Raising a Child Alone
How to Raise an Emotionally Healthy Child Without a Partner
Raising a child alone creates unique challenges for the single parent. These tips for single moms or dads can help you succeed in your parenting efforts.
Raising a child is one of life’s most challenging tests. So challenging, it’s often a test two people take in partnership. But sometimes, for any number of reasons, we’re faced with meeting the challenge alone. Here are several important tips to help you succeed as a single parent.
Create a Positive Perspective
Whether positive or negative, your child is going to naturally learn from you and your outlook on life. If you’re depressed or overwhelmed by parenting alone, these negative feelings are going to be your child’s emotional nourishment during the most formative years.
Whatever the issues are, confront and resolve them. Find a way to develop that sort of can-do upbeat attitude you want your child to have. Being that positive role model is the most important thing you can do for your child.
To gain that positive perspective, consider becoming involved in groups such as Parents Without Partners, Single Parents USA or other similar groups. Collectively, these other parents raising a child alone have faced almost everything you may be experiencing, and can help you find a way to gain that positive outlook your child needs.
Avoid Making your Child your Confidant
When you don’t have an intimate partner to share your innermost feelings with, it’s tempting or even natural to share those feelings with your child. It’s a mistake, however.
Children are not emotionally mature enough to accept the weight of a parent’s issues. They are programmed to learn about life at a more leisurely pace. Help your child to grow naturally by avoiding the urge to share your deepest feelings. Instead save those conversations for a trusted adult such as a parent, a pastor, a relative, a friend or a co-member of a support group.
Be Consistent
This applies to two-parent families as well; all children require consistency. But parents raising a child alone deal with a greater degree of uncertainty over choosing the correct parenting style. This may lead to changing their minds more frequently concerning house rules and discipline.
As your child grows, your parenting style will naturally evolve, so this is not about being unbending or rigid. Children are naturally adept, however, at figuring out the rules of life. It’s OK to bend the rules from time to time for special occasions and achievements. These special rules teach your child about rewards and can be more effective than discipline in promoting positive behaviors.
By applying the rules consistently during the various stages of a child’s life, you encourage balanced emotional development. A well-behaved child will have a great positive impact on your parenting experience.
Avoid Putting Down Your Ex
Single parents with a surviving ex sometimes face the additional challenge of maintaining a cooperative coparenting relationship when the rest of their relationship is broken. At the barest minimum, keep matters civil at all times, even when you think your child can’t hear your exchanges. Fighting between parents, whether living together or separately, is one of the most difficult situations a child can endure. Taking the high road will spare your child that agony.
Separated parents may also compete for their child’s loyalty and affection by putting down the other parent, sometimes even subconsciously. Children innately love their mother and father both. One parent speaking ill of the other creates an inner conflict a child is not well equipped to deal with. When discussing your ex, choose your words carefully.
Develop a Network of Trusted Friends or Relatives
One of the most difficult challenges of parenting alone is not having a partner to share parenting duties. If you develop a network of trusted friends or relatives, they can provide the spirit of a loving family and alternate role models for your child. They can also be your sounding board so you don’t come to rely on your child for emotional support.
Situations will also come up when you need someone to take care of your child while you deal with some important matter. Occasionally you’ll just need some "you time." A sitter can fulfill the role in a pinch, but a trusted friend or relative who is part of the child’s daily life is a much better choice.
Be Discrete When Dating
Dating under normal circumstances can be challenging, but for the single parent, it can be even more complicated.
From your child’s point of view, casual dating should be nothing more than your going out with a friend. Beyond that, seek the advice of experts regarding the healthiest way to explain your new relationship to your child in the most age-appropriate way.
