Single parenting success
It is a real blessing to have a husband who I am a team with when it comes to parenting. Whether because of a past mistake, unavoidable circumstance, even death, a handful of adults have to parent their child without a spouse's help. While families with complete sets of parents are challenged to train a child, we can only imagine how doubly hard it is for a single parent.
Some will agree that a single parent household is not the picture that God has planned for a child to grown up in. But we do have to remember that ours is not a perfect world. Wiser single parents will thrive and still choose to teach their children the same godly principles in bringing them up even without a spouse present.
I may have never experienced how it is to parent a child single-handedly, but I have counseled many single parents in my lifetime, especially in the ministry (my husband pastors www.sbcmakati.org), to know that honesty and integrity should be a priority. Take these out of the equation and it will be so easy to compromise in every other aspect of your life. As a child grows, he or she will be driven to ask why the other parent does not live with them. Emphasize that even as you tell your child your circumstance and if you have committed a mistake in the past, that he is NOT a mistake. If you happen to be divorced or separated, emphasize as well that God's plan is for the husband and the wife to stay married to each other. This is an important foundation you will be teaching your child. In the event that you fail to mention this to him, he may grow up thinking that the default of married couples is the same as your situation. Never speak evil of your former spouse. This will prove to be a challenge especially if you think you have all the reasons to hold a grudge against him or her. Allow your child to form his own opinions of both his parents as he matures.
It is never easy to parent. Although everything happens for a reason, mistakes also can bear with it consequences that you have to put up with for the rest of your life. Plus the fact that it is not a perfect world. Founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, Bill Bright could not have said it any better:
“I have thought of life like this: Whether Christian or not, we are all going to have problems in this life; Christian or not we will die one day. If I am going to be a Christian at all, I want all that God has for me and I want to be all that He wants me to be. If I am to suffer and one day die, why not suffer and die for the highest and best - for the Lord Jesus Christ and in His most worthy cause!”
And if God has blessed you to be a parent, one of your responsibilities is to train that child, regardless of your circumstance in life. Problems will surely come. This is the same for every individual in the planet. We are not perfect but we have to serve as our child's model. However we act or respond to things around us, will be picked up by him, consciously or otherwise. As a parent, we become the loving authority to our child. We provide them the stability that may not yet be present in their young minds. And that stability can only be possible if we have experienced God ourselves. Simply put, we cannot give what we do not have. Here is how you can have a personal relationship with the Lord. Read on the Life Change portion of the page.
Some single parents or even those who are in shaky marriages make the mistake of making their child as their confidant. You can do this when they have matured -- Never within their critical growing up years. Let your child know that you look forward to seeing him/her happily married in the future, if this is God’s plan for them to be – for there is such a thing as single-blessedness. Know in your hearts too, that God has promised to be “a father to the fatherless, a defender of the widows...” (Psalm 68:5). And the most important thing to remember, single parenting will never be a success in the absence of positive attitude.
