A call out to single, working parents
Posted on July 1st, 2008 in General
I am not exactly single. In fact, I am nowhere near that. No no, I am very married. But my wife, unfortunately, has been hit with a rather debilitating illness that renders her pretty much incapable of performing tasks that she used to perform regularly in the course of day.
What that means is that my workload has increased dramatically over the last few months. No longer can my wife spend time during the day doing laundry, washing dishes, teaching the kids, running errands, planning for and preparing meals, managing the finances and scheduling the calendar of events that is always exceedingly large in our house. And with these things being not done the onus falls on me to get them done.
Except I am not really in a position to take all of these things on in a given day. The reason is that in addition to taking care of all of the things that a stay at home parent (SAHP) would normally do I still have to work my regular day job (roughly 7:00 AM to 6:00 PM) in addition to client work I do on the side (which I usually work between 9:00 PM and 11:00 PM weekdays). Where in all of this do I get to take care of my home? Weekends? Not exactly, since I have to schedule client work for Saturdays as well. Sundays maybe, but only after about 1:00 PM since we usually go to church until then (unless my kids have a wicked strain of undying headlice).
All this leads me to one enormous question: how the bloody gripes do single working parents actually go about parenting their children while still managing the responsibilities of the home? I am finding this to be quite difficult and extremely frustrating as I watch my house get thrashed daily, my dishes get used but not washed daily, the laundry pile up daily and my kids go unparented daily. What is a parent supposed to do?
I am seriously feeling wholly inadequate to be a father right now. I feel like I am letting my kids down so bad. They hardly get to do anything. They never really get to go anywhere. They are almost as imprisoned in our home as I am. I feel guilty and I feel as though they deserve so much more than what I am giving them. All the while I am feeling less and less adequate as a provider as I watch my finances spiral out of control and continue to avoid certain telephone calls from certain 1-800 numbers that I am certain I don’t know. 
If you are a single parent would you mind sharing some of your tips with me? I am fairly certain I am going to be into this situation for a while and would love to hear how some of the pros do it. I am at a loss to be perfectly honest. This is the hardest thing I have ever done in my life and everyday it gets harder. So any words of wisdom are much coveted and appreciated.
And if you can’t spare that, could you spare some babysitting time? 
July 3rd, 2008 at 1:33 am
I have no idea what it must be like to be responsible for chidren day-in and day-out, so I can’t give you any sensible advice there, but if Skype do a “Babysitter” plugin, I would be more than happy to help
July 3rd, 2008 at 10:49 am
Thanks dude. I especially like your Skype babysitter plugin. That would be so awesome!
July 7th, 2008 at 5:50 pm
Do your kids help out around the house at all? No, kids should NOT be chore horses. But I do believe that kids helping out around the house is a good thing, it teaches them responsibility, and will help keep things clean. If they mess it up, they should clean it, right?
My Grandma was the best at this. She had these huge rubbermaid containers, that we separated our toys into. We had one for dress up, one for legos, etc. We could have one container at a time down and open, and when we wanted a different one, we had to put all the stuff back into the one we were using and then we could swap it out. Not only did it keep the house much cleaner, it was easier to PLAY! All our toys were were we needed them. They didn’t get broken and we didn’t ever trip on them and stuff. Also, we had SO MANY TOYS, it was kinda overwhelming. With the 4 0f us kids there (Me, brother, and 2 cousins) it made us play together with whatever was down. We loved it. At the end of the night, we all had a small treat (like a cookie) after we had cleaned up the last of our toys and put them up. it took literally minutes to do this.
Also, when we had a day we were supposed to go “do stuff”, all us kids pitched in and helped. We each had some small chore to do, and we all worked together to do our 45 minutes or so of chores, and then we headed out for FUN. I am sure that nothing was sparkling clean, but Grandma never cared, and when we were done we got to play. She would set a timer and when it dinged.. we were DONE!! Drop everything, and let’s go! Not even a “let’s just finish this”. We were done. That was always so cool. Some of the chores we did were vacuum, make sure all the clothes are in drawers or in the dirty clothes, and if we had a full load start the washer (or fold the ones that were waiting to go back into drawers), sweep the kitchen, put dishes away, wipe down the kitchen table and sweep under it, take out the trash.. all small things, but with 4 kids and a grandma, it was 5 hours of work, al done in 45 minutes. And we had music on when we did it, and we sang and hurried so we could go do what we wanted to do.
I still do that with my family sometimes, when there is too much to do, I ask everyone to just clean for 30 minutes, and we all turn on music and hustle for 30 minutes, then we go get yogurt. Then I don’t feel like I am the maid, I teach the kids about pitching in to make a family work, and I get yogurt at the end, too.
I hope this helps.
Hugs!