Solo Mother

I’ve been pondering this one for a while. New York Times has an article about it. An eight year old boy shot and killed his father and a boarder, his father’s friend. Deliberately. One victim was found outside the house. One was found inside–upstairs, in a bedroom.
I have no answers. Seems there’s a surfeit of anger out there, these days. The KKK is in resurgence… in Long Island. Baby Peter is beaten to death. And an eight year old kills his father and his father’s friend.
The Arizona boy is facing two counts… of premeditated murder. What on earth is going …read more

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“Mama, what does ‘Rated R’ mean?” he asked me last night, his blue eyes staring solemnly up into my brown ones. I was busy in the kitchen, putting away dishes, cleaning up dinner, finding the counter under an avalanche of cooking inspiration.
“Oh, it means there’s violence, bad language, and sex. It means it’s a movie for grown ups, not kids,” I explained.
“Mama, what’s sex?”
Oh holy crud, how on earth do I answer that one?

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What is happiness to you, single mother?
There’s a fascinating book coming out in 2009 — The Happiness Project
Gretchen Rubin has spent some time examining happiness, and the pursuit of, from every which way, and might have some suggestions on how to achieve it. I know that personally, I am happiness when I am in the Now, without concern about the future or the past. When I’m sitting at my potter’s wheel, immersed in a project, I know only the clay beneath my hands. When I am deep in a design or a writing assignment at work, I’m in my element. …read more

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I picked up a sweet little article about dating and the single mother this morning.
Seems that sometimes, a kid’s got to do what a kid’s got to do. One such vigilant child of a single mother took it upon herself to vet her mother’s online dating prospects… without her mother’s knowledge. I had to laugh at this one. She snuck into her mother’s profiles and deleted anything she felt was too revealing, and even went so far as to delete prospective matches that didn’t ring true:
While Mum was building her dating profiles on Web sites, I was secretly …read more

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I don’t know how to manage an older child’s anger. I haven’t been there yet. But I have a hot-headed five year old full of opinions and attitude, and I worry about him. He’s an exuberant child. He’s got imagination spilling out of him in hot lava gobs of paleontology and space travel and good guys and bad guys. He’s a handful. He was full of piss n vinegar today, and it was all we could do to get through an hour without shouting at each other. Sometimes, we didn’t make it. Finally, exhausted, we hung up our sparring gloves, …read more

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Does the number ‘529′ mean anything to you? If you have kids who might go to college, it should ring a bell. The 529 Plan is a “tax-advantaged investment vehicle” (read: plan to encourage folks to save by giving a tax break or advantage for using the plan) that, for the intent and purpose of this single mother’s needs, focuses on a mutual fund investment plan that becomes more conservative as the child grows towards college age. That’s the savings plan.
FYI, there’s also a prepaid plan that allows you to buy tuition at today’s rates–but for today, I’ll skip that …read more

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I’ve been thinking about this story all day, wondering if I dared say anything about it here. She was a mother of two, in desperate mental straights. She did this horrible thing to her children, and then herself. Amazingly, her neighbors knew something was happening, and summoned the police who, forcing their way into the house, were able to save the children.
And the mother.
This woman is a single mother. She is being treated for mental disorders, and her children are being cared for. I don’t know how you live with that memory, either as the child or the mother. I …read more

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It was wonderful to get away, even though I was pretty well tethered to work with the Blackberry and the cottage’s wireless connection. We read books. We cooked food and ate out. We swam in the ocean and walked the Boardwalk. We played arcade games and made gigantic bubbles in the backyard.
And every time we moved from one thing to the next, the King of Everything threw a fit. What a misery. I know, he’s five. He’s not used to transitions and sleeping somewhere else and the difference that vacation puts into life. And mostly, he was so excited to …read more

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Camp Weary Parent has been in full swing all summer, but the fearless leaders over at Weary Parent are marching gamely on. Charlene is playing her own game of Survivor and counting down to school (38 days!), while Christine is wondering when her teens decided she was uncool…
Here at SoloMother, the summer seems to be sliding by pretty smoothly. The King of Everything has a great haircut and brand new shoes, thanks to his grandparents (size 13.5 WIDE and he’s only 5 years old). All his best summer memories have been lovingly crafted by his grandmother and grandfather–berry picking, a …read more

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I love Dr. Leah. If ever you need a level-headed perspective on life, go on over to Just Ask Dr. Leah and… ask. Her comment to yesterday’s musings on broken marriages and failing children was so spot on, I asked her if I could post it here for all to see:
Children born to single moms by choice are a whole different category. The outcome data–meaning how do these kids turn out–is positive and show no meaningful differences between SM – choice kids and kids born to heterosexual couples.
All divorce studies are confounded–not so clear cut like this article made it …read more

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