So I was married, and divorced in 2015. He lives in this area, but we don’t really communicate. He’s been in and out of my daughter’s life since then. I’ve been very blessed because I have a career that allows me to take care of her and to take care of the daily [needs]- the house, the car, the social stuff on my own. Never remarried, still single.
I think motherhood is extremely challenging for a single mom because we don’t have that sound board to talk things through, to kind of banter back and forth about our kids. So in elementary school, the kids are growing up, you’re just worried about play dates and bonding with other moms to build that kind of community and that support system. So that was pretty easy.
I think the most challenging part of the transition from elementary to middle school is the fine line between being their friend and being a mother. We’re going through some challenging transitions from friendships to grades to competitions to just allowing her to be an individual. Sometimes it’s difficult financially because it’s a one income household, and you never want to say no to your child. You always want to give them the best.
To be able to communicate with them so that they can open up to you while knowing that you have work to do, and your work schedule, and trying to balance everything, working an eight hour shift, coming home and trying to make dinner, and then with extracurricular activities. It’s just one person. And I’ve been pretty lucky living in this neighborhood and with the school system and the friends that I’ve made, because I do count on them a lot. I have a really strong support system.
It’s been challenging in a lot of areas. I think that’s where I was truly blessed with my career, because each milestone that I approached, it kind of fit into what I needed to be a mother.
So, for example, I worked at a drug company that was regular eight to five, but I was able to work my schedule around so that I was home a lot. And then the next milestone was to find a position to work at home as a pharmacist. So with that, my parents came over, watched her, and I was in the next room. And that went on for a few years. And then now I work for a hospital where my schedule is pretty flexible, where I can take her to school and drop her off, pick her up. And so I’m home by dinner time, and if she has any volunteer opportunities then I do that.
So it’s very nice, it’s very flexible, and I’m very blessed to have that because I know that’s not the case for a lot of single moms. So yeah, she was four and she’s twelve now, and we’ve been doing it on our own for about eight years.
My day starts probably at 5:00 in the morning and it doesn’t end till about 10:00 at night. Drop off at school, making lunches, trying to get to work at a decent time… that’s probably the most challenging part of my day is the running back and forth and to be able to give her what she needs. For example, going to extracurricular in the afternoon. So always being present is probably the most challenging.
Let’s say she has a behavior issue, or there’s an incident at school with grades, with teachers, whatever have you. I’m like the disciplinarian. And then I have to turn around and be the nurturer and the comforter. So that’s sometimes a big challenge because I sometimes don’t know if I’m doing it right. Am I being too hard on her? Am I being too soft on her? I don’t have somebody there to tell me or give me a different perspective.
That I think is the number one- I would say it’s just to have somebody there to say “hey, what do you think about this? Should she do this? Should she go do this or not? Do you think she’s lying?” It’s just everyday growing pains so thankfully she’s pretty independent, she makes the good grades. I think she has a pretty good head on her shoulders. She’s a mindful person, and I think just communicating with her on a daily basis and sitting down with her at dinner time because it’s just the two of us, so we really bond that way. And I have to be careful of how I ask things because there are certain ways that you can ask to get the replies or the openness that you want.
To talk to another parent sometimes [when] there’s an issue that’s going on, no parent wants to hear about something that’s going on with their kid. And also with our kids being in middle school, you want to be able to let them have the freedom and the time and the energy to kind of express themselves and think things [through] for themselves. So even though you see a certain situation and you know how you would approach it, you have to let them kind of go through it and figure it out on their own. And I think that’s hard too, because you want to come in and say, “hey, this is how you’re supposed to do this.” You can’t do that. You have to let them figure it out on their own.
Dating has been a double edged sword. It can be fun, but then it can also be challenging. Fun as in you get to get away from that hectic schedule that you have all week of doing something on your own, and now you get to go out and just focus on yourself. Challenging in that I want to protect my daughter, and so I’m very careful of who I select. Usually men that I’ve dated, they don’t quite understand the schedule of a single mom and how much energy and how much time I put into it that I can’t go out every week.
I’m not one of those typical moms who has their ex husbands come and pick the child up every other weekend. So I have [her] a majority of the time. So when I do go out, I go out. I’ll go out and have a good time. But it’s very rare that I do that because I do want to make sure that she is protected. And whoever I let into our lives now, it’s not just me, it’s also including her.
Usually my mom friends, I’ll call them up and I’ll ask, “hey, can you watch [my daughter] for a couple of hours?” And usually they’ll say yes. And I know it’s a give and take, and we have that understanding, and I love to do that too, for them, if they needed to go out with their husbands or whoever, and I would say, “hey, bring your kid over. I’ll watch them.” So it’s a give and take. It’s not like a tit for tat kind of trade. It’s like a comfortable understanding.
