Triple The Dad

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'...

*This article originally appeared @ thebabyspot.ca I had a Cabbage Patch doll as a child.  Go ahead and get a snicker in about that if you want.  Got that out of your system?  Ok.  Good. Because for Easter, the bunny left one of my boys Magic Clip Dolls.  Not one, either, but 8 of them.  This wasn't some some strange experiment or a stunt to get a nice post for the blog; Rand asked for these for literally months.  Every trip to Target resulted in Rand telling us he wants Magic Clip Dolls, and which ones he wanted.  He would ask us at random times if he could have Magic Clip Dolls.  And at a recent birthday party he spent probably an hour in the basement playing with the two Magic Clip Dolls he found. Pure Joy What is a Dad to do?  Well, if you've posted in the past about why you gave up your opposition to your daughter wearing the  color pink  and why you think hating on pink  may actually be doing more ...

I posted last week about why I dropped my opposition to the color pink. Lo and behold, I stumbled upon this article about pink lockers at the University of Iowa. The lockers in the visitor's locker room, you see, are pink.  The walls have been that way since forever, apparently, but during a 2005 renovation the school took it a step further and added shades of pink everywhere, including lockers. There is pretty no question that when the practice started in 1979 it was intended as an insult.  And the new pink-hued lockerrooms were of course was called out as sexist and discriminatory.  But why is that?  Would it be sexist to put Tonka trucks out?  To make the benches appear like tires rising out of the ground?  If the visiting women's team's locker room was blue would that be sexist? Being offended by the presence of pink gives the people using that symbol, and the symbol itself, power.  If the visiting team wins 9/10 games, does the color pink...