Are you in position to equip, embrace, and encourage your children? Single moms, this is your invitation to explore the power of the three E's of parenting. Experience a journey of growth and transformation as I share practical ways to teach our children necessary life skills, such as manners, chores, and cooking, preparing them for the world outside our homes. Remember, there's no cookie-cutter approach to parenting – every family has its uniqueness, and it's all about finding what works for you.
Are you in position to equip, embrace, and encourage your children? Single moms, this is your invitation to explore the power of the three E's of parenting. Experience a journey of growth and transformation as I share practical ways to teach our children necessary life skills, such as manners, chores, and cooking, preparing them for the world outside our homes. Remember, there's no cookie-cutter approach to parenting – every family has its uniqueness, and it's all about finding what works for you.
It's not how you arrived at the title, but what you do with it.
Speaker 1:
Hey ladies, welcome to the Single Moms United podcast. Thank you so much for joining today. If this is your first time listening, welcome. I hope you find value in some encouragement and motivation with helping with your parenting skills and if you are a repeat listener then I assume that something's. I'm saying you're finding some encouragement and motivation and I wanna publicly say thank you for being a return listener. You really don't know what that means to me. I'm gonna get right down to it of what we're gonna talk about today.
Speaker 1:
In the past, these last few months, I've been taking the letter E and extracting word choices I think would be applicable with your parenting skills. So today I'm gonna combine three and I hope you will formalize a plan these three words and how they relate to each other, because they're very important. As I mentioned before, this is not a one size fits all. Just because I'm outlining three particular word choices. You may say I can add one or two more to this, and that's perfectly fine. You can make it however you want it to be. Everybody's situation is different. So I'm just trying to lay the foundation on just three key word choices that I think that every single mom or every parent should have and do as they're raising their children, and that's what we wanna do. This is the next generation that you're raising. I've already raised my kids, so You're raising the next generation and you have a lot to take into consideration as you're raising your children because of their impact that they're gonna have in this world.
Speaker 1:
And the family dynamics have changed from when I was growing up. For the most part I would say 80% of the households 40 plus years ago had a mother and a father. Now and I'm just throwing these numbers out there it seems like it's reversed. It seems like it's 80% single parent households, 20% married households. But that's just me and I'm just throwing these numbers out there, so don't come and say well, where did you get that? That's just my own perspective, right, just based on what I'm seeing and really the culture and the environment we're currently living in, it is clear what some of the behaviors we're seeing with our children. A man is not in the house. That's just, again, my opinion.
Speaker 1:
But anyway, let me move on. Let me move on because I'm getting off the exit and I gotta stay on the highway. Gotta stay on the highway I'm gonna talk about today equip, embrace and encourage the three E's. How about that, the three E's? When we talk about equip, that's another name for teaching.
Speaker 1:
As a parent, we all should be teaching our children fundamental things to be successful once they move out of your house and even while they in your house. Right, because eventually you're gonna get older, ask me how I know, ask me how I know, and so your kids are gonna have to take up some of that slack on when you start to fall off because of aging. Start now, mom, with teaching your children or equipping them with basic manners. Thank you, please. You're welcome. I'm sorry, excuse me. Those are basic manners that your children shouldn't know as they're interacting with people, and especially the elders or folks older to them. I was always told and taught to give utmost respect to my elders. You should also equip your children how to do chores, giving them chores. So if your child is five and above and again that's just my benchmark whatever you feel is comfortable with that child, give them some chores. If it's nothing but taking out the trash, wiping down the counters, vacuuming, all of these things your child can start doing at the age of five, because they need to know once they leave your household how to do basic things. And then, because they are in a single parent household, this is your support structure. Because if you are like me, you are out working all day and then having to come home try to put something together as far as to eat. There's still other things you need to do in the house. Once you start leveraging a dispersing responsibilities, that's going to ease the stress on you. Single mom yeah, bet you didn't think about that. And then too. And then if you say, well, nobody ever taught me, that's okay, because we're gonna burn that bridge, we're not gonna continue with generational curses and that's what that is. If no one ever taught you, that's okay, but you don't have to push that on to your child or your children. You can learn this stuff and thank God for you two.
Speaker 1:
This is an opportunity to go in and say well, how to properly clean the home. Because I remember my aunt telling me honey, lift up stuff, move stuff around. Because I was just going around and I'm just saying she would say go, wipe this down. And I would wipe it down, but I wasn't moving anything. Well, in her eyesight that wasn't proper cleaning and then most people's eyesight that's not proper cleaning.
