Trying to parent your kid while fighting with your ex reminds me of the poem by Robert Frost, “The Road Not Taken”, but in the fighting version of the poem where the roads diverge, each parent takes a different path as well as one arm of their kid.

Then they start pulling.

There was no handbook at age 22 when I got divorced and if there was I wouldn’t have read it.  For such a young and relatively selfish human being I managed to do more right than most would have expected of me but I did a lot of things wrong.

A lot.

One story ended up with me on a bar floor, a cigarette butt stuck to my cheek and police being called to restrain me as I fist fought with my ex husband’s new girlfriend. While I have never been afraid to tell my own stories or examine my own faults, I never thought it right to write about my ex’s.  That was one of those “me managing to do the right thing” moments.

My son is now 22 and I decided it was time to talk, but only if I had something good to say.

When my ex and I were married and my dad was dying outside our bedroom door, my ex spent countless hours drinking coffee with my dad who was at the time pretty much talking gobbeldy gook.

My ex went to work with my three brothers every day and threw pizza dough in the air starting at 4 o’clock in the morning to make money for our family.

I repeat, 4 o’clock in the morning.

My ex gave up his band, his house, the company of his friends, and life in the city to move back to the suburbs and into my family home with my entire family including my dying dad.

My ex was at times an amazing dad and he still makes my son laugh.

If you have nothing good to go back to then I’m sorry for you and your kids but don’t curse your ex anyway, instead, thank them for coming into your life long enough to create your kid with you.

Stop fighting over every little thing, such as the food your children eat, the homework they forgot to have them do, the L.L. Bean jacket that didn’t make it back, the amount of television time or what rated movie they watched.

Your kid won’t fall apart if they eat one un-organic yogurt or spend the weekend watching Wizards of Waverly Place.  In the matter of you versus your ex, it doesn’t matter who’s right.

In most cases, both of you are probably a little bit wrong, except for in mine where I was always right.

Wait, did I just write that?

See, it’s a work in progress.

Your ex’s family did not divorce you.  Foster a good relationship with your child’s other side of the family.  Be thankful that there are more people in the world that love your kid than just you and your immediate.

If you hate your ex then wait till the day your kid becomes an adult and you look at him and all you see is your ex.  Your child shares attributes from both your gene pools, attributes from your ex that you once thought it appropriate to get in bed with.

If you can’t manage to like your ex, then go for neutral.

In divorce world, neutral goes a long way.

Never talk about your ex to your kid.  It isn’t right and once a year is one time too many.

You do not get a pass for bad behavior just because your ex is the spawn of Satan, if he is then one day your child will figure that out on his or her own.

It will not be a joyous day; it will be one of the saddest days of their lives and therefore yours as well.

After two decades of being divorced, the moments I am most proud of are those in which I did the right thing.  And the ones I did wrong linger always like a bad rash in my arsenal of guilt

You will have fights, disagreements, and arguments and it will be a work in progress but your kid is the masterpiece you are trying to protect so pull up your sleeves and sweat a little.

Try to treat your ex with as much respect as you can muster, he or she might not deserve it but there’s someone in your house who does.

When Kate approached me about writing for this column I jumped at the chance. I’m a writer by passion and trade, and was muddling my way through the single-mother subject matter IRL. When I thought about it, it just felt right to write. When she asked me to upload a picture my heartbeat slowed a bit. Not for vanity sake, but because people might know me. And by know me, I really mean judge me. So I uploaded a picture of the back of what could be my – or anyone’s – head. By the time I posted my first blog, the blood was barely creeping along my veins, and I asked her to please keep me anonymous.

Some people get braver when they’re behind a keyboard, but I actually am more fearful. The Internet is forever. Nothing, no matter how strict your privacy settings, is completely private. It’s easy for a text or email to be forwarded to a third-party, and just ask the likely now-fired person at Kitchen Aid, social media can be confusing.

I didn’t walk away from a safe relationship. The potential repercussions of speaking openly, that is, with a name attached to my words, were too great to bear. But most important to me of all, my little one is too young for me to ask if it’s okay with him that I blog about him.

I don’t want my son to have to answer questions that are based on my life’s choices. He’ll have to do that enough when he doesn’t have the latest gaming system or the coolest shoes in class. I don’t want a classmate to come up to him quoting a blog piece that I wrote on a subject matter that is painfully personal to him. One day we’ll talk about the blog, and I’ll show him all of the posts. But not right now.

