Solo Parent Society

If you struggle with situations in parenting that are beyond your control, this is for you. As single parents we often have zero control over how our kids are being raised while they are with the other parent. We may feel powerless over the other parent’s values or principles that are counter to our own. Other times the struggle of parenting feels out of control because our exes don’t show up in our kids’ lives or participate as much as we would like them to. This can be so hurtful to our kids and we can’t do anything about that. Further issues can develop as our kids get older and start making choices of their own with friends or outside influences. Each of these challenges represent parenting when things are beyond out control. So, how do we help our kids, and how do we parent, when things like this are out of our control?Single mom, Elizabeth, shares her struggle with splitting custody 50/50 with her son’s dad who has different values, different beliefs in God, and a different parenting style. “It really

Being a single parent is complicated enough much less when we discover that our kids are the “problem”. Founder of Solo Parent Society, Robert Beeson, shares that one of the hardest parts of his parenting journey was finding out times that his kids weren’t making the wisest decisions. But that’s just part of life. Kids are kids. They are learning, they are growing, and they will make mistakes. But no parent wants to get the phone call that lets them know their kid hasn’t made the best choices. Parenting can be overwhelming, and as single parents, we see our kids struggling to overcome the pain and hurts of life. Sometimes this pain comes out as bullying, depression, or acting out. How do we look at these struggles from the perspective of love-based parenting? Crystal Paine hosts her own show “The Crystal Paine Show”, she’s the best-selling author of “Say Goodbye to Survival Mode” and “Money Making Mom”, and she’s the founder of www.moneysavingmom.com. Crystal is releasing a brand-new book called “Love Center

Life as a single parent can often feel like we are just maintaining safety and stability with little intentional vision or direction for our family. In the solo parent season, we can feel like we are just barely hanging on. Being intentional can seem like a lofty goal when you’re holding on by a thread, just praying and asking God for His grace to get us through as we raise these tiny humans.Directing the course of our family as a single parent can feel daunting. We end up paying attention and reacting to the urgent things that come up while neglecting what’s important – creating stability and direction for our family in the new normal. Sometimes all we can do is hold on but, as we journey down the solo parent path, it’s important to be deliberate in our steps. To start effective parenting, we need a road map, a vision, or a mission statement to keep us focused on what is important to our family.How do you measure success?George Barna, leading researcher, and author, asked Robert, “How do you measure success?

Let’s Talk About Sex Talking about sex can be uncomfortable but it’s necessary. The world around us, through TV, movies, and social media, inundates us and our kids with images, ideas, and perspectives on sex. We almost can’t get away from it. That’s why it’s so important we talk about sex from a godly perspective so we can examine, filter, and correct the viewpoints we are surrounded by. God created sex as a gift. If we don’t talk about His plan and intention for sex, the only voices out there will be worldly ones that do not reflect God’s plan or design.So, how do we navigate dating and sex with a healthy, faith-based approach especially in a world that has changed so much? This can be especially challenging as we go from having active sex lives, while married or in relationship, to being single and finding our way through what seem to be changing values and expectations. Robert, Kimberley, Marissa, and Elizabeth gathered to discuss this, sometimes awkward topic, candidly and authentically about the followi

What is love and how do we teach it to our kids?We don't all start with a healthy concept of love. We often enter relationships with strong feelings and confidence, but we may not truly understand what love looks like and requires. Even when we have excellent examples of love from our parents, from God, and our childhood experiences, we still may not transfer that awareness into marriage or significant relationships. Robert and Kimberley both share that despite opportunities to know what love looked like growing up, they still entered marriage with few actual skills to develop, maintain, and grow in healthy love with their spouses. Robert said he only started to understand what genuine love was about when the "bottom dropped out" for him and his marriage fell apart. Kimberley questions if she had a genuine grasp on God's deep love for her or how that could translate to loving anyone else. Sometimes it takes a crossroads or significant event to wake us up and help us realize that we really don't know how to lo

Many of us were raised to serve and give to others, and this is biblical, but this can become unhealthy when we give so much to others, we lose ourselves in the process. This tendency to give too much, to take on too much responsibility, to own more than we should in relationships, often comes from insecurities rooted in our upbringing and hurts we’ve suffered in the past. Perhaps our experiences taught us that others would reject us or get angry if we said no so we learned to pacify or overcompensate by being too accommodating. After doing this for long enough, we can fail to recognize we are caught in a destructive cycle. Unless we put up guardrails or boundaries, we are sure to implode emotionally, bringing our well-being and our relationships down with us. Robert and Kimberley talked with single mom, Elizabeth, about how loving well includes boundaries. Sometimes we spend too much time worrying about other people’s feelings and saying yes to too many things because we’re afraid to disappoint them or have

https://soloparentsociety.com/blog/2021/02/01/love-in-a-culture-of-hate

Rebekah Lyons, author, wife, and mother shares her strategies for balancing work, which for her includes writing, speaking, and traveling, with the needs of her busy family. Rebekah manages the load she carries by coordinating her work times while her kids are in school and her rest time while they are on breaks. She also pays attention to finding rest and rhythms of renewal each day, each week, as well as in each season. Rebekah grew up with two working parents, both schoolteachers who pursued further degrees during her childhood. She saw their work ethic but also how they balanced the time they were able to spend at home with their family because they taught school and had the same breaks and time off as their kids. This showed her the importance of prioritizing time with family. Now, she does the same with her kids as much as possible. Before learning to build rest into her life, Rebekah says, “I never knew what I wanted, where I was going, or why I felt the way I felt. There was no time for reflection in

