Confessions of a Single Mum

Archive for the ‘Single Mum Ramblings’ Category

The sun has decided to show itself again after 6 weeks of hiding. Ahh it must be time for the children to go back to school. 6 weeks of rain, not quiet rain and not raining now but will be in a minute, have moved aside for the sunshine. It happens every year so I am no longer surprised by the suns timing. Regardless we have survived the holidays intact. Read the rest of this entry »

Then check out the latest post in the Media section on the forum. They are looking for single mums, who are from the UK and a fan of the Nintendo DS. Contact details in the forum.

Whohooo we have a new toy to play with. A forum for Confessions of a Single Mum. It’ still early days so please if you find something wrong, a section we can’t live with out or anything else please get in contact. I will be adding things as we need them.
Post a question for other mums to answer, get a confession off your chest or just stop and say hi.
We need all you mums and your posts.

So what are you waiting for – head over to the forum and try it out.

Being a single parent uses up every ounce of your juggling skills and if you missed the juggling classes you soon get a crash course in the art of doing 6 things at once as well as more worrying than humanly possible for one person. One of the things that I really worried over, and still do, is my parenting style. Not the designer gear sort of style complete with matching accessories but more the ‘how you parent’ sort of style.

When my second child came along there was ‘the how to get down the street in a safe and orderly manner’ task to conquer. Baby was easy to contend with. Wrapped up in pram he was safe as my pram driving skills would allow. But now my daughter was foot loose and fancy free. No pushchair for her anymore. I tried the reins approach which lasted all of one trip to town. She got tangled up, I got stressed and the reins were sent to the back of the cupboard. I soon learnt I couldn’t push a pram with one hand and hold her hand and keep us all safe.

The solution was to have a spying session on other mums, how did other mums do it? It materialised that some could indeed push a pram with one hand whilst others took the baby in sling, other child in pushchair approach. I tried this too. Now if you have experienced this you may understand where I come from when I say it makes you walk very unnaturally and not at all straight. After 9 months of a growing bump with growing backache, I was yearning to stand up straight. Having the baby in the sling was like being pregnant again, plus being summer baby got hot, I got hot, baby got hotter….you can see where I am going with this. Sling soon joined the reins at the back of the cupboard.

My only answer was to train my daughter to hold the side of the pram. Easier said than done, so I thought. I had images of something catching her eye and off she would go even if I had explained firmly and nicely that she needed to keep hold of the pram. Indeed this did happen, at the side of the road too. Did I handle the incident with decorum? No. Did I act calmly and explain in best sugar coated words the risk of being flattened by a passing car? Well no. I went into hysterics of the screaming ‘you could have been killed’ kind. There were uncontrollable tears from me and a wobbly bottom lip from her. Solved the problem as she never let go of the pram every again.

This was my first taste of the differences in parenting styles. Tell them as it is verses sugar coated. Tell them as it is seems a bit harsh but is it the right thing? Or should it be more sugar coated. Life isn’t sugar coated though, awful things happen.

As my children are now a lot older sugar coated really doesn’t work, it doesn’t get over the importance of some things. They are about to enter the era of firsts. First offer of alcohol, first offer of a cigarette, first offer of a kiss…… I’ll stop there before I get myself wound up. With the first increasing the importance and danger increase too.

So how do you think children should be warned of dangers? What’s your parenting style? Sugar coated or tells them as it is?

There seems to be a conspiracy going on. Not that statement is strange as there always seems to be something in the news. But this conspiracy is happening within me. My whole body is on a personal attack on my sanity.  It’s not enough that children attack my sanity on a daily bases but now my body is joining in too? Give me a break.

I was coping with the body deciding to give in to middle age spread. I guess it happens to us all but despite being the healthiest I have ever been, the belt on my jeans has had to go to the next notch up. They say that the youth is wasted on the young and that is very much true. Gone are the days of not caring what you ate or when you ate it. Now I watch what I eat, not excessively to the point I obsess over it, more along the lines of not too much red meat, never touch anything that’s fried and eat more salads and fresh veg then I probably ever did the whole of my life. I walk more, ok I am not at the point of going to the gym or anything else as reckless as actually hard lycra clad exercise, but I am gardening everyday and the school run has been known to be a school walk. This still gets brownie points with the exercise gods as the 1 mile route is one big hill. But where as I would drop a belt notch just watching someone exercise, now I am starting to have to consider further actual physical exercise of some sort, as if I didn’t have anything better to do. I will not be doing lycra though.

