October 1, 2023 • 20 mins
Strap in as I promise to explore the nooks and crannies of self-evaluation in parenting that we often overlook or struggle with. Let's confront those difficult questions - are you being too hard on your child, or maybe not hard enough? Do your words build them up or break them down? There's no magic formula to be the flawless parent, but together we can strive to be the best we can be. We'll talk about the vital practice of assessing your parenting skills, your approach to discipline, and the essence of your communication with your kids. We'll delve into the avoidance of mental abuse and the importance of apologizing when we err.
Picture this: a world where single moms are not stigmatized but celebrated. We're here to turn that vision into reality. In a bold move, this episode sends a wave of support and inspiration to all the single mothers out there, acknowledging the unique challenges they face. We not only appreciate single moms but applaud their decision to keep their children, and we're here to reassure you that you are capable, strong, and you can ace this parenting game. Join me, lend an ear, let's uplift each other and embrace the joys and the trials of single parenting. A sisterhood awaits you at Single Moms United podcast.
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 (00:02):
Hey ladies, welcome to the Single Moms United
podcast, where we cannot spellunited without you.
Yes, you, not only the letter,you, but why, oh you?
So I'm so glad you decided todrop by and if this is your
first time joining, welcome.
(00:23):
And if you are a repeatlistener, thank you for your
loyalty.
Thank you for your loyalty.
I just ask one favor if youcould pass it along to another
single mom that's looking forparent parental guiding or
guidance as it relates toraising their children.
I'm not the expert, but I havethe experience and so hopefully
(00:48):
they would find some value inhelping them with their parental
skills.
If you're a repeat listener, soI'm assuming you find some
value and I appreciate that andthat's encouraging to me.
I would love for you to leaveme some comments, either on my
YouTube page or visitsinglemomsunitedpodcastcom I
(01:10):
know it'sa long word, but have ablog out there.
If you could leave me somefeedback on things you like,
things you would like to hear ortopics you'd like to have
discussed, while I can just goon my own experiences, but this
is a new day and age, right, andso there may be something that
(01:33):
I can cover that I may justhaven't thought about.
So leave me some comments.
I would love to hear from you.
I would love to hear from you.
Alright, so today and it is anew month, and so I'm so excited
to bring you another episode,and this episode is about
evaluation.
If you have a job or had a job,when you first took that job or
(01:59):
accepted that job, you had togo through a 90-day probationary
period.
The employer would evaluateyour skills to make sure you're
still a good fit for the role.
They take that 90 days for youto blend and understand the
business and how it works andhow you adapt to it, and then,
(02:23):
after that 90 days, they make arecommendation to go ahead and
take you off of the probationaryperiod, or they extend it right
, because they say, well, I canstill see some value in her, so
therefore, let's give her alittle more time.
Some employers do do that, somedo, but I want to talk to you
(02:44):
today about evaluation and aprobationary period.
When it comes to parenting,especially as a new parent, I'd
like you to think about andconsider a probationary period
evaluating your parental skills.
Right, because if you're likeme, or like I was mature enough
(03:08):
to have a baby, I wasn'tmentally mature enough to
technically raise the child,because mentally, I was still a
child myself.
If I'm still calling my mommommy, right, not keeping mine,
I was 21, okay.
(03:28):
So cut me some slack.
Cut me some slack.
We have to get into position ofevaluating our parental skills
over time.
I recommend you do six totwelve months of your evaluation
.
And what does it mean?
To evaluate is to judge ordetermine the significance,
(03:56):
worth or quality of, and toassess, to evaluate results.
Hmm, let me save that pieceagain.
Assess to evaluate the results.
Okay, because as a new parent,we're not going to get it right
(04:16):
all the time.
And and let me just throw thisin there there is no perfect
parent.
There are good and bad parents,but there's no perfect parent.
So you can strive for the goodright.
You're not always gonna makethe right decision.
Ask me how I know.
But was it the right decisionat that time?
(04:39):
Yeah, but it didn't work out.
