September 4, 2023 • 19 mins
As single parents, we often find ourselves in uncharted territories, grappling with life's unexpected twists and turns. Education might have taught us a lot, but nothing equips us better for parenting than personal experiences — the life lessons we glean from making decisions and enduring the consequences. We're not aiming for perfection, just progression. This episode is all about sharing those valuable lessons, the triumphs, the struggles, and even the occasional blunders, to inspire and educate others sailing in the same boat.
Ever found yourself thinking about the impact of your past experiences on your parenting decisions? Or wondered if there's more to be learned from personal experiences rather than formal education? In this episode, we tap into those thoughts and help you realize that your experiences are not just your own but serve as an irreplaceable guide for others. We also share some enlightening tips on how to ask the right questions, make informed decisions, and transform your experiences into invaluable lessons for other single parents. So tune in, and let's navigate the beautiful chaos of single parenting together.
https://singlemomsunitedpodcast.com/
It's not how you arrived at the title, but what you do with it.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:03):
Hey ladies, welcome to the Single Moms United
Podcast, where we cannot spellUnited without you.
Hey, if this is your first timejoining, welcome If you are a
repeat listener.
Thank you for your loyalty.
It means so much and for allthe people from around the world
(00:26):
that's been tapping in andlistening.
Thank you, and I hope you arefinding some value in this
podcast as well, even thoughyou're not located here in the
United States, but I see you, sothank you so much for joining
in.
Today I want to talk aboutexperience versus education when
(00:48):
it comes to parenting.
As a single parent, we reallyaren't given the foundation of
where to start as far as being agood parent not a perfect
parent, but a good parent.
Right, there is no perfectparents.
You can't make me believe thatif they don't exist.
But you can be a good parentand you can be a bad parent, so
(01:12):
hopefully, we're all striving tobe a good parent.
Even good parents make mistakesand that's why you can't put
perfection on parenting if itdoesn't exist.
But today I want to talk aboutexperience versus education and
the difference between the twoand why you would want to
(01:34):
gravitate more to the experience, linking with someone who's
been through the experience.
So I guess I'm kind of puttinga plug in for this podcast,
because that's what this isdesigned to do is to share with
you my own personal experiencesrelated to single parenting.
(01:56):
There's many, many episodes outthere since this has been going
on for over a year now 18months, different experiences
I've gone through and trying topay it forward to you, single
mom, so that you can embrace andunderstand some things that you
may go through.
(02:16):
Bringing you guidance and again, as a guide it doesn't mean
it's a one size physiology, itjust means here are some things
to think about is to provokethinking versus just saying, hey
, go do it this way, and I can'ttell you to go do it a certain
way, because everybody'senvironment is different, right,
(02:40):
but I can say this is whathappened to me, this is what I
did to try to help get throughthis.
This is what I did back then.
This is what I know now because, again, being young, I didn't
have a lot of knowledge in thisarea.
I know some things now that Iwish I knew back then and so
(03:04):
hopefully I can pay that forwardto you and that you will find
some value as you're raisingyour children or your child.
Again, we're talking aboutexperience, and what does it
mean to go through an experience?
Well, that's a personalencounter and you're not going
(03:24):
to find this in a book.
You're not going to find thiswith a teacher.
You're not going to find thiswith a therapist, you're not
going to find it with a pastor.
This is your own personalencounter with the situation and
that equates to an experience.
Right, you're gonna have tomake decisions, and not every
(03:47):
decision is going to be a rightdecision.
Ladies, unfortunately.
Ask me how I know.
But the good news is you learnfrom it, even good decisions.
You learn from it because thoseyou want to kind of continue
down that path of making a gooddecision or the right decision
when it comes to some things youwant to embrace.
(04:08):
That right, it's going to savea lot of stress later.
You know, on one of my podcastsor one of my episodes early on,
I talked about decisions,decisions, decisions.
