Solo Parenting: Alone or All One?
Do you feel alone? Or do you feel all one? OK—you’re on your own now. You may be on your own with the kids. Or without, if they’re living with your ex. There are a variety of “flavors” of being on your own. If you’re not living totally alone, you might be alone with only [...]
Solo Parenting: Tell Me A “Me-Story”
If your kids are all teens or tweens, you may choose to skip this week’s column; this week I’m talking to parents of kids still young enough for bedtime stories. What I’m about to suggest is really applicable to all little kids and their parents, but it’s particularly important to those from single-parent families. Why? [...]
Solo Parenting: It’s Nobody Else’s Business
If there’s been a disruption in the family unit, especially if it’s due to divorce rather than a death, you may be reluctant to talk about it. It’s understandable—first of all, the death or divorce has undoubtedly been painful for you, even if it was a divorce that you initiated. Talking about it, other [...]
Solo Parenting: I Don’t Wanna Go To Summer Camp
Is your child resisting going away to camp this summer…even though he’s never been fearful about being away from home, and possibly even though he’s been to summer camp, happily and successfully, before? Was it just this past year that your domestic situation changed—that you either got divorced or became widowed? Has it occurred [...]
Solo Parenting: Who’s The Daddy?
“Who’s the father?” Most people won’t ask it, but there’s always one…a person with no sense of boundaries, or no sense of propriety. Or maybe it’s someone who thinks she’s (or he’s) close enough to you that she is “entitled” to an answer. (But if that were the case, she would already know. You [...]
Solo Parenting: “Presents” of Mind
I’ve titled this piece with a pun, but the subject is serious: Giving our children material things to compensate for emotional losses. It’s not only the newly divorced—or widowed—who fall prey to the temptation to do this; it can happen long after the loss as well. • The other parent has left the household, the [...]
Solo Parenting: I Don’t Have To Cook Tonight!
“I don’t have to cook tonight!” Is that what you exult when you realize you’re unexpectedly excused from kitcen duty? It may be that you have a surfeit of leftovers, and all you have to do is nuke them and put them on the table. It may be because your 10-year-old is staying over at [...]
Solo Parenting: Everything’s Going To Be Fine
This is for those of you for whom divorce or widowhood is a recent or fairly recent development, and whose kids are no longer babies but old enough to be aware that Daddy (or Mommy) is no longer around. Naturally the kids are upset. Chances are, you are too. Even if this is a case [...]
Solo Parenting: The “Other” Nana
Your children most likely have two sets of grandparents. Of course, if either of your parents or either of your ex-husband’s parents met an early death, that changes things. And if one of you has parents who divorced and remarried, that may change things too: Your children might have three sets of grandparents…or even more. [...]
Solo Parenting: “Uncle Daddy” vs. “Mall Mom”
I have written previously about “Uncle Daddy, the Ice Cream Man.” That’s the sobriquet given by a former S.O. of mine to the father who shows up on visiting day and tries to win his child’s love and loyalty by lavishing treats while going easy on the rules. “Uncle Daddy” behaves less like a disciplinary [...]