But that's okay.
You learn from that right asyou're going down through life
and you're raising your child oryour children.
You got to throw in some timeand say you know what?
It's time for me to assess myparenting skills.
And so if you say well, how doI know when six months is up?
(05:00):
How do I know when 12 months isup?
Well, we have reminders in ourphones, we have calendars and, I
am positive, everybody has asmartphone now.
Everybody has a smartphone,especially if you are on the
younger side.
I'm just saying you can put itin your phone to say you know
(05:21):
what.
Let me go back and assess somethings as it relates to me
raising my child, and here'ssome things you would want to
consider.
Just your parenting techniquesoverall.
What about disciplining yourchild?
How's that going?
Are you seeing a difference?
When I say a difference, I'mtalking about the child is now
(05:45):
respectful.
You see a change, right, andtheir behavior for the positive.
But if you see the opposite ofwhere they're reserved they're
not as outgoing as they werethen you might want to look at
your discipline technique.
That's important.
(06:06):
If you're disciplining themphysically and it's above the
waist, then that goes under thecategory of abuse.
But if you're disciplining themphysically below the waist,
that's correction.
And how are you talking to them?
Are you cussing at them?
Are you calling them stupid?
Are you calling them dumb?
(06:26):
And I hope that you're notsaying I wish I never had you,
and I've heard some people saythat and it's like, oh my God,
can you imagine the impact thatthat has on the child mentally?
And I can honestly say my kids.
Yes, they made me angry, mademe frustrated.
(06:47):
I just accumulated all theseemotions, but one thing I never
did was say I wish I never hadyou.
Ladies, please, if that's inyour vocabulary, please remove
it.
Apologize to your child now,asap.
Do not wait, do it right now.
(07:09):
That is called mental abuse.
Anyway, let me move on.
But it's time for you to assesssome things.
Between the six and 12 months.
I hear some people saying well,why do I got to wait six months
?
Why do I have to wait 12 months?
These are recommendations.
I say six to 12 months becauseit allows you that opportunity
(07:35):
to get a good assessment on thegood and bad of the discipline
or whatever you're trying toassess okay, or improve upon
Anything.
Before six months, in my mind,you just don't have enough
information to make a sounddecision.
You got to take both.
You got to have enough time toreally assess both situations
(08:00):
during that time frame.
So, honestly, I say 12 monthsand I know some people are going
to argue that's too long.
Again, that's just my opinion,okay, but you do what you want
to do.
The other thing you want toconsider is parental involvement
.
How involved are you in yourchild's activities, especially
(08:20):
if they're school-aged children?
I hear you saying well, I work.
When they go to school, I go towork and that's fair.
We have the means now that youcan contact the teacher, email
the teacher outside of parentteacher conferences, ask how
little Joey is doing or howlittle Mary Bella is doing, and
(08:42):
you don't have to wait.
And if you're not that involvedin your child's activities or
what's going on at school, thenthat's something you say.
You know what I need to dobetter and if it's again once a
month, is there anything I needto know?
That you text or email theteacher more likely email Is
(09:06):
there anything I need to know?
Because a lot of times they'reso consumed and they have the
larger classes they can't getdown to contacting all the
parents.
So sometimes you have to takethe initiative as it relates to
parental involvement.
You're taking the initiative.
You're going to the teacher andasking is there anything I need
(09:27):
to know?
Because it's going to make adifference long term.
Something else you should assessis your mental and physical
status, especially if you're anew mom.
There's that postpartumdepression that you may
experience.
And how are you doing mentally?
Are you still feeling like I'mthe child versus the mom?
(09:50):
Are you adopting or those adultresponsibilities, or are you
still relying on your mom to doeverything?
And a lot of moms or grandmomsout there is taking ownership of
that.
But what are you doing, singlemom, to better yourself mentally
?
And there are a lot of books,audio books out there, various
(10:17):
channels that you can go andlearn more about parenting and
how to be more involved in yourchild's life, how to change that
mental status of I'm a parent.
Now some things I shouldn't doand some things I shouldn't do
in front of my kids.
(10:38):
You know it's okay to go outand enjoy yourself.
Are you coming home sloppydrunk?
Are you cussing out loud?
How's your behavior in front ofyour child or your children?
So now you got to do a mentalassessment.
And then physically, kids havea lot of energy, so are you just
(10:58):
sitting down and watching orare you physically active with
them?
Are y'all exercising together?
That's something to think about, you know.
The other thing you want toconsider as far as evaluation
and assessing is if you areemployed, does that job still
make sense for you to be there?
(11:19):
How are the benefits?
How are?
How's the pay?
Think about that.
And it's okay to move on,especially if you're moving on
to move up.
Many employers have tuitionreimbursement, and if you're at
a current employer that does notoffer that but you're able to
go somewhere like Walmart wherethey do offer tuition
(11:42):
reimbursement, you might want toposition yourself to pivot over
to somewhere like Walmart.
Ultimately, you want to gainadditional knowledge so that you
can move on just from a job toa career.
Additional knowledge is notgoing to hurt you.
And then you also need toassess what gifts you have,
(12:03):
because everybody has a gift.
They're gifted at doingsomething and a lot of times we
get jobs until we can figure outhow to effectively utilize our
gifts.
For example, a hairdresser.
There are some hairstylists outthere that are just natural,
(12:25):
have never gone to beauty schoolbut can just do a hairstyle.
That is like wow, you did thatand you haven't been to school.
But until they get that licenseand so forth, they got to get a
regular job.
You have to uncover what yourgift is and again, that six to
(12:45):
twelve months assessment ofwhere you are financially and as
it relates to employment.
This is your opportunity.
And then goals.
Have you set any goals foryourself, any at all?
For example, if you're at homewith your parents, are you
(13:06):
planning on moving out later onin life, sooner than later?
That's a goal and it doesn'thave to be extremely large as
far as your goal, because youstill want to set a goal that's
attainable.
Maybe your goal is if you areat home, I want to get a car.
Well, you have to start puttingmoney aside to get that car,
(13:29):
and then there's insuranceinvolved.
So you have to start doing thisresearch and you can say I want
a car in a year.
Well, if that's the case, thenyou need to know how much money
you're going to need to putaside for not only the car but
for the insurance and themaintenance and gas, all those
things that come with it.
That's a goal, right, and youcan do this.
(13:53):
But you have to assess andevaluate where you are in life.
If your child is still young,you're trying to work and you
have a babysitter that's closeby and things are working out,
and you're doing publictransportation and you have a
little bit of change left overto do something extra for you or
(14:15):
the child.
There may be.
A car right now is not theoption you want to pursue.
You keep it on the radar, butyou definitely want to make your
goals attainable and what makessense.
Long story short, ladies, I knowtoo late, too late.
You have to take the time toevaluate and assess your own
(14:41):
parenting skills, what it lookslike, where you are today, where
you wanna be, and then how youwanna get there.
And again, it doesn't have tobe anything significant.
You can take baby steps andthen you go back and you look at
what happened over the last sixmonths, what went well, what
(15:04):
didn't go well.
That's how you determine yournext steps, because if there's a
lot of things that went well,then you wanna continue down
that path and tweak those.
But if a lot of things didn'tgo well, you wanna take time to
reconsider changing some thingsand I mean a whole 360, just
(15:25):
getting rid of some stuff,having some stuff exit your life
, having some people exit yourlife, and so that you can get
refocused, achieve your goal.
I hope you found this episodehelpful.
If you did tell another singlemom, it's all about us embracing
(15:47):
and encouraging one another.
You don't say you know what.
I'm a parent now and I don'tknow what to do next.
I don't see a future.
I don't see anything positiveas a parent, and there's many
young ladies out there that'ssaying this.
But the reality is there's alot of positive to this and I'm
(16:12):
just gonna throw this in andthen I will be done.
I was coming home from churchtoday and I saw the picketers
out about abortion.
