by Renee Morgan

Created on: July 09, 2008   Last Updated: February 04, 2011

First thing to do is to buy a few cages, handcuffs, bullwhips and mace. Then always date police officers, judges, and professional boxers, throw in a couple of lawyers and pray to God everyday.

Are you afraid yet?

Now that I have your attention, let's talk. All children are different and being a single parent is not easy no matter what the sex of the child is. I know this because I raised two sisters, one brother, one nephew, four sons, four nieces, three stepsons, and a host of neighborhood boys and girls.

The first thing to do is to start communication as soon as possible and always have an open channel for the child. This is because it is very important that he know that you are open 24 hours a day. An example is, one of my sons would slip into bed with me in the middle of the night, and he did this until he was about 15 years old so that he could talk to me in privacy when I awake. My youngest son would sleep in my bed when I worked nights or had gone out to a party so that he could tell everything his brothers had done while I was gone.

I always talked freely with any of the children that have lived in and out of my home. I will try to answer any question brought to me and if I couldn't I would always have some type of positive male around for the hard questions. If my sons had something that they just could not talk to me about, I would send them to one of these men to talk about what ever it was and if it was not life threaten I did not want to be told of the conversation until the sons say it was ok because I always wanted to respected them and their male feeling. I did this because no matter how cool I was, or how tomboyish I was, how many cars I could work on, I could never be a male figure in their life. I have always been just as rough and tough as any male they could ever meet, but I understood that I am still their mother, a woman.

I always taught my sons that life would not be easy. Most black single mothers will teach their sons that life holds three strikes for them. One strike is for being black, the second strike is for being male and the third is for being from a single mother household. Well I always told my sons that the world had three strikes for him coming in the gate and all three were just for raised by a single mother.

There is no perfect answer, because every boy is different. Some of the things that worked for one son and did not work for the other. The only thing a single mother can do with a son is to keep an open line of communication, teach love and respect.

Let the cards fall were they may and if that doesn't work send in your boxer boyfriend and pray that the police, judge and lawyer boyfriend can get the boxers off.

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