My parents are still married. They were middle class. They both worked. So getting a divorce was something that was not necessarily frowned upon, but generally doesn’t happen in my culture. That was something that I had to deal with.
Growing up with the Vietnamese family, it wasn’t easy. It was more [of a] focus on academics, no social life, no whatever. So becoming a single mom, there were points in my life where I thought that I wasn’t good enough because I was a single mom, and I had to do everything on my own, or maybe I had to work a little bit harder to be seen or to be heard. So I had to try to leave that part of my life.
When it comes to [my daughter], I have to kind of learn from what my parents taught me, but not carry their behaviors onto her. It was all academics, no social life. I didn’t do any extracurricular activities at school. We didn’t have sleepovers. Friends were never over at the house. I never went anywhere to a friend’s house. So they were very strict. And I don’t feel like I had the same kind of growing up as the kids these days do.
So with [her], I have to kind of let her experience everything that I didn’t have, but at the same time, I didn’t know how to maneuver around it, so I had to learn on my own- okay, how do I react to this? How do I answer to this? That’s a personal thing for me that I work on constantly, every day, to put aside what’s expected and what should be. Nobody wants to carry on a negative aspect of growing up. They don’t want to carry that forward. And so that’s probably something that I constantly work on every day.
I’ve read a couple of self help books about how to raise like strong, emotional kids. But a lot of it, I think it doesn’t fit into that mold. And so a lot of the experiences are just through trial and error of raising her. It’s an everyday challenge.
But sometimes I look back and sometimes looking at where I am now, I feel like it’s the reverse. Like [she] was sent here to kind of take care of me or to be with me. It’s one of those AHA moments I had where- what would I do if she wasn’t here? She’s brought here to take care of me, not me to take care of her, because nowhere in the universe [did I think} that I would be a single mom- now I have my daughter to share my life with. And sometimes when I talk to her, I have to watch myself, because a lot of times our communication back and forth is very friendly.
But she still needs to know her mom. And that’s something that I struggle with sometimes. Because I want to talk to her in a way to have her open up, but you don’t want them to talk in a way, to disrespect you and think that you’re just a friend. You’re still mom. I’m still mom.
I’m a very obstinate person. I’ve been told that I’m intimidating. Sometimes I react. And with her, I kind of have to take a step back and try to figure out what the situation is before I react. So it’s taught me a little bit of patience because I like things done at a particular time. I want things done a particular way. I’m just used to that. My career is like that, and that’s where I have to kind of take a step back and slow down my roll and say, okay, what is she really trying to tell me? Why is she angry? Why is she sad? Taking a step back to analyze that before I raise my voice or I give my opinion about something, because sometimes she just wants to say she wants to be heard. She doesn’t really need me to tell her, well, this is the way that you should do this.
I’ve learned how to ask questions. For example, if she were to say, “yeah, so and so did this at school and I didn’t like it,” and I would say, “well, what was it about what she did that you didn’t like?” So you kind of throw it back on them to kind of think and to figure out what it is that’s making them upset or making them feel sad or whatever. So I’ve learned to do that. I’ve learned to be kind of a counselor just to listen.
I think my biggest concern is when she gets to that dating age or in college, I want her to feel strong, and I want for her to look back and see her mom as somebody who stood up for herself and not somebody who was just constantly dating, just to have affirmation from somebody.
My main worry is because she doesn’t have that male role model now in her life that she doesn’t know how to handle, that she’ll need that constant affirmation from someone. So I struggle every day to try to teach her that- to do well in school, to have your girlfriends, to keep your friends close and just not depend so much on having a relationship with someone.
I always joke around, and I probably shouldn’t say this, but I told her once that I look forward to [her] turning 21 and [she] and I sitting in a bar and having a drink, and that sounds kind of… I don’t know, that sounds kind of wrong, right? And just be able to have that relationship where we are two women talking about just her life now, to say that I want happiness for her, that’s such a general statement.
I want her to be just fulfilled and just satisfied with all her successes and all her failures and just grow from them instead of just pining over the things. Have no regrets. Just don’t pine over the things that haven’t happened or did happen to be self sufficient. And if I were to do one thing all over again after college, I would probably do a lot of traveling, do a lot of things that you want to do. Not worry about what I want or what society is expecting of you. Just go do what you want to do first, and then you have the rest of your life to figure out the other details.
If you are a single mother in need of support, here are some resources to help:
Single Mother’s Assistance in Texas
Single Mom . Com has assistance in other states as well.
What To Expect has information on Grants and Housing.
All content and information on this blog is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute medical advice. Always consult your doctor for advice on your particular medical situation.