And again, ladies, I applaudyou because the option was there
for you to have an abortion andyou chose not to.
You made the right decision.
(16:32):
And again, it's not about howyou arrived at the title, but
what you do with it.
This is your opportunity toshine, to be the best parent
that you can be.
All right, ladies, I hope youhave a delightful day, a
wonderful week and a marvelousmonth.
(16:56):
Tell another single mom hey, golisten to Single Moms United
podcast on Apple, iheart orwherever you get your podcast.
Encourage someone this week,take care.
Hey ladies, welcome to the Single Moms United
podcast, where we cannot spellunited without you.
Yes, you, not only the letter,you, but why, oh you?
So I'm so glad you decided todrop by and if this is your
first time joining, welcome.
(00:23):
And if you are a repeatlistener, thank you for your
loyalty.
Thank you for your loyalty.
I just ask one favor if youcould pass it along to another
single mom that's looking forparent parental guiding or
guidance as it relates toraising their children.
I'm not the expert, but I havethe experience and so hopefully
(00:48):
they would find some value inhelping them with their parental
skills.
If you're a repeat listener, soI'm assuming you find some
value and I appreciate that andthat's encouraging to me.
I would love for you to leaveme some comments, either on my
YouTube page or visitsinglemomsunitedpodcastcom I
(01:10):
know it'sa long word, but have ablog out there.
If you could leave me somefeedback on things you like,
things you would like to hear ortopics you'd like to have
discussed, while I can just goon my own experiences, but this
is a new day and age, right, andso there may be something that
(01:33):
I can cover that I may justhaven't thought about.
So leave me some comments.
I would love to hear from you.
I would love to hear from you.
Alright, so today and it is anew month, and so I'm so excited
to bring you another episode,and this episode is about
evaluation.
If you have a job or had a job,when you first took that job or
(01:59):
accepted that job, you had togo through a 90-day probationary
period.
The employer would evaluateyour skills to make sure you're
still a good fit for the role.
They take that 90 days for youto blend and understand the
business and how it works andhow you adapt to it, and then,
(02:23):
after that 90 days, they make arecommendation to go ahead and
take you off of the probationaryperiod, or they extend it right
, because they say, well, I canstill see some value in her, so
therefore, let's give her alittle more time.
Some employers do do that, somedo, but I want to talk to you
(02:44):
today about evaluation and aprobationary period.
When it comes to parenting,especially as a new parent, I'd
like you to think about andconsider a probationary period
evaluating your parental skills.
Right, because if you're likeme, or like I was mature enough
(03:08):
to have a baby, I wasn'tmentally mature enough to
technically raise the child,because mentally, I was still a
child myself.
If I'm still calling my mommommy, right, not keeping mine,
I was 21, okay.
(03:28):
So cut me some slack.
Cut me some slack.
We have to get into position ofevaluating our parental skills
over time.
I recommend you do six totwelve months of your evaluation
.
And what does it mean?
To evaluate is to judge ordetermine the significance,
(03:56):
worth or quality of, and toassess, to evaluate results.
Hmm, let me save that pieceagain.
Assess to evaluate the results.
Okay, because as a new parent,we're not going to get it right
(04:16):
all the time.
And and let me just throw thisin there there is no perfect
parent.
There are good and bad parents,but there's no perfect parent.
So you can strive for the goodright.
You're not always gonna makethe right decision.
Ask me how I know.
But was it the right decisionat that time?
(04:39):
Yeah, but it didn't work out.
But that's okay.
You learn from that right asyou're going down through life
and you're raising your child oryour children.
You got to throw in some timeand say you know what?
It's time for me to assess myparenting skills.
And so if you say well, how doI know when six months is up?
(05:00):
How do I know when 12 months isup?
Well, we have reminders in ourphones, we have calendars and, I
am positive, everybody has asmartphone now.
Everybody has a smartphone,especially if you are on the
younger side.
I'm just saying you can put itin your phone to say you know
(05:21):
what.
