Hello again. It has been 6 months since I have written a blog post on being a Successful Single Parent. During this time divorced moms and dads have asked me what I have been doing, what caused me to stop writing and sharing, just where in the heck I have been. At first I must admit, I was flattered by the fact that so many cared what I was up to and why I stopped writing. Many still listened to me and Colleen on our radio show as we shared a “She Said He Said” perspective on being a Single Parent; however, they noticed the lack of blog postings. I guess I could make up a lot of stuff as to why I haven’t been updating my blog, but the truth is I was lost in making a very important decision in my life.

About 3 months ago it finally it dawned on me that I had failed to define a Successful Single Dad, and by failing to do so, I had lost my focus as to what I was teaching and sharing. It was all about making me a successful entrepreneur, and less about making y’all a successful single parent. Once I figured this out, I still had to take care of myself, as I had let my body shape change shapes. When one’s stomach (don’t even try to pull the I wear a 34 because your pants are down around your housing group) measured belly button to belly button is bigger than your chest measured around your man boobs, my friend that just aint right. I was at a cross roads in my life as a Single Dad. I had to either Advance or Die. Harsh reality, but nonetheless the road I was traveling. What are the key things that above all else define a Successful Single Dad? That was my quest as I changed my diet and workout an hour + a day. What were the things I did right which made the biggest differences in my Kid’s lives? What were the 4 or 5 messages I could share that are guaranteed to make you a Successful Single Dad..for that matter a Successful Dad?

A Successful Single Dad is a man who loves his children more than he hates his Ex, who knows the life lessons he teaches his children will affect not only his kids but his grandkids, who makes his children the focus of his life (yes this means going to practice and games, Teacher Conferences, school functions, car washes/fund raisers, etc), but most importantly who teaches his children to be healthy and active through his diet and exercise.

In other words: Stop bitching about your Ex. Start loving her for being the Mother of your Children. Use her given name; don’t call her the Ex or the former Mrs _____. You don’t have to like her or the situation y’all are in. BUT you do have to raise your children as Co-Parents. Do you really want to teach your Kids that you can easily fall out of love with someone because they piss you off? Imagine what goes through their minds when you get upset and punish them. “Does Daddy talk bad about me to his friends like he does about Mommy?” “Does my daddy hate me like he hates my Mommy?”

Your Children will learn their best life lessons imitating your behavior. Make a big deal about having to call your Parents..guess who isn’t going to get a call when his Kids grow up. Always drink a beer or two when y’all go out or you and the Kids are at a party…guess whose Kids are going to think it is OK to drive after drinking when they are teenagers. Ignore your neighbors..guess whose Kids are going to grow up and always have issues in their neighborhoods. Smoke or do Drugs..guess whose Kids are going to be first in line to be cool like their Dad.
Quick look at the appointments you have scheduled between now and the end of the year. How many are work and your fun things vs your Kid’s activities? Do you know when your Child’s teacher conference is? Do you even know their teacher’s names? When was the last practice you sat through? When was the last game you went to even though it wasn’t your night to have the Children? When was the last time you called in sick to work because it was Columbus Day and school was out?

As for health and diet: You need to get up off your fat lazy ass and take your Kids outside and run their little rears into the ground. Challenge them to a game of horse, and love the night you finally lose. Put lights up outside and win World Series and Super Bowls and World Cup games with your kids. Teach them to chip and hack up the lawn. Race walk them around the block. Ride bikes, pull them in a wagon, and have them haul your old man body around in a wheel barrow. Fix healthy meals, plan healthy meals and shop together for the stuff that goes into those healthy meals.

You see my friends your choice is very simple. You can either Advance as a Successful Dad or you can Die at it. Throw some dirt over being a real Dad, and just do it your way. Blame the divorce and become a part time Dad. Lose the most important part of you to your own selfish wimpy whiny ways. I hope you decide to join me for an amazing journey of being a Successful Single Dad. Your Children deserve the best you have to offer. Don’t cheat them out of having the Best Dad in the World.

Now go do what you need to do to…

Make it a super day,
Kevin

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2 Responses to “Successful Single Dad Defined”

Moving from one side of the US to the other side was an awesome adventure/road trip. Although I did not experience too many Clark Griswold moments, it wasn’t for a lack of trying on my part. This is a big ole Country and when you start off your trip West by going South and East, one is bound to run into their fair share of situations. However, with the help of my trusty GPS and an ice chest full of Coke Zero, I survived and somehow made it to Boise, Idaho. Just in time for more rain than they have ever had in the month of May. So I got that going for me.

