This might be one of the most inspiring Ted Talks I have seen. The 3 A’s of Awesome or, as Open Culture calls it, the secrets to living an awesome life from Neil Pasricha, editor of the 1000 Awesome Things blog. Seriously, when you are feeling down, bookmark this puppy. Neil’s take on how to navigate adversity in your life and appreciate the little things is refreshing and all around wonderful.
If we are lucky, we get 100 years. A reminder of how to make the most of it.
Posted in Life as Dad
I loved this article from the NY Times on the movement to restore children’s play – a rallying cry for us parents to let go of our control freak order tendencies and leave it to the kids to rip apart the house and tackle some unstructured, imaginative play that involves loud noises, yells and dismantling of furniture.
Much of the movement has focused on the educational value of play, and efforts to restore recess and unstructured playtime to early childhood and elementary school curriculums. But advocates are now starting to reach out to parents, recognizing that for the movement to succeed, parental attitudes must evolve as well — starting with a willingness to tolerate a little more unpredictability in children’s schedules and a little less structure at home. Building that fort, for example, probably involves disassembling the sofa and emptying the linen closet. (A sheet makes an excellent roof.)
If you pop over our house, it’s a bloody mess most of the time. And sometimes the chaos does overwhelm and stress me out. Clutter everywhere. But I also see in that clutter the various superheros costumes my son dresses up in, the tinfoil robots and cardboard Viking shields, and my daughters ever present art supplies, strewn across three split levels.
And, as frustrating as I occasionally find it being asked to play with them only to be verbally thrashed and admonished because I am “not doing it right” when I have no idea what the hell “right” is, or even what it is we are playing, I know that I need to suck it up and have fun because it is important for them to be in control of whatever is going on, and for me to just go along with whatever scenario it is they have cooking up in their mind. Because in their mind me not “doing it right” is usually whenever I try to inject something of my own in their play, when in reality most of the time they just want me as a prop – a supporting actor in whatever epic fantasy they have cooking up in their heads but can’t always fully articulate. It’s just part of the chaos. A challenge, for sure, and one that I am glad I am not alone in.
But promoting play can be surprisingly challenging to parents. Emily Paster, a mother of two in River Forest, Ill., a Chicago suburb, tries to discourage screen time and encourage her children to play imaginatively. That usually works fine for her 7-year-old daughter, who is happy to play in her room with her dolls for hours. But her 4-year-old son is a different story, especially in the cold weather when he’s cooped up.
“If he wants to play, he always wants me to play with him,” Ms. Paster said. “This child has a million toys. Every kind of train you can imagine. But he really wants a partner. If I’m meant to get anything accomplished — dinner, laundry, a phone call — then it’s really difficult.”
I feel your pain, Emily. It’s bloody hard work when you are nothing but an ever present prop for a 4 year old’s imagination.
On a bit of a side note, another section of the article reinforces something I wrote about a couple days ago about overly safe (and ultimatley sterile) playgrounds for kids, and how play spaces these days are designed more for adult peace of mind that developing children.
Ms. Rosker has also campaigned, although unsuccessfully, to bring recess to her son’s elementary school. But school officials were too worried about potential injuries, unruliness and valuable time lost from academic pursuits to sign on to her idea and, she was surprised to find, many parents were similarly reluctant. “They said: ‘I’m not going to sign that. I’m sure there is a good reason why this is good for our kids — our school has good test scores.’ “
So, not only do we not want to give our kids challenging play spaces that help them develop, but we don’t even want to give them the time to do it because we are too concerned about “injuries and unruliness”. Something just feels wrong about that.
Image credit: Giant Kids Fort by Dave Bates used under Creative Commons license
When it comes to playgrounds, a 5 year research study from UBC recommends municipal park planners dump the pricey playground equipment in favour of designing more natural spaces for kids to play.
We found that outdoor play spaces that contain materials that children could manipulate — sand, water, mud, plants, pathways and other loose parts — offered more developmental and play opportunities than spaces without these elements.
