Triple The Dad

A couple months ago I posted about a push up challenge , and at the risk of pushing this blog into a self-help section, I'm going to post something else that I really enjoy that I think might help a reader or two (all two of you!). Lifehacker.com currently runs what it calls "Mid-Week Meditations," which is a short story on some piece of ancient wisdom.  Oooohhhhhhh, its ancient.  Just so you know, I'm not one to fall for the whole "ancient" is best meme. But this is legit good stuff.  They take a quote or concept from a philosopher in the past - think Marcus Aurelius - translate what the sometimes mumbo jumboish phrase means, and then kind of detail how you can apply it. This week, its all about how to train your mind for constructive thinking . One thing I love about the series is that it doesn't dress up the knowledge too much.  It doesn't make it out to be more than it is, or suggest that its great simply because some Greek guy said it 2...

The holidays are over.  It only seems like life is over. There is a solid three month period where holidays of various degrees are hitting you one-two-three style.  You have Halloween, which takes some of the sting out of the cooling temperatures and the disappearance of summer.  You have Thanksgiving, with rare foods and the promise of Christmas.  Then you have a month of prepping and joy for Christmas.  You are so busy, you hardly notice how cold it has gotten.  And this year it got pretty darn cold.  And then Christmas itself.  My wife and I take a week off between Christmas and New Years, so we have that.  Its a period so full of life.  And then the aforementioned NYE - when the cold decided to take it up a notch. With triplets, its a little like being shot out of a cannon and taking three months to land. But when you land, you land firmly in what I call the Dark Months. There are no more holidays.  Yes, I realize ML...

Orlando; Dallas; Charleston. Brexit.  Less than one-third of people polled believe the United States is headed in the right direction. Admittedly, if you drill down and focus just on certain events, the world can seem pretty bleak. Almost as if its falling apart.  I would - have! - argue that you would be wrong. I would also argue that its irresponsible. Not just as citizens of society, but as parents, as well. B ecause the belief that we are worse off today than pretty much any period in time is an artifice of the mind  psychologists  call  habituation . Its a trick our brain plays on us. You get that new phone or car or apartment and you love it. And then as the weeks go by you become acclimated to it. The new and exciting becomes background. You forget how good you have it. The emphasis on current also means we tend to forget about the past, when things were also violent and hateful. Which is what we do when we pretend that a single current even...

I'm old. I turned 39 in April, so I guess it shouldn't be that much of a surprise. And a million things could have triggered it.  Like the aches that linger a bit longer than they used too or the pains that don't quite subside.  The mornings that are harder to face than before.  There was the time my eye doctor told me my completely harmless eye condition came as the result of age.   But nope, none of that did it.   A little baby did. When I started hanging around with my wife's family we were the youngest of the group.  While I'm the oldest sibling in my family, my wife is the youngest of hers.  She had a couple nephews and a niece, but they were just entering their teen years.  So we were the ones finding  first jobs, and then second jobs, and exploring the world.  We were the ones living in new places and buying homes and then having kids.  And we didn't just have kids, we had triplets.  We were always the young u...

Read enough parenting books and blogs and you'll inevitably come across this piece of advice: You shouldn't try to reason with toddlers.  They simply don't have the comprehension skills, emotion-management skills, expectation management skills or time-management skills to reason or rationalize. And surely, anyone who has watched as their kids melt down because someone cut their sandwich the wrong way, or because one parent or another pushed the elevator button first - the HORROR! - will realize that this is true. If only it were this easy... It is also advice I ignore.  Not entirely ignore, mind you, but largely ignore.  Because its a parenting TRAP and not entirely true.  Instead, I think you should totally talk to your kids above their cognition level.  What you should not  do is expect them to understand.  At least not right away. You see, I've found that if you talk to your kid like a baby or like the two-year-old child they are, the pass...