Archive for the ‘Parenting Tips’ Category
The word “busy” seems to be one of the most used up words in recent history. When I ask someone how they are, the first word out of their mouth seems to be “busy”. Busy doesn’t seem adequate enough to describe the life of a single parent. Whether the busyness comes from poor time management or over committing yourself to others, the days seem to slip away with hardly anything to show for it.
As real as that passage of time seems, the reality is that everyone has 24 hours each and every day and most of those hours are not used effectively or efficiently. The excuse of “I don’t have enough time” is a lie. It’s a made up story that allows people to stay stuck where they are. How do I know?
Look at the facts:
If you are getting 8 hours of sleep each night, you still have 16 hours left over each day to do the things you need to do. That equals 112 hours a week of awake time that you can account for. Now, let’s remove, for example, 3 of those hours a day for things like cooking, eating, bathing and going to the bathroom/reading the paper. That still gives you 13 hours each day, or 91 hours per week.
Now, let’s take away 45 hours a week for work and commuting. You still have 46 hours left over. Remove another 7 hours (an hour each day) and set it aside for “Stuff” things like buying food, paying bills, walking the dog, and cleaning the house. You still have 39 unaccounted for hours each week. That is nearly 40 hours each and every week that you can’t account for.
If you still don’t believe you have that many unaccounted for hours each week, then go ahead and reduce that number by half (20 hours/7= pert near 3 hours a day to watch TV and surf the Internet). That is still nearly 20 unaccounted hours each week. Even if your “Internet” activity accounts for another 10 hours a week, you still have 10 hours each week that you can’t logically account for. Ten hours that you have no idea how you spend. Ten hours every week, in a year’s time, that is 520 hours, or 32.5 days that are unaccounted for.
How are you spending those 10 hours? Watching TV, playing games, surfing the net, feeling sorry for yourself? Carve out 30 minutes a day, give those minutes to your kids, and see how your relationship with them can change. I was telling my friend Lynette Patterson, who helped me put into words this concept, that I used my “found” hours to be a volunteer Coach for my kids. How will you use your hours?
Now go do what you have to do to…
Make it a super day,
Kevin
The Birthday Bagel
I must admit. When I first became a Single Dad, I was still honing my culinary skills. I had become somewhat proficient at grilling steak and hot dogs, could zap a baked potato, and mastered adding butter, salt, pepper to frozen veggies, BUT baking a cake or cupcakes..well that was beyond my ability to concentrate. With my youngest’s birthday approaching I needed to figure something out like yesterday.
While wandering the isles of the grocery store trying to figure out if I added fudge brownies to yellow cake and chocolate cake would that make it a 3 layer cake, I happened to see the most beautiful culinary site ever. Yes an almost perfectly round Bagel. This thing was awesome about 5 inches across, with a squished together center, and about an inch high. I knew immediately that if I added a singing candle my cake worries were over. Thus began the Birthday Bagel tradition. I must admit we have substituted English Muffins, Croissants, 6 or 7 pieces of bread pressed together with crusts cut off, and even jelly filled donut when Dad forgot the bagel. However, the tradition became one we shared over and over. On one’s birthday morning, they come down the stairs at Dad’s house to find their card, present and birthday bagel.
I encourage each of you to establish your own Single Dad traditions. They don’t have to be elaborate or super expensive. They just have to be y’alls tradition. Now go do what you have to do to…
Make it a super day,
Kevin
I can’t help it. Every Friday around 3:30pm I start to get nervous. I go into overload at work completing everything I can or putting it into a folder I can pull out on Monday morning. I start checking the weather for the upcoming weekend. Check driving conditions. Making sure when the whistle blows at 5pm I am ready to head home and start “My Weekend” with my kids. After all, for the past 15 years my every other “Weekend” started on Friday. It was Daddy Time and I was thrilled.
I wish I could say that every weekend was perfect. Well..I guess I could because this is a blog and I can say pretty much what I want, but that would not be honest. I have promised y’all from the beginning that I would always tell the truth even when it didn’t always make me look the best. I believe that if your goal is to be a Successful Dad, there will be mistakes made along the way, and it is up to you to learn from those mistakes, make the correction and do better the next time.
My biggest mistake occurred early on in my new life as a Single Dad. I failed to properly plan for the weekend. Failure to plan my friends can be a nightmare.
Here is my beginners list:
• Proper clean clothes
• “ALL” homework
• Food in the house
• Toiletries stocked (shampoo, TP, female product, conditioner, nail polish remover, band aids, brushes, hair ties, hair glop to make it curly or straight, etc)
• Milk
• OJ with and without pulp
• Uniforms
• Contact info for sleep-overs
• Church clothes
• Shoes of all types
• Times for weekend appointments
• Contact info for Mom
• Knowledge of who is and who isn’t in trouble and what that means at Dad’s house
• Activities planned (shoveling snow and mowing the grass are fantasies..LOL)
• Coats, boots, flip flops, shorts, swim suit, gloves, hats, sunglasses
• Menu planned
• House “clean” to start the weekend
Just a few things to keep you going and keep “Your Weekend” the best it can be. Now go do what you have to do to…
Make it a super Weekend,
Kevin
Many Schools in the Northeast have decided that given kids 2 weeks off the week before and the week after Easter is too disruptive for the second semester of the academic year. There solution is to have a week off in February and a week off in March or April depending on when Easter is. As a Single Parent you need to know as soon as possible when these weeks occur, or you could find yourself waking up one morning wondering why the kids are sound asleep on a school day.