The report seems to suggest that playground equipment is designed more for adult piece of mind rather than to challenge and aid kids in their development. Such an emphasis has been placed on safety that it has sucked all the challenge out of most contemporary play spaces.
The playground equipment industry has a very aggressive marketing campaign going on that is largely based on putting fear and guilt into the minds of parents. Landscape architects are under a lot of pressure to simply install equipment because its easier and more recognizably accepted by adults as a place to play compared to [a more natural environment].
My own experience has found this to be mostly true – that more often than not my kids will tend to favour natural play settings over playground equipment. At my daughter’s school, there is a playground which is surrounded by a thick cedar hedge along the fence line. Over the years, kids have worn trails through the hedge and have created caves and hiding spots in the hedge. On any given day there are just as many kids zooming in and out of those trails and trees as there are climbing on the playground equipment.
Our backyard is another example on the natural side. We have both a backyard climbing structure/fort thingy, and two apple trees and an empty garden plot full of dirt. Guess which get played with more? Yep, mud and tree climbing wins the day, with the playhouse structure taking more damage from the weather than from kid use.
However there are some exceptions. My daughter, for example, is a monkey bar freak. She regularly blisters her hands on the things, and can spend an hour just swinging. And give my son one of these things:
and he is good for a morning.
I think that some playgrounds are becoming sterile environments because playgrounds are often spaces for parents moreso than kids. Sure, we want our kids to be safe, no question. But sometimes I wonder if that emphasis we put on safety is really an excuse for us to not pay attention.
I am not talking about hovering and preventing our kids from exploring the boundaries of their physical bodies in a safe way, but rather how many times I have been at a playground and see parents chatting away to each other, completely oblivious as to what their kids are doing. The playground has become a social center for parents and a kind of babysitter.
Not that parents shouldn’t socialize and visit – playground conversations with other parents has often been some of the most productive parent networking I have done. But I have seen many an oblivious parent use the playground as a babysitter, completely abdicating the responsibility of making sure their kid is safe to the municipal park planners, who in turn take their marching orders from lawyers and risk assessment professionals who always err on the side of caution. Meaning our kids get sterile playgrounds.
Photo credit: Playground Climbing Web used under Creative Commons license
Posted in All The Rest, Education
We are 70% of the way through this cycle with The Girl, who , in just a few days, turns 7.
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Posted in All The Rest, My Kids and Family
Leapster game cartridges. Here is a photo of one of the games Santa tried to stuff into my sons Christmas stocking with a $2 coin for comparison.
and here is the actual size of what was contained inside that package.
What a bloody waste. I wish the Grassroots Recycling Network was still doing their annual excessive packaging awards. I would be nominating Leapster.
Love your games. Hate your packaging.
They don’t hold a candle to these folks. I mean, follow European soccer and there are some rabid (and scary) fans, but I don’t think I have seen this kind of fandom demonstrated for 12 year olds. At 2:30 the flares come out for this young Polish side.
Thanks to the Good Men Project.
Just discovered a great new Dad podcast, Dads Unplugged, which introduced me to the work of John Badalament, author of The Modern Dad’s Dilemma: How to Stay Connected with Your Kids in a Rapidly Changing World
One of things John mentioned in the interview that has resonated with me is his question of who taught you to be a Dad? John says that no one ever talked to him about Fatherhood. No one ever told him when he was a boy that they believed had what it takes to be a good Dad.
It’s more than missing mentors and role models. In fact, I think we have a lot of models and mentors for great Dads around (and, as an aside, I think there have always been great Dads – it’s not necessarily something new with our generation. I have something percolating in the back of my head about this so called “changing role of Dad” thing that I am suddenly finding irksome, but that’s another post). It’s just that there is not a lot of open discussion about what it takes to be a great Dad with those who matter the most – our sons.
I am not talking about publicly writing our blog posts, or carrying out these conversations over beers or on Facebook with each other, as important as those activities are. We Dads ARE connecting and having those discussions about what it takes to be a Dad. That is happening.
