APRIL GABRIELLE’
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
ABOUT ME
INTRODUCTION
PREFACE

1. CHERISHING YOUR CHILDREN     30
  • Breast Feeding vs. Bottle Feeding

2. SOCIALIZING YOUR CHILDREN         40
  • Delay Gratification
  • Developing Healthy Competition
  • Strangers and Strange Nots
  • This Is My Body
  • Watching the Tube
  • Allowance – Did You Earn It?
  • Discouraging Drug Use

RAISING GIRLS56
  • Teaching Daughters to Deal with Mean Girls

RAISING BOYS to Men 59
  • How a single mother raises a gentleman
  • Stay Out of His Face
  • Police Alert!
  • I Need a Job
  • Let’s Talk About Sex, Baby

3. DISCIPLINE   77
  • The Look
  • Jump Mommy Jump
  • The Telephone Nagger
  • Whuppins’ & Spankins’
  • The Nevers and Do Not Allows
  • Battle of the Wills
  • Taming the Tongue
  • When No Means No
  • Do Not Entertain Negative Behavior
  • Using Guilt as Manipulation
  • How to Tell if Your Child Is Lying (Adult use only)

4. EDUCATION       116
  • Creating Independent Learners
  • Homework Misery
  • The Role of the Teacher
  • How Can He Read What He Can’t Understand?
  • Stop Depending on Schools to Educate Your Child
  • Educational Tools for Home Use
  • I Got Ya Back! Being an Advocate for Your Child
  • My Child is Being Mistreated in School

5. INSTILLING PRIDE & SELF ESTEEM  153
  • Developing Self Esteem
  • Importance of Spirituality
The Myth of the Broken Home - Guidebook for Single Parents
TABLE OF CONTENTS
6.TEENS & TWEENS         168
  • Get them to Speak More than Single Word Phrases
  • Watch that Tongue!
  • The Positive Influence of Hip Hop Music
  • Dating – Uh huh! Yeah right! NOT!
  • The Sex Talk Again?
  • Peer Pressure: Make it Null & Void
  • Can I Have Some Privacy Please?

7. BUDGETING      192
  • Meal Planning
  • Purchasing Clothes
  • Finding Affordable Housing
  • Purchasing a Used Vehicle

8. CAREER CHOICES       210
  • Dreams Deferred
  • Idea Careers
  • Supplementary Income

9. THE NON CUSTODIAL OTHER           220
  • Visitation - The Unenforceable Right
  • How Come Daddy or Mommy Won’t Call Me?
  • Child Support - Don’t Take It Personal
  • Extended Family

10. DATING & the SINGLE PARENT       234
  • Is it Really Over with the Ex?
  • So You Want to Go Party, Huh?

11. OUT OF THE VIOLENCE               247
  •   Surviving the Financial Pain
  •   Living Through the Fear
  •   Guiding Children Through the Pain
  •   Message to the Victims
  •   Message to the Courts
  •   Message to Law Enforcement
  •   Message to External Service Agencies
  •   Message to Employers

12.CELEBRATING YOU!      281
  • Is Your Name on the List

EPILOGUE        284
  • Affirmation
  • The Voice of Jamal -High School & Beyond
  • The Voice of Ta’mara –Be Right Back! (BRB)
PREFACE

*Disclaimer: For purposes of confidentiality, all names have been changed and minor details of their stories have been omitted to protect the identity of the participants.

It’s one thing to try to convince a person about your good ideas based on your own beliefs, but it speaks volumes when you are able to prove that your concepts are reliable through the use of experience and examples. I realize how mundane and uninteresting research can be, however, I wanted to provide a realistic, practical view to you, the reader.  Thus, before I decided to publicize my good ideas about single parenting to the world, I thought it necessary to put my parenting skills and techniques to the test, to gain some insight, and to conduct visual observations with a focus group. I was honored to receive approval by the administration of a local residential facility for parenting teens and their babies in order to conduct such research. As a method to test my concepts, I structured a focus group comprised of participants at a residential facility for unwed mothers. The group members, aged 14-20, comprised a diverse population of Latina, Asian, African-American, and white participants with their babies. Some were recently involved in prostitution, gang banging, drug use, sale, etc. Although the majority had their babies, two were pregnant, and another did not have custody of her child at the time. They came together as a group, sometimes with their babies, to interface with one another, giving different points of view while discussing their parenting skills. As the moderator, my purpose was to elicit information and to gather several opinions and encourage a debate, as most of them were very strong willed and defensive.

The first day of a weekly six month process, I initiated the discussion by first talking about myself, and then I opened the discussion with a question, “If you could be any celebrity, who would you be?” I allowed them to answer as they continued to size me up. There is much to be learned as a moderator during the quietness as you observe non-verbal body language. Out of nowhere one girl

Introduction
There is nothing broken about your home! Do you understand me?” “Yes, Mommy.” “Look at me, Jamal. There will be people who will tell you that because your Daddy does not live with us, your home is no good and you can’t be what you want to be. Don’t you ever believe it, do you hear me?” “Yes, Mommy.”