Now, I find myself moving into my apartment. Do not ever fool yourself into believing that downsizing is an easy thing to do. Going from 3000 square feet to 1000 aint easy, mostly due to the lack of space to “put/hide” stuff until you get around to doing what ever it was you planned on doing with it. Too bad my complex does not have a real garage where I can stash all the extra boxes of stuff. Looks like I will be renting some storage after all.

There has been one awesome highlight of unpacking, and thanks to this highlight the process is taking 3 or 4 times as long as it should. I am talking about the pictures and photo albums I brought with me. I have been enjoying 23 years of memories. The best part is the pictures are in no particular order. I will open a box and carefully wrapped will be Ziplocs of pictures from the late 90’s, another will have baby pictures, goofy pictures, teenage pictures, every year (up until 3 years ago when I switched from film to digital) of my kid’s lives are right there in front of me. I am re-living the “good” parts of our lives, after all most of us don’t pull the camera out to capture sad we use it to capture good.

I know somehow someway I will figure out how to preserve these memories for myself and my kids. Those simple pictures have given me the greatest joy. My decision to be a Dad first has been validated. I would not trade a moment captured in the pictures for any amount of money or job title. The laughter and tears I have enjoyed the past couple of days are truly priceless.

I encourage all of you Parents reading my blog to take some time this weekend and capture your joy of being a Parent. Nothing in this world is more important than the relationship between a Child and Parent. Do yourself a huge favor and create your memories of these awesome times. Now go do what you have to do to…

Make it a Super Day,
Kevin

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One Response to “Successful Single Dad Tips…They Really are Priceless”

One of the smartest things I did after my divorce was to start to listen and observe the interactions between children and their parents. Did not matter if I was in the store, Church, Library, Restaurant, Ball Fields, on a walk, the Golf Course, anywhere, I was always watching and learning what works and what didn’t work. At first I concentrated on “actions” and kept a notebook full of observations. As time went on I added sound and surrounding to the mix. Over the years, I have become pretty good at my stealth fact finding, although every now and then one of my kids will tell me to stop staring and acting like a creeper!

I’m telling ya Dad’s, you can learn a lot watching others. One of the big things I have noticed is the different ways people react to the same situation. We are all hard wired to behave in certain ways. All of life to this point has made you who you are. Because of this you react certain ways, however, at any time of our lives we can change the wiring and start to react differently. I’m sure if you spend some time thinking about this you will understand what I am saying. Think about the evolution of your ability to drive a car. When faced with an emergency you react based upon what you have learned (driving in rain or snow or ice). For example, people who grew up driving in real snow are clueless how to drive in Southern snow (ice).

Along with observing I started to ask parents why they reacted the way they did. Their reasons almost always go back to “That’s how I was raised”. I believe I can best explain this if we use a restaurant as an example. Picture separate tables at your favorite “family’ friendly restaurant, and think back to the kid’s actions. One table the parent is constantly ‘shushing” and giving directions to their kid’s to sit straight, be quiet, don’t put 10 sugar packets into the glass with 5 lemons and water, stop talking loud, stop hitting your sibling, be patient the food will be here soon, etc. Another has no kids sitting at it because they are up and playing video games or hanging out in the front of the restaurant. A third has a group discussion going on about school or sports or the other families at the restaurant. Finally the fourth has a calm and relaxed parent sitting at a table of kids who are clam and relaxed just being kids (sitting quietly, getting up, going to the bathroom, coloring, reading, texting, talking, laughing, walking around, spilling stuff, eating all the crackers out of the basket, etc).

So how can you have 4 families at the same restaurant in the same environment acting in 4 completely different ways? I will bet you it has everything to do with how the adult was raised and nothing to do with the atmosphere at the restaurant. Which way is the best? That depends on your definition of “best”. Table 4 might be best for the adult, table 2 might be best for the kids, table 3 might be best for family and table 1 might be best for making you laugh at the poor adult’s efforts to raise perfect(?) children. There are no right and wrong ways. There are only ways that work best for you. If you see a family having a meal together and you like the interaction and parenting style, go ask the parent to share with you how they were able to make it happen. You might be surprised at just how easy it is.