But what John says is missing are those conversations we have with the boys in our lives about what it takes to be a great Dad. It is about arming them with the belief and the confidence that they have the tools within them to someday be great Dads theselves, and then seizing the opportunities as they come up to help them refine those tools.
I am guilty. I don’t think I have ever consciously thought that while I am playing with my son I am preparing him to be a Dad. I am preparing my son for lots of things in his life. How to work as part of a team, how to think for himself, how to solve problems, how to treat and respect women, how to tie his shoes. But I haven’t ever consciously thought that I should be teaching him to be a great Dad.
I can’t tell you how uncomfortable typing that last line made me feel. Like I have just discovered some innate truth that I should have known all along. But the truth is, it is something that had never occurred to me, beyond consciously trying to be the best Dad/Husband I can be in the hopes that I can model behaviour for him. But what John is saying is, while that is important, modelling alone isn’t enough – we have to be explicit and act consciously if we want our sons to be great Dads. As powerful as our modelling is, we can’t expect that our sons are going to get it just by observing our actions. It is, I think, an important point, and one that I need to pay attention to.
Here is some more from John.
Posted in A Dad's Role, Dad to Dad
This is my Dad. Over the years he has taken some friendly ribbing about his enthusiastic Christmas decorations. It got worse once Christmas Vacation was released and we now had a name to lovingly hang on my Dad – Clark W Griswald. My Dad had so many cutouts, lights and decorations on our yard that they actually spilled over to the neighbours yard.
We grew up in a small town, and I have vivid (and sometimes embarrassing) memories of the traffic being backed up on our street Christmas Eve, flashbulbs popping as strangers took pictures of our house. I’m certain the flashes were redundant.
A few years ago, my retired parents moved from the town I grew up in to the town they grew up in. A province away. I thought that would have been the end of the decorations, considering they alone would probably fill a 1 ton U-Haul. But Dad packed them all up and took them and has continued the tradition at their new home.
As I get older with my own kids and spend more time in my childhood memories than is probably healthy, I have come to deeply appreciate this tradition that my Dad worked hard to carry on. Traditions are important. They are the glue that holds family together across time. And as the years go by, I have this feeling of pride in the fact that my Dad brought smiles to many faces, and probably contributed to a few other families Christmas traditions – the Christmas Eve drive-by of the Lalonde house.
Nice work, Chuck.
Posted in Dad to Dad, My Kids and Family
Maybe this is why I am in a funk today. Just realized it’s December 8th. 30 years.
My mom used to listen to the radio in bed as she fell asleep at night. My room was in the basement of the house. I remember coming upstairs in the evening and hearing the sound of my Mom crying in her bedroom. 14 year old me went in and asked her what was wrong. She told me against the sonic background crackle of AM radio static, through which I faintly heard a voice and a song.
Comments on websites are both a blessing and a curse. Take YouTube, for example, where responses to user videos are often juvenile at best. Amazon, on the other hand, oh how I love the comments on Amazon. Maybe it is because Amazon was born out of a community where people had a love of the written word. Here are 5 of my favorite Amazon product reviews that make me laugh.
Lord knows I love my Playmobil, but this product takes realistic place settings to a whole new level. All that is missing is the full body scan and inappropriate patdown area. Here’s the review from loosenut:
I was a little disappointed when I first bought this item, because the functionality is limited. My 5 year old son pointed out that the passenger’s shoes cannot be removed. Then, we placed a deadly fingernail file underneath the passenger’s scarf, and neither the detector doorway nor the security wand picked it up. My son said “that’s the worst security ever!”. But it turned out to be okay, because when the passenger got on the Playmobil B757 and tried to hijack it, she was mobbed by a couple of other heroic passengers, who only sustained minor injuries in the scuffle, which were treated at the Playmobil Hospital. The best thing about this product is that it teaches kids about the realities of living in a high-surveillence society. My son said he wants the Playmobil Neighborhood Surveillence System set for Christmas. I’ve heard that the CC TV cameras on that thing are pretty worthless in terms of quality and motion detection, so I think I’ll get him the Playmobil Abu-Gharib Interogation Set instead (it comes with a cute little memo from George Bush).
