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Welcome to the Single Moms United Podcast.

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If this is your first time joining, welcome If you are a repeat listener.

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Thank you, so so very much.

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This podcast is designed to encourage and motivate the single mom.

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As a single mom myself, an older single mom it's very difficult to raise children on your own.

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There are challenges that come with it. No one prepares you for that.

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At least I wasn't prepared And so, as a result of that of lack of preparedness and poor decisions I just want to pay it forward to the new young single mom out there and not just the new ones, but some old ones as well, if they're listening.

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If I would have had additional support back when I was raising my children, i think I would have made some better decisions When my mom was there and the kid's grandma was there.

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I appreciate that and I appreciate what they were able to bring to the table and teach me along the way.

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But there were still some situations I don't feel like I could go to them and talk to them about was kind of feeling around in the dark, unfortunately.

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Yes, i made some poor decisions, but I'm hoping that with this podcast, you will find value and think about some of the things in your life that's happening Now.

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All of these episodes are not going to be applicable to you, but I would hope that you would say hmm, yeah, that makes sense, But the only issue is this, and if I replace this with that, then that would be trying to do something different with my parenting skills.

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At the end of the day, if you're finding value in this podcast, please share with another single mom, and even if you're not a single mom that's listening or chiming in, but you know of a single mom, share with them, because you just never know the benefit it may offer to someone that helps increase their parenting skills.

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All right enough with the introduction, okay, so today I want to talk about experiment Here.

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I've been on this kick of extracting word choices from the letter E And, as I mentioned in the past, this is probably going to last a while because there's just so many word choices.

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So today's word is experiment, and when I look up the definition of experiment, it says a scientific test in which you perform a series of actions and carefully observe their effects in order to learn about something.

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The key word is learn.

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That's what we're taking away from this definition.

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If I would have done more experimenting when I was raising my children, i probably would have made better decisions versus just jumping in with both feet and saying we're going to do it this way.

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For example, my podcast that I'm doing right now.

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I'm doing dual platforms because I want to see which platform performs better.

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Issues related to this experimentation of launching the podcast.

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I'm looking at data. That's really important.

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I'm also looking to see if anybody's providing feedback.

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I'm also looking at social media channels.

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Are they effective? I'm excited to now be experimenting with doing this versus just saying, okay, i'm going to do this and call it a day.

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You can do the same thing, ladies, with parenting.

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Why is experimenting important?

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Just because you were taught one way doesn't mean it won't work another way.

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And when I say experimenting, i'm talking about positive experimenting.

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I'm not inviting you to go experience drugs or experiment with drugs that type of thing.

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I'm talking about positive experiments because what will you gain?

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You can look back and say you know what.

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I tried that and this is what happened.

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I tried this and this is what happened, because now you know you dipped your toe in the water.

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Either it was hot, cold or lukewarm, but at least you know what The outcome was as a result of you completing that experiment.

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Life is not a one size fits all, so one thing worked for one single mom may not work for you, as I mentioned before.

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So you have to try different things.

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You have to experiment.

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When I was in management once upon a time ago, we used to call it champion challenger.

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When we were trying to improve a process, we would do the same exact process on two different levels.

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Did we get better results from test A or better results from test B?

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It's the same thing, same thing with you, ladies.

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You know, oftentimes, as a single mom, we have to make these decisions, and sometimes we have to make the decisions on a fly And therefore we don't have time to experiment.

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But we should be taking note of the effect of, or the outcome of, the decision we made, because now we can go back and say when we have a little more time okay, well, it didn't work out very well when I did it this way, and especially if that opportunity arises again for example, your child in school may not be doing very well you have to make some decisions around that.

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What do you do? Okay, so you make an on fly decision of how to handle that situation.

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Here comes that same situation again, and when you made that decision on the fly about their education and what the next steps are, it may not have worked out well.

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One, because it was on the fly And then, two, you didn't get an opportunity to explore all options.

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So this time, when it's time to make that decision about your child's education, now you're gonna say well, it didn't work when we did this, so now I'm gonna go down this path.

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I'm gonna get more involved with the teacher, i'm gonna understand what the issue is right, whereas before you didn't have the full picture of what was going on, but you had to make a decision.

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And then you go back and say, okay, this is what I'm gonna do different.

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I'm gonna go ahead and experiment this of my level of involvement, what the outcome is going to be related to my child, and I can almost guarantee you, the more involved that you are, that second time around you're gonna see more positive results.

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But just thought I threw that in there for free, but anyway.

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But we gotta learn how to experiment.

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We gotta learn from things that we've gone through in life and just say you know what?

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Yes, i had to make a decision very quickly.

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Here's the outcome. I'm just gonna bring up just a little closer to home.

