Contemplate this.
Part of my professional perspective has been informed by my personal parenting adventures, or more accurately - misadventures. (Ask me about the popcorn incident some day.) It's truly amazing what one can learn by living fully immersed within the situation one teaches about.
Just briefly, my wife died when our two sons, Jake and Braden, were 4 and 5 years old. She had been struggling with cancer for quite a while and as she became more and more debilitated, I took over more and more of what had been a beautiful shared parenting partnership.
I won't go into the gruesome details, but ... my transition into single parenthood was not a fluid, seamless process.
There were some very real struggles for me as I adapted to the solo role. Sometimes, these struggles spilled out onto the boys. It wasn't pretty. The first lesson I learned was how to regroup quickly and frequently. My recovering time shortened remarkably. But the challenge did not end.
More later.