Speaker 1:
This is your opportunity to educate, equip your children on how to do some of these basic things and that's gonna, number one, help you as far as managing the household and then also equip them so when it is time for them to leave, they're gonna know some of these things. And it's not just gender related. Your sons shouldn't know how to do this as well. Equip your children with manners, chores. You can also equip them with how to cook and of course they have to be a little older, right? But if it's nothing but teaching them how to boil water for spaghetti, right, I heard pasta is the easiest thing to cook. But you can also teach them how to cook eggs. Start very basic, and then let them experiment if they want to, right, as long as you have a little extra left right. Encourage them to experiment with those eggs. Put a little cheese in them, put a little milk in them. A little milk makes them fluffy. So those are things that you can do and encourage your child as you're equipping and teaching them how to navigate of what life is really like.
Speaker 1:
Truth be told that you have to cook. You're not gonna want to eat out all the time. Every now and then is okay, but after a while it's like I don't want any more of that restaurant. I want to fix it how I want to fix it as fresh, as hot. The seasoning is just right. You are responsible for this. We can't put this on the schools or the churches or any other entity out there of our responsibility of teaching our children, not theirs, alright.
Speaker 1:
And then finally, as far as equipping and teaching our children how to manage money, if you can, if you want to start giving them a little bit of an allowance each week and it doesn't have to be a lot, teaching them how to manage money is critical. And again, I hear you Nobody taught me. I know Nobody taught me either, and that was part of one of my bigger issues in my parenting role was managing money. I was horrible. Nobody told me about a budget and how to manage a budget. Never knew that.
Speaker 1:
I'm not blaming anybody because again, it could be a generational curse that it was just handed down. Nobody taught folks prior to me and so forth and so on. So I'm not blaming anybody, but it's up to us to break that generational curse. The good news is you can go out and Google budgets. You can do that and I swear you all have it so much better than when I did. When I was raising my kids 30 plus years ago, all of this wasn't available, couldn't Google, nothing. If it's a generational curse, then I couldn't ask about it. So I'm I'm feeling around in a dark trying to manage my household, and I did a horrible job at it.
Speaker 1:
My kids saw this and I'm so thankful they didn't adopt some of that bad behavior they saw and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. Please make sure you're teaching and equipping your children with some of these basic things for them to be successful in life. And remember, when we're talking about equipping and teaching, it's not just verbal. They are also learning behaviors based on what they see I just talked about that right, based on what they see, they're developing these, these bad behaviors that we don't even realize that they're paying attention to.
Speaker 1:
Try not to do bad things in front of your children. Key word is try, because I know there's going to be those days. They're going to be harder than others. Most of the time, believe it or not, it's the visual learning that they absorb the most, because you can talk until you're blue in the face. You can try to teach them how to do this, that and the other, and some of them will catch on. Some of them will be rebellious and say, okay, I can't do this. I don't know how to turn on a sweeper. Yeah, okay, once they start seeing what you're doing, that really is one of the best methods of teaching and equipping your children. It's really what's going to stay with them. Is what they see you doing.
Speaker 1:
Like I talked about teaching them how to cook, cook together. You crack the egg and let them put the egg in the pan, or let them stir it or whisk it or whatever it is. But now they're seeing this. They're seeing this. Or you try it one time and then let them do it the next day on their own, or you do it together. That's how you teach. So when you're not feeling the greatest one day and you just tired but you know folks got to eat, listen you can tap Susie or Johnny on the shoulder. Listen, mama, she ain't feeling it today Go down there and put a couple eggs in the pan. And now you have your backup plan in place and I ain't even think of that as it relates to managing your household. So not only are you equipping your child for the future. They are that resource for when you just don't have it, for that day when you're exhausted and there are going to be days like that You're going to not feel well. That doesn't stop things from happening All right. So our next E word we talked about equipping or training. Now we're talking about embracing. Another word for embrace is hug.
Speaker 1:
One of the things that my kids shared with me and I agree with them, I absolutely agree with them. I didn't do enough hugging. There wasn't a lot of affection going on in my household. Number one is because I was too busy hustling Got to make sure the kids eat, got to make sure we got a roof over our head. Got to make sure they got clothes. Got to make sure I got gas in my car. Got to make sure I got to pay my car note. So when you all focus on providing or I should say, when I'm focusing on providing affection got lost. You know, my kids tell, or have told me. You know, mom, you just didn't do a lot of hugging, and that's fair. Ladies, do better than me with your children.