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What about the baby's father? If you're still together, awesome, and if y'all get along, that's even more awesome.

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But then, if you're not, then you should be learning from that.

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And then the next time, if there is a next time I'm assuming you're a young single mom.

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So hey, you'll meet up with another fella, but you're gonna wanna know and try not to make those same mistakes that you did with the baby's father.

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Right, there may be different characteristics you wanna look for.

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Maybe the baby's father was very outgoing and kind of a ladies man.

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So then the next fella you potentially want to attract is one that's not that's devoted to you.

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And then compare the two.

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Did you really like the outgoing fella?

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And if you did, then look at the result of where you are as far as parenting is concerned.

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Is he involved? Does he even claim the child?

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Hmm, whereas someone not as outgoing, you know they're gonna give it.

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They're all to you. Yeah, they may just be a little bit more boring.

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They're not as outgoing and trying new things as others.

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He's attentive to you, he takes care of you and your needs.

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That's an experiment and you learn from that right.

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So this is what I took away from my last relationship.

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This is what I want in my next relationship.

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Now I'm going to put a comment here and say relationships aren't perfect.

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There is no perfect person, but the majority of what you're looking for in that individual would help you define and understand.

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That's what you're looking for and you would want to accept that.

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If you go back to for lack of a better term ladies man, while it was exciting and everything, but it was just something to do for him.

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Period, it was just something to do for him.

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You got caught in the line of sight as a result of something to do for him.

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Ladies, experiment, try, learn.

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Another example as it relates to your children.

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You know, in the past few episodes I challenged you to put down the phone for one full hour and spend that time with your child, or your children, because you're going to learn some things.

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Remember, that's our key word for the day. You're going to learn some things about your child.

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When you're not giving them their the full attention.

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Guess what? They're going to look for someone else to get direction from, because they're not getting it from mom, because mom is holding her phone in one hand, looking at it in one hand, and you have your child looking up at you like here I am, here I am waving at you, you're looking at your phone, so guess what?

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She doesn't care, so why should I?

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That's the message you're sending. However, if you take that time, spend that time with your child, guess what?

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They're going to open up more to you.

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They're going to come to you first.

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They're not going to go to their peer or someone else that may give them wrong direction, and it's up to you, single mom, to give the right direction to your child or your children.

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Something a little more basic you could try to experiment with with your child is food.

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I understand children love chicken nuggets, french fries, chicken nuggets, french fries and maybe one of those Kool-Aid coolers, and they're good to go, but they're just haven't been introduced to vegetables and fruit.

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So I would challenge you to experiment with giving your child different fruits or vegetables, and if you're not a fruit and vegetable girl, then I would challenge you to try it.

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I would challenge you to try it if you're just eating out all the time or pizza is the number one or main food in your household.

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I would challenge you to experiment with just different vegetables and go in the produce department, spend at least 10 minutes there, pick out some fruits and vegetables.

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I am so glad that summer is here because I love summer fruit, i love plums, i love cantaloupe and peaches.

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That's what I'm getting. That's what I'm getting and that's because that's what I was raised up on.

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We always had fruit in the house and vegetables.

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My mom had her own garden, so we always had that.

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It wasn't difficult for me to experiment per se.

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Now I will say some of those vegetables didn't wow me, and that's okay, but I did taste them, right, and that's what you do.

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That's what you do. You taste them and say okay, yeah, not me, or oh, yeah, so let me introduce this to my kids.

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Right, that's how you experiment.

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And then, hopefully, soon enough, they'll say you know what?

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I don't want as many chicken nuggets as I've had in the past.

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Now I want more grapes, now I want an apple.

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That's the kind of things, ladies, that you have to come outside of your comfort zone and start doing So again.

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If I had to title this episode outside of experiments, come out of your comfort zone, that's what's going to make the difference.

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That's what's going to help you make better decisions as you travel through this life.

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It's a long journey, ladies, and it's going to be a tough journey, so I'm not even going to pull any punches there.

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It's going to be a tough journey.

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You can get through this. You know how.

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I know I got through it. I learned so much along the way over these last 30 years 35 years, when I first became a parent.

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I'm thankful, as I look at my children and see where they are today, that I did do some things right, not everything, some things right.

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And that's how you determine, ladies, if you're a successful parent or not.

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Look at the outcome. All right, ladies, i really appreciate you taking the time today to listen to another episode of single moms, united ladies.

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It's not about how you arrived at the single mom title, but what you do with it.

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It's a title you're going to carry the rest of your life.

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I hear you someone say well, what happens if I get married?

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If it's not to the father technically, and you're still trying to do that on your own, then you're still a single mom.

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But that's my definition.

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That's just my definition. But anyway, i hope you have a great day, a great week and an absolutely spectacular month.