Single Parenting & Other S***

Sitting at the breakfast table my son and I were talking over something (the topic is lost in the horror to come momentarily) and it was not the outcome he wanted and he said, “Shit.”

This is one of the problems of single parenting. I don’t have another parent to blame this on.

Well, to be perfectly honest, his Dad doesn’t use these words that often so even if we were still together, I’d have to own this one.

So we talked about potty words and how we’d both get in trouble at school if we used that word. We agreed to work on it.

And to be really perfectly honest he said it once before, but it came out as “shat” which I thought was funny and didn’t say anything.

Yikes.

The other challenge I find with single parenting is I don’t have someone in close proximity who I can easily brag how amazing and adorable my son is. With other moms, it is bad form to assert your child is extraordinary.

And other people just think “All moms think that.”

Which is true for other moms, but in Little Sir’s case, his amazing and adorability is a matter of fact. I just have to be humble about it.

His Dad is the only other person this would be appropriate with and since we’re divorcing, it’s not anymore. It’s one of the weird changes in life that comes with divorce.  I sense this awkwardness from his Dad too. We still occasionally send a text or photo because sometimes our son’s amazingness trumps the complicated politics of divorce.

Wouldn’t it be great if that could happen in real politics? Common sense and truth trump party politics?

I have done more single parenting than I have double(?) parenting, so while I am sad to find myself here, it is not unfamiliar. With my daughter, I was determined that she would not grow up and ever use the phrase “Well, my mother was a single mom, so…” in some sort of victim or “less than” way. Yes, her parents weren’t together but she had home cooked meals and church and love and story time and Disneyland and new clothes and a bike for her birthday. I didn’t want her parents failure at marriage to impact her life experience beyond what is obvious (divorced parents).

I feel that about Little Sir too. I don’t want his life experience to be noticeably less than what he would have if his parents had managed to stay together. It is different certainly, but I don’t think it has to be less.

But right now I’m just worried he won’t grow up and say, “My mom taught me to say ‘shit’.”