If you are a single parent, you may need to know something: you have the hardest job in the world. You have to meet all the needs of your teen, over many years, without the help of a spouse. Some of my closest friends are single parents, and my heart breaks with theirs when they encounter the rough years of parenting. Single parenting can sometimes be brutal and overwhelming.
At the same time, many of these friends have also found the balance and resources they need, and they are experiencing success as parents. Their teens are doing well and are maturing at the right rate. So there is hope for you and your teen as well.
How to Tackle the Tough Issues
Let’s take a look at the primary struggles you face as the single parent of a teen and explore what you can do to meet those challenges.
Not enough of you. Single parents have to do the work of two parents, yet they have more limited resources than two-parent families, both in quantity and in ability.
This limitation becomes more of a challenge when your kids are teenagers. They push against your authority and limits and assert their freedom in a million ways. Parents who have a spouse can hand off their teen to the other parent when they are feeling worn out. My wife and I do this all the time. But you can’t do this as a single parent. If your teen doesn’t let up on you, you don’t get a chance to rest and regroup. This can be exhausting, and it’s easy to feel you don’t have any strength left inside to resist your kid’s resistance.
What can you do? The answer isn’t trying harder, or using your will power. Instead, realize that you don’t have what you don’t have. You will need to get from the outside what you don’t possess on the inside. You need to do this for your kid, and for yourself as well.
You may need to take a break from the fracas and say, “I’m getting worn out with this, but I want to finish it. I’ll get back to you.” Call a safe and sane friend and get your emotional tank filled, and then enter the ring again and resolve the issue.
It’s tempting for single parents to think, I am so tired. I just don’t have it in me to spend a lot of time talking with my kid. Besides, he’s almost an adult anyway, so he probably doesn’t even need a lot of me. While your teen is almost an adult, he still needs bonding time with you in order for him to feel safe and loved and to help him sort out the vagaries of teen life. So get some strength from others, so that you can stay attached to your teen.
Keep in mind that you may need to ask another adult, such as a mature friend, youth pastor, or counselor, to intervene. Your teen may be able to hear things from this other person that he refuses to hear from you. Regardless, get connected.
Not only do single parents have limited quantities of emotional resources, they also have limited abilities as parents. No one parent has all the abilities to parent perfectly. No one parent can provide all of the parental “nutrients” an adolescent needs: grace, empathy, validation, structure, limits, and discipline.
So surround your teen with people who have what you don’t possess. If you are a beginner in rules and consequences, make sure your adolescent spends time around an adult who is down the road further than you in this area. If you are having difficulty connecting with your teen, expose him to people who are gifted at opening him up.
Rescuing your teen from failure. I recently asked a single mom who is a good friend of mine, “What do you think is the biggest mistake single parents make?”
Without hesitating, she said, “Not allowing their teens to fail.”
My friend was talking about rescuing teens from experiencing their consequences. Parents who rescue their adolescents often do so out of guilt. They already feel bad about their kid’s situation, and often feel partially responsible that their child doesn’t have two parents in the home.
As a result, single parents often indulge their teen and don’t enforce the consequences that should come with attitude and behavior violations. They think, My teen already has a strike against her. I’ll make it up to her a little by being easy on her. However, this “solution” doesn’t solve the problem; it merely creates a second problem. Not only does the teen have to struggle with a broken home, it’s likely she will never develop any self-control. Kids from a single-parent family need limits just as much as any kid does.
So surround yourself with guilt-busters — that is, friends who will support you when your emotions tell you you’re being too mean. Cry on their shoulder, allow them to give you a reality check, and let them encourage you to love your teen and still hold the line.
I have a single-parent friend who always felt guilty whenever she grounded or took privileges away from her teens. But her kids have grown up, and they have come back to her and said, “Thanks for being strict, Mom. That’s why I can keep my own marriage and job together.”
Making your teen the parent. Single parenting is a lonely experience. You likely have some warm memories of what it was like to be part of a couple. The emptiness can be profound, because what you once had is no more.
Some single parents begin looking to their teen to meet their emotional needs. This is called parentifying, because the child has become the parent. The adolescent becomes a confidant, a sounding board, a listener, a problem solver, and someone to talk to on a Friday night. Because teens look and act like grown-ups, parents can easily fall into depending on them. This may feel good to the parent, and connection is a good thing, but your teen needs room in his head for his own development and tasks. When your kid’s mind is full of your life, he is too concerned with supporting you to be able to experience and deal with his own struggles and challenges.
So gently retire your teen from that job, and find loving, solid grown-ups to support you. When parents say, “My kid is my best friend,” it is more of a warning than a celebration.
Exposing a teen to your dates too soon. Sometimes parents will prematurely get their teen connected to someone they are dating. Most of the time, this is due to a desire for unity and oneness. The parents have a world that involves their date and another world that involves their children, and they want to bring those two worlds together.
There is nothing wrong with that desire. After all, God designed us for connection. However, restrain yourself for the sake of your teen. She will meet the person you are dating and get attached, as you are. Then she will begin to transfer her needs for her other parent onto your date, which is perfectly normal. Your teen also wants a unified home. But if you break up with the person, your teen’s life shatters a second time. If you have multiple relationships and multiple breakups, it can harm her deeply.
While you don’t need to hide the reality that you are dating (as if you could anyway), it is best not to get your teen involved with that person until it looks like the two of you are likely to get married. Just keep putting yourself in your teen’s shoes, and restrain your desire for a unified family. You and your teen are creating a new, unified family, which is fine.
Parenting differences with your ex. Many divorced parents differ in their parenting values, but as I pointed out earlier, it is best if they can defer to each other’s strengths.
But often a parent will notice that the child has a bad attitude or misbehaves after she has spent some time with the other parent. You can attribute some of that to the teen trying to adjust and transition between two worlds, and she needs your support and patience on that. But it may also be that your ex is not providing enough structure and consistent limits.
If this is your situation, do all you can to get your ex to agree to put your kid first and to come to an agreement on parenting values and styles. If your teen’s well-being is in jeopardy, you may even have to go the legal route for his protection.
If you see some negative effects when your teen spends time with your ex, but they aren’t serious enough for you to take legal action, then be the best parent you can be. Be balanced and integrated with love and boundaries. If your ex is a Disneyland parent, don’t be the hardnose, hoping to compensate. Your teen needs to be around someone whom she can take inside of herself, who is a picture of maturity, grace, and truth. Don’t try to get even with your ex. Get healthy.
Ask for Help
Finally, don’t try to be strong and go it alone. Ask for help from your teen’s school, your church, and your friends. Single parents need more help, and they should get more.
God has a special place for you and your teen. King David wrote about how much God wants to provide for kids who don’t have both parents around: “A father to the fatherless, a defender of widows, is God in his holy dwelling.”14 Ask God for help, and he will give it to you.