Now y’all don’t have to limit your observations to a restaurant. Everywhere you go you have an opportunity to see new and exciting ways to parent. Do not feel embarrassed to ask “How do you do that?” people love to share stories about their kids. And we all love to share stories about how we did it right. Watch, talk, listen and learn. That is what being a Parent is all about. Now go do what you have to do to…

Make it a super day,
Kevin

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One Response to “Successful Single Dad Tips…Reacting to Kids”

As y’all know I recently sold the house I raised my children in after making the decision to move away from the Buffalo area. The process of going through 23 years of memories and accumulated stuff was at times a tremendous relief and at other times pert near the hardest thing I have done as an adult..be it married, divorced or single parent..As I was going through the process I was forced to make some decisions on possessions. Do I keep and move with me, give to a friend, put into storage, throw away, or donate to a local charity. I don’t know how well I did in this decision making, but will definitely have a better idea once my stuff arrives.

Now my kids need not worry, Dad did not get rid of all your things. Heck there stuff was the hardest to go through. No matter how many of my friends I asked, it seems none of them had a need for plaster casts of y’alls hands, so I still have those. Most of my tears of joy at remembering were your things. I’m pretty sure I remember all the clothes y’all wore while being clueless as to why I had 3 leather jackets of different shades of brown. Plus why did I have all those 40 and 42 inch waist jeans and shorts?

However, when all was said and done, I still had clothes, furniture, books and stuff which I wanted to donate. So I started the process of finding good homes for my old things. My first chin scratcher had to do with men’s clothing. For some reason Church clothing pantries aren’t hurting for men’s clothes. They all wanted kid clothes and any winter coats, but pants and too small for me golf shirts just weren’t big ticket items. My books were not “hip” enough for the new age book stores and too explicit for Church Libraries. Finally, I realized that there really isn’t a place to give away all those late night infomercial purchases. You are going to have to do some homework in order to donate your stuff.

In the end I had great success with AMVETS and Goodwill. They not only were an outlet for much of my things, but they thanked me for donating. Kid’s clothes went to local Churches. Infomercial stuff went to an odds and ends store way out in the country. My only complaint involved some furniture I tried to donate to Salvation Army. I did not know that they only take furniture they can resell in one of their stores, and a tear on the lining of my couch disqualified it from being donated (find out the rules before you have them show up to remove your things). However, the men loading the truck did haul the couch to the curb and an add on craig’s list “free couch/bed, first come first serve” had that thing gone in no time.

As I write this blog post, the things I did ship from Buffalo will be arriving in less than 24 hours. That will pretty much occupy me for the next few days wondering why I brought this and not that. So y’all know what I will be up to. Now go do what you have to do to…

Make it a super Day,
Kevin

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One Response to “Successful Single Dad Tips…Donating Time, Money, and Stuff”

HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY

I thought that in light of today being Mother’s Day, I would let one of my “go-to” single Mom friends share some incredible advice. I have told y’all many times that I do not have all (many times my kids would argue any) the answers. Therefore, I am constantly asking Moms, Dads, Single Parents, Grandparents, Teachers, Coaches, etc for advice on best practices for raising kids. My friend Annamarie is one of those “go-to” friends. Here is some sage advice she shared with me.

“..this may not apply to all single parents but one of the BEST pieces of advice i got when i was going thru my divorce was from my sister’s friend dodi (who’d been there, done that…) who told me you don’t have to bad mouth your children’s father, nor do you need to tell them the (whole) truth if he’s not a role model father/husband/man, etc… your kids are intelligent and some day, they will grow up and come to their own conclusions about the man they call dad…it’s not about shielding them from the truth, it’s more about taking the higher road, not ‘gossiping’, not focusing on someone else’s shortfalls. Kids turn into adults and someday…man it seems forever sometimes when you’re biting your tongue…someday, down the road, your kid will look you in the eye and say something that makes you realize they know…they accept and they understand, and they figured it out themselves! It doesn’t really change anything for them – they still love this man for who he is to THEM…but hopefully they gain an understanding for the other parent’s decision”.

Did y’all notice that you have no clue what if anything her husband did to her way. We don’t know what was involved in breaking them up. We don’t know what her kids came to realize and share with their Mom. All we know is that while her kids were growing up, my friend was able to bite her tongue and not be mean towards her kid’s Dad.  What an incredible gift of advice for those of us strong enough to accept it, Thank you Annamarie. Now go do what you have to do to….

Make it a super day,
Kevin

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