Life as a single parent can often feel like we are just maintaining safety and stability with little intentional vision or direction for our family. In the solo parent season, we can feel like we are just barely hanging on. Being intentional can seem like a lofty goal when you’re holding on by a thread, just praying and asking God for His grace to get us through as we raise these tiny humans.

Directing the course of our family as a single parent can feel daunting. We end up paying attention and reacting to the urgent things that come up while neglecting what’s important – creating stability and direction for our family in the new normal. Sometimes all we can do is hold on but, as we journey down the solo parent path, it’s important to be deliberate in our steps. To start effective parenting, we need a road map, a vision, or a mission statement to keep us focused on what is important to our family.

How do you measure success?

George Barna, leading researcher, and author, asked Robert, “How do you measure success?” He went on to explain that he asked because you get what you measure. Unless you know and identify where you want to go, you are never going to get there. A friend of Kim’s whose husband was battling cancer shared, “Life is a vapor. Evaluate and measure carefully.” We need to be intentional about our investment in our family. We need to have a definition of where we want to go and what we stand for as a family. Unless we have a direction that we want to take our family, we can’t and won’t get there.

Ann Voskamp talks about developing her own “family manifesto” that emphasizes the values and priorities that are important to her and to her family. Solo parent families can do the same thing. Creating a “Solo Family Mission Statement” doesn’t have to be overwhelming. A mission statement is defined as “a formal summary of the aims and values of a company, organization, or individual”. We can keep it simple and fun.

To read more and to down load a free tool to create your own Solo Family Mission Statement, click here - https://soloparentsociety.com/blog/2021/03/01/how-to-create-a-solo-family-mission-statement