Our homes have become more than just a traditional home for us during the pandemic. It’s now our workplace and our kids school too. That’s why the topic of balance at home is so important. Our lives look so different than they did a year. Even without the challenges of COVID-19, a single parent home can be chaotic. We are juggling all kinds of things. So, how do we create a stable, balanced home life for our kids? Here are 5 suggestions:Develop a support network. Raising kids is difficult even with two parents. Without a network, we can easily become overwhelmed. Having a support system strengthens, reinforces, and encourages us as parents bearing the weight alone. Having people in our lives who fill us up is crucial so we can create a balanced home life for our kids to launch from. Create a routine. This can be a game changer as a single parent! When we build a framework for our schedule and daily needs, we add consistency that can help us move forward with less chaos. Set a specific bedtime, get your kids

Single parents, we know you have so many balls in the air. In the chaos, your minds are often filled with jumbled thoughts too. Each of us has limited ability and time to meet the expectations placed on us. Living deliberately can elude us. Often our focus is on simply keeping our kids healthy and fed as our thoughts swirl with work issues, financial strain, and questions on just how we are going to get it all done. This week we are talking about balanced thinking. We know how important our minds are in shaping how we feel, how we choose to live our lives, and how we parent. If we can be more balanced in our thinking, we can be better parents for our kids.Three strategies to renew our minds and have more balanced thinking are:Choose your battles. Let go of consuming thoughts. Give yourself permission to let some things go. You cannot give equal time to everything. Right size your expectations. Remember, you are not two parents. You are only one. You are capable of only so much. Take the pressure off yourself!

Balance: How to Find Daily Spiritual Balance“Any theology or any way of living that doesn’t lead back to loving God and loving others with all of my heart, mind, soul, and strength is actually bad theology.” – Jake Smith, founder of Plumline www.shamahway.com www.jakesmithjr.comWe want to be deliberate about finding balance in 2021 and that starts with our spiritual lives. And that’s what we talk about this week on our podcast - how to find daily spiritual balance.Finding balance is difficult for all of us but single parents find it particularly challenging. Many of us don’t experience consistent balance. Rather, we tend to live going between highs and lows as we try to juggle everything on our plates while being a solo parent.Our guest this week is Jake Smith, a former pastor who created a non-profit called Plumline which is centered on personal development and spiritual, emotional, and relational health. Plumline offers weekly groups that lead individuals through a process that helps them integrate their

 The holidays can be very difficult for single parents. The one thing we can count on is change, like changes in tradition and changes is time with our kids. What we once knew is often now very different. Gd promises He will turn all things to good and that He is doing a new thing in our lives, but the idea of newness and change can still make us uneasy. Our dreams that have been shattered leave us picking up the pieces while walking into a new frontier. We don’t know how things are going to turn out especially after facing the unexpected already. How do you embrace the new and encounter God in newness? 1. Identify past dreams and past realities - Be authentic and take inventory of what you have lost and how you are feeling. Take time to grieve specific losses. If you move on too quickly, you can stay stuck and carry the pain with you. As you embrace God in newness, acknowledge your dreams but also acknowledge your realities. Sometimes loss can make us look at the past through rose colored glasses and r

We are in a crazy time this year, and on some days, it feels hopeless. We are trying to get through the pandemic, move on past the election, and find a new perspective for 2021, but there’s just so much going on. We want to look ahead with hope but what are we hoping in? Is it a political outcome, a vaccine, a change in our circumstances? When we look to these things for hope, we can set ourselves up for a cycle of disappointment and despondency. Today we are talking about finding hope in Emmanuel, God with Us. We are so thrilled to have Kristi McClelland with us on our podcast this week. Kristi is an author, professor, speaker, and biblical culturist. Kristi teaches the Bible through its original historical, cultural, linguistic, and geographic context. This approach helps build a bridge to help us understand the world and culture of the bible to know what the authors meant and show us who the living God is, what he’s like and what it’s like to walk with Him. When Kristi was 21 years old, as a senior in co

God With Us In Our Struggle The holidays can be difficult because they bring up so many emotions for all of us. Especially as single parents, it can be hard to celebrate when we are facing painful memories of lost dreams, broken family traditions, and at times, being apart from our kids. Our reality is far different from a Hallmark movie storyline. Celebrating the season can be a struggle because it highlights the pain of parenting alone.  Because we know the reality of loss can peak around the holidays, we want to offer some strategies that might help you embrace the truth that God is with us in grief.  1. Identify and confess your strugle. We need to acknowledge and admit that our grief is real. We need to stop being afraid of it. There is no shame in grief. Yet, sometimes we shrink back from naming and facing it. But grief is a normal part of the human experience. Grief is a sign that our losses and pain matter because we matter. When we love someone and lose them, it’s sad. There is a painful v

