Bookmark
Five back to school health tips
Back to school time usually coincides with health notices, increased awareness of lice, and for some, a reminder to get a flu shot. If you’re not on the way to the doctor’s office this fall, here is a list of things your doc still wishes were on top of mind for your preschooler:
1. Don’t make the doctor out to be the bad guy. If you warn your child all year long that he’ll “have to go to the doctor and get a shot” when ever you are trying to enforce a rule, your child will be extra worried about those doctor visits, making them unpleasant for everyone.
2. To avoid sickness, use soap and water. This little trick, that even your grandmother knew, is the first line of defense for little hands that seems to go everywhere now that your child’s social circle has increased in size.
3. Keep the helmet on. Even if your child isn’t yet riding a big kid’s bike, a helmet is still needed for scooter riding, even in the driveway.
4. Turn off the TV and talk to your child. In a study of 275 families led by Dr. Frederick J. Zimmerman of the University of California Los Angeles published in 2009, researchers found that parents’ willingness to talk to their kids was as important for language development as reading and storytelling.
5. Don’t make toilet training into a childhood trauma. Too many parents want their child trained by age 2 no matter what the cost. Some kids aren’t ready until age 4, so you’ll have to figure out when your child is ready. And, that won’t be by fighting about it or chasing him or her around asking if if it’s time to go.
These steps will go a long way in preventing a trip to visit the doctor before your next scheduled checkup.
Popularity: 3% [?]
A Week With My Father – new show on father/son reunions (Video)
Giacaomo Knox is launching a new web show and trying to sell the pilot for A Week With My Father, a new show that explores reunions between dads and sons. It’s an interesting idea, and underscores the importance of the father/child bond.
The first episode features Knox reuniting with his father after 33 years apart. The next episode, already in the Development stage, will reunite a former NBA great who came back from a stroke, and his father.
Check it out in this excerpt and the whole show at: aweekwithmyfather.com.
Popularity: 6% [?]
Travel with Kids (Video)
Daddy Troy and Daddy Clay offer their top five travel tips for road trips and air travel. Learn how to entertain your family while traveling,
and keep family travel nightmares to a minimum.
Popularity: 5% [?]
7 Ways Dads Can Raise Smart Kids
The best thing any dad can do is be loving and supporting, but there are a few boxes you can check if you’re serious about giving your kids the best opportunity to reach their full brainy potential.
1. Feed them right. Make sure kids get a healthy breakfast, and go from there. Recent studies also recommend added doses of Omega-3s for developing brains.
2. Teach them a language. Second language development actually changes the neural pathways in the brain. At the very least, a second language teaches kids to see things from other points of view, and gives them a special lens on other cultures.
3. Play music. Music is like another language, but is also related to mathematics in its structure.
4. Read with them and in front of them. Readers are thinkers and doers. Make sure to set the example.
5. Travel. The more kids see of other places, the more curious they will be.
6. Get art. Art teaches independent thinking.
7. Understand your child’s learning style. Kids do learn in different ways. If you let a teacher define your child because he or she fails under only one style, you’re giving up on your child.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Off-topic: French robber steals cash by baring breasts
Not really on-topic, but always amazed at how predictable we men are. I’m surprised this doesn’t happen more often actually. Could be a new approach for the Pentagon.
Police say on August 7, the man inserted a card into a cash machine in central Paris to withdraw money when two young women approached him and asked for money. The women waved a newspaper at the man in an attempt to distract him, but the technique didn’t work.
[From French robber steals cash by baring breasts - CNN.com]
Short take: he paid 300E for a really, really good robbery story.
Popularity: 11% [?]
On our desk: “Sugar Milk” by Ron Mattocks (book review)
Sugar Milk, subtitled “What One Dad Drinks When He Can’t Afford Vodka” joins the library of first person, mostly true accounts of real dads navigating the completely new waters of fatherhood in the new millennium. Unlike many of these books that track pregnancy and the trials and tribulations of fatherhood in a still secure nuclear family (see Daddy Drinks, for example), Mattocks’ story is the more increasingly commonplace tail of a dad organizing his life around kids from a first marriage and stepkids from a second. Throw the recession of 2007-2010 into the mix, and the story becomes emblematic of the way we live today.
Mattocks story, however, is not a crying-in-your beer melodrama. A former English Lit major, Mattocks writing has a very readable style and tells his story with humor and clarity, despite the way his life tumbles around as he is living it. He’s a high-flying young housing executive and then laid low in his career by the housing bust. During this time, he also divorces his first wife and mother of his three sons, and remarries to a woman with two daughters. His new role, attempts to blend his families, and a new job as stay-at-home step dad bring new challenges unseen before in his career.
The “sugar milk” of the title is the subject of a funny anecdote on how we all cope with parenting in ways big and petty as we struggle to make sense of old roles and new economic realities. Anyone wanting to understand how real families are living and reconciling their real lives should read Sugar Milk, a bright spot of the daddy memoir genre.
