Everyone has advice for single mothers. Do this, don’t do that, never allow this, don’t put up with that. When I was first divorced everyone gave me a hard time for allowing Hailey to sleep with me. How was I ever going to remarry if my daughter was in my bed, I was setting her up to resent my future, non existent husband. I finally stopped paying attention, it’s too overwhelming, especially since most of the advice is conflicting.
As a single mother who has been in the trenches for a while I can honestly say that the two things you can’t do without are a sense of humor and the ability to laugh at yourself.
Our kids feel our stress, whether we realize it or not, so if we can laugh we are telling them that things aren’t as bad as they seem. We worry and stress too much, over things that don’t matter. Early on I got into the habit of asking myself if whatever I was worried about was going to matter in five years and most of the time the answer was no, so why not laugh about it.
When Hailey was a preteen and seemed to cry at the drop of a hat, laughter saved us many times. Once she was holding a glass of milk and crying about someone being mean at school and the glass slipped. Milk and glass exploded all over the kitchen. After the initial little yell we both did, I realized neither of us was hurt so I looked at my baby, who was now crying harder and said, someone should have told us not to cry over milk before you spilled it either.
That did it, that one little sentence. Hailey looked at me with tears in her eyes and started giggling. We cleaned up the milk and glass, making silly jokes about spilled milk as we did so. In the end, all we lost was a glass, but the time spent laughing was priceless.
I could have gotten frustrated about one more thing to clean but then I would have missed Hailey joking about drinking beans instead of milk. People say don’t spill the beans but they are a lot easier to clean up than beans. That kid kills me with her sense of humor.
So laugh, each and every day, be silly with your kids. I want Hailey to remember me doing the naked mole rat dance that I made up because some kids show had a cartoon naked mole rat dancing. That’s what I want her to remember. Childhood should be full of sunshine and laughter, so embrace, after all, you are not finished growing up yet either. Or maybe that’s just me.