Worth – Teaching Our Kids WorthWe live in a time where our kids are being battered around by all kinds of voices and comparisons, more than when we were kids for sure. 24/7 they are hearing lies about ways they don’t measure up. Depression, anxiety, and suicide are on a serious increase. As adults, we are facing these things too, but we have history, context, and experience to know that these things come and go but our kids don’t.Especially during the pandemic, the hopelessness, and questions about “Am I worth it” can be very loud voices. With current events like this, it’s more important than ever to notice what our kids are going through and identify how they are feeling about themselves. Teaching our kids how to have a healthy sense of worth is paramount. All this month we’ve been building our idea of worth using the acronym VIP, value, identity, and purpose. We are going to use these same ideas to explore practical ways to teach a healthy sense of worth to our kids. First, psychologists agree a good place

Worth – Discovering Your Purpose Worth is made up of our value, identity, and purpose (V.I.P.). Understanding each of these elements helps us know we are VIP’s in God’s kingdom. Each one of us has intrinsic value because we were created by our Creator. We each have a unique identity shaped and informed by our history, story, strengths, and passions. And, we were created on purpose for a purpose – to walk out the plan God set in place and to do the works He planned in advance for us to do. Discovering your purpose is part three of our series on worth. Your purpose is a path. It’s a process of discovery, not a destination. There are two distinctives to pay attention to in discovering your purpose. They are your design and your path. The first is our design. To understand our purpose and unlock our power, we must value our design. This starts with knowing and believing we are uniquely created by the Designer for a specific purpose. When we are anchored in this knowledge, we can embrace our unique design. Some o

Worth: Uncovering Our Identity Single parents have often walked a challenging path experiencing hurts and obstacles along the way. These difficulties can shake their sense of worth leaving them feeling empty and unsure of who they are. Regaining a sense of worth is found in recovering our sense of value, uncovering our identity, and realizing our purpose.  Each component builds on the other. The first one, our value, is unchangeable and intrinsic. God determines our value which is foundational to our sense of worth. The second component is our identity. Our identity is made up of characteristics that distinguish us from one another. It’s our individual stories that set us apart. Finally, our worth helps inform our purpose. We were created intentionally by God to fulfill good works planned for us. When we have a solid understanding of our value, identity, and purpose, we can walk with confidence in our worth, knowing we were created by God, on purpose for a purpose.  One of the components needed for

Divorce, unplanned pregnancy, death of a spouse, or leaving an abusive relationship can shake our sense of who we are. So much of our identity gets wrapped up in the roles we play, and we sometimes let our value be defined by external circumstances. Four things that can help when it comes to knowing our value is 1) reverence, 2) refuting lies, 3) replacing lies and 4) remembering the truth . Reverence Value starts with reverence, ascribing worth and honor to God. This is the most important anchor point for our value. We have a Creator who sits on a throne. To understand ourselves, we must understand Who created us. We are not mistakes. When we know and believe that God is real, powerful, and praiseworthy, it helps us realize our value too. We were intentionally designed for a purpose by our Creator. This is the foundation of our value. Our value starts with God. Knowing Him helps us understand ourselves and our value. Solo Parent Society founder, Robert Beeson, began to reverence God  more when he began t

Many of us feel ill-equipped to be single parents already. When faced with the responsibility of teaching and guiding our kids, we can feel in over our heads. Some of us never handled money in our relationship so this is new territory for us. Others don’t feel like we have a handle on our finances ourselves so how can we teach and pass down to our kids’ important lessons about money. We know it's important but many of us feel the need for resources on how to do that. Most of us are not experts! How and where do we start? Single mom, Elizabeth, works at Ramsey Solutions and shares her insight and experience. First, Elizabeth reminds us that money can be an overwhelming subject that sometimes triggers shame or feelings of inadequacy for anyone but especially single parents. Often, single parents are just keeping their heads above water and when you don’t feel like you have enough to budget, many think why budget at all? However, there are some lessons we can teach our kids regardless of our specific situation

“Sometimes it takes a car crash to realize you were driving irresponsibly.” When his mother died and his marriage ended in the same month, Josh Millburn had to reexamine how he was living. He had spent his twenties focused on making money and climbing the corporate ladder. He wracked up a lot of debt and was focused on so called success and achievement. In our society, we know that means accumulating more and more stuff, believing that “if we just get one more thing, I’ll be happy”. The average American household has over 300,000 items in it. But stuff never fills the void, it only widens it. Josh woke up to that reality and embraced a minimalist lifestyle, writing an ebook called “The Minimalist Rulebook: 16 Rules for Living with Less.” Living more deliberately with less is now Josh’s way of life. After the financial crisis of 2008, Josh realized his money and stuff were doing the opposite of what he wanted. They weren’t making him happy. They were getting in the way of what was truly important. Too ofte