Because, you know, what Dad doesn’t need a pair of $6,800 speaker cables? Review by Happy Customer
I was a bit skeptical, but decided to take a chance and took out a second mortgage on my home to buy these cables. In a great wave of luck however, the cables actually built me a NEW house shortly after I lost mine to foreclosure (I lost my job after missing 2 weeks straight due to illness. Between you and I, though, I was really just spending 16 hours a day tweaking the connectors on these cables to get the best possible sound from my speakers.)
Although I love my new home, I do not love it as much as I do these cables. They are quickly becoming the favorite thing in my life, a position which used to be held by my daughter. She’s old enough to take care of herself now, at least that’s what I tell the Children’s Services agent when they try to lecture me about food and clothing and blah blah blah.
Final verdict: buy 3 pair.
Another fine product from the realistic setting folks at Playmobil. Review from Christoper Barber.
This playset is one of the best purchases I have made for my three-year-old. In the past, when we have been stopped at roadblocks, or when during one of Daddy’s arrests, he would start crying uncontrollably. Now, after playing with this for the past several months, he is perfectly docile.
As an adjunct to this product, I would also recommend that you purchase the Playmobil Armed Standoff Playset, Fisher-Price Little People Battering Ram, and the Nerf Tear-Gas Canister Deployment Gun.
Bill of Rights sold separately.
Yes, you can buy milk on Amazon. Who knew? Catherine Swinford’s review raises the literary bar for Amazon product reviews.
He always brought home milk on Friday.
After a long hard week full of days he would burst through the door, his fatigue hidden behind a smile. There was an icy jug of Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz in his right hand. With his left hand he would grip my waist – I was always cooking dinner – and press the cold frostiness of the jug against my arm as he kissed my cheek. I would jump, mostly to gratify him after a time, and smile lovingly at him. He was a good man, a wonderful husband who always brought the milk on Friday, Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz.
Then there was that Friday, the terrible Friday that would ruin every Friday for the rest of my life. The door opened, but there was no bouyant greeting – no cold jug against the back of my arm. There was no Tuscan Whole Milk in his right hand, nor his left. There came no kiss. I watched as he sat down in a kitchen chair to remove his shoes. He wore no fatigue, but also no smile. I didn’t speak, but turned back to the beans I had been stirring. I stirred until most of their little shrivelled skins floated to the surface of the cloudy water. Something was wrong, but it was vague wrongness that no amount of hard thought could give shape to.
Over dinner that night I casually inserted,”What happened to the milk?”
“Oh,”he smiled sheepishly, glancing aside,”I guess I forgot today.”That was when I knew. He was tired of this life with me, tired of bringing home the Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz. He was probably shoveling funds into a secret bank account, looking at apartments in town, casting furtive glances at cashiers and secretaries and waitresses. That’s when I knew it was over. Some time later he moved in with a cashier from the Food Mart down the street. And me? Well, I’ve gone soy.
The grandaddy of Amazon reviews imo. So lovingly paid homage to in an episode of The Office, and sweetly reviewed on Amazon by B. Govern
This item has wolves on it which makes it intrinsically sweet and worth 5 stars by itself, but once I tried it on, that’s when the magic happened. After checking to ensure that the shirt would properly cover my girth, I walked from my trailer to Wal-mart with the shirt on and was immediately approached by women. The women knew from the wolves on my shirt that I, like a wolf, am a mysterious loner who knows how to ‘howl at the moon’ from time to time (if you catch my drift!). The women that approached me wanted to know if I would be their boyfriend and/or give them money for something they called mehth. I told them no, because they didn’t have enough teeth, and frankly a man with a wolf-shirt shouldn’t settle for the first thing that comes to him.