I made a lot of decisions, butI didn't ask a lot of questions.
Hmm, well, how can you make adecision and not ask questions?
(04:28):
Easy, don't think about it Kindof shooting from the hip per se
, as it relates to what you wantto do Relationships right,
ladies, a fellow walk by and say, hey, beautiful, how you doing.
And all of a sudden you're likehey, I'm good how you doing,
and he look halfway decent.
(04:49):
All of a sudden, next thing youknow, you're exchanging phone
numbers, or giving him yourphone number and whip bamboo,
right.
You don't ask a lot ofquestions about him.
So whose fault is that?
That's right, it's your fault,it's my fault.
And then when we get into thisrelationship, he goes left.
(05:10):
When you think you're goingright or straight Well, ain't
nobody's fault with yours,because you missed an
opportunity to ask questionsversus, oh, somebody's paying
attention to me, hey, and helooks decent, he's cute and all
of this.
You get distracted by that and,as a result of that distraction
(05:32):
, you forgot all about askingcritical questions, especially
if you're looking for a longtime relationship.
So that's what experience isall about and how we get
distracted from that.
That's all.
Also, you know making baddecisions.
It's because we don't askenough questions.
(05:53):
So, ladies, if you have timeand you want more information
about decisions, decisions, justlook up that episode.
You know there's some goodstuff in there, pretty decent
stuff.
So I encourage you, if you wantto learn more and get guidance.
Listen to that episode as well,all right.
So experiences also shapes ourexpectations and judgments,
(06:17):
right.
It has a long term emotionalimpact.
That's what an experience does.
While we want to gravitate, lookto books or other methods to
gaining parenting skills, youreally want to gravitate to
someone that's already beenthrough this.
Because why is that important?
(06:39):
You want to link with someonethat knows what it's like to not
have enough money, but yet yourchild needs school supplies.
You know you don't have lunchmoney this week, but they got to
eat or a special circumstancehappens.
Your money is just not thereand your child support isn't
(07:01):
coming through.
Your public assistance hasn'tgone through and here you have
an immediate emergency relatedto your child.
You can't go to a therapist andask them about that.
A therapist only guides youthrough the emotions that you
experience, right.
Whereas when you talk tosomeone that has the experience,
(07:23):
they're not only going to tellyou some of the emotions you're
going to go through, but they'realso going to say this is what
I did, this is how I got throughthis and that's who you want to
lean on.
That's who you want to identifyand have in your life.
Is someone that's gone throughthis parenting, single parenting
(07:48):
, on their own, without thechild support, without them
emotional support.
Because if he leaves and you'resitting there and you can have
a pity party, I just say don'tstay there, right, because he
left or he did XYZ, pdq,whatever the situation is that
(08:09):
he's no longer in the child'slife.
Yeah, you can like, okay, youcan be angry, you're going to
experience all kind of emotions,right, but you don't stay there
.
You say I, this is whathappened and now I'm moving on.
I'm moving on.
Now I need to gravitate tosomeone that also has gone
(08:30):
through this.
I know that I can get guidance.
Now I hear you some of youprobably saying well, let me go
to my mom.
Well, if she's gone throughthat, then absolutely, she's
going to help guide you throughgetting that resolution you're
looking for giving you thatadvice.
However, sometimes moms are tooclose and, depending on the
(08:53):
situation, you might want athird party, someone from the
outside, looking into givingmore neutral Response.
Moms can be biased right as faras giving feedback, because
sometimes they may just say Itold you so.
Is that really what you want tohear?
At a time of crisis, you reallywant someone to say, yep, this
(09:16):
happened, but try this andsometimes, sometimes moms don't
go that route because you're thechild right and they tried to
tell you.
They try.
Mom tried to tell me.
You know, this is the manner Togo in, and if you don't follow
that manner, then they say Itold you so, and sometimes you
(09:38):
don't want to hear that whenyou're in a crisis, you need
someone to come back and say youdid that, it was wrong, you
made a bad decision.
