Jobs, Careers, Law, and the Single Parent

While finding a job is a problem for many people, the single parent, responsible for him- or herself and at least one other human being, is hit particularly hard. 

My first job as a single parent was working for an insurance firm. It didn't take long for me to determine that after the federal and state took out their hefty taxes, I couldn't survive. I quickly learned how to budget. 

When we are young, as I was then, we sometimes forget to include ALL expenses in a budget – mortgage, rent, heat, electricity, water, sewer, garbage, car payments, auto insurance, gas for our cars, parking fees, health insurance, home owners or rental insurance, taxes, and credit card fees. AND savings, gifts, and extras. What if you are invited to three weddings in one year?  

Knowing your budgets allows you to find your "perfect" job. That's what I thought I had until I realized I was working for a pervert. Fortunately employers today are more careful about sexual harassment – they can be sued. Still, some employers cross the line from light teasing to sexual harassment. You can – and should – report those crimes.

Eventually I searched for Pervert. He had moved. I would have needed a California criminal lawyer if I had wanted to prosecute him. And he would have needed a Los Angeles criminal defense lawyer. It wouldn't have been difficult for him – he was a lawyer too. Unfortunately I found him through his obituary.

My best advice? Speak to a financial counselor at your local college about grants, loans, scholarships, a CAREER, and your future. Year after year, scholarships go unused either because students don't ask about them or take the time to write the essays required of them. Scholarships are FREE MONEY! Use them and change your life! 

Single Parents Alone On The Holidays

Perhaps it was because my mother decided long ago to celebrate holidays before or after the actual holiday (she wanted all of her girls together on the same day). Or perhaps it was because the actual holiday never felt like a holiday unless the whole family was present. Whatever the reason, it prepared me for the first time, after my divorce, when I would not have my children with me for Christmas.

I was a single parent who had to learn how to spend holidays alone – while my children spent holidays with their father. I felt a deep sadness at the loss of what had previously been a family tradition.

Other newly divorced parents or parents who've lost partners through death, find holidays difficult too, but getting used to being alone on a holiday doesn't have to feel lonely, and it doesn't have to be depressing.

What my family discovered was that if we decided to celebrate Christmas the week before Christmas, we could pretend it was actually Christmas. The aroma of food cooking in the kitchen, the festivities, and the laughter of children made whatever holiday we celebrated feel like the actual holiday.

And so it went that on each Christmas morning, when I awoke alone, while my neighbors and practically everybody around me were celebrating Christmas with their families, my children were with their father.

I may have shed a few tears the first couple of times, but on Christmas morning, when I awoke alone, I wished Jesus a Happy Birthday, and told Him we would celebrate the day together, just the two of us. Then I went to the store and bought one last tiny gift for each of the kids, wrapped it, and placed it on their pillows. It might have been simply a Caramello for Christmas or a Cadbury Egg for Easter. It might even have been just a little trinket, but it was just one more surprise that I could look forward to celebrating upon my kids' arrival.

Holidays aren't just dates on a calendar, and they don't have to be celebrated ON the holiday – what gives holidays significance is the love shared by family in celebration of that holiday.

To all the single parents out there, I wish you a Merry Christmas, a Happy Hanukkah, or a Happy Celebration for whatever you celebrate. May your year be blessed with joyous surprises.

How Much Help Do Parents Actually Need?

How much help do parents actually need to raise healthy, loving, happy, and productive children? LOTS.

Fortunately, lots of resources are available to help parents who have questions about raising their children. Here are a few of those resources (and at the end of this blog is a link to an article I came across that offers some great uses for coffee filters – just thought I'd throw that in the mix – after all don't we love hearing about ways to save money?) :

My Family is a web site that allows you to create a network of parents, siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, children, grandchildren, and grandparents who share photos, stories, and news about their own families. You can invite family members of family members to join as well.

Parenting is an online magazine that offers articles on everything from how to get pregnant to how to choose the right preschool for your toddler.

