Single Parenting

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Permalink Reply by Michael Jesse Chonoles on October 21, 2007 at 6:49pm

I have one son, now approaching 18, and my wife died when he was 14. I find raising him as a single father difficult. There's no one really to talk to about how he's developing and what strategies to choose. Though he seems to becoming a mensch, there are so many issues -- The latest, can he skip school to do a major homework assignment. In addition, Also, when he passes all these milestones, I don't really have someone to share.

Does anyone else have similar parenting issues?
Michael

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Permalink Reply by Elizabeth Busnar on October 21, 2007 at 7:18pm

I have been a widow for 4 years. My daughter was 12 when he died. The night before he died, she had a fight with him, and told him to drop dead. Since then i have found out that she is hearing impaired, and needs to wear a hearing aid. Single parenting has been difficult. I never realized how much my husband and I shared the parenting. She recently started driving. I never thought I would be the one teaching her to drive. I would love discussing the ups and downs of widowed parenthood with other people who are going through the same thing as me.

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Permalink Reply by Irene Konig on October 24, 2007 at 7:52pm

Hi, my daughters were 18 and 20 when my husband passed on. It is very difficult. What I did was share my thoughts and feelings with a close woman friend by phone, nearly daily, to see if my thinking about issues sounded right. This helped me quite a bit. I was also able to share the joys and other troubles with her. Since my parents were gone, and I didn't have much in the way of siblings, she became my sounding board, as well as my friend. I think this is a good thing to do. It doesn't matter if the friend is a man or a woman. Just someone you know who has a fondness for you and your family and has good common sense. Sometimes we think out of our own heads, and we cannot see if things sound right as a good course of action since our spouse is no longer there to comment on them or support them. Parenting, especially as our children get older, is a real challenge in itself. I have found that in many cases, I have had to step back quite a bit and allow my daughters to make their own choices in things. This happens in two parent families as well. When they are little, they need our full guidance, but once they get pretty much into their teens, we do need to back off. We can still tell them how we feel about things, and why, and we can still put restrictions on things that we provide support for, but in my opinion, we do have to have added flexibility.

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