This week there’s been ado in the media, and particularly among the mom blogging community about STFU, Parents. If you haven’t heard about this, here’s the skinny: STFU, Parents is a snark blog column featuring emails, Facebook, and really any type of content you can imagine, shared without permission on behalf of parents, by members of their unsupportive community everywhere. Let me be clear: people’s “friends” are screen shot’ing Facebook news feeds (or forwarding emails they receive) from parents who share information about their kids, and sending them to STFU, Parents to be dissected and made fun of, and then commented on. That blog gets thousands of hits per day and was just featured on the Today show.

Blog owner Blaire Koenig’s tagline is: You use to be cool. Then you had a kid.

Before we get mad at Blair, consider that she’s just providing an outlet for something an entire Internet full of people are united in hating: the parental overshare. Overshare is loosely defined, by me, as any sort of information you put out online but someone doesn’t care about. It’s the new TMI.

Social media, blogging, emails – we reach out to people for a variety of reasons. Maybe we’re proud of our little ones, maybe we’re voicing our political opinions, and maybe we’re sharing the latest amazing meal we’ve whipped up in our kitchen. But out there exists the haters, and the people who would rather get a cheap laugh at our expense than to scroll to the next update or mute our feed.

I accept that there are people who don’t want to know about my child, and so I’m not friends with them. I can accept that there are people with contradictory political views than mine and I read them, appreciate their right to an opinion (however crazy or sane), and move on. I don’t de-friend, or threaten to de-friend, over normal, non-questionable commentary/pictures, and I certainly do not put anyone on blast for making them.

I’ve read that social media has made us fat and mean. I’m not so sure about the first one, but the second one feels to me to be true with exceptions of course, dear readers. I’ve got my own social media posting procedure, and work from there. And until my little one’s okay with it, I will remain,

Yours very truly,
Anonymous

Ah, the single mom life.

I’ve been teaching my little one how to tell a joke. He’s picking up a sense for timing and is developing his own wit already, and besides who doesn’t love a little charmer who can make you smile?

We started with knock-knock jokes and the classic “why did the chicken cross the road” varieties. This morning I tested him “Hey, C, I’ve got a joke for you”. His eyes lit up and I continued, “how do you catch a unique rabbit”? To which my little comic replied “Who’s there?”

We fell into a heap of laughter, probably for different reasons, and I thought to myself “I can’t wait to text my sister and my best friend, and…”

And then I stopped myself. It’s not as though the people closest to me wouldn’t care or wouldn’t laugh, but I thought about how all weekend I’ve been texting or telling them the latest “super cute” thing my son has said. And that’s when I realized I’d gone too far.

Ah, the single mom life.

100% of the love with 0% of anyone to share it with. And I say that in the happiest way possible for I wouldn’t trade this set of circumstances for the previous. Still, in all of my careful preparations, my hours of research, the books I’ve poured through, and talks with my therapist – I can’t help but feel caught off-guard here. Nobody prepared me for one of the biggest single parenting hazards: the over-share.

I’m that mom. The one who comes at you with arm extended brandishing her phone’s photo album before you’ve even said hello. I’m the mom friend everyone’s got who’s all “guess what the little progeny did today at school /soccer /music class /in the backyard” while the waiter is pouring you a glass of wine and you’re gesturing for him to keep pouring. I’m the mom who looks adoringly at her little one who’s running in circles around the living room in his underwear grasping a piece of bacon in each hand singing his ABC’s and thinking “OMG soooooooo cute! Who should I send this picture to first?!”

And then I sort of panicked: how long have I been doing this? How many bizarre pictures and kid quotes have my closest allies received with zero to little context? Does Hallmark make an “I’m sorry I keep harassing you with the most intimate moments of my life” card?

Let me be the first to warn you single moms: there is a very fine line between mass text proper use and mass text abuse. And let me be the first to tell all of the friends I’ve included in my mass text abuse that I have learned the error of my ways, and I thank you for standing by me through this trying time. Though you’ll never get those images out of your mind, I commit myself to exercising restraint in the future.