Popularity: 7% [?]
Product Review: Siliskin Glasses
There’s a lot to like with new glasses and glass baby bottles from Siliskins. The name derives from the silicon sleeve around every glass.
We’ve been trying to eliminate all plastic from the house. Even when that’s not possible, we’ve quit throwing plastic containers in the dishwasher because of fears of what heat does to release more of the plastic into food and drink. You don’t have to scrub that many plastic containers before you’re motivated to find glass replacements for “necessities” like Tupperware and plastic sandwich boxes.
Of course, around pools or with little kids, plastic is a God-send, since it doesn’t shatter like glass, but what if the risks of eating off plastics are worse than a cut from a piece of glass? Products like SIliskins can take the place of glass in all but the roughest households, since a shattered glass really isn’t possible when 95% plus of the glass surface is in a silicon sheath.
These Siliskins glasses also comes in fun colors with peek-a-boo cut-outs and seem perfect for kids around the pool or family dinner table. They are available in 6 oz, 11 oz, and 12 oz sizes, and retail for $26 for four of the small and $30 for the larger glasses. The silicon is 100% food grade, and is boilable and dishwasher- and microwave-safe. Silicon is a naturally occurring element that is found throughout the universe. It is the eighth most common element and makes up 25% of the earth’s crust.
Siliskins also makes baby bottles.
GreatDad.com Review Policy: Some of the featured products for this review were provided to us, at no cost, by the manufacturer or representing PR agency for the sole purpose of product testing. We do not accept monetary compensation for reviewing or writing about products. We only review products that we have personally tested and used in our own homes, and all opinions expressed are our own. In this case, we purchased all of the items listed above, except for Jumpstart’s Get Moving, which was sent to us for possible review.
Popularity: 7% [?]
On our desk: “40 Weeks of Keeping Your Head Down” by Bill Bounds (book review)
In Forty Weeks of Keeping Your Head Down Bill Bounds has written an entertaining first person look at the baby process. This genre, pioneered by Grant Eppler in What to Expect When She’s Expecting, gives the reader a very personal view of what happens on the long road of pregnancy. While Bounds’ experiences are personal, his experience is common to us all, complete with OB/GYN visits, scary moments, and the eventual joy of a birth scene. Other new dads can read the book front to back, or pick up and scan the chapters for approaching or familiar territory. 
Forty Weeks of Keeping Your Head Down is organized in short chapters, with titles that are sometimes very clear on content, and some which are completely enigmatic. For example, “A Word on the Name” is clearly going to be on baby names, while “Yep, it’s Fifteen” is anyone’s guess.
As the back cover copy says, the story is of an “average Joe,” who is not a doctor or psychologist. Bounds is not attempting to provide expert advice, just the perspective of one man on the journey of the everyman new father. Still, good advice abounds, including things not to say at the OB/GYN visit and how to prepare for the eventual trip to the hospital when “it’s time.”
Forty Weeks makes a nice addition to the growing library of dads’ books which place dad squarely in the middle of pregnancy, childbirth and the immediacy of care for a new baby. His family and we are lucky that he chose to chronicle his experiences. It is a good gift for the new dad, or choice for the soon-to-be father needing guideposts during early pregnancy and beyond.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Troubleshooting Fix for iPhone screeching noise
“What fresh hell is this?” as Dorothy Parker once quipped.
Well, after wasting a bunch of time making a Genius Bar appointment at the Apple Store down the lane, I stumbled on a fix that so far seems to cure this one really fast.
Rebooting or resetting the system appears to be only a temporary fix. To kill this gremlin once and for all, open Settings…
Even as I was writing this, thinking I had the final fix. the phone went off. Alas, there is no cure (yet?) for the iScreech.
I wandered down to the Apple Store this morning and they hadn’t even heard of it. The helpful non-omniscient “genius” did clean out a lot of gunk around the speaker, and it this cures it, we can hypothesize that that was the problem. In the meantime, the audio on the phone appears to check out, so at least it’s not a screeching death knell for the phone. I’ll update if I find the real solution, which likely will be a future iOS update.
At least the kids had fun playing on the iPads and iPhone 4s.
By the way, iOS 4.02 is not a fix, just a patch for a PDF security hole.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Doogie Howser and Partner to be Dads to Twins
Doogie Howser is all grown up and ready to be a dad. Doogie, AKA Neil Patrick Harris, 37, and long time partner David Burtka will be doubling their family by two. According to E! Online, the couple used a surrogate.
“So, get this: David and I are expecting twins this fall,” Harris tweeted. “We’re super excited/nervous/thrilled. Hoping the press can respect our privacy…”
Harris is currently starring in “How I Met Your Mother.” At the age of 16 in 1989, he starred in Doogie Howser, M.D., for which he was nominated for a Golden Globe. The show ran for four years.
Popularity: 11% [?]