Now this is what you shouldconsider.
Look at this.
This is what I did when ithappened me.
And that's the other thing too.
If you gravitate to an older,senior mom, a senior right,
(10:04):
someone that's retired, Iremember I got a lot of great
advice from a mother from mychurch and at that time she was
in her 90s and she gave me somegreat advice, as well as my kids
grandfather on their dad side.
He treated me like a daughterand I felt like he was a father
(10:28):
figure to me, so he gave me alot of great advice.
And those are the type ofpeople you want to gravitate to,
because, number one, they wereneutral and number two, they're
not out trying to gain anything.
You know some people.
They have alternative motivesto helping you, whereas when you
(10:49):
gravitate to someone older,much older, you know they just
want to see me do.
Well, they've already gonethrough it, right.
What do they get out of seeingyou fail?
Absolutely nothing.
So that's why you would want togravitate to someone Senior age
(11:09):
, retirement age and, you know,maybe over their 70s let's just
put a number to it right, theyhave nothing to gain, absolutely
nothing to gain, but to see youget through your situation,
your situation, and you want toembrace that.
Here's a nice fun fact that youmay or may not know our identity
(11:32):
is a collection of experiences.
Absorb that.
Our identity is a collection ofexperiences.
It affects how we think, whatyou do and how you do it.
Experience improves yourabilities, skills and knowledge
(11:53):
while you get closer to success.
Now again, you define success.
Don't you look that up inWebster's, because a lot of
people think success is definedbased on money.
No, sometimes it's peace ofmind.
Sometimes it's peace of mind,sometimes you can get up and
(12:14):
still be independent on your ownand your children are on their
own.
That's success.
And they're not knocking onyour door talking about gimme,
gimme, gimme, or you see themprospering.
That's success.
So it's not linked to money allthe time, ladies, while it's
nice to have knowledge andeducation, but education is just
(12:39):
links back to academicsstudying and turning in papers
and taking tests and passingthose tests.
Therefore, you know your workfor your resumes.
This is what I've done, this iswhat school I've attended, this
is what I specialize.
So you're just learning stuffthat someone else's experience
(13:04):
has been outlined and you'retrying to link that back to who
you are.
Get further in life.
Education when it comes toparenting, I would say, is
limited.
You can incorporate someeducation into your parenting
skills, but I would not rely onbooks.
(13:26):
I would not rely on books.
Find you someone has gonethrough the single parenting
experience.
Ask them how they got throughit.
What did they do?
How did they handle theiremotions in certain situations?
(13:46):
And trust me, ladies,especially when it comes to apps
and fathers, many of us thereare many of us out here has
already gone through it.
We've already gone through itso we can say when he doesn't
show up to birthday parties,what did you do?
(14:07):
Or special events at the school, or make false promises, what
did you do?
How did you handle that withyour child after he made the
promise, or he was once in alife or prominent in her life,
and then all of a suddendisappear and then, when you see
him again, he's with some otherchick and they got another baby
(14:29):
.
Hmm, what do you do?
You're not going to find thatin a book?
You're not going to find thatin a book.
Find you a mentor.
Someone will guide you throughthose situations of
disappointment and how youhandle that.
And again, there's plenty of usout here that have already been
(14:54):
there, and I'll just be formyself.
I thought it was the end of theworld.
Oh my God, what do I do?
What do I do?
Only to find out that it wasn'tas bad as I thought it was.
Hmm, I'll say that again.
Ladies, I'm trying to encouragesomeone.
It wasn't as bad as I thoughtit was, and you all encountering
(15:16):
some of the same situations.
All right, ladies, that'senough for me for today.
I hope that you enjoy today'sepisode experiences versus
education.
I hope I came through loud andclear and I hope this episode
(15:36):
ends.
