Recently I got a text from a single mom. She is just starting the divorce journey. She has moved into an apartment and is making great strides in developing a healthy single parent home. This mom does not want the divorce but sometimes things are out of one’s control. Her kids are going with their dad to another state to visit the girlfriend. Mom wanted to know what she should tell her kids before they leave with the dad.

The children do not know about the girlfriend. They don’t know why their parents are getting a divorce. The boys love both parents, and they still want to live with both parents. The mom is wise to only give them the truth on their developmental level. She is also being smart not to run down the dad or the girlfriend. She continues to tell them they are going to be okay.

Her text was, “Tomorrow the boys are going to meet my husband’s girlfriend. Should I say something or tell them before they meet her?” This is a tough situation for any single parent.

The boys do not know they are going to meet someone new. My suggestion was to sit the boys down and talk to both boys at the same time. Use a matter of fact and calm voice. Here is what I suggested she say: Continue reading

Single parent gets depressed just thinking about the up and coming year. It has been a heavy burden just surviving this past year and now another one looms in front of them.

What can you do? How can you help? How do we minister to the single parent in a positive light and help them see the up and coming year as a transition year; a year where things are going to get better and they can draw closer to God, their children and others?

Describing a “transition year” to a single parent might go something like this:

It is the year where you put your business of parenting alone in the hands of the Lord.

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THE SINGLE PARENT DILEMMA

What do you say to the single parent that comes to you with this problem?

“What can I do about my kids being exposed to things they shouldn’t be when they are at their other parent’s home? He shows them R rated movies, plays music that’s not appropriate for their age and has his latest girlfriend spending the night while they are there. What can I do? He even has different social and religious standards. My kids, who are only in elementary school, are already seeing a difference in what I allow and what their father allows.”

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As a single mom, Mother’s Day was always the most dreaded holiday. To me it was worse than Christmas, Valentines or any other day. It didn’t help that it seemed like almost every year when my children were young Mother’s Day came on the weekend they visited their father. So I would trudge to church, sit alone, and watch all the lovely families celebrate their mothers.

I remember one year I stood in the church parking lot and watched all the families come out of the church and shout to each other, “Hey we’re taking our mom out for lunch. Why don’t you guys grab your mom and come with us.” Or, “The kids and I are going to celebrate mother’s day for Peggy at the Golden Corral. Why don’t you bring Betty and the kids? Our families can celebrate together.” I swear pain stabbed my heart just as if a knife had been laid to it.

I wondered why when church and pastors recognized mothers they only acknowledged the moms in complete families. I know some single moms who won’t even attend church on Mother’s Day.

A friend of mine shared that one Mother’s Day the minister at their church had all the moms and dads stand. He asked the dads to bring the moms to the front of the church where he prayed for the moms and her kids. My friend said the single moms were seated all over the sanctuary. As she looked around, she said every single mom left standing alone was weeping.

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Single parents are hard working people. Basically they are doing the job of two people. This is especially true if there has been a death in the family or if there is no other parent on the scene. They could be parenting alone due to death, desertion or a never married situation.

Sometimes the other parent will live in another part of the country or they have no interest in staying connected to their child. Other single parents who are divorced share custody with the other parent. Even though they share custody, having the sole responsibility in your own home is still difficult.

Single Parent Day is March 21^st. This day doesn’t get as much attention as the regular Mother’s Day or Father’s Day and yet it is a very important day for many single parents.

According to Jennifer Wolf on About.com Single Parents this day is set aside for “honoring the single parent who is basically doing double duty” and “giving them some respect.” She says the idea for this day started back in 1984.

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It’s one thing to know something about a single parent family’s situation. It’s quite another thing to understand a situation enough that you can empathize, appreciate the frustrations involved in living in a single parent home and be tolerant of a family’s situation.

In this article, I’d like to look at actually understanding what goes on inside a single parent home. Try to place yourself in the role of being a single parent. First of all there is no one to help you. I mean NO ONE! You are on 24/7 and that’s not for just a day or week or a month or this year but for many single parents it is for years.

Let’s look in on some typical single parents. In this first scene we see a mom sitting in the audience of a school concert. She is sitting there looking very calm on the outside but on the inside experiencing unbelievable turmoil.