When I think back to when co-parenting began, I can remember taking pains to prepare myself for the roughest moments that surely lay ahead: lonely nights, solo temper tantrum management fun, public meltdowns faced alone, hectic schedules and dinner, sick days when you’re both sick, fielding questions from everyone – even holidays. I armed myself with research, coping techniques, emotional outlets like writing and a hot yoga fixation, prayer, and a short list of A-Team absolutes I could call, text, or email at the drop of a dime for support.

What I didn’t prepare myself for, however, was how to deal with the happy moments. What to do after you embrace your child who brought home a great report card, or said something hilarious, or built the mother of all Lego towers. It’s hard to turn, with a smile on your face and joy threatening to burst out of your heart, because your little one just made a basket or figured out how to ride his bike and not find anyone there to share that bliss. For all the pain I prepared myself to face as a single mother I did nothing to ready myself for the sharp ache that is loneliness experienced in the happiest of times.

Friends, I stand beside my earlier promise to exercise restraint, but if you get the occasional strange text from me with 4-year old dialogue or another “adorable!!” picture of my nearest and dearest, please know that in that singular moment of happiness I turned and I reached for you. Because I needed to know I wasn’t completely alone. And it probably really was hilarious or adorable.

So, how do you catch a unique rabbit? It’s an old joke: unique (say it like: you-neek) up on him. And that’s really how we’ll be handling things over here: laughter and silly jokes. Because you’ve got to keep smiling.

What would happen if we all stopped thinking we know what’s going on in the family dynamics of others? What if we stopped comparing ourselves to each other, and assuming that one woman’s struggles were something she needed saving from or something she brought on herself?

We gripe when the government is too intrusive, but we have no qualms interjecting our thoughts, opinions, and critiques on the mother we don’t even know. How is this?

Recently TIME Magazine ran an interesting story with a provocative cover (thanks for writing about it RichmondMom writer Cheryl Lage – the pic of your twins at the end was also much appreciated!). When I read the cover it scared the hell out of me. Because this is exactly what we do to each other – we size one another up. “Are you Mom enough?” we silently, and not so silently, ask.

I, for one, would be floored if we stopped projecting our internal belief systems on all things family (including motherhood in all of its forms and every aspect of child-rearing) onto each other. Because motherhood is hard enough without that nonsense.

Case in point: A few weeks ago at church a woman, who has never spoken to me, launched into the following speech:

“Hi! I’m Ella*. I head up the single mom’s support group here and – I mean, I’ve seen you coming to church for a few months now and you never have anyone with you…except for your son…”, glance down at my naked left hand ring finger, “soooo…you know, I’m a single mom too. In fact I’m a single mom with five kids! So I know exactly what you’re going through! And I know how lonely it can be.”

This woman never even asked my name. There is no way she can have any idea who I am or what I’m going through.

Unfortunately, Ella’s invitation came sandwiched between two invitations from the pastor for the same single parent’s support group. All three times I declined, politely.

Underneath it all, this really irks me because all of these invites to the Single Parent’s Support group and not a one in sight for Adult Bible Study, Mommy and Me Bible Study or Worship, or any inclusion into the women’s organization in the church.

I’m going to lay it all out on the line: Just because I’m a single mom doesn’t mean I’m sad about it. Or that I need your support group. Or that I want to mingle with other singles. Or that our family is destroyed. We’re not a project that went wrong, and we don’t need to be “put back together”. One of the greatest things we can do to help each other in our community is to simply ask each other “What do you need?” rather than state “I know what you need”.

Because the truth of the matter is that yes, sometimes this arrangement is difficult. But it’s ours and it doesn’t need to be “fixed” because it is not “broken”. It bears repeating that families come in all shapes and sizes. And we – in our family – are committed to this arrangement because it is the best one for us.

*Please note that Ella’s name has been changed.

source: joelane.com

Since the first week of July 2011, our life has been fraught with mistake after mistake (with a whole lot of Life thrown in, too) made by me while D hung in for the ride. There isn’t much that teaches you about the mistakes you make more than watching a preteen attempt to adjust to your decisions and rebelling in an internalized cooperation of emotion. Unfortunately for us, I realized it much too late and the following is very personal and perhaps even self-shaming. After all, I don’t think I would be a very good Mom if I didn’t take at least half, if not most, of the responsibility for my sons actions culminating in his getting suspended and subsequently transferred to another school just 2.5 months before the school year ends.

