What does parenting mean for your mood today?

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Today, I’m fixated on a specific segment of our society: we all need to celebrate the heroic efforts of single parents.

This is the week of the year my wife Melinda and her sisters visit their parents in Sun City, Arizona. Like Michael Keaton in the 1983 film… I am “Mr. Mom” this week.

This ritual has been going on since our oldest child was two years old. He just turned 23, so that means this week has been a Darwinian test of my parenting for 21 years. 1997 was the apex – we had three kids under the age of five, which meant Melinda trusted me with a preschooler, a toddler and an infant.  For five days.

Five days!? The whole word just laughed and said: wah, wah, wah…blah, blah, blah.  You pathetic whiner…no one is crying for you!  Back in those days, our office administrator Liz Seitsema would listen to my Mr. Mom episodes and laugh at me. I deserved it.

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Actress Bonnie Franklin died last week.  She became famous playing the single parent, Ann Romano, in the hit TV series “One Day at a Time”.  Sociologists have already identified her role as the one to lift the stigma from single parenting. We know it worked, because years later Dan Quayle felt the anger of single parents when he criticized Murphy Brown — another TV single parent. Clearly, he hadn’t ever done the Mr. Mom thing.

Enlightened people understand there are reasonable explanations for why single parents exist today: both Moms and Dads. Unlike me, they perform the miracle full time. We all know it’s hard work.  Both the children and the parents deserve our most intense admiration. And support.

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The one thing all working parents have in common is “personal leadership” — the aura we produce at work. It isn’t always easy to maintain a positive mood and tone at work when the kids don’t sleep at night or cooperate in the morning!  And it’s irritating to get a text message that says: “My lunch account is out of money!” during an important meeting.  The least we can do as leaders is to understand what’s going on in the personal lives of the people important to our success…so we can help each other stay resilient, patient and positive.

In the spirit of true disclosure, the hardest days of Mr. Mom are long gone for me. We only have one kid left at home, Anna, now a high school junior who has her own car. Normally she and I seize mom’s vacation as an opportunity to PARTY with our own rules. But, alas, Anna has finals this week. Yesterday she asked me to leave her alone so she could STUDY. Sheeezzzz.  Must be her mother’s child.

Good leaders make a habit of embracing daily parenting challenges in ways that help them show up at work with good energy.  And they do us all a huge favor by producing good kids who will be our future leaders, employees and customers.

Please share your joys as a single parent with us: full time or part time.  We want to celebrate your dedication and courage.[/fusion_builder_column][/fusion_builder_row][/fusion_builder_container]