“Now let’s see, if Chase’s group will just perform in the next fifteen minutes then I can sneak out of this concert and go across town, and if I don’t hit too many red lights, I can get there just in time to see Heather play soccer. If I can just stay long enough to see one quarter, are they called quarters or what? Oh well, I have to learn about soccer on another day, I don’t have time to worry about it now. Let’s see where was I? Oh yes, I can come back here pick up Chase before the end of this performance and then we can rush back, get Heather, go home and make dinner. Oh yeah, I’ve got to remember to pick up some milk for breakfast. Then while dinner is cooking I can start the laundry. I hope those kids got the clothes sorted. Did Chase say he needs tape for that science project? Oh well, I might as well get some tape while I’m at the store. After dinner I’ll have to remember to set aside some time to help Chase with that project. After I get the kids to bed I’ve got to remember to go online and pay the credit card bill. Please let my paycheck get to the bank before the credit card payment! I’m going to have to remember to check the date online on that bill and make sure I can pay it after 11:00 pm in our time zone and not get charged another late fee. I think there’s a three-hour difference in our time zones. Honestly, I can’t keep up with when everything goes through the bank and I’ve got to remember that I wrote a check for the school fundraiser. Did I even give Heather that check yesterday morning? Then I’ll have to get my clothes ready for tomorrow. I think I’ll wear that blue outfit but I have to remember to fix that tear. Gee, I wonder how many more washings that outfit can take. It must be five years old by now but I’ve got that important meeting at work tomorrow and I’ve got to wear something that looks half-way decent. Whew! Maybe I can get to bed by midnight. Oh well, that’s earlier than last night. Oh, shoot I was supposed to call my mom tonight. I’ll have to remember to try and find time tomorrow night.”

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Several months ago, we received the following comment from a reader:

Do you have anything I can read about the upside down family law court system in OK? How do you help three little boys whose father adores them, helps them with all their sports, mother has an affair and the court system gives him only standard visitation. 4 days a month is UNPARDONABLE! What can be done to come against a small town judge who clearly has issues against men herself to rule the way she did???

I don’t know the details of this family’s situation, but I have been involved in enough divorce cases to know that many times one side, or both, feels this way about the decisions handed down by the court. I also know that those of us who work with children of divorce are often solicited for information and advice by the parents of the kids that we minister to.

With the help of Linda Ranson Jacobs, a writer here on Hope 4 Hurting Kids, who has worked extensively with children of divorce and lived for a long period of time in Oklahoma, I set out to answer this question in a manner which I feel would be most beneficial to the kids involved. Here is my answer:

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Parenting alone can be a tough journey when one doesn’t feel well. Most single parents will continue to go to work when they don’t feel well. They do this so they can save their sick days for when their child is sick so they can stay home with that child. But, what happens when the single mom or dad is really sick and they need help?

I know there were a few times in my single parent life when I got sick, but I never had to be hospitalized or face a life-threatening situation. I would like to think had that happened my church family would have stepped up and helped. But do churches do that for single parents?

I know of one single mom that faced cancer. She had a four-year old child. During her cancer she came to know Christ as her Savior through our church reaching out to her. When she found out the cancer was terminal she reached out to our church and to me more than she called on her non-Christian family. Here are some things she liked for us to do:

• Come to the house and visit with her or sometimes just sit with her.
• Bring fun things to the house for her daughter such as ice cream to eat. My friend couldn’t eat ice cream, but she enjoyed watching her daughter get excited that she had ice cream to eat and she had someone to eat it with her.
• Come and read the Bible to her.
• At one point, she asked me to help her plan her own funeral. She wanted a Christian funeral, and her family couldn’t comprehend what that would look like.
• When she went into the hospital toward the end of her life, she liked for me to come and sing her favorite praise songs to her.

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We’ve often discussed how stressful it is being a single parent. A lot of ideas have been given about how to minister to single parents and their children. One subject that hasn’t come up is the issue of the possibility of a single parent with a terminal illness or a disability. How can you help a single parent in one of these situations?

Most single parents don’t plan ahead for such a situation. Most of the time they are barely surviving and yet the necessity of them having to face their fear of death or a disability might become a real concern. I know when I was a single parent the possibility was always in the back of my mind,

“What will happen to my kids if something happens to me?”

At the time, I was clueless about what to do. I wish there had been a church or some church leaders close by that could have helped me sort through the legal issues in a situation like this. In my particular case I knew the kids would be able to go and live with their dad, but I hadn’t really thought through much more than that. He lived in another town, and that would have meant a lot of changes for my kids.

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One spring day I was walking in my neighborhood. As I rounded the curve I noticed a little girl that looked to be about 5 years of age, playing outside while her mom was working in the yard. When I came back around the next time the little girl was dragging out a large tub. As I passed by her house she began to pull out the garden hose.

The third time around the block, the hose was in the bucket, water was spilling out over the sides and the little girl was nowhere to be seen. In just a moment she came running out of the house and had on what appeared to be last year’s swimsuit. Evidently she had grown quite a lot over the winter.

She gleefully jumped in the tub of water. She tried to sit down in the tub. She stood, got out of the tub and walked around looking at it. With a look of determination she took a running jump and headed for the water again. No matter how hard she tried, she no longer fit in that small tub.

The little girl with her too little swim suit and the tub she could no longer fit into reminded me of a lot of single parents that have experienced a change in their lives. Some continue to try to go back and fit into their old life. Perhaps you have some single parents like that in your church. They have experienced a divorce and they just can’t quite accept how their life has turned out. They continue to try to fit into a life that no longer fits. Continue reading