Single Parents Town Blog

For those of you living in warm climates you may not know what a “Snow Day” is. Wikipedia describes it as:

“A snow day in the United States and Canada is a day in which school classes are cancelled or delayed by snow, heavy ice, or low temperatures.”

Kids call it the greatest day of each school year. Some call it a day off. Who ever said it was a day off was obviously not a single parent. I live in Colorado, so occasionally we will get snow days. It is rare but does happen. My daughter didn’t have one snow day last year. She was depressed all summer when reminded of this. My son did get a few but that was only because he goes to an all boys school that has students attend from as far away as 45 miles away. Snow days for my kids are better than Christmas, birthdays and the occasional check in the mail from their grandparents. You can only imagine how happy my kids are now that they are going on thier third snow day in a row. Continue reading »

How many times have we heard this famous line?  To then turn around and watch our kid(s) doing something that will make us smile or shriek in horror.  I experience this on a daily basis with little red but, since I have started taking her to the skate park, I hear it about every 2 minutes and it triggers me to hit the panic button every time.   She LOVES going to the skate park and toggling between riding her bike with the big boys on quarter pipes (Oh ya, I know some skater lingo) or hitting the smaller structures with her skateboard.  It is so hilarious to see what a bad ass she thinks she is.  But technically, for 7 years old, she kinda is. 

It’s so cool to watch her get more and more brave, practicing and getting new tricks and being so proud of herself when she does.  But, at the same time, it’s totally unnerving to sit there and watch her while boys on bikes do flips over her head and going in all different directions, very fast yet in a controlled chaotic fashion.  I mean it just looks like collision city and my daughter is smack dab in the middle of it and she loves it.  So the question I wrestle with is, let her play in the sea of scariness or tell her no, make her wait and deny her the opportunity to learn as she goes?  Of course, I want to keep her safe, but at the same time, I don’t want to hold her back.  I’m sure this is something most of parents struggle with.  Let em go and fall so they can learn, or keep them safe and protected but sheltered from experiencing life as they want to.

I just read this horrible article about a set of parents who allowed their daughter to continue her involvement in a sub-culture of music called murder rap.  They thought she was just going through a phase and didn’t interfere with her too much.  Long story short, the parents and the daughter were murdered by a kid she met who was involved in this sub-culture.  So then I have to ask, at what point do you let your kid explore, even if it is with something that could potentially hurt them, or when do you put your foot down and lock them in their room till their 18?  Much like those parents, I believe, because this is how I am, you tell a kid no, and depending on their level of rebelliousness (mine is pretty high on the Richter scale) could push them to do it more.  Since I know Paris is much like myself in this area, I manage her like I like to be managed.  Don’t tell me should, but give me the choice to decide.  So what I do is teach her consequences.  I have empowered her with critical thinking skills where she can evaluate the situation herself and ask whether she is prepared to deal with the consequences.  My thoughts are, I won’t be around to tell her no all her life, so at some point, she’s got to make those decisions on her own.  So if I can train her brain right now how to do that, she will be far more equipped to do that for herself later in life.  She will actually say to me now, “Mom, I am prepared to deal with the consequences.”  It’s a scary way to parent, but I know the effects will be longer lasting.   I get flack sometimes for parenting this way, but I find it effective in most situations.  And of course sometimes no means no.  Period end of story.  Time will tell if this was the best way to do it.  Continue reading »

Due to Bill’s surgery this week we are re-posting one of his blogs form September 2008. Hope that you enjoy….

I was raised in a family of five children. Four boys – I was the oldest, and one girl Mary Ann – she was the youngest. At the age of almost four, my little sister became very ill with Encephalitis which is a swelling of the interior brain. This illness caused my little sister to become mentally disabled at a very young age. She was in essence a “special needs” child. My parents, as well as the family, lived with Mary Ann’s illness her entire life. Granted this was a tremendous hardship on my mom and dad. But it was, in my opinion, a blessing from God. As a single dad it is where I pull much of my strength, perseverance and commitment. As a family it taught us to appreciate what we have in life as it can change on a moment’s notice. Mary Ann passed away on April 27th, 2005 at the age of 37. We were so blessed to have this angel in our presence for that long. I am not here to blog about Mary Ann, although I hope to share with you in later blogs the motivation she has been to me in my life.