My son is gifted and highly intuitive. I believe he is freakin’ brilliant, loves anything to do with strategy and enjoys any excuse to speak with an accent, particularly when it annoys his cousin. He has recently expressed an interest in drama and I think he’s got the imagination for it as well as the skill. What this also means is that my son is just as susceptible to internalizing problems he is having in life. Gifted kids are not exempt from anxiety and/or depression, they are not exempt from eating disorders, and they are not exempt from wishing they aren’t as smart as they are. What I am realizing is that creative kids have a harder time fitting in with their classmates because they don’t quite belong in any stereotypical box, something society constantly teaches us is a must and middle schoolers are no exception.

How would you, a 12 year old pre-pubescent boy, respond to being jerked from Richmond to Norfolk then back to Richmond in just 6 weeks, only 2 days before school started? By your own mother, who is your ultimate protector, who is supposed to be looking out for your best interests and with whom you cannot argue nor think she will listen to what you have to say anyway?

That’s where all of this started and D kept telling me he was fine. At that moment I did not realize he was coping with stress the same way I do: put on a pretty face and wade through the muck anyway because it’ll get better/easier, right? It’s got to. Oh how wrong we both were.

School seemed to start off easy enough. He was excited to see his friends again and to be going to school in a familiar environment. He seemed to be enjoying himself despite the typical middle school clashes with friends and teachers. I was proud of him for doing a better job of keeping up with schoolwork than he did the year before…until I got his report card for the semester wherein I learned he failed English for the entire semester, a subject I majored in for my undergraduate degree and a subject D could do in his sleep. (Note: I have changed my address with the school several times and yet the report cards still continue to be mailed to an old address I had 3 years ago.)

This was definitely a red flag because D has never ever failed at English since he was able to talk. He loves writing stories and reading as well as illustrating the stories he writes with imaginative pictures, sometimes taking up large amounts of space on several sheets of paper taped together. I should have sat down and talked to him, found out what was bothering him.

Except what did I do? Super Ground him. No tv. No video games. No dvds. Nothing. Just hanging out with me and reading or playing Lego’s.

Which in turn really really pissed. him. off. But did I see that? Nope.

(There was the incident where he got to participate in Saturday detention, for what neither of us can clearly recall at this point. This should have been a wake-up call…but it wasn’t.)

Often kids will act out at school because it is their safe place and apparently life at school for D during readjustment was rough yet I didn’t hear anything about it until the one final (and fatal) blow to his chances at remaining in the IB Program: he went to his Spanish class unprepared so his teacher allowed him to share materials with his neighbor. D, unfortunately, inherited (or quite possibly learned) his chattiness from me so proceeded to chat with his neighbor while they completed the work. When asked to quiet down because they were disturbing the class and should instead be working, my son stood up and loudly told his Spanish teacher something like he was angry with her and he was tired of her yelling at him all the time and asking him to be quiet.

Digression: how frustrating it must be to have adults telling you what to do all the time with almost no control over the outcome. This is when choices and compromise are better tools to use with tweens and teens rather than absolutes, something I strongly urge school administrative staff to remember in these situations. Tweens and teens lack the necessary maturity and ability to rationalize in order to deal with things on the level we as grown adults deem acceptable and/or reasonable. We cannot require they act like little adults because, quite simply, they are unable to think past the right now hence their appearance of self-centeredness.

source: medicalook.com

For a more scientific explanation: our hypothalamus, located in our forehead and which controls our ability to reason and weigh consequences, does not reach full maturity until approximately age 25 thus enforcing any teenager is unable to understand the immediate risks of their behaviors/digression.

D swears he can’t remember what happened next yet his Spanish teacher remembers quite well: she asked D to leave the class, he refused. She put her hand on the doorknob to open the door and walk D out of class. D then pushed her hand away from the doorknob with such force as to move her arm backward. At that point D left the room, security* was called and D was placed in the office of the director for the program.

I didn’t hear about the incident until the principal called me the day after it happened to let me know they were investigating the incident and would keep me informed of the situation and its consequences. I immediately contacted D’s former therapist to see if he could begin seeing her again. The next day, as D and I walked to the bus stop, I apologized to D for not listening to what he had been trying to tell me indirectly, that he didn’t come with a manual, I made a mistake and I was sorry for putting him through so many of my bad decisions. He seemed relieved.