Let me go back and assess somethings as it relates to me
raising my child, and here'ssome things you would want to
consider.
Just your parenting techniquesoverall.
What about disciplining yourchild?
How's that going?
Are you seeing a difference?
When I say a difference, I'mtalking about the child is now
(05:45):
respectful.
You see a change, right, andtheir behavior for the positive.
But if you see the opposite ofwhere they're reserved they're
not as outgoing as they werethen you might want to look at
your discipline technique.
That's important.
(06:06):
If you're disciplining themphysically and it's above the
waist, then that goes under thecategory of abuse.
But if you're disciplining themphysically below the waist,
that's correction.
And how are you talking to them?
Are you cussing at them?
Are you calling them stupid?
Are you calling them dumb?
(06:26):
And I hope that you're notsaying I wish I never had you,
and I've heard some people saythat and it's like, oh my God,
can you imagine the impact thatthat has on the child mentally?
And I can honestly say my kids.
Yes, they made me angry, mademe frustrated.
(06:47):
I just accumulated all theseemotions, but one thing I never
did was say I wish I never hadyou.
Ladies, please, if that's inyour vocabulary, please remove
it.
Apologize to your child now,asap.
Do not wait, do it right now.
(07:09):
That is called mental abuse.
Anyway, let me move on.
But it's time for you to assesssome things.
Between the six and 12 months.
I hear some people saying well,why do I got to wait six months
?
Why do I have to wait 12 months?
These are recommendations.
I say six to 12 months becauseit allows you that opportunity
(07:35):
to get a good assessment on thegood and bad of the discipline
or whatever you're trying toassess okay, or improve upon
Anything.
Before six months, in my mind,you just don't have enough
information to make a sounddecision.
You got to take both.
You got to have enough time toreally assess both situations
(08:00):
during that time frame.
So, honestly, I say 12 monthsand I know some people are going
to argue that's too long.
Again, that's just my opinion,okay, but you do what you want
to do.
The other thing you want toconsider is parental involvement
.
How involved are you in yourchild's activities, especially
(08:20):
if they're school-aged children?
I hear you saying well, I work.
When they go to school, I go towork and that's fair.
We have the means now that youcan contact the teacher, email
the teacher outside of parentteacher conferences, ask how
little Joey is doing or howlittle Mary Bella is doing, and
(08:42):
you don't have to wait.
And if you're not that involvedin your child's activities or
what's going on at school, thenthat's something you say.
You know what I need to dobetter and if it's again once a
month, is there anything I needto know?
That you text or email theteacher more likely email Is
(09:06):
there anything I need to know?
Because a lot of times they'reso consumed and they have the
larger classes they can't getdown to contacting all the
parents.
So sometimes you have to takethe initiative as it relates to
parental involvement.
You're taking the initiative.
You're going to the teacher andasking is there anything I need
(09:27):
to know?
Because it's going to make adifference long term.
Something else you should assessis your mental and physical
status, especially if you're anew mom.
There's that postpartumdepression that you may
experience.
And how are you doing mentally?
Are you still feeling like I'mthe child versus the mom?
(09:50):
Are you adopting or those adultresponsibilities, or are you
still relying on your mom to doeverything?
And a lot of moms or grandmomsout there is taking ownership of
that.
But what are you doing, singlemom, to better yourself mentally
?
And there are a lot of books,audio books out there, various
(10:17):
channels that you can go andlearn more about parenting and
how to be more involved in yourchild's life, how to change that
mental status of I'm a parent.
Now some things I shouldn't doand some things I shouldn't do
in front of my kids.
(10:38):
You know it's okay to go outand enjoy yourself.
Are you coming home sloppydrunk?
Are you cussing out loud?
How's your behavior in front ofyour child or your children?
So now you got to do a mentalassessment.
And then physically, kids havea lot of energy, so are you just
(10:58):
sitting down and watching orare you physically active with
them?
Are y'all exercising together?
That's something to think about, you know.
The other thing you want toconsider as far as evaluation
and assessing is if you areemployed, does that job still
make sense for you to be there?
