The Challenges of Single Parenting

by Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

The following article is offered for free use in your ezine,
print publication or on your web site, so long as the author resource box at the end is included. Notification of publication would be appreciated.

Title: The Challenges of Single Parenting
Author: Margaret Paul, Ph.D.
E-mail: mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com
Copyright: © 2003 by Margaret Paul
Web Address: http://www.innerbonding.com
Word Count: 853
Category: Parenting

THE CHALLENGES OF SINGLE PARENTING
By Margaret Paul, Ph.D.

Having worked with parents for the last 35 years and written books on parenting and relationships, I’ve discovered that one of the greatest challenges for us as parents is to be loving role-models for our children, showing our children through our behavior how to take personal responsibility for their own feelings and needs. Our children need to learn from our role-modeling how to nurture themselves within and how to create a sense of safety in the world. In families where both a mother and father are present, both parents can participate in nurturing the child emotionally and taking care of the child in the world, and both parents can role-model what it looks like to do this for themselves.

Single parents have a far greater challenge - they have to be both mother and father to the child. Mothering energy is that energy that nurtures while fathering energy is that energy that protects in the world - that is, earning money, setting boundaries with others, speaking up for oneself. While our society often defines women as the nurturers and men as the protectors, both men and women are capable of both nurturing and protecting in the world.

In order for a single parent to successfully be both mother and father, he or she must have learned how to be both mother and father to the Child within. In other words, we have to have learned how to nurture our own Inner Child - how to take responsibility for our own fears, pain, anger, hurt, and disappointment, and how to take care of our Inner Child in the world - earn money, set boundaries, and so on. There is no way to successfully teach our children these skills until we are doing them ourselves, which means that each of us needs to be in a process of learning how to do this.

We have developed a process that teaches us how to care for and nurture ourselves, while also loving others. This process, called Inner Bonding, teaches us how to become a loving Adult to our own Inner Child and to our actual children. Inner Bonding is a six-step psychospiritual process that can be learned and practiced daily, and that leads to the development of a spiritually-connected loving inner Adult.

Inner Bonding defines the Inner Child as our core self, who we are when we are born - our natural creativity, intuition, playfulness, imagination, talents, feelings, and ability to love. Our Child is our inner experience. Our Adult is everything we learn after we are born. It is our thoughts, beliefs, and ability to take action. We start learning how to be an Adult from the moment we are born through watching our parents and other caregivers. The Adult we learn to be is a child-adult, the part of us that learned many fears and false beliefs and learned addictive ways, such as using substances, TV, spending, anger, or compliance to avoid pain. A true loving Adult is that part of us that is spiritually connected to a Higher Source of truth and love and is able to bring that truth and love down into the Child and share it with others. The adult many of us operate from most of the time is really a wounded child masquerading as an adult. It is our unhealed wounded self that causes us problems with ourselves and our children. Inner Bonding is a process for healing the wounded self and developing a spiritually-connected loving Adult.

In Inner Bonding, there are only two possible intents at any given moment: the intent to learn about love and the intent to protect against and avoid pain. The intent to learn says that we want to learn about our own pain in order to understand what we need to do to be loving to our Inner Child and others; The intent to protect says that we want to avoid experiencing our pain at all cost. The child-adult is always in the intent to protect and the loving Adult is always in the intent to learn.

The six-steps of Inner Bonding are:

1 - The willingness to become aware of our pain rather than protect against it with our various addictions.

2 - The conscious decision to move into the intent to learn.

3 - Dialoguing with our wounded self to discover the false beliefs and resulting behavior behind the pain. Releasing anger and pain in appropriate ways.

4 - Dialoguing with our Higher Power to learn about truth and loving behavior.

5 - Taking loving action in behalf or our Inner Child.

6 - Evaluating the action.