On 1 March, a Thursday, D was suspended for 10 days pending a panel hearing. How I found out he was suspended were the text messages he sent to me on the bus while on his way home: he threatened to kill himself with the pistol at his dad’s house where he was supposed to go that weekend. D is only on the bus for approximately 30 minutes and we talked about this decision to kill himself the entire time. I met him at the bus stop and I hugged him hard while he sobbed. I told him he made a mistake, a big one, and that we’ll get through this together like we’ve gotten through so many others. A couple hours later, after trying to talk to his dad about the threat and only being told it wasn’t his fault, I decided to violate the custody order and keep D home safe with me. Again he seemed relieved and for the rest of the day he proceeded to take apart a few of his Nerf guns and/or retrofit others with the parts.

On day 14 of D’s suspension the panel hearing was held at which time the person leading the hearing asked D if he had ever thought of seeking out another teacher or social worker or guidance counselor when he got mad. After 20 minutes the meeting ended and we were told to look for their decision in our mailbox. On day 16 we received a letter informing us that D would be transferred effectively immediately to another school.

We spent the whole weekend talking about this change; D spent most of Sunday afternoon and evening by my side including sleeping with me that night because he was so anxious. He didn’t voice his thoughts, most likely because he was unable to, but I’m sure he was worried about what the school was like, would the kids like him, was he going to fit in, what were classes going to be like and so on. I could see the tapes running in his head so well he didn’t need to tell me anything.

Author Crystal Pintoch, who like all moms, occasionally makes a mistake.

Longer story shorter, after 2 full weeks at his new school, it has become evident that perhaps this is what D needs in his life: moderately difficult work in a less stressful environment. His new school has a program called Community in Schools as well as experience with kids with behavioral problems. While I don’t believe D has a problem with behavior overall, I do believe he has greater difficulty regulating his emotions because he is so bright and intuitive. Then there’s the fact so many adults still haven’t learned to regulate their emotions very well and when one of those is your own dad, how are you supposed to learn not to practice what he consistently emotes?

While it sucks that we had to learn the hard way and suffer through Mistake No 541, D and I confirmed that with love and constant communication we’ll get through Mistake No 542, 543 and so many more as there is so much more life left to live.

*For the record, for a long time I have been critical of how school staff handles any child who has gotten angry, afraid, frustrated, overly anxious, etc. Think of a time you have become so angry you were seeing red and then someone got in your face, grabbed your arm, told you to calm down right this instant then forcibly removed you from the area. Be honest, what would have been your reaction? Richmond Public Schools stopped employing therefore utilizing One-on-Ones because of budget cuts. Immediate intervention is very important because those trained individuals can help a child learn their triggers and in turn help those children learn ways of coping with those triggers.

Last year I participated in (and I use that term loosely) NaNoWriMo – the national marathon novel writing event that happens every November. It costs nothing to join and the only thing holding you to the goal of writing 2,000 words per day is your own personal honor code. NaNoWriMo was important to me. Besides loving to write I have three novels in various stages of progression, a children’s book in the works, and I’ve recently concepted a screenplay.

Anyone who knows me knows that I can reason my way through anything. You want to justify a pair of $200 jeans even though you have no savings in the bank? Call me. You want to ditch the internal guilt trip after indulging a container of ice cream and brownies

credit: sacchef.com

when you’re on a diet? I’m your girl. Feel bad for flipping that person off when you were driving to church this morning? I’ll assure you that God totally gets it.

Needless to say, I didn’t stick to NaNoWriMo at all. And I’ve got 17 exceptional reasons (one for each day I wrote nothing) that will have you nodding your head in complete understanding – “well, of course you couldn’t write that day,” you’ll say, “the weight of the entire world was upon your shoulders! What else could you do?” Dear reader, you couldn’t be more right.

You know the expression “come hell or high water?” It takes hell or high water to motivate me to action. Because at that point, what do you have left to lose?

About a decade ago I broke up with a long-term boyfriend and went to Paris. A year after that I graduated from college and joined a dance company that performed on stage at the Landmark Theater. After the birth of my son I opened my own business. A few years ago I lost my father to a severe heart attack, and I ran my first 8K less than a week after his funeral. Every time I get my world rocked, it shakes up my fear enough so I can have a breakthrough.

