Single mom on Mother's Day
Beth Whitehouse with her teenage son when he was younger. Credit: Handout
Mother’s Day can be a tough holiday when you’re a single mom of young kids. In the homes of mom-and-dad-live-together families, Dad is the one who picks up the ball to make the day special. He supervises the traditional breakfast-in-bed endeavor. He takes the kids shopping to pick out something. He makes the reservation to take Mom and the kids out to dinner.
When you’re a single parent, even if Dad is in the picture, it’s not likely he’ll think to make that special effort for you — or even be in the mood to. So to make it special, you have to do it all yourself. You plan your own day, or try to meet up with other family members. I’m so thankful for the crafts that teachers have kids make, so that my child learned to do something special for me when I was a single parent.
If I could go back in time, I would try to be better as well at saying to my son, “What do you want to do for your Dad for Father’s Day? Do you want to go shopping for a present? Did you make him a card?”
Even though I got married in 2009, Mother’s Day is still a me-and-Teen-Son event. My stepdaughter spends the day with her mother, and rightly so. Hubby usually spends the day with his mother, as he has for years. How do other single mother's and blended families celebrate Mother's Day?