All parents needs to be in a process of healing themselves. It is particularly important for single parents to be in this process since they are the primary role-models for their children. The more you heal the fears and false beliefs of your wounded self, the more loving you will naturally be with yourself and your children. Learning to utilize these six step throughout the day, especially in times of anger, fear, anxiety and stress, will eventually heal the false beliefs leading to these difficult feelings.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Margaret Paul, Ph.D. is the best-selling author and co-author of eight books, including "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By You?", "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By My Kids?", "Healing Your Aloneness", "Inner Bonding",and "Do I Have To Give Up Me To Be Loved By God?" Visit her web site for a FREE Inner Bonding course: http://www.innerbonding.com or mailto:margaret@innerbonding.com

---

---

For more great articles please click here.

Free Gift - Google Adsense Empire - for Linking to Spiritual-Experience.com

The Google Adsense Empire ebook sells in many places for $97. It is chock full of advice on how to profit with Google's Adsense program.

There are a number of folks now making a sizeable monthly income with nothing more than Google Adsense alone. This free ebook will show you the tips and tricks to squeeze everything you can out of your Google ads.

You'll also be given the lowdown on the powerful software that many are using to funnel massive traffic to their sites and hence make more money from their Google ads.

To see how you can easily link to the Spiritual Experience website and get your free Google Adsense ebook just click here.

How Many of the Healing Movies in the Free Ebook, 50 Spiritual Movies, Have You Seen?

Download it Now for FREE

The 50 Spiritual Movies ebook is free for you to enjoy and distribute. It comes with a list of 50 spiritual movies with reviews. It is in PDF format so can be enjoyed by both PC and Mac users.

The 50 Spiritual Movies ebook features some interesting spiritual cinema. Extend your circle of impact by sharing this free ebook that also includes a number of links to some of the best charities around.

By reading it and passing it on you'll be exposing yourself and others to some positive movies and some very worthy charities. These charities help others all over the world.

Download your free copy of 50 Spiritual Movies by right clicking here (it is in pdf format).

For a faster loading copy (same ebook just fewer graphics) just right click here to download.

Now You Can Make Money and Help Others with Your Own Branded Copy of 50 Spiritual Movies - and it's Free!

Click here to get it now.

A Thousand or More Minds Sending You the Energy of Abundance and Success? Tap into the Power of Wealth Vibes - it's Free.

healing - Yahoo! News Search Results healing - Yahoo! News Search Results Riovana?s Sole Healing: A Complete Story Complete. The best word to describe Riovana?s Sole Healing: the revolutionary recovery center for athletes and sports enthusiasts alike. This hub boasts of having state-of-the-art physical therapy equipment and top-notch medical and sports practitioners as part of its core team. The whole team ensures their customers a heightened experience, one which will help them transcend [...] Healing Hands Health Center Sweets for the Sweet fundraiser underway Healing Hands Health Center is again conducting a Valentine?s Day fundraiser that generated a surprising return last year. Healing wounds of a long-gone war A Melbourne businesswoman is easing the suffering of Vietnamese children needing surgery. Healing Dives Announces New Military Portable Hyperbaric Chamber Healing Dives, Inc., an international distributor of portable hyperbaric chambers and hyperbaric accessories, has introduced a portable hyperbaric chamber specifically for military veterans. Hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) is a medical treatment which enhances the body?s natural healing process by delivering oxygen under pressure, increasing the oxygen content in the blood and in the cerebral ... Healing wounds of war A Melbourne businesswoman is easing the suffering of Vietnamese children needing surgery. Jobless claims fall, jobs market slowly healing WASHINGTON (Reuters) - New claims for unemployment benefits in the United States fell more than expected last week, pointing to further healing in the nation's battered jobs market. Jobless claims have zig-zagged in the last few weeks, but the trend - reinforced by the latest drop - suggests employers have grown less eager to lay off workers, offering hope they could also step up hiring. Initial ... The Healing Power of Magic to come to ETSU Kevin Spencer, who uses magic as a healing tool to help people who are physically challenged, will perform at 7 p.m. tonight. Magic can amaze. Magic can amuse. And Kevin and Cindy Spencer of Spencers : Theatre of Illusion believe that magic can also heal. Newsfeed display by CaRP