Parenting (ivillage) is a community of parents with several areas devoted to all aspects of parenting and includes videos, customized calendars, mom-to-mom advice, and links to maternity information, as well as articles about your tween and teen.

Parenthood is another great web site that offers parents advice on the parenting process.

Though numerous parenting web sites exist, many of them include most of the information and resources as those found above. Even if they are the caliber of the sites posted above, this next one is worth mentioning. Family Education is a great parenting web site organized in such a way that you can quickly locate information geared to the specific age of your child(ren). It includes printable games and activities for children, games for mom, and a recipe database.

And now for the promised coffee filter article entitled, "20 Uses For Coffee Filters Around The House."

Career Challenges

Every once in a while I come across other articles that relate to single parent issues, and, rather than discuss the articles, I have decided to place a link to them.

We are a special class of parents who "do it all" and are sometimes left emotionally drained at the end of the day. We face all kinds of challenges from the moment we wake up in the morning to long after we fall asleep – as we dream about how to solve our many problems.

Janet Hunt addresses one of our many challenges in her article: 

Career Challenges Facing Single Parents 

After you read her article, click on her profile. You'll find many articles that list various career-related articles.

The photo of Janet Hunt is taken from her profile at associatedcontent.com.

Until next time, I wish you Love, Peace, Joy, Harmony, Happiness, and Success 

Parents Helping Parents

As single parents, we are not unlike our married friends when it comes to seeking advice in dealing with our children. But because we are raising our children alone, we want as much help as possible and when we come upon somebody who offers to help us, we grab onto that help and share our findings with other single parents.

After I wrote my article, How Touch Affects Your Children, a woman by the name of Maggie Macauley, of Whole Hearted Parenting, contacted me to tell me she would be linking my article to her web site. She also authors a blog at http://wholeheartedparenting.blogspot.com/. I highly recommend her for parenting issues and I wanted to share my "find" with you. 

Her slogan: 

Joyfully Parenting with Your Whole Heart.

Her mission:

		to provide parents with loving skills to build deeper
		relationships with their children and to increase their effectiveness in raising children who grow into responsible, productive and happy adults

		to provide teachers with the classroom management
		skills that build a connected school family where children belong and can maximize their learning potential

 

Just wanted to share, and if you find anything helpful for single parents as you surf various sites, please share your "finds" with me.

A Single Parent's Success

As single parents we wonder if the way we are raising our children is benefiting them. The mommy of this little girl must be doing something right. Please read today's post (April 8, 2009): Great Story That Didn't Make The News – But SHOULD Have.

We all need help

As a mother of four grown children, I struggled for years to raise my kids – often in abject poverty and sometimes with little to no child support. Raising four kids was difficult. I can't imagine raising more.

33-year old Nadya Suleman, with the help of assisted reproductive technology, gave birth to eight babies after having already given birth to six other children. Imagine fourteen children wandering around your home.

No question Nadya's decision to follow through with the implantation of 6 embryos was without thought or consideration. But now that her eight new babies are here, she needs help.

As do we all. 

Did we all plan on raising our children alone? Probably not, though I'm sure some, like Nadya, felt they could handle the responsibility. But hard times befall us all. We lose our jobs, we lose our patience, and sometimes we lose our minds. And though we sometimes hate to ask for it, help is all around us if we reach out our arms and hold on.

In this blog, I will impart a lifetime of wisdom garnered from my own trials and errors of raising four children alone.

It wouldn't be fair of me, however, to neglect mentioning all the help I received from my family, all of whom I dearly love, all of whom made life less stressful because of their help. Though I felt ashamed asking for help, I discovered I had to ask, because without their help, my children and I would have been living in even worse circumstances.

From daycare dilemmas to handling bill collectors, I will cover a gamut of problems I encountered, along with possible solutions in my future Help For Single Parents blogs. I hope it helps.