FIVE TIPS TO RUN A SINGLE PARENT HOUSEHOLD 

THREE BIGGEST SINGLE PARENTING MISTAKES 


    No one said it would be easy after divorce. Trying to support two households on the finances that used to sustain one is hard enough. But no matter how bad living together might have been, many find that living apart and trying to maintain a calm, organized family and home can be overwhelming. Then enter the emotional issues of being on your own with a family without a partner, and the result can be disastrous.   

“Bringing up a kid on your own is extraordinarily difficult; bringing up two isn’t twice as hard, it’s 200 times as hard,” said Cliff Greenberg, a divorced adoption attorney who has raised his two children solo for the last three years. “It’s extremely hard, extremely hard. And stressing and at the same time, so amazingly wonderful.”   

Greenberg, 43, says he was one of the fortunate ones following his divorce in the sense that he has flexibility to his work schedule. “I work for myself and have for years, so I can make my own hours.”   

But with his ex-wife not just divorcing him but also leaving the country, he has found dealing with the emotional fallout has been almost devastating. “The toughest time I have had  was with my little one who was two and a half years old when my wife and I broke up. That was really brutal. She was traumatized, screaming, 'I miss Mommy' for five hours at a time. She was frothing at the mouth with such pain. I was overwhelmed. I cried. I didn’t know what to do. So I took her to a psychiatrist,” he said. “It was really heartbreaking. Here she was still in diapers, and I was pushing her in a stroller to see her psychiatrist. It was overwhelming. I look back on that and wonder how did I do it. I have no idea.”   

Which is often the case with divorcees who have custody of the children and find themselves single parents, putting one foot in front of the other. They look back and wonder how they got through what many say are common hurdles of being a single parent. "You do what you have to do,” said Brenda Rodstrom, LCSW, a therapist in private practice in Manhattan. “While you wonder in the beginning how you are going to make it, I have found that if people go full circle in their divorce recovery, they will come out stronger on the emotional side. It is a time for great personal growth.”   

Which is where the process of developing life as a single parent begins, according to Rodstrom. “If you don’t care for yourself, you can’t sufficiently care for your children,” said the 59-year-old, who has developed a Single Parents Survival kit for her clients. “When you are married, you compromise things out of your life. Even in a good marriage. But as the marriage disintegrates, you do less and less for yourself. You find yourself getting a little depressed and trying to make the marriage work, so you put yourself at about ninth on the list.”  

The first step toward that self-caring is putting yourself right at the top by getting the help you need emotionally to deal with the loss of divorce. “The shock of divorce and death are really overwhelming. Before I was divorced, I was used to hearing that, but I was not prepared for the pain I was going to go through when I got divorced. It takes a long time to build up again,” she said. “There’s a lot of denial around divorce. Whether you admit it or not, there still a lot of shame and guilt about divorce. That is where a recovery group can be so helpful.”   

Perhaps almost as important, a recovery group can get the single parent out of the house. “You have to de-isolate yourself. What better way than be with people who have gone though the same thing.”   

And it’s a start. Networking with friends is the next step, according to Amy Sue Gerstel, a divorce coach in Boca Raton, Fla. “What I tell my clients is that your friends become your family. When I got divorced, I was living down here in Florida with no family. I surrounded myself with my friends. And when people offer their support , especially in the short term, you must take it,” she said. “These are people who don’t feel sorry for you; they just want to help you. It’s so hard to not be independent. Take that burden off yourself and accept the help. For once the dust has settled, those are the ones who are there for you during the hardest times –  those you can rely on in the long term.”