Parenting in itself is difficult. Now, raising a child without a father figure is a tough job at a whole different level, especially when it’s a son. But there’s always light at the end of the tunnel. With all the love, care, and affection, a single mom can find many ways to raise her boy without his father brilliantly.
Having to raise a son without a dad is not a disadvantage but is challenging. If not done properly the boy can fall under the traps of being a drug addict, alcoholic, and many other horrors.
However, if we can overcome a little difficulty, we can raise a perfect young man. Being single moms, we need to consider a few things while nurturing a child.
A single mother can ideally raise a child. There is no doubt about that. To do that, we need to take some steps to overcome the challenges we have to face. While being a mom, we also have to fulfill the responsibilities of a father. It becomes stressful and overwhelming at times. We need to take some guidance to make things a little simpler.
Roles of a single mother
As a single mother, the parenting roles aren’t divided, and hence we need to take all the responsibilities. From being a chef to a counselor to our child, we need to handle it all. But, unfortunately, it is a bit strenuous to handle it all.
We cannot always perform all of it perfectly, and sometimes that makes us feel like we’re not good enough as a parent. It might sometimes make us feel lonely, but we never should make ourselves feel any less. Single moms can rock parenting a boy child as well.
What works best while raising a boy?
It is not much of a crazy task to raise a son by ourselves. We need to consider what works best for our children. Building a close relationship with our sons is very crucial. To do that, we need to understand them well.
Becoming a strong, independent woman will make you their role model. But, first, we need to connect with them. Then, with some guidance, we can ace single parenting of a boy without a father.
Some tips about raising a boy without a father.
1. Open up about their father.
Children tend to ask about their father when they’ve reached preschool. The curiosity starts then. We should not altogether avoid them but respond to them according to their age and level of understanding.
We could answer them and change the topic rather than ignoring them. Ignoring our kids makes them hold on to it and get distracted as well. Slowly when the child starts to understand, we need to start talking about their fathers ourselves.
Disregarding their questions about their father might be creating an emotional burden and complexity for children. Always answer their queries by telling the truth. It’s our responsibility to make them feel open to talk about anything and everything with us.
2. Don’t make them feel like he’s the “man of the house.”
We might feel like our son will be the one filling the void of the absence of our husband or lover. We might want him to be responsible as the “man of the house.” However, we often tend to ignore the fact that he’s just a child. Apart from his chores and development activities, no other burden should hinder his growth.
Inculcating the idea of how a man should be and responsible for his whole family is never good. We need to unlearn the idea of toxic masculinity and let our son grow into his unique self.
Teaching him how to be independent is important. But, on the other hand, filling his head with all the emotional burden of taking care of the family just because the father figure’s absence would make him feel his mother isn’t enough. That’s something we don’t want our children to think about women.
3. Indulging him in activities
We need to make him participate in different activities for his physical, social, and emotional growth. It could be anything related to different fields of his interests. Helping him socialize is very important.
We need to guide him but let him free doing what he wants to get involved in. We need to be there as a guardian telling about what’s right and wrong but we shouldn’t stop him from proceeding towards his interest.
Instead, we should let them decide what they want to do and then tell them the benefits and drawbacks. We should help them explore different fields such as music, writing, coding, robotics, sports, and many more.
We shouldn’t stereotype their interest according to our belief or because it’s in our interest. For eg: we shouldn’t involve them in sports because “that’s something boys should be interested in” but because they like doing it. It should be something they like doing and learning. They need a supportive parent rather than a suffocative one.
4. Don’t be overprotective.
One of the essential parenting advice is we should not be an overprotective parent, whether it’s a little girl or a boy. It’s seen more in single parents. As we feel like we’re the only ones and we need to protect them from dangers in their life, we tend to bind them into a bubble.
It’s good to look after your kids but bad to be suffocating them inside a cocoon. We need to make them independent. It is necessary to teach them how to take responsibility for their actions. They need to do their chores.
We need to make them learn how to respect others and instill values and morals in our children. We should teach them how taking risks in life leads to success and how failure leads to another stepping stone.
It is crucial to be careful that we don’t make them afraid of facing life independently in giving all the love and care to our children. Instead, we need to explore their life themselves while us being by their side guiding them.
5. Set an example of being a strong person
It is imperative to show our child that it is perfectly okay to be a single parent. We should make our children not feel that women are weak in the absence of a man. It is great to have a balanced life with a partner, but that doesn’t mean we can’t live independently.
It is hard sometimes, and it’s okay to vent but with ourselves. We need to makes the child feel strong and independent as he looks at us as their role models. Children learn from what they see and experience. Knowing the struggles of being a single parent and seeing us handle them properly will induce respect in his heart.
As we teach this to our sons from childhood, they won’t disrespect anyone regardless of their gender and value everyone’s effort. Also, they’ll have the determination and confidence to achieve everything by themselves and not depend on anyone else.
6. Schedule a family time
As single parents, it’s evident that we spend a lot of time with our kids. But is it quality time? We need to start thinking about it.
We’re hovering around our children all the time to make sure they eat properly, dress correctly, are good in their studies, and many more. We do all these to guide and protect our children.
A separated family time includes not the responsibilities but the activities. We need to spend time with our children doing something that’s in their interest and captivates them. Our time and value for them are significant for the social and emotional development of the child.
All our children need their parents to listen to them and value them. But, unfortunately, in the chaos of responsibilities and making everything suitable, we sometimes miss out on this. Hence, a proper amount of quality time with the kids is crucial. Schedule time to play and spend time with your kids.
7. It’s okay to let someone get involved.
Being a single mother can be a choice, but mostly it is because of a traumatic experience. It can be because the biological father didn’t want to get involved. There can be many reasons. But the residue that remains is the fear of letting anyone else inside your territory anymore.
We don’t feel like committing with anyone else because of one bad experience. We shut ourselves down and are overprotective with our children because we don’t want anyone else to abandon them. Sometimes these emotions flush out the right people from our life as well.
It’s okay to let the right people in our lives, share the responsibility and not be too hard on ourselves. It’s perfectly fine to give more chances to live and to love. But, we should never forget ourselves and who we are in this process of being a single mother raising a boy.
Conclusion
Being a single mom is overwhelming at times. Some days are great, and some days feel like an eternity. There are a lot of difficulties. We may feel like giving up. But, we need to hold on and not hesitate to ask for help anytime we need it.
Hope these above points have enlightened you with some ways to raise your boy without a father.
It is a handful of tasks to accomplish and needs a powerful woman to do it, and I know you are one of them. This is life. It isn’t easy. But one thing is that this will pass, the bad days and the great days. The important thing is to be with our child and grow up with him and enjoy the time we have them.
All these responsibilities shouldn’t shut our own life down. Instead, we need to take care of ourselves the same way. We need to understand what we want and need in our lives and let the right ones in.
Lastly, we need to stop worrying about being a perfect mom. One day when we’ll see a handsome, young, and independent gentleman with all the humbleness, values, and success in life standing in front of us, we’ll pat ourselves on the back with a smile on our face, whispering to ourselves saying “Well done, mom!”.
