First maybe we should look at what “better” means. It does NOT mean “better” than any other parent. It does NOT mean I’m a better parent than my parents, who by the way I believe are great parents.

I learned long ago that it never pays to compare any part of who you are to others. So as a parent I subscribe to this concept and my yearly goal as a parent, now 11 years is to be a “better” parent than I was last year.

So I feel not only am I a better parent due to time and lessons learned while doing “the job” as parent. I also believe I am a better parent BECAUSE I am a single working parent.

Let me explain, as an engineer for really all of my career, when you implement a new VoIP platform for a client you use your frame of reference from past installations to guide you to success, however with all new platforms or technology solutions may come together in a new ways. So this challenge stretches you to really understand the new technology, how it operates, how it was put together on a base level and really understand how you can take your current expertise and maximize not just institute new capability and features for your clients.

Back to parenting, I feel that each year my challenge is to understand my daughters better in this new and changing world, environment, climate and community. Because I take my job as parent as the most important part of my life, I have evolved to apply how I tackle my career goals and aspirations to succeed in parenting. I’ve learned research into their physical and mental development at their given ages is key and exchange of information among other parents with same aged children is important.

I believe as a single parent, the entire parenting responsibility is left to me, so therefore I believe this makes me a “better” parent year to year only because I step up to this responsibility that I take very seriously!