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There were so many people that there wasn’t enough garbage and the kids were disappointed that there wasn’t more to do. Imagine if we all helped so much that there weren’t enough homeless to shelter, kids to teach, or beaches to clean to keep us all occupied? While kids do get distracted and like to goof off during these types of events, I find they are always interested in helping out and proud of having done so.
Category Archives: Thoughts and opinions
New Year Resolutions for Dads
January 12, 2009 – 10:20 am
I paged through Jessica Seinfeld’s Deceptively Delicious: Simple Secrets to Get Your Kids Eating Good Food, though I was scared off by how she puts sweet potatoes into everything. … I’m a sucker for easy fixes like this, but I found this article in the New York Times on the value of push-ups quite compelling. … I bought myself a pedometer and just that step has me thinking again before taking the car out to drive ten or twelve blocks rather than walk.
There is hope – daughters will always need their dads
October 31, 2008 – 8:39 am
That’s why I like this post from The Thread I Love My Dad… My parents came for a quick visit on their way out to their winter home in Utah. … I’m pretty handy around the house– I think I get it from him– but there are some things, usually dealing with electricity, that I won’t try alone. … I’ve called him over the years with various house issues and he’s talked me through most of them.
My kids are now off at school, so I’m no longer the stay-at-home dad I used to be, but…
October 30, 2008 – 3:05 pm
Here in San Francisco, when a man stays at home, or just shows up at all the school functions, everyone assumes he made a bundle in the internet boom and doesn’t have to work. Staying at home is looked on as a glorified form of sloth, reward for what may or may not have been a lot of hard work. For the rest of us, who have to make hard choices with our spouses on who is best positioned to work at a “real job,” it may end up feeling like a lucky reward, but it usually doesn’t start out that way on the first day.
The Self-Esteem Trap
September 17, 2008 – 5:30 am
"The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance by Polly Young-Eisendrath is out and it will be a good read for parents frustrated by the "every child is a winner" mentality that has taken over our schools and playgrounds. ... However, if you recognize yourself as one of these types of parents, you may be setting your child up for self-esteem issues later on: * Laissez-faire parents - "indirect, non-confrontational, vague, and friendly in their attempts to be authorities" * Helicopter parents - "hover around their children" trying to be close friends with them. ... Some readers may be put off by her chapter on "Religion and Reverence," where she has a section entitled, "Why we need religion," and patronizingly insists that "spirituality" is not a substitute for organized religion.
The parental instinct is present in all of us
April 4, 2008 – 8:48 am
Using a technique called magneto-encephalography that measures brain signals, the Oxford researchers found that a baby’s face can seize our attention in milliseconds, activating an unusual mental organ called the fusiform gyrus that responds to human faces…. So, if friends, or even your wife, are teasing you that you’ve gone soft around babies, maybe it’s not that you’re evolving, maybe just that we have as a species, to protect the little ones in our midst.
Facebook users beware!
February 1, 2008 – 5:19 pm
However, you should be aware of privacy issues that relate to your use of facebook even if you don’t think you’re giving out data to more than your friends…. So as a user, you may have posted your age, favorite books, maybe even sexual preferences, thinking you are sharing with a very small group of friends.
Double dipping – the risk finally quantified
February 1, 2008 – 5:02 pm
In case you missed it, the New York Times did a story on the phenomenon known as “double-dipping, “made famous by The Seinfeld Show This is when you dip a chip into a dip, and then dip into the dip again with the same end of the chip, thereby polluting the entire bowl of dip with your used chip.
…”I like to say it’s like kissing everybody at the party — if you’re double dipping, you’re putting some of your bacteria in that dip,” Dawson said.
Reading Harry Potter
January 21, 2008 – 11:03 am
At every occasion, she begs for me to read Harry Potter to her, and many of our conversations are reviews of the plot and mystery.
…We’re proceeding cautiously at this point, which will increasingly become a challenge, as my daughter asks every afternoon when she gets home from school, “Can we read just a little bit?.”
One top ten list you don’t want to be on
January 5, 2008 – 4:10 pm
This month’s Men’s Health is on 2008 resolutions and one section featured screenwriter Justin Zachham’s ‘bucket list.’ There, at number 7, was the item you see over and over, but that you’d never want to see written by your own kids, “Be the father mine never was.”