You will take it on you to saylet me find somebody that's gone
through this and link up withthem, and then, of course, come
back to Sing a Mom's United formore tips and encouragement,
because that's what this is allabout.
That's why I started thispodcast.
(15:57):
I'm trying to pay it forward toyou, sing a Mom to you, because
I've already been through it.
I've been through it.
I want to just be there for youand encourage you and remind
you.
You can do this, because it'snot about how you arrived at the
(16:20):
title, it's what you do with it.
Okay, you have a fantastic day,a marvelous week and an
exciting month.
Take care.
Hey ladies, welcome to the Single Moms United
Podcast, where we cannot spellUnited without you.
Hey, if this is your first timejoining, welcome If you are a
repeat listener.
Thank you for your loyalty.
It means so much and for allthe people from around the world
(00:26):
that's been tapping in andlistening.
Thank you, and I hope you arefinding some value in this
podcast as well, even thoughyou're not located here in the
United States, but I see you, sothank you so much for joining
in.
Today I want to talk aboutexperience versus education when
(00:48):
it comes to parenting.
As a single parent, we reallyaren't given the foundation of
where to start as far as being agood parent not a perfect
parent, but a good parent.
Right, there is no perfectparents.
You can't make me believe thatif they don't exist.
But you can be a good parentand you can be a bad parent, so
(01:12):
hopefully, we're all striving tobe a good parent.
Even good parents make mistakesand that's why you can't put
perfection on parenting if itdoesn't exist.
But today I want to talk aboutexperience versus education and
the difference between the twoand why you would want to
(01:34):
gravitate more to the experience, linking with someone who's
been through the experience.
So I guess I'm kind of puttinga plug in for this podcast,
because that's what this isdesigned to do is to share with
you my own personal experiencesrelated to single parenting.
(01:56):
There's many, many episodes outthere since this has been going
on for over a year now 18months, different experiences
I've gone through and trying topay it forward to you, single
mom, so that you can embrace andunderstand some things that you
may go through.
(02:16):
Bringing you guidance and again, as a guide it doesn't mean
it's a one size physiology, itjust means here are some things
to think about is to provokethinking versus just saying, hey
, go do it this way, and I can'ttell you to go do it a certain
way, because everybody'senvironment is different, right,
(02:40):
but I can say this is whathappened to me, this is what I
did to try to help get throughthis.
This is what I did back then.
This is what I know now because, again, being young, I didn't
have a lot of knowledge in thisarea.
I know some things now that Iwish I knew back then and so
(03:04):
hopefully I can pay that forwardto you and that you will find
some value as you're raisingyour children or your child.
Again, we're talking aboutexperience, and what does it
mean to go through an experience?
Well, that's a personalencounter and you're not going
(03:24):
to find this in a book.
You're not going to find thiswith a teacher.
You're not going to find thiswith a therapist, you're not
going to find it with a pastor.
This is your own personalencounter with the situation and
that equates to an experience.
Right, you're gonna have tomake decisions, and not every
(03:47):
decision is going to be a rightdecision.
Ladies, unfortunately.
Ask me how I know.
But the good news is you learnfrom it, even good decisions.
You learn from it because thoseyou want to kind of continue
down that path of making a gooddecision or the right decision
when it comes to some things youwant to embrace.
(04:08):
That right, it's going to savea lot of stress later.
You know, on one of my podcastsor one of my episodes early on,
I talked about decisions,decisions, decisions.
I made a lot of decisions, butI didn't ask a lot of questions.
Hmm, well, how can you make adecision and not ask questions?
(04:28):
Easy, don't think about it Kindof shooting from the hip per se
, as it relates to what you wantto do Relationships right,
ladies, a fellow walk by and say, hey, beautiful, how you doing.
And all of a sudden you're likehey, I'm good how you doing,
and he look halfway decent.
(04:49):
All of a sudden, next thing youknow, you're exchanging phone
numbers, or giving him yourphone number and whip bamboo,
right.
