Soli Deo Gloria!

Five Ways To Be A Good Mom

// June 15th, 2009 // Parenting, The Boy

Peo­ple always tell me that I’m a good mom. I never really thought about whether I’m a good mom or not; I just know that I try to be. A friend sug­gested that I write about how to be a good, sin­gle mom rais­ing a good man in the cul­ture that we live in now. (Thanks, Stacey!) I def­i­nitely have ideas on how to do that, and since I’ve been doing it for over nine years now, with some good results, here we go. I’m going to list them here, and in future posts, deal with each item. This is by no means a com­plete list, nor do I con­sider myself an expert on the sub­ject. If you agree/disagree, reg­is­ter and com­ment. If you have some­thing to add, reg­is­ter and com­ment. If you just wanna co-sign, reg­is­ter and com­ment!

1. Get to know your child! When I was preg­nant, I dreamed that I’d have an adorable, fat-cheeked, laid-back and agree­able (like me!), son. How­ever, my son proved, from the womb, that it was def­i­nitely a dream. He was adorable and had the fat­test cheeks ever.…but laid-back? agree­able? NO SIR! How­ever, one of the best things about being Julian’s mom has been get­ting to know who Julian is…even if I get extremely frus­trated at times!
2. Have a goal in mind for your child. For the first half of my preg­nancy, I thought I was hav­ing a girl. While I am not the most girly girl on earth, I looked for­ward to play­ing with dolls, buy­ing cute clothes and other girly things with my child. How­ever, my boy showed proof of his man­hood in my 6^th month of preg­nancy when he couldn’t evade the ultra­sound any­more. At that moment, I made a vow: My son would NOT be like the males I’ve encoun­tered in my life. My goal is to raise him to be a God-fearing, God-HONORING, MAN. Par­ent­ing Julian is cen­tered around that goal, and I keep it in mind in every­thing I do con­cern­ing him.
3. Intro­duce your child to Jesus as EARLY as pos­si­ble. Julian is very used to going to church. That’s a good thing. But going to church, in and of itself, doesn’t make much of a dif­fer­ence unless one knows Jesus Christ. I began a con­cen­trated effort to talk to Julian about our faith when he was six years old. And it was at that time, dur­ing a dis­cus­sion about the Ten Com­mand­ments, that God showed my child his sin. As I explained what the com­mand­ments meant, it was like a light went on, and Julian said that he was sorry for break­ing God’s Law and he won­dered what his pun­ish­ment would be.….and he repented and believed Jesus Christ for his sal­va­tion when he was six years old. I’m con­vinced that I’d be deal­ing with a very dif­fer­ent lit­tle boy if that had not hap­pened.
4. Take advan­tage of ANY sup­port you get. I may be sin­gle, but I don’t do this alone. I have a great sup­port sys­tem of fam­ily and friends that help me with this par­ent­ing thing. Sup­port is not just finan­cial either. My brother pro­vides a great male role model for Julian and spends time with him often. My friends babysit for me on the rare occa­sion that I go some­where with­out him. My mom and dad do too much to even talk about. I couldn’t be the mom I am with­out my fam­ily and friends.
5. Last, but not least, PUT YOUR CHILD FIRST IN YOUR LIFE. I am all Julian has. He needs to feel secure that he is my pri­or­ity, and I make sure that he does. Too often, sin­gle moth­ers want to pur­sue their own inter­ests at the expense of their chil­dren. How­ever, if you’re going to raise healthy kids, that should never be done. Once I got preg­nant, my life was not my own any­more. It’s all about the boy. That’s not to say that I don’t have inter­ests, because I do. But my son comes FIRST. He knows he’s safe and secure with his mom. He knows mom will always take care of him, sup­port him, and defend him. So he’s a kid with NO wor­ries. Happy and care­free. As he should be.

© 2009, Soli Deo Glo­ria!. All rights reserved.

Five Ways To Be A Good Mom