Single Motherhood

* Juggling Between Multiple Roles – As a single mother, you have to fill in the shoes of both the parents and juggle between different roles. With multiple responsibilities, there is less time for each and it becomes a precious commodity. Most single mothers have a lingering sense of guilt for not being there for their child.

* No financial support – Most single mothers are financially dependent on their spouses before the current status and don’t have experience or qualifications to stand on their own. The parents and in-laws may not be willing or able to support you in dire circumstances. You have to stand up to the challenge to get yourself and your kids out of financial distress.

* Less time for children – You are now the sole provider for the family as well the only mentor or guide for your children. The luxury of dividing responsibilities has been taken away forever. The one thing you are going to have the least on your plate is time, especially with children. As you will devote the same time to them, you can’t be with them.

* Social Pressures – Many single mothers have been subjected to different social pressures like getting remarried, compromising in certain situations, submitting to wrongful demands of in-laws or siblings in order to get their emotional support and even indecent approaches and proposals from other men.

Being a single mother is, in fact, one of the most challenging jobs one could ever ask for. Most single mothers have the natural ability to cope with these challenges, with a bright smile, and emerge as supermoms.

Parental counselling can help you not only understand the emotional needs of the child, but it also enables you to understand your needs and limitations and healthily address them all.

Being a mother herself, Life Coach Ritu Singal often tells her own experience with her daughter. She says, “When my daughter was young, she used to complain about a lot of things like she doesn’t like her school bus driver, her teacher is not good, etc.”

“As most parents would do, I also used to tell her that things don’t work this way in real life. She has to ‘learn to manage’ things, and she can’t be finding fault with everyone.”

She continues, “After a little while I started getting this kind of response from my daughter – ‘You mean I am at fault?’ or ‘Mom, don’t you trust me?’”

This is when she feels like her daughter is going away from her.

One day, after the parent-teacher meeting, when she saw her waiting, all scared and anxious that now “Mumma is going to scold me,” she knew that this is not the time for scolding or punishments as that changes nothing.

She understood that the responsibility of making her daughter a nice person is her responsibility. The importance of parents’ counselling and guidance was evident to her.

Therefore, instead of rebuke, she said to her daughter, “Your teacher likes you, and she said that you are one of her brilliant students, and if you are a little more careful, you can do wonders.”

This positive feedback made her daughter more receptive and responsive and made her understand what was expected from her.

Ritu’s daughter soon started taking care of her things and became way more organized and alert. Today she is working as a successful senior executive in an MNC.

This personal story has one lesson: making a child emotionally healthy and stable is the parents’ responsibility.

Emotionally disturbed children are more vulnerable to emotional, physical, or even sexual abuse by others.

They exhibit more aggression or go into complete seclusion, sometimes without any apparent reasons. They may shout even when not provoked or be awkwardly quiet even when it is provoking.

This behaviour is challenging for the parents and anyone around them, and people start labelling the child as “unruly,” “dumb,” or “psycho.”

With parent-child relationship counselling, it is possible to gain the lost trust, confidence, and mend broken relationships.