The Single Mom Podcast - Single Parent Advice, Support & a Little Bit of Humor

Accountability. Seems a simple word really; but in practice it can be difficult at times and sometimes even harder to teach. In my life and in my family it is something that is so very important though. Being accountable for the things we do, the things we say, and how we feel are things that I try to teach my children because they are so very important. In today’s society I feel that many people have stopped teaching this concept to their children. That they need to be accountable for themselves, in their actions, in their words and all throughout their lives. The world will definitely hold them accountable so why wouldn’t we teach them to hold themselves accountable?

So I recently decided that I wanted to do a Q&A segment where I would answer some of the questions that my readers and podcast listeners have asked. To get started though I asked my 8 year old daughter if SHE would like to be the first guest.

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You hear all the time about things like fat shaming and body shaming and all those horrible instances of one person making another person feel bad about themselves. Recently a woman named Nicole Arbour gained a great deal of infamy due to her “Fat Shaming” video where she basically insulted overweight people everywhere. Now I understand that she felt that it was a bit of satire, which I almost always enjoy, however it was done in very poor taste and while MAYBE her intentions were to give some ‘tough love’ to people who struggle with their weight it ended up simply pissing a lot of people off. (I will not be posting a link to the video because it is really quite offensive – but I’m sure you can find it if you really want to search for it.) But this brought up a topic that I have found to be a huge problem in the parenting community. Parent Shaming And by parent shaming, I am talking about those individuals – be they parents or not – whom feel that they need to make another person feel bad about their style of parenting, or the choices that they are making as a parent. I’m talking about the lady in line at the supermarket who takes a look at your toddler sitting in the buggy and tells you that you really should buy one of those buggy covers so your child doesn’t get any weird germs on them. Or the person who a few years back took one look at my son having a meltdown in the middle of Target and told me that I should really learn to discipline my child. Not knowing that my son had a traumatic brain injury and was having this melt down because the seams of his socks were bothering him and he couldn’t take his shoes off until we got to the car or that the Halloween costumes scare the living daylights out of him and so he freaked out because he went into sensory overload and couldn’t handle it. (Yes we had multiple incidents of people telling me how horribly my son was behaving in the store). Now it used to be that these incidents of parent shaming were simply a local thing, something you only had to deal with in your local store, or home, or school or playground, but with today’s social media platforms you now can be shamed by the entire WORLD for your parenting choices! Isn’t that just freakin’ fabulous! Recently this became more national news due to celebrities like David Beckham, who was criticized becuase his 4 year old had a pacifier in her mouth. Many went after him stating that it was wrong, and he shut them down rather brilliantly. My son had sensory issues and needed a pacifier to sleep until he was almost 5, because it calmed him and helped him feel secure. Is he unbalanced now because of it? NO. Does he have dental issues? A little but nothing that braces won’t fix. Did having a ‘binkie’ to help comfort him enough so that he could sleep when nothing else would work cause him irreversible damage? NO! – and to be honest it saved us all many sleepless nights and my sanity thank you very much! Then just a few short months later Alyssa Milano took on fire for a throw back picture that she posted for her daughter’s birthday. It was a beautiful picture of her nursing her baby in the hospital after she was born – I have one JUST LIKE IT. I am certain that most mothers do. However,

Don’t give up! Never give up! Don’t quit!   We constantly hear this in our lives. That you should never give up on anything, that you should keep fighting, keep working hard, keep pushing if you want to get ahead in life, if you want to be happy, if you want the outcome that you desire you CAN’T QUIT! You see the memes out there always telling you to keep working and never give up – and for many situations that is in fact true. If you have a dream of being a dancer you won’t achieve it if you quit. If you want to become an artist you will never achieve that dream if you give up. For all intents and purposes never giving up is a good thing. It shows a certain amount of tenacity and dedication and it keeps you motivated to achieve your goals in life. But there are some times in life when the best thing that you can do is give up. I know, I know… that is very contradictory to what I just wrote, but it’s true. There are many times in life where it is better for you to give up and walk away. In fact sometimes it is vital to your happiness. Sometimes in life we soldier on through situations and experiences that make us absolutely miserable simply because we have been told to never give up. We feel like if we give up we are failing – and that simply isn’t true. There are times in life where we will stick with something out of a fear of failure or loss even if it is toxic for us. I know that I stayed with my daughter’s father for a hell of a lot longer than I should have simply because I thought if I just tried harder, worked more at it, changed this or that about who I was or what I did that things would get better. I talked myself into believing that if I could just get him to change this one thing about himself that everything would work out. I was deluding myself and trying to justify staying in a relationship that was doomed to fail. Many times we will stay in relationships that will never work because we think if we just keep working at it then it will all get better; all the while ignoring the glaring evidence that it never will. My ex and I are two very different people and the only way that we were ever going to work was if I fundamentally changed who I was or if he changed who he was. And that is not a healthy relationship for either party. Sometimes we have to weigh the pros and cons of a situation to see if it is really working for us. Is the struggle that we are going through worth it in the end because the pros have outweighed the cons? A few years back I had a client whom I was working for as a Virtual Assistantand he was the most difficult man to work for. He was a decent enough guy but very demanding, very self involved and unaware at how poorly he treated people at times. He created a very poor working environment for those who worked for him. I thought many times about quitting and no longer working for him but because he was my largest source of income I was afraid to. So for many years I worked for him, becoming more and more stressed out as time went by. It got so bad that when I saw his number come up on my caller ID I would instantly feel my shoulders tense and my stomach would tie in knots – and it started effecting my job performance. When I finally stopped working for him it was the best possible thing that could have happened. It was scary losing that much potential income but the possibilities that were now available to me were far outweighing the fear. Instead of staying with something that was making me miserable just to earn some money I was now able to find new clients with whom I worked well with, people who paid me more than my old client and I was much much happier.