Triple The Dad

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...

I wish I could blame my month-long posting hiatus on my recent vacation, but alas, I can’t.  I can, however, tell you that I learned some lesson while visiting Virginia for a cousin's wedding.  When you go on vacation without your kids, you do a couple things differently. 1)       You begin using your spouse’s name again, and what a nice feeling that is.  Instead of “Mom” she becomes a wife again.  The shift was almost immediate for me, and I don’t even thing I recognized it until about the third time I called her by her name.  It was both awesome and freeing, as if I had been transported back to a time before kids. 2)       You don’t realize how stressed you are until you leave it behind.  I’m such a better Dad the last two or three days and I credit the vacation.  I feel less stressed.  And yeah, I realize that is the reason for vacations, but still, worth noting. 3)   ...

College tuition is in the news a lot lately and I've had some college-related stuff at work lately.  And then I wrote my last post about the least helpful advice I received as a teen and it got me thinking.  There is a variant of this least helpful advice that also rears its head in high school.  It comes when guidance counselors are doing their thing regarding college choices and careers.  Now, I’m a pretty well rounded, “jack of all trades, master of none" type fellow.  That isn’t bragging.  I’ve often longed to have some overwhelming natural talent to direct me.  And as a result of what boils down to “be yourself” when choosing a college or career, this lack of direction gave me fits. I’m 37, and have had what amounts to 3 careers.  I'm pondering a fourth.  And that isn't because I'm the untethered, wandering type; if anything, I'm the exact opposite.  Nor have the career changes come as a result of job losses.  All of t...

An Elf so bad at being punctual Santa apparently exiled him. The topic of the Elf on the Shelf came up recently in a discussion with good friends of ours who bought an Elf for their child against their better instincts, fearing that their child would be the only one of his friends who didn't have this tradition.  A kind of "keeping up with the Elveses". To which I said: We aren't getting an Elf on the Shelf. Sorry kids, hate to break it to you, but we're not.. And not because I'm being a humbug.  I'm probably one of the biggest pro-Christmas people you'll ever meet.  My wife and I start with the Christmas movies and music as early as possible. But back to the Elf.  Let’s forget for a minute that the thing looks like a 1950s toy factory reject.  I’m even willing to forgo the whole creepy “he watches us when we sleep” thing because, well, isn’t that what we tell kids about Santa?  Let’s forget all that.  This isn’t a “Christmas tradit...