I was also coping with the odd brain dead moment too. I seem to have started losing all ability of being able to speak English, despite nearly 40 years of English babble happily falling out of my mouth on command. Take today; instead of saying what was in my head “I don’t have any change on me” it came out as “I only have pound notes”. For heaven’s sake they went out of circulation 26 years ago and yes it really was that long ago, I googled it. My children’s ages and current school year has always been a sticky remembering subject. I have to ask them every time I fill yet another school form in. So I assume the now forgetting their actual name is only to be expected. It also puts me into utter confusion now my daughter has 4 friends with names starting with A. Even I know I am starring gormlessly at the A named friend, desperately trying to remember which one they are.

So now that my brain and middle age spread are in cahoots and happening in unison, I declare it a conspiracy and I know I am dwelling far too much on my age at the moment. But it does hit home when your youngest is moving up to secondary school in September then add in the lovely statement that my daughter had great delight in announcing ‘this is your last few months being in your 30’s’.

You work hard on bringing up your children in the correct way and then when they do something you have been striving for, it worries the life out of you.

Yesterday morning I lugged the heavy shopping back from town. Not a usual occurrence for me but the weather couldn’t make up its mind what it’s going to do. The lovely sunny bbq I planned for the evening was cancelled when I woke up to rain. So off to the supermarket I went to get rain suitable food. No sooner as I have paid for it, lugged it home and packed it away and the sun comes out. Bbq back on, no food though for a bbq. Off to town, as bored with the supermarket, to get more supplies. Now the route back from town is a horrible climb up a long hill, add in heavy shopping bags you can imagine I was not best pleased when the rain started again. At that point I was getting quiet irate and this post was going to be more of a rant then it is but I have had the wind knocked out of my sails by my daughter.

I returned home to find the hoover upstairs, switched on and my daughter actually using it. Furthermore she had hovered downstairs first. I should be pleased, I should be proud of the kind considerate daughter I have raised. I am but I am more worried what it’s going to cost me as that much housework means she must want something

I know children have to grow up. It’s a fact and will happen no matter how much I protest. Just when you think they will be toddlers forever and never grasp the art of understandable speech or the ability to walk in a straight line, whoosh they are at that awkward stage of not yet a teenager but not a young child stage or even worse, young teenagers. Not that the speech or straight lines improve, instead they have replaced the toddler babble with so called ‘cool’ words that don’t make sense and cannot be used by adults successfully, no matter how cool the said adult thinks they are. The toddler waddle is replaced with a mixture of slouched posture and flailing limbs. Baby giraffes come to mind as you watch them learning how to control their growing limbs whilst mastering important lessons of life like walking around town endlessly and walking in high heels (mainly the girls).

So I accept this is all happening but what I am not prepared for or expected was the rollercoaster of ages it seems to be taking me, the so called adult, through with it. I mean I am supposed to be the one who can string two words together and walk in high heels and occasionally at the same time. So why am I swinging from old age to teenager at a moment’s notice? I have pangs of jealously at their younger fitter bodies. This was amplified when in a recent post clothes washing sort, I mixed up my daughter’s jeans with mine. She thought she had lost weight and skipped around the room and I was a crumpled heap on the floor trying to get into jeans that were no way going to budge above my thighs wondering how on earth I had put on so much weight over night.

My growing children don’t actually help matters either. They roll their eyes and mutter to me to grow up and then moments later complain that I am too old and just not with it.

I guess all there is to do, is to help and guide them through their ever changing hormones, hoping my hormones are adult enough to sort themselves out.

I have just spent the morning reading up on the latest news article concerning single mums. I don’t know why I put myself through the agony as it always leaves me fuming.

I also guess that the articles are written in such a way that they are intending to wind the readers up as it gets response and comments on their articles. But the problem it is creating is if all they can write about is how bad single mums are and how all they do is scrounge off the government by not working and receiving benefits, it just continues to paint all single mums with the same brush. We are not all the same.

So for the record and any one searching for info about single mums to add to their articles about how awful single mums are…..

We don’t all wear designer jogging bottoms, hair extensions and false nails – though we may be known for doing the school run in pyjama bottoms but this purely down to time or rather a lack of it.

We don’t all think we are better off not working and better off raking in the benefits – yes there is a benefits system, yes a lot of us will claim these benefits but it’s not thousands as reported all the time. Majority of us work just like anyone else. There also many 2.4 families with both parents working that are also entitled to some benefits, it’s not just single mums who claim benefits.

Some single mums have lost their partners/husbands through tragic circumstances or through no fault of their own.

We are not just single mums. We are many other things too.