(11:19):
How are the benefits?
How are?
How's the pay?
Think about that.
And it's okay to move on,especially if you're moving on
to move up.
Many employers have tuitionreimbursement, and if you're at
a current employer that does notoffer that but you're able to
go somewhere like Walmart wherethey do offer tuition
(11:42):
reimbursement, you might want toposition yourself to pivot over
to somewhere like Walmart.
Ultimately, you want to gainadditional knowledge so that you
can move on just from a job toa career.
Additional knowledge is notgoing to hurt you.
And then you also need toassess what gifts you have,
(12:03):
because everybody has a gift.
They're gifted at doingsomething and a lot of times we
get jobs until we can figure outhow to effectively utilize our
gifts.
For example, a hairdresser.
There are some hairstylists outthere that are just natural,
(12:25):
have never gone to beauty schoolbut can just do a hairstyle.
That is like wow, you did thatand you haven't been to school.
But until they get that licenseand so forth, they got to get a
regular job.
You have to uncover what yourgift is and again, that six to
(12:45):
twelve months assessment ofwhere you are financially and as
it relates to employment.
This is your opportunity.
And then goals.
Have you set any goals foryourself, any at all?
For example, if you're at homewith your parents, are you
(13:06):
planning on moving out later onin life, sooner than later?
That's a goal and it doesn'thave to be extremely large as
far as your goal, because youstill want to set a goal that's
attainable.
Maybe your goal is if you areat home, I want to get a car.
Well, you have to start puttingmoney aside to get that car,
(13:29):
and then there's insuranceinvolved.
So you have to start doing thisresearch and you can say I want
a car in a year.
Well, if that's the case, thenyou need to know how much money
you're going to need to putaside for not only the car but
for the insurance and themaintenance and gas, all those
things that come with it.
That's a goal, right, and youcan do this.
(13:53):
But you have to assess andevaluate where you are in life.
If your child is still young,you're trying to work and you
have a babysitter that's closeby and things are working out,
and you're doing publictransportation and you have a
little bit of change left overto do something extra for you or
(14:15):
the child.
There may be.
A car right now is not theoption you want to pursue.
You keep it on the radar, butyou definitely want to make your
goals attainable and what makessense.
Long story short, ladies, I knowtoo late, too late.
You have to take the time toevaluate and assess your own
(14:41):
parenting skills, what it lookslike, where you are today, where
you wanna be, and then how youwanna get there.
And again, it doesn't have tobe anything significant.
You can take baby steps andthen you go back and you look at
what happened over the last sixmonths, what went well, what
(15:04):
didn't go well.
That's how you determine yournext steps, because if there's a
lot of things that went well,then you wanna continue down
that path and tweak those.
But if a lot of things didn'tgo well, you wanna take time to
reconsider changing some thingsand I mean a whole 360, just
(15:25):
getting rid of some stuff,having some stuff exit your life
, having some people exit yourlife, and so that you can get
refocused, achieve your goal.
I hope you found this episodehelpful.
If you did tell another singlemom, it's all about us embracing
(15:47):
and encouraging one another.
You don't say you know what.
I'm a parent now and I don'tknow what to do next.
I don't see a future.
I don't see anything positiveas a parent, and there's many
young ladies out there that'ssaying this.
But the reality is there's alot of positive to this and I'm
(16:12):
just gonna throw this in andthen I will be done.
I was coming home from churchtoday and I saw the picketers
out about abortion.
And again, ladies, I applaudyou because the option was there
for you to have an abortion andyou chose not to.
You made the right decision.
(16:32):
And again, it's not about howyou arrived at the title, but
what you do with it.
This is your opportunity toshine, to be the best parent
that you can be.
All right, ladies, I hope youhave a delightful day, a
wonderful week and a marvelousmonth.
(16:56):
Tell another single mom hey, golisten to Single Moms United
podcast on Apple, iheart orwherever you get your podcast.
Encourage someone this week,take care.
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