You don't ask a lot ofquestions about him.
So whose fault is that?
That's right, it's your fault,it's my fault.
And then when we get into thisrelationship, he goes left.
(05:10):
When you think you're goingright or straight Well, ain't
nobody's fault with yours,because you missed an
opportunity to ask questionsversus, oh, somebody's paying
attention to me, hey, and helooks decent, he's cute and all
of this.
You get distracted by that and,as a result of that distraction
(05:32):
, you forgot all about askingcritical questions, especially
if you're looking for a longtime relationship.
So that's what experience isall about and how we get
distracted from that.
That's all.
Also, you know making baddecisions.
It's because we don't askenough questions.
(05:53):
So, ladies, if you have timeand you want more information
about decisions, decisions, justlook up that episode.
You know there's some goodstuff in there, pretty decent
stuff.
So I encourage you, if you wantto learn more and get guidance.
Listen to that episode as well,all right.
So experiences also shapes ourexpectations and judgments,
(06:17):
right.
It has a long term emotionalimpact.
That's what an experience does.
While we want to gravitate, lookto books or other methods to
gaining parenting skills, youreally want to gravitate to
someone that's already beenthrough this.
Because why is that important?
(06:39):
You want to link with someonethat knows what it's like to not
have enough money, but yet yourchild needs school supplies.
You know you don't have lunchmoney this week, but they got to
eat or a special circumstancehappens.
Your money is just not thereand your child support isn't
(07:01):
coming through.
Your public assistance hasn'tgone through and here you have
an immediate emergency relatedto your child.
You can't go to a therapist andask them about that.
A therapist only guides youthrough the emotions that you
experience, right.
Whereas when you talk tosomeone that has the experience,
(07:23):
they're not only going to tellyou some of the emotions you're
going to go through, but they'realso going to say this is what
I did, this is how I got throughthis and that's who you want to
lean on.
That's who you want to identifyand have in your life.
Is someone that's gone throughthis parenting, single parenting
(07:48):
, on their own, without thechild support, without them
emotional support.
Because if he leaves and you'resitting there and you can have
a pity party, I just say don'tstay there, right, because he
left or he did XYZ, pdq,whatever the situation is that
(08:09):
he's no longer in the child'slife.
Yeah, you can like, okay, youcan be angry, you're going to
experience all kind of emotions,right, but you don't stay there
.
You say I, this is whathappened and now I'm moving on.
I'm moving on.
Now I need to gravitate tosomeone that also has gone
(08:30):
through this.
I know that I can get guidance.
Now I hear you some of youprobably saying well, let me go
to my mom.
Well, if she's gone throughthat, then absolutely, she's
going to help guide you throughgetting that resolution you're
looking for giving you thatadvice.
However, sometimes moms are tooclose and, depending on the
(08:53):
situation, you might want athird party, someone from the
outside, looking into givingmore neutral Response.
Moms can be biased right as faras giving feedback, because
sometimes they may just say Itold you so.
Is that really what you want tohear?
At a time of crisis, you reallywant someone to say, yep, this
(09:16):
happened, but try this andsometimes, sometimes moms don't
go that route because you're thechild right and they tried to
tell you.
They try.
Mom tried to tell me.
You know, this is the manner Togo in, and if you don't follow
that manner, then they say Itold you so, and sometimes you
(09:38):
don't want to hear that whenyou're in a crisis, you need
someone to come back and say youdid that, it was wrong, you
made a bad decision.
Now this is what you shouldconsider.
Look at this.
This is what I did when ithappened me.
And that's the other thing too.
If you gravitate to an older,senior mom, a senior right,
(10:04):
someone that's retired, Iremember I got a lot of great
advice from a mother from mychurch and at that time she was
in her 90s and she gave me somegreat advice, as well as my kids
grandfather on their dad side.
He treated me like a daughterand I felt like he was a father
(10:28):
figure to me, so he gave me alot of great advice.