I arrived at Wal-mart, mounted my courtesy-scooter (walking is such a drag!) sitting side saddle so that my wolves would show. While I was browsing tube socks, I could hear aroused asthmatic breathing behind me. I turned around to see a slightly sweaty dream in sweatpants and flip-flops standing there. She told me she liked the wolves on my shirt, I told her I wanted to howl at her moon. She offered me a swig from her mountain dew, and I drove my scooter, with her shuffling along side out the door and into the rest of our lives. Thank you wolf shirt.
Pros: Fits my girthy frame, has wolves on it, attracts women
Cons: Only 3 wolves (could probably use a few more on the ‘guns’), cannot see wolves when sitting with arms crossed, wolves would have been better if they glowed in the dark.
Honerable mention for Three Wolves shirt goes to DrCoolSex (and bonus point for working in Tuscon Whole Milk):
What are your favorite reviews on Amazon?
If you are on Facebook, you may have noticed that your news update is beginning to look a lot like some bastard love child offspring of Hanna-Barbera and Walt Disney as profile pictures get changed. To go along with the change is the message:
Change your FB profile picture to a cartoon from your childhood. The goal? To not see a human face on FB until Monday, December 6th. Join the fight against child abuse, copy & paste to your status and invite your friends to do the same!
My profile picture right now is Batfink, a little known cartoon character that aired after schools when I was a kid.
This is fun (and perhaps the largest collective copyright infringement movement I have ever seen hehehe ), but there needs to be more in order for this to work. Changing your profile picture does send a message, but ultimately it is a meaningless act.
So, let’s all remind our networks that, if we really want to send a strong message that we believe violence and abuse against children is something we do not tolerate in this society, let’s back it up with some action. I urge you to not only donate some cash to an organization that works to eradicate this issue, but send the message out to others in your network to do the same. Make the change mean something. Here are some suggestions:
The latest issue of Literacy Lava came across my Twitter feed in a tweet from tessadad. In it is an excellent article called Story Time with Dad by Kelly Burstow about the importance of Father’s reading stories aloud to their kids. In the article, Kelly quotes from Jim Trealease, author of The Read-Aloud Handbook
Fathers should make an extra effort to read to their children. Because the vast majority of primary-school teachers are women, young boys often associate reading with women and schoolwork. And just as unfortunate, too many fathers would rather be seen playing catch in the driveway with their sons than taking them to the library.
I do the vast majority of bedtime reading with my kids. I enjoy the time that I get to spend with them at the end of each day. And it reconnects me to my childhood. I loved reading, and I love the opportunity to connect my kids with the books I loved as a kid. It reminds me that at one time of my life I read as entertainment – to escape – as opposed to today where I often read to understand. Balance the time crunch of being a full-time working parent with the demands of a Masters program, and reading for escape and pleasure has taken a back seat in my life for the past few years. So when I get a chance to read The Littles
Yes, I like to write about firsts. Maybe because as a parent there are so many of them.
I remember how terrified both my wife and I were when we first walked in the door to our house with a fresh, new baby girl bundled in our arms. We both just stood there, shell shocked from the seismic change that had just occurred in our lives, unaware of what having this new baby would really mean or even what we should do next. That feeling does gradually wear off. But it occasionally rears it’s quease-inducing head when we are presented with a new challenge we have never dealt with before. In the early days, it was the basics – first diaper changes, first solid foods, first baths. Today, it’s first day of classes, first time on skates, and first sleepover.
This week’s episode of This American Life, the excellent radio program from PBS, has a story of a Dad who undertakes a first with his four month old daughter – their first walk around the block together. This doesn’t seem like it should be terrifying. But for Dad Ryan Knighton, it was. His story is the first one in this weeks TAL (about 6:30 in in) and it hooked me. Don’t worry. No one gets hurt. It’s just a compelling story of a first for a Dad who experiences life from a different perspective.
Besides being a dad, I do have this in common with Ryan. I have also been asked if I am looking for Mom when pushing my kids in a stroller :).
Ryan has written a book about his parenting experiences called C’mon Papa: Dispatches from a Dad in the Dark
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Posted in Dad to Dad, Life as Dad
The things you learn when you blog.