It has been over 15 years when I first had this conversation with my son as I dropped him off to kindergarten for the first time, and I made sure I reiterated this over and over again throughout his 18 years, primarily because we were also battling against statistics about African-American males in our society, specifically those from single parent homes. I was determined that my son would not be a statistic or a product of a “Broken Home.” It was 1995, and I had just read an article in Time Magazine about the problems involving children from divorced homes and the effects upon the children.

You’ve heard it said that television imitates life, and maybe that is true for some, but for the majority of single parents in America today, reality isn’t even close to the way that Uncle Bill raised Buffy, Jody, and Cissy in Family Affair or Eddie’s father raised Eddie in The Courtship of Eddie’s Father. Even as an African-American woman, I couldn’t even relate to Julia Baker as she raised Corey in Julia. And for those who find themselves too young to relate to those characters of way back when, well, try mimicking Zack and Cody’s single mother, Carrie Martin, of The Suite Life of Zack and Cody. If only it were so simple!

We have guidebooks and training on how to drive, how to become a nuclear physicist, and even on how to write a book. In every profession, there has been someone to train the successor. Yet when it comes to parenting, particularly single parenting, we are only as good as the trainer before us has been, and in many cases, in many households, that can be very abnormal or dysfunctional. Now add single parenting to the mix, especially those unprepared or unwilling to accept their role, and you get an entirely different dynamic.

3. DISCIPLINE


Remember back in the day those eyes your parents would look at you with from across the room when you were misbehaving? All they needed to do was make eye contact with you and it was over. You knew to stop dead in your tracks and get a clue. You knew that it was time to straighten up real quick. In addition, you knew The Look was only the beginning of the punishment you were about to receive and once you got home or they got you alone, it would be worse. How dare you make your parents have to take the time to warn you. Obviously, you knew better.

Today, I watch parents embarrassed by trying The Look. Oh, and let it be known that you cannot use this form of discipline if you have not instilled some pre-disciplinarian techniques. Children are rather bold today. They actually have the audacity to give you The Look right back. One time I was in a store and saw this little girl, she couldn’t have been more than three years old. Her mother gave her The Look, and she must have popped her neck from side to side and bugged her eyes at her mother as if to say, “I know you ain’t talkin’ to me.” Oh my. Now who’s controlling whom? I wanted to laugh so hard, but to keep the mother from further embarrassment, I just walked away.
Can you imagine you and your children at a social outing, and from across the room they start acting like a bunch of out of control heathens, embarrassing you, saying or doing something they know should not do.? You are smiling on the outside and fuming on the inside. You can’t even concentrate on your conversation, and you are too far away to use The Pinch. You are all the way across the room wishing, “If only I were Mrs. Incredible. I would be in their face before they said another disrespectful word.” If you tried using The Look, only to have it backfire on you, this chapter will walk you through the techniques to use it effectively.
The Look
Jump, Mommy, Jump

Remember our children are always trying to impress us, and I wonder if Malcolm X realized that his infamous quote, “by any means necessary,” would someday help single parents realize what their children will go through to get their attention even to the extent of exhibiting negative behavior if the positive behavior is ignored. “By any means necessary.”  It is only when there has been a breakdown in your relationship that the child’s behavior becomes disrespectful and disruptive. So check this out, if you exhibit encouraging positive behavior, your children will follow behind you. Please, I still get excited about sharing my life with my parents and receiving their feedback, and hey, I’m a grown woman with my own kids.

It’s for children to feel loved, be loved, and all of that good stuff, and because of it, they’ll act a bit spoiled. You can identify that love in your little ones by watching how confidently they move along, as if they have been here before. But you can also tell when the love has gotten a bit out of hand and they begin ordering you around. They sit around the house demanding that you jump up and do everything for them, “Mommy, can you get my doll out of the closet?” “Mommy, can you put this in the bathroom?” “Mommy do this, Mommy, do that. Mommy, Mommy, Mommy!” Arrggggggggh!. Keep in mind that as single parents, we don’t want to be a crutch for our children. You ask, “Why is it a big deal if I’m near the bathroom already? It’s ok for me to get it for her.” No, it’s not ok. Sometimes we get caught up and find ourselves responding to their every demand. Yes, you are right, sometimes it may not be a big deal. What’s not a big deal is for them to do it themselves and you not encourage behavior you don’t want to continue. The behavior can progress into a self-centered, demanding, and lazy child and it will have a domino effect, effecting everyone involved in your child’s life including school, church, babysitters, friends, and family. When your children have you running and jumping up and down like a jumping jack, you need to get a mental grip by doing the following: