The First Date for A Single Mom

It is best to organize a date with someone once you feel confident in your own skin and also confident in the boundaries that you have set with the father or mother of your child (if he or she is still alive.)

If someone feels right and meets your criteria then it is okay for either sex to organize the first date. Trust your intuition and move forward if someone feels right and if you feel like you have choices and are in control.

Although it seems cheap and easy to entertain someone in your home the best thing you can do is agree to meet away from home.

The first reason for doing this has to do with your own safety. This is especially true if it is a blind date or you have met the person online. Meet in a well-lit public place, preferably a restaurant, use your own transport to and from the venue and tell at least one person where you are; agree to call them when your date is finished as a safety measure.

You can meet day or night; just make sure that you have a 'way out' as long if the date does not work out for some reason. More people who are compatible online become quite disappointed with each other once they meet online.
Secondly, you want to put your kid's feelings before your own. It is traumatic for children to see adults wandering and out of their lives especially after a divorce or a death.

It is better to slowly immerse your date into your children's lives once you have his or her word that they are going to stick by you and disappoint by taking off, being unfaithful or changing their minds.

As boring as it sounds you should not have sex on the first date, no matter how much Spring Fever is a factor!It sounds prudish but it is a good policy. The problem with sex is that it colors our judgment of someone. If the sex is good it becomes hard to judge the person effectively. Many of us will sacrifice everything to be with the person we love, and unfortunately that sometimes means that we are tempted to sacrifice the best interests of our children.

How long should you wait? Depending on the dating expert you should wait anywhere from three to twelve dates before even considering getting intimate with someone you are expecting to spend the rest of your life with.

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Entertaining Your Kids Without Going Broke

Are you leaving all of the entertaining of your children to the television? I don't blame you. Watching television is so cheap!

Some recent studies show that now as many as 83 percent of kids are watching two hours of television or more each day, while an incredible 90 percent of toddlers spending that much time around the tube. That does not give them that much time to interact with people.

Activities with others and in the great outdoors allow for happier, less anxious kids that feel better and are more relaxed. A sedentary kid is going to be a fat and unhappy kid.

You do not have to spend a fortune to play with your kids or make them feel more active. All you have to do is make them simple forts out of boxes and blankets. Any big cardboard box can easily be turned into a castle or a fort. Cardboard boxes and tubes also make great rocket ships. You can make your little girl a kitchen complete with fridge and stove out of cardboard boxes.

It is not that hard to find large boxes. You can find them at stores that carry appliances.
One warning – if you are cutting cardboard, do it by yourself. Your child's safety scissors cannot handle thick, stiff cardboard.

There are also hundreds of fun crafts that your kids can make. You can find instructions for most of them online. You can have them build their own kite and fly it in the back yard. You can have them put together a popsicle stick house or have them build a boot scraper mat out of bottle caps. One of the most fun and simplest of toys is a phone connected by a string and made out of two empty tin cans.

Awakening your kid's creativity is as simple as giving them some paper and colored pencils. You can also let them decorate their own room using washable paints. They can draw all over the walls and you can wipe it clean later.

To get your kid off the couch and walking take a field trip to somewhere free. Go view the nearest public government buildings or take a walk in a part. Some kids enjoy strolls through cemeteries. Basically a kid will go anywhere with you. For them, the quality time has to do with the connection to you. So it does not really matter where you go as long as the two of you are together.

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