Parenting – The Single Parent's Challenge — Raising a Mentally Healthy Child

A mentally healthy child, as well as a physically healthy child what all parents desire.  As a single parent, it is a challenge that requires you to fully use your abilities, energy, and resources to develop a physically healthy child by making sure the child eats the right foods, gets the proper rest, and have time for exercise and active play. But how do you develop a mentally healthy child?

Despite often inconsistent and ineffective parenting, the good news is that most children grow up and exhibit the range expected mentally healthy behaviors. Somehow the child receives enough love, attention and discipline to achieve emotional balance. In addition to this, between the family, the extended family, teachers, coaches, and even neighbors the child finds at least one role model in an effort to discover what it means to be an adult man or woman.  However, inconsistent and ineffective parenting along with a bad neighborhood can be risk factors for a mentally unhealthy child and may lead a youngster to engage in unlawful or self-destructive behavior.

The challenge is to continue to improve the quality of your parenting and, if there is a bad neighborhood environment, to reduce or mitigate the impact of the neighborhood on the child. Consider this as a parent as it may pertain to you and you can become instrumental in making it happen. Parents often have to be engaged where they naturally come together or where they can be drawn together for the benefit of their children. Parents who have children in Day Care or Head Start Services can be engaged on the site; parents who have youngsters in park district programs can be engaged on the site; churches can reserve space and engage parents on the site; and even public schools can make the schools parent-friendly and strongly promote parent-teacher cooperation.

Once a parenting group is established, reaching out to and notifying parents can occur at the local grocery store, the local laundromat, the local restaurant, the local gas station, the local drug store, and the local libraries in an effort to gain their parents’ attention and participation.  Once parents begin attending an informative, productive, and stimulating group, work of mouth will keep the group growing and increasing in importance and ultimately having a positive impact on the neighborhood.

It is important to take the role of being a parent seriously and consider these resources carefully if you are becoming stressed out. Without each generation succeeding each other by bringing into being productive, well-balanced citizens, our world will cease to exist as we know it. It is important give your child a balance of love and discipline and an opportunity to realize his gifts and potential. To have a mentally healthy child, be the role model you want your child to emulate, teach the child how to behave in different situations, provide the necessary guidance, have the pleasant conversations, and do fun things together.

Keep up to date with timely financial and personal growth tips and strategies. Visit http://www.youcontrol.blogspot.com. You can subscribe to the monthly Financial/Personal Growth newsletter at either site as well as read and download the free articles and e-books. Will Barnes is a financial and personal growth consultant based in Illinois. Mr Barnes has conducted hundreds of workshops on parenting and counseled parents for decades.