not. In fact, they should know. Do not be afraid to tell them. The school is a service to you, and you have rights in choosing which school your child goes to, and whatever your circumstances a teacher has the responsibility of making sure your child enjoys school and achieves their full potential. You should see it as a partnership, and as in the case of any partnership you should inform the other of your change in circumstances so that the teacher can be supportive and understand your child more. Teachers in the main are experienced and the reality is that every school class in the country has children that come from single parent households.

Learning to Have Fun with Your Children

As a single parent you often have little time to think, let alone have fun. You are doing all the domestic chores, taking the children back and forth to school, perhaps holding down a job. But you still need to laugh and have fun. Enjoy your children's company - it's amazing what good therapy they can be. It's not easy as you are continually engaged in battles, or the mail arrives and you are faced with another problem, another bill that cannot be paid. You need to let your hair down a bit and show your children that there are happy moments when life can in fact be fun.

Break the routine. Instead of going home straight after school, go to the park. Take some bread and feed the ducks. Or turn the television off and get the family around a table and play a game.

Make a list of all the things you like doing and all things your children like doing. Look at the things that you have in common. When was the last time you did them together?

Looking at the Option of Shared Parenting

The old saying, 'two heads are better than one', can be true if the two heads, in this case the two parents, can break the ice and find a way of communicating in regard purely to the children. Remember the past is the past.

Shared parenting means that after divorce and separation, both mother and father retain a positive parenting role in their children's lives. Sometimes it is called joint physical or joint actual custody or the newer concept of shared parental responsibility. Shared parenting is simply where the children spend substantial amounts of time with both parents - anything from a 30/70 split upwards. It is different from the notion of reasonable access or contact. Normally one parent has full legal custody of the child, and the other has visiting rights. All decisions on the child are made by the main 'home based' parent. In shared parenting, the children will normally live with one parent but regularly visit and stay with the other and both parents discuss issues regarding the children. The clear advantages of this arrangement can be:

Financial: The other parent will feel happy to target money to the children.

Support: There is always the other parent, in the event of illness, for example.

Children: The children feel at ease with both parents and this gives a sense of balance. They are also prevented from playing one off against the other.