What I am here to let you know is that when it comes to myself watching girls grow up like other kids, I really do not have a lot of real life experiences to draw upon. Needless to say when it came time for me, or at least I thought it was the time, to buy my daughter her first training bra, I was about as lost as a defensive lineman in a synchronized swimming class. (Think about that one for a minute). Where do you buy training bras? What style would she like? Do they come in different sizes or is it one size fits all? Why do they call them training bras? I know that when I was a kid my dad bought me a “jock strap” not a “training” jock strap. Why do girls need to be trained? Needless to say as a single dad I was very lost. I don’t know about you but it took me until I was in my late teens to walk by the lingerie department of a store and not be afraid to actually look with both eyes wide open. Well that was not about to deter me. My daughter needed me and by God I was going to go buy the perfect bra for her. I just needed to decide where I was going to go to buy it at. At first I thought that I would just go to her favorite store, Limited II, and pick one up. But then it dawned on me “what if one of her friends saw her dad buying a bra for her?” That was the mom’s job not the dad’s. She would be so embarrassed, but I have learned as a single dad there are a lot of jobs for a parent, not just a mom or dad. Regardless I decided to pass on that idea. So I then considered the mall. Lots of stores and lots of options but sure enough some mother would see me, feel sorry for me and become my bra enabler. I didn’t need that as I was more than capable of doing this on my own. I finally settled on the Old Navy store outside of the mall. I marched in with all the confidence of a seasoned shopper, pronounced to the clerk that I needed to be directed to the training bras and proudly walked down the aisle, made the turn, and then…..oh my God, there are a lot of options here. What happened to the one size fits all thought? There were different colors and shapes and styles oh my…Well I did what any other confident single dad would do, I bought every style color and shape they offered. I could have fitted my daughter’s entire middle school at this point. I felt pretty good about my quest even if the checkout person did look at me as if to say to herself “rookie”. Continue reading »

So now I was back in San Diego with a new label, single mom and now my life was the furthest thing from the picture perfect fantasy of what I thought being a mom would be for me.   I felt one weight off my shoulder from not having to deal with the constant battling and heartache her father and I went through, but now another weight was added; navigating through this life, child in tow, ALONE and POOR.   Staying with my mom helped lower my expenses.   Her father, thank God, automatically starting giving me child support which helped me to just get by.  I must say, with all the trouble I had with him, I’ve never once had a child support issue with him.  He is a VERY responsible father and I count my blessings every day for that.   When I was in Kentucky, I was watching HGTV and saw the show Mission Organization.  I discovered that there were people called Professional Organizers charging money doing what I had been doing since I was 12 years old. Six months later I opened my business, Miss Organized which is part of the income that was used to help support Paris and I. 

About 3 months after being back in San Diego, Gray and I agreed that I would send Paris back to see him for a month.   I was so scared to send her back for fear that he would not return her.  We had not established joint custody so everything we did up until 2 years ago was through a verbal agreement.  And considering how we never agreed on anything I didn’t trust that he would uphold his side of the agreement.  I have been shocked at how well we have worked together over the years with just a verbal agreement.  Even when we eventually made it legal, his lawyer also expressed his shock at how well we have been able to work things out on our own.   We both knew that if we didn’t, the one who would suffer the most is our daughter, and we were not about to let that happen.  

So he came and got her and I was sad but happy she was going to see her dad.  While she was there she got a very bad ear infection.  It was heart breaking hearing what her dad had to do to help her.  To make it worse, she was in a daycare that had a webcam.  So I would sit at my computer, from across the country, and just watch her not being her normal, active, vibrant self and just sit on the caregivers lap, with her holding her little ears.  Finally, a few days before she was to come home, her dad told me the doctor said she couldn’t get on a plane with her ears like that.   I was devastated, I missed her so much and felt that it was my fault she was sick.  I knew I had to get back there to help her get better but buying an airline ticket in less than 24 hours was surely going to cost well over a thousand dollars which, of course, I didn’t have.  Well God was looking out for me and I managed to find a ticket the next day for $250.00.  Unbelievable.  Continue reading »