Raising a Well-Balanced and Loving Child as a Single Parent

Being a parent is complicated, at the very best, even as a couple. When you are a single parent, however, it can be almost twice as complicated. As the custodial parent, you face the job of being one and a half parents, at least. Though the non-custodial parent is still a major factor in the child's life, your average child will still receive most of the life-lessons that they learn from the custodial parent. This can be quite the heavy load to bear, but with persistence and indepth knowledge of the road ahead of us, you can persevere and come out with a real winner.

As a single parent, you need to care for your children and not to mislead them with your own anger and frustration. When a child has divorced or separated parents, there is quite often an all too obvious resentment between the two parents. While you are too busy arguing to notice anything beyond your ongoing competitions and arguments, you can be certain that your child notices. This teaches your children a multitude of negative aspects; some of the most damaging are lack of respect and living with hate and hatred.

If you don't respect your child's other parent, then your child will likely do two things. One, he or she will develop anger issues against you for that lack of respect and against the other parent for being the bad guy as you describe them. The second thing is that you are teaching your children not to respect and not to love the other parent, and when a child loses respect for one parent, the other parent is generally soon to follow. Making the other parent look bad in your children's eyes causes them to lose half of their identity. Don't damage your kid's psyche to win the battle against your ex! You will pay a high price for it later in life when your kids are older.

You don't want your children to learn to hold grudges and become vindictive from those around them. They are not born with this reaction. It is one hundred percent and completely learned and YOU are responsible for it.

As a caring parent, it is your responsibility to put your all your effort into teaching your children to maintain pure love and the ultimate forgiveness and let go. By bickering back and forth between your ex-spouse and yourself, you are teaching hard feelings. A child sees all this and subconsciously begins to see this as a normal life. Instead of leading them down this path, teach them that forgiveness and courtesy is the way that is considered "greatness." True, your significant other might not take this same path or outlook, but then, always remember that you, as the custodial parent, have access to your child most of the time. The majority of life's lessons will be learned through you.