What Fatherless Teens Need from their Single Mom

The anticipation of the teenage years often causes parents a lot of anxiety. Although this season of growing in independence can be turbulent, it is an important transition from childhood to adulthood. 

Many factors impact a fatherless teen navigating these years, including their personality, support system, maturity, personal faith, and how long they have experienced the loss of an engaged, earthly dad. When the dad is not alive or actively involved in a child’s life, single moms are entrusted with the responsibility of raising them. This task is especially challenging in the teenage years. 

When both mom and child put their trust in God, He will be faithful. The relationship during these teenage years is a tool that God will use to bring about sanctification.

9 gifts single moms can give their teens:

1. Surrender: Surrendering your plans, dreams, hopes, and wills to God, who is good, kind, merciful, and loves you and your teen(s) more than you can imagine or comprehend. 
2. Compassion: Significant milestones often unlock hidden or dormant grief. It is important to communicate with your teen about the possibility of tender emotions and feel the loss with them.
3. Confidence: As the single parent of your home, it is crucial that you lead your family well. Trust in God, walk in faith and do not fear. 
4. Intentionality: Establish a team of support and enlist mentors for yourself and your children. Make memories together and stay engaged with family interaction. 
5. Consistency: Remain steady even as your teen(s) fluctuate with the highs and lows of their emotions, hormones, and circumstances. Keep your discipline consistent so that they know that mom is going to respond and not react. Be consistent with your expectations, yet offer grace and flexibility as the Holy Spirit leads you. Be faithful in gaining strength from the Lord.
6. Light-heartedness: These years are intense and will need to be seasoned with grace, fun, and a sense of humor. When you can, insert joy and laughter into the dark days of grief.
7. Blessings: Use your voice to affirm their positive traits, behaviors, and dreams, letting them know that you love and respect them. Speak blessings over them and give them hope from God’s word.  
8. Humility: As you navigate this unfamiliar territory, both you and your teen will make mistakes. Be willing to ask for forgiveness. You will also need to ask for help, which takes humility. Do not try to do this season by yourself. The best way to make it through the teenage years is to have other people come alongside you and offer support.
9. Faithfulness: Children who do not have an earthly dad can hold onto Psalm 68:5 as a special promise that He will care for them. You, too, can be a reminder to them by continually surrendering your life to God. 

God is sovereign and is with us in times of suffering. In these difficult times, we must worship Him while rejoicing that death does not have the final victory.

“Worthy are You, our Lord and our God, to receive glory and honor and power; for You created all things, and because of Your will they existed, and were created” (Revelation 4:11, NASB).

“He has made everything beautiful in its time. He also has planted eternity in men’s hearts and minds [a divinely implanted sense of a purpose working through the ages which nothing under the sun but God alone can satisfy], yet so that men cannot find out what God has done from the beginning to the end” (Ecclesiastes 3:11-14, AMPC).

He will swallow up death for all time, and the Lord GOD will wipe tears away from all faces” (Isaiah 25:8, NASB).