Speaker 1:
I would recommend you hug your child three times a day Morning, noon and night and I hear you oh, my gosh, that seems like a lot. But if you know the benefits that come from hugging, yeah, you break down and do it. I also hear you saying well, you know they're at school at noon or I'm at work at noon, how do I hug them at noon? Okay, you don't have to literally follow this, but you should try to get in as many hugs as you can in a day and if you miss one of them, then just make the hug that you do have with your child. Let it last a little longer. You may do a brief hug for about a few seconds. Well, turn those seconds into minutes. Okay, just hold them right.
Speaker 1:
And guess what? This is not only benefiting your child, but it's benefiting you, mom, and I wish I would have known this when I was raising my kids, because of all the stress and feeling overwhelmed. All of that could have been eased up by just having that hug, and it's a reassurance. That's what a hug is. It's a reassurance it's gonna be okay, and we all need that, and especially this day and age. So while you're giving your hug to your child and your child is hugging you, you're reassuring each other. Think about that. And when you're reassuring each other, it promotes self-esteem. And guess what? Just anybody can't come along and break up that self-esteem that you just built, because now there's that trust between you and your child. That's what that hug does, even if you're not with the child's father any longer for whatever reason, and you're thinking you gotta go over to next Joe, thinking you gotta get that hug or that comfort or fill that void, when in actuality your child is right there to reassure you.
Speaker 1:
Mom, you can do this, and they don't have to say it verbally, it's in the hug, it's in the hug. They won't have to go outside and be easily persuaded about from other people because mom gave me a hug, mom gave me two hugs today, mom gave me an extended hug, right? So even if you can't get in multiple hugs during the day, at least get in one good extended hug. That is what is going to make you happier. Any fear that you may be feeling is going to reassure you. It's going to be okay. That's what the hug does.
Speaker 1:
Finally, encouragement. Now, encouragement comes in two forms. One, you can verbally express encouragement. Hey, you can do this, you got this, you're all that in the bag of chips, right? That's that verbal communication, that's that reinforcement that you can do this. You can pass this test, as you're maybe sharing with your child, who may say you know what, I'm not sure. This particular subject is hard, I'm not sure about this test, but that verbal reassurance can help. It can help especially when it comes from you, mom, because if that came from anybody else it's like okay, whatever. But when you do that verbal reassurance or it comes from you, that's going to take your child's self-esteem to another level. There's also the physical encouragement which we just talked about, the hug. Again, these are just some examples. You may think of more, and I encourage you to think of more.
Speaker 1:
You're trying to get your child to another level and make sure that these outside forces social media and other things don't cloud their judgment. And how do we do that? We have to encourage, we have to embrace and we have to equip them. So it's the three E's you have to do and incorporate with your parenting. It doesn't matter what happened yesterday, yesterday's gone. We have to share with our kids that these are seasons that are going to happen.
Speaker 1:
But guess what, anything that you go through, especially negative things and even for you, single mom, they're temporary Bad things are going to happen. You just learn to embrace it. Get ready for it, get ready for that extended hug. Encourage yourself right, because we need it to get motivated, our parenting skills, and not get discouraged. You can do it. Say you know what. I'm going to do something for me and my kids. I'm going to start learning so I can teach them. I'm going to start learning I'm more marketable, that I increase my skill set so I can build my own self-esteem. We just needed to uncover and who we are. And once we uncover who we are, there is no limit what you can do and what you can achieve. And once you adopt that mindset remember I talked about generational curses, where there's also generational blessings. Let me wrap it up. I hope that you found value in today's episode.
Speaker 1:
The three E's Equip, embrace and encourage. If you incorporate the three E's into your parenting skills, you'll start to see some positive changes without even having to ask If your child has behavioral issues. Once you start incorporating the hugs or extended hugs, you're going to start to see a change for the positive. Young moms are saying I can't control my son or my daughter. I would ask when's the last time you gave them a hug? Yeah, all right, so next week I hope you come back I'm going to be talking about empowerment. Empowerment is just having that strength and confidence to make a decision. And, single mom, you're going to have a lot of decisions to make. Yes, some of them aren't always going to be the best Ask me how I know but you should learn from them, right. So join me back next week to hear about empowerment. Tell another single mom hey, thanks for joining. I appreciate you. Take care.