Triple The Dad

First off, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays. It is the holiday season, so this is going to be a quick and fun post. If you want something more serious, you can look my struggles with my daughter's self esteem  here , my blah attitude about the death of cursive here , and why I'm a very bad person here . All kids believe in some clearly wild ideas. Santa. The tooth fairy. Heck, some parents believe vaccines cause disease, so its hard to blame the kids. But mine might be taking it to new levels. For instance, my one son will repeatedly tell me how I'm the best Dad he knows. Its sweet. And gosh, its hard to deny. But I'm also pretty much the only Dad he knows. I guess his other point of reference is the Dad from Peppa Pig. Have you seen that guy? He's a half shaven, rotound pig with the manners you might expect of such a guy. Its a bit surprising he isn't usually adorned with a can of beer in his hand and food stains on his clothing. This suddenly sounds li...

Yes, Christmas Eve isn't until tomorrow, but I already received the best gift I could get this year. How? Let me set the scene for you: My kids' preschool holds "special days" for each child. On those days, that child is the line leader, gets to tell the class what the weather is like, and brings in a secret item in a share sack for which they give clues and the class has to guess. It is a pretty big deal for the four-year-old set. But probably the  biggest  deal is that a parent or other adult goes to school with them that day. Our kids have brought both Mom and Dad, a grandparent and our Nanny to their various special days. It is a big deal. And we love it. Its great for them and fun for us. But four months into the school year we are now firmly into a second time around this merry-go-round. For parents with one kid in the system its not a big deal. Everyone month or two they go into school. For us, its pretty much every month, often twice or sometimes...

Care Norway has a new video out on YouTube supposedly detailing the life a woman. The video takes the form of an unborn girl's letter to her father. It comes complete with a #DearDaddy hashtag. And loads of crap. Are you kidding me? I'm not saying middle school-aged girls aren't called the names mentioned in the video (whore and slut are specifically name dropped) nor that teenage boys don't make sexual advances on teenage girls. Both happen. The little girl makes a point of reminding her Dad that he probably did many of the same things growing up. He probably did. I'm sure that if, showed a video of my life, I'd be embarrassed about lots of it. So would my wife, most likely. So would you, I'm guessing. Life isn't something we are born knowing how to do. Our 20-year-old selves often have different goals, values and understanding than our 40-year-old selves. As it should be. We shouldn't want or understand things the same way at 20 as we do at...

My daughter came up to me on one recent Saturday and said "Daddy, I'm not pretty." I'm not going to lie: A little portion of my soul died right then. And it wasn't just the words, it was the sad way she said them. I was cut a thousand different ways. One of my focuses in parenting is trying not to just tell my kids something is "good" but explain why. Maybe its their use of several colors, or how they linked the colors, or how they stayed within the lines. I try to have a "why" for when something is "good." This is doubly true for my daughter. I try not to emphasize the fact that she is truly beautiful too much and instead emphasize her other  qualities. I figure society and even her educators will spend enough time convincing her that looks are important and that she can't do math and science .  I can spend my time convincing her that other aspects of her are important. "Daddy, I'm not pretty." It isn'...

While the weather here in the Northeast might not be tipping you off, radio music and decorations and such might have given you the hint that we are fully engulfed in another Christmas season. As part of that, my wife and I are having our kids purchase gifts for other members of the family. So on a recent Christmas shopping trip my wife attempted to suss out what the kids might want to buy Daddy by asking them what Daddy likes. They responded with "tea and football." Why? Why do my kids think this about me? Which is fair enough. I do  drink tea pretty much every day and it is football season. But my interests are broad and varied. Broader and more varied than most, in my experience. At first I laughed it off. Kids, amirite? You can go crazy reading the tea leaves behind a four-year old's thinking and logic. But its been a week now and there the comment sits, crouched at the edge of my subconsciousness like some sort of demented Nightmare-Before-Christmas versi...