Now, after a separation and newfound status as a single mom I’m staring down my bucket list and coming up with some pretty amazing excuses for why I can’t accomplish my goals. My old standby is the advanced guilt trip I give myself because writing will mean sacrificing even more precious time with my son.

But why does it take something to shake us to the core before we grab a dream of ours and make it happen? Why do we have to constantly be reminded that life is too short? With every passing day I can see changes in my son – I know life is too short.

credit: helen-lingard.com

I don’t know how you validate chasing your dreams and fulfilling your goals when you’re preoccupied with helping your child dream their dreams and shape their own goals. But I guess I’ll find out. I understand that I’m a better mom – and an incredible role model – to be someone who works to achieve her dreams.

So what do you get when you mix a single mom and dreams? Well, I still don’t really know, but come hell or high water – or both – I’m going to write these books.

Thanks for this image, winecountrymom.blogs.santarosamom.com

Tell the truth, tell the truth, tell the truth.

                                    -Eat, Pray, Love

I’m here to write about being a single mom living in Richmond. It sounds simple enough, but single motherhood has its own assortment of issues outside of “normal” motherhood topics over which I could wax philosophical about if you’d lend your ear for 10 hours. And how do you pick just one thing to talk about for your first blog post?

And what’s normal? What’s…not normal? Scratch that – let’s ask, what’s not traditional and how do we feel about it?

My family involves me, my ex husband, and our 3-year old son. We share custody one week at a time. We’re a co-parenting unit trying, some days not very successfully, to put all of our emotional baggage aside and do what’s best for our little one. This means two houses, two bedrooms, two sets of clothes, and two sets of toys. This means we spend some holidays together, and some apart. This means that for 26 weeks out of the year, I am without my son. This is my new normal.

I hesitate to use the “single mom” label. Because what does that mean? I feel like it implies that my ex is a deadbeat dad who isn’t involved in his son’s life, and, luckily, in our situation the exact opposite is true. My ex and I have become co-parents. We have discussions over parenting styles, consistency, and personal preferences (can he not wear skinny jeans, please). We talk about what our son is doing at preschool and compare notes over his ever-changing food habits (seriously, the kid just stopped liking macaroni and cheese). Much of our parenting is done over the phone or through text message. We have ground rules and I can honestly say that we respect them.

Thanks for this image, cheynesuker.com

This may be my new normal, but I have to accept that it’s not everyone else’s. My friends aren’t quite sure what to do with me or even if I want to talk about it (P.S. Ladies, I do – CALL ME). They aren’t sure of the weeks I have my son and the weeks I don’t, and so often I’m left out of plans. My family whispers my ex’s name when they bring it up, almost like it’s a taboo word. And maybe I’m just hyper-sensitive, but whenever I’m out with my son eyes always dart to my naked left hand ring finger.

For a while I tried to explain to people that I wasn’t just a single mom but that I was a “co-parenting mom.” That drew a lot of puzzled faces and long explanations so I tried new labels like the tongue-in-cheek “mom of one, wife to none,” “fully capable mom without a husband,” and “matriarch.” All of these labels returned the same quizzical looks so I sat down one night and decided that I needed to make peace with what I was feeling. I needed to understand why I was grappling with coming to grips with what was true: I am a single mom.

It’s all thanks to fear. I’m scared that I won’t be accepted by my friends and family – even my coworkers and community. I’m scared that I’m a failure at being a mom and a failure at love. I worry over 100 thousand scenarios each day, most of them so far from being fathomable it’s silly that I even waste time worrying about them. So instead of owning who I am, I tried to come up with new labels to mask my fear. In the end, I realized that I’m just not being honest.

So this is my pledge to you as I write about being a single mom in Richmond: I will tell the truth. It’s not like I was ever not going to tell the truth to you; I was just going to tell an abridged version of the truth, you know, the one I was comfortable with. At least until we all got to know each other. The truth of the matter is, the truth scares me.

But I don’t think that anyone reading this wants my abridged version, and frankly I’d like to come to terms with being a single mom myself, even if it’s in a very public way. My rose-colored glasses are likely not the same shade of pink as yours, so what’s the point?

This is me. I am a single mom. And I would love it if you read along with me as I discover myself again.