What Does It Mean to Be a Single Dad?
To me it meant freedom. How can that be, you say? It was simple. No more arguments with an ex who couldn’t function. The kids and I made every decision ourselves. We decided what, when and how. That alone changed everything.
Life got busy. Life got fun again. Even in the middle of a divorce, the separation brought clarity. No more lies. No more backpedalling. The kids started eating healthier too. I took that on myself. Our lives would be fun, fair, inclusive and above all, we would be a proper family. If you missed where all this started, catch up on Part 1 of this series.
I didn’t cut the kids off from their mom. She came as far as the driveway and could not set foot on the property.
Different Challenges That Come With Being a Single Dad
The challenges came from other areas. I kept the kids in the loop and always told them the truth. Their mom’s drinking and driving charges, the divorce, her eventual decision to return to Indonesia. All of it came out in the open.
The real challenge was juggling everything at once. Cooking, laundry, dinners and packed lunches all fell on me. I made a rule: no frozen dinners, no junk food in the house. I cooked fresh meals with vegetables and experimented constantly. I cooked with the kids and shopped with the kids. We picked what we wanted to eat, bought it and cooked it together.
Being a single dad meant one thing above all else: doing what the family decided to do together. Weekend plans, movies, sleepovers, all of it went through the group.
How to Be a Successful Single Dad
My answer to this is simple. Make it all about the kids. We made decisions together and had fun doing it. Dinner together, quality time together. The individual took a back seat.
That approach eliminated unwanted surprises. We were a team. We planned vacations and evening outings together. Walks, basketball, bike riding, skateboarding. All of it was a group decision.
Because of the age gap between my two kids, my daughter had more grown-up plans. Sleepovers, time away with friends, getting picked up late from the movies. That naturally gave me more time alone with my son and we grew closer because of it. More than just father and son.
Don’t fight and argue with the kids. No point in screaming matches. Yes, it happened, especially with my daughter. Her experimentation with weed and alcohol at 13 or 14 caused some arguments. But we didn’t miss the old daily fights and tension. Not even a little.
The takeaway is simple. Keep things about the family. Keep things positive. Stay inclusive. Research from Psychology Today consistently shows that children in stable, communicative single-parent households do just as well as those in two-parent homes when the environment is positive and consistent.
Conclusion: We all have different situations. This is how this single dad managed his. Things were not always smooth but they could have been so much worse. Continue reading in Part 3 where I get into what life as a single, single dad really looked like.