I went to write this post and, on a lark, Google’d the term “bickersons”. I have heard that term used throughout my life to mean two people who do nothing but argue. Turns out, The Bickersons was actually a post-WW2 radio comedy series starring Don Ameche and Francis Langford as two married people who do nothing but argue.
I feel like I know this radio play well. No, not my wife and I. It’s the kids.
It has gotten so bad that we have taken them to our family doctor to see if there is anything medically wrong with them. Turns out that was a good call as it appears that The Boy is suffering from a severe bout of LBS (Little Brother Syndrome). LBS symptoms include an incessant need to sit on his sisters half of the couch, poke her in the back and then run away, and mess up perfectly ordered lines of crayons.
His older sister has also been diagnosed with OSPMS (Older Sibling Parentitis Münchausen Syndrome), whose symptoms include assuming the proxy role of a parent when none are in the same room, an unnatural desire to strictly enforce all rules (real and imagined) and maintain extreme control over all living beings smaller than her who live within close physical proximity.
The Doctor has assured us that this is quite normal and that the symptoms will decrease in occurrence the closer to December 25th we get. However, the long term prognosis does not look good, and we can expect both conditions to flame up again early in the new year, with possible spontaneous outbreaks over the next 10 to 20 years.
Photo: Ever seen a cat kick a dogs ass? by Charles Nouÿrit used under Creative Commons license.
Posted in My Kids and Family, Silly and Fun
Well, as a parent of a kid with allergies entering the public school system next year, this new report from Dr. Scott Sicherer, professor of pediatrics at the Jaffe Food Allergy Institute at Mount Sinai School of Medicine doesn’t fill me with warm, gooey thoughts.
According to the report, nearly 1/3 of kids with allergies have been harassed, teased or bullied about their condition. 80% of the time it is by their classmates. As a result of this, 65 per cent of kids with allergies report feelings of depression and embarrassment.
While this study does give me even more resolve to continue to educate my son about the realities of his allergies, it still fills me with worry. Overall I do think that things are getting better for parents with allergic kids, at least where I live. There is more acceptance by schools (even if there is tacit and often unconscious singling out of kids with allergies by teachers, as the study shows), and many have adopted peanut free policies. I am happy our schools are willing to take a stand on behalf of our kids.
But I still run across the occasional parent who resents – sometimes vociferously - the minor restriction on their kids eating choices. Every once in a while I run into someone who believes that our sons condition has somehow impinged on their personal freedoms, and that it is their God given democratic peanut loving right to send whatever friggin food they wish for their kid to eat. It seems so out of proportion in my mind. I know packing lunches and snacks for kids is a hassle, and that having to make choices based on the safety of a few kids seems restricting. But the alternative?
Suck it up, itchy boy. Yes, I have heard that. Just last week. Along with “helpful” advice to a Facebook friend that they shouldn’t worry about sending a peanut butter sandwich for their kids to school despite it being against school policy. They won’t get in trouble for it because all the lunch room monitors are Grade 5 kids and they don’t care what the little kids eat.
So, part of me has to wonder how many of those kids doing the teasing, excluding and outright bullying are getting fed a diet of resentment from their parents? How many parents openly talk in front of their kids about what a hassle or pain it is to pack a lunch or snack each day that has to accommodate little Billy’s allergy? How many still believe that, really, it’s just a couple of hives. Our kids listen. This stuff trickles down.
I know that isn’t the case with most parents. The vast majority of people are fully supportive and understand that the risks are more than just a few hives. But it just takes that one parent who decides, for whatever reason, that their kids need to eat a peanut butter sandwich for lunch trumps my kids right to learn in a safe environment to wreck havoc in our life.
Posted in Kid Allergies
I’m a 45 year old Father of two great kids: an 8 year old girl I call “The Girl” and a 5 year old boy called “The Boy”. The names are changed to protect the innocent – they can choose to reveal themselves when the time is right – probably in 20 years with their therapist when the contents of this blog will be used against me :)
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