Solo Mother

A Facebook poll got me thinking about the whole mess that No Child Left Behind has created in our schools. Teachers are teaching to the test. Enrichment programs like art, music, sports are being cut so kids have more time to learn the test materials. Hell, some schools don’t even have recess anymore.
Kids aren’t learning. They are memorizing. They aren’t being taught how to think. They are being taught to regurgitate what they have been told, with little understanding of how or why the answer was found.
I think it’s a disaster.

9 Comments

As a child growing up in D.C., in a household of Republicans in a wildly Democratic city-state, I grew up listening to the nobile futility of casting a vote for the Party, even knowing it would do no good… as a child in D.C., land of taxation without representation, I heard quite often that my vote, in my city, wouldn’t count.
When I was a young woman, living in Washington, D.C., I marched. I marched and I shouted and I belonged to a throng of other, passionate, shouting idealists who believed their marching and gathering and protesting would bring about change.
Sometimes …read more

6 Comments

Science Daily published an interesting article on the benefits of three generations under one roof for the children of single mothers. Of course, the study doesn’t say much about the toll such arrangements might take on a single mother’s freedom for booty calls and the like, but it definitely comes down on the side of the kids.
In the United States, more than six million children under the age of 18 live with at least one grandparent. Of these children, 2.5 million are part of a single-mother family that includes the child’s mother as well as one or more grandparents.
Using data …read more

4 Comments

A comment on an old post here on Solomother and voila! Another connection is made, another source of help for single mothers trying to make ends meet.
SERVANT’S HEART International helps desperate single Mom’s and their children by delivering to them, every week, a 40lb box of food including meat and bread.
These deliveries are made completely with volunteers. There is no paid staff and we sell no food.
We also help Moms with clothing, furniture, baby food and diapers.
I don’t know anything more about this organization; it implies that it is doing business as a 501c(3) but if you are thinking about donating to this or any …read more

No Comments

Summertime rolls around and my son blossoms. He’s reading like a fiend, learning about money (which means how to add and subtract and not go into negative numbers!), and getting a crash course in paleontology and natural history. Along the way, he has learned how to swim well enough to be promoted to the next level, ascended a climbing wall, run like a banshee, paddled a canoe, searched for frogs, found a black snake, jumped off a dock, guided a boat, played mini golf, and generally had the best. time. ever.
But those days are coming to a close. Soon, we’ll …read more

2 Comments

First off, if you don’t read Susan Palwick’s Rickety Contrivances of Doing Good, you’re in for a treat. Susan’s not your ordinary, Bible-thumping Christian. In fact, she finds God in the most unlikely of places — stuffed animals, rocks, and the occasionally deranged patient passing through the OR where she is a volunteer chaplain. She’s also a teacher, an author, a wife, and a recently bereaved daughter. Her father passed away quite recently, and we’re no longer permitted the ‘luxury’ of mourning the loss of a loved one for a year, or however long it takes to find a place …read more

No Comments

View Larger Map

No Comments

I read a heartbreaking piece in the Washington Post about how this recession is affecting our children. It goes deeper than giving up a few frivolities. In the article, a ten year old boy was beside himself because he was too young to get a job to help his family out.
I don’t know that we can protect our children from the strain and fear of this recession. But we must  absolutely guard against letting our own fears and worries spill over to our children, either by making them feel they must do something drastic, like drop out of high school, …read more

4 Comments

Man, it’s frustrating, isn’t it? If you’ve got a deadbeat dad in your life, you know just what I’m talking about. It’s hard to bite your tongue whenever your child praises your ex, or asks why they can’t have something you can’t afford, or say something like, ‘Well, daddy lets me…’
and what you really want to say is, I have to beg your father every month to see you, talk to you, stay connected to you, help with your expenses… if we can’t afford something, it’s because he’s not helping.
But if you’re smart, you won’t say anything of the …read more

3 Comments

“I’m done with you.” These, the parting words of a mother to her 15 year old daughter as she dropped the child off at a Nebraska hospital.
A 16-year old tried to abandon herself and her baby. How does that work, exactly? She herself is a minor child with a minor child. Who makes the determination in that case?
A widower left his nine children. He fell apart after his wife died and ‘couldn’t take care of them’.
Parents flew their unruly teens in from around the country.
What’s happening to us?

9 Comments