And those are the type ofpeople you want to gravitate to,
because, number one, they wereneutral and number two, they're
not out trying to gain anything.
You know some people.
They have alternative motivesto helping you, whereas when you
(10:49):
gravitate to someone older,much older, you know they just
want to see me do.
Well, they've already gonethrough it, right.
What do they get out of seeingyou fail?
Absolutely nothing.
So that's why you would want togravitate to someone Senior age
(11:09):
, retirement age and, you know,maybe over their 70s let's just
put a number to it right, theyhave nothing to gain, absolutely
nothing to gain, but to see youget through your situation,
your situation, and you want toembrace that.
Here's a nice fun fact that youmay or may not know our identity
(11:32):
is a collection of experiences.
Absorb that.
Our identity is a collection ofexperiences.
It affects how we think, whatyou do and how you do it.
Experience improves yourabilities, skills and knowledge
(11:53):
while you get closer to success.
Now again, you define success.
Don't you look that up inWebster's, because a lot of
people think success is definedbased on money.
No, sometimes it's peace ofmind.
Sometimes it's peace of mind,sometimes you can get up and
(12:14):
still be independent on your ownand your children are on their
own.
That's success.
And they're not knocking onyour door talking about gimme,
gimme, gimme, or you see themprospering.
That's success.
So it's not linked to money allthe time, ladies, while it's
nice to have knowledge andeducation, but education is just
(12:39):
links back to academicsstudying and turning in papers
and taking tests and passingthose tests.
Therefore, you know your workfor your resumes.
This is what I've done, this iswhat school I've attended, this
is what I specialize.
So you're just learning stuffthat someone else's experience
(13:04):
has been outlined and you'retrying to link that back to who
you are.
Get further in life.
Education when it comes toparenting, I would say, is
limited.
You can incorporate someeducation into your parenting
skills, but I would not rely onbooks.
(13:26):
I would not rely on books.
Find you someone has gonethrough the single parenting
experience.
Ask them how they got throughit.
What did they do?
How did they handle theiremotions in certain situations?
(13:46):
And trust me, ladies,especially when it comes to apps
and fathers, many of us thereare many of us out here has
already gone through it.
We've already gone through itso we can say when he doesn't
show up to birthday parties,what did you do?
(14:07):
Or special events at the school, or make false promises, what
did you do?
How did you handle that withyour child after he made the
promise, or he was once in alife or prominent in her life,
and then all of a suddendisappear and then, when you see
him again, he's with some otherchick and they got another baby
(14:29):
.
Hmm, what do you do?
You're not going to find thatin a book?
You're not going to find thatin a book.
Find you a mentor.
Someone will guide you throughthose situations of
disappointment and how youhandle that.
And again, there's plenty of usout here that have already been
(14:54):
there, and I'll just be formyself.
I thought it was the end of theworld.
Oh my God, what do I do?
What do I do?
Only to find out that it wasn'tas bad as I thought it was.
Hmm, I'll say that again.
Ladies, I'm trying to encouragesomeone.
It wasn't as bad as I thoughtit was, and you all encountering
(15:16):
some of the same situations.
All right, ladies, that'senough for me for today.
I hope that you enjoy today'sepisode experiences versus
education.
I hope I came through loud andclear and I hope this episode
(15:36):
ends.
You will take it on you to saylet me find somebody that's gone
through this and link up withthem, and then, of course, come
back to Sing a Mom's United formore tips and encouragement,
because that's what this is allabout.
That's why I started thispodcast.
(15:57):
I'm trying to pay it forward toyou, sing a Mom to you, because
I've already been through it.
I've been through it.
I want to just be there for youand encourage you and remind
you.
You can do this, because it'snot about how you arrived at the
(16:20):
title, it's what you do with it.
Okay, you have a fantastic day,a marvelous week and an
exciting month.
Take care.
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