Yes this happened 10 years ago, I frantically woke my oldest up saying “Let’s go time to get ready for school”, her reply “Dad we don’t go to school until next Monday” floored me. How did I miss this? More importantly, how did I agree to my Ex going out of town the entire week? Did ya ever stop and think your life needed a rewind button?
I keep telling y’all that I learned to be a Single Dad through trial and error. Mark checking school calendars down as learning by error method. Please Dad’s what ever you do, get a copy of the remainder of the school year’s calendar and update your own calendar. Most school districts now have internet access (yes, you will have to ask your kid or your Ex for the Family user name and password), and find out what is going on. Pay particular attention to any updates on how your school district is handling excess snow days, just in case your kids have exceeded the number of snow days built into the schedule. Better to be forewarned than finding out at the last minute.
I scrambled 10 years ago to make sure my kids had adult supervision all week long. Took a couple of unplanned vacation days, had a terrible case of morning flu one day, and volunteered to watch neighborhood kids on my vacation day in exchange for the days I had to work. You don’t need to scramble if you have all year or even a couple of months to plan things out. However, should you decide to learn days off as soon as they are posted, you and your kids can plan some awesome activities.
One of the best is a kid friendly All-Inclusive vacation. This is something I did not know existed for Families. I knew there were plenty of adult only All-Inclusive vacations, heck I even did a few Internet searches for a place to get away to. But taking my kids, that wasn’t something I thought about doing. I wish I had though. What an awesome experience to bond as a Family. Laying around on the Beach, swimming, snorkeling, boogie boards, ping pong matches, braided hair with beads, smelling like sunscreen all week long, walks on the beach, and sunrises and sunsets. I guarantee you will create memories which will last a lifetime.
Make the most of your time with your kids. Embrace the vacation weeks and spend time as a Family bonding. What a unique opportunity you have. Use it to the fullest. Use garage sales to help fund the vacation. Create your memories in the manner you desire. Make your kid’s day a super one. I know you will enjoy every minute of every smile on their faces.
Now go do what you have to do to…
Make it a super day,
Kevin
Watching the Opening Day Ceremony last night got me to thinking about how proud the Olympian Parents must be. All the time and sacrifice to insure their child had the opportunity to live their dream. As the USA came into the arena, one of the people I was watching the ceremony with said, “That’s it, time for me to go home”. Of course we were curious why he had to leave so early. In typical mid winter fashion the culprit is a hockey tournament and he has driving duties. His morning would consist of 100+ miles across an International Boarder, leaving at 4am, with an SUV full of 9 year olds.
I realized that it is not only Olympian Parents who give up time and sacrifices to insure their child has an opportunity to live their dream. Every day Parents do this on a routine basis. Does not matter if it is a hockey tournament, a golf match, equestrian competition, softball/baseball game, basketball, football, soccer, piano recital, dance recital, the list is endless. Now multiply the “competitions” by a factor of 4.5 and you have the added number of practices. A staggering number of pick ups and drop offs.
As a Single Parent of young ones this task can be overwhelming. Each child has their own practice and game schedule, and tournaments run all day long Saturday and until you lose on Sunday. Now you get to multiply the number of pick ups by the number of kids you have. If your littlest ones are not old enough to play on a Team, you still get to haul them along. Imagine how boring it is for the little ones the next time you catch yourself wondering “can’t they just make an out, score a goal, complete a song”.
This brings me to the point of this blog. For the next couple of weeks you will hear a lot of chanting for the good ole USA. We will discover the Winter Olympics next superstar. There will be stories of how an Olympian’s Parent drove them to 4 am practices, or moved the family to be closer to expert training. You’ll find yourself glancing at medal totals and cheering for your Country’s count. The world will embrace the athleticism that is the Olympics. Enjoy, celebrate, and let yourself get into the moment of the excitement of the Olympics. But do me a favor.
Every time you see a Parent with young kids, every time you go by an arena or dance hall full of kids participating, every time you pass a vehicle full of rowdy kids, can you please take the time to acknowledge the Parent carting the kids around so the can have an opportunity to live their dram? Let’s go out of our way to say “Thanks, Way to Go, Good Luck, give a thumbs up gesture, to those deserving Parents. Who knows you might be giving the encouragement needed to keep an Olympic Gold Medal dream alive.
Now go do what you need to do to…
Make it ma super day,
Kevin
