Bookmark
The kids are at home this week and next, and it is hard. As much as I’d like to believe in it, there are no “great dads” or even good dads. There are moms and dads who try every day to manage their own demons and stresses to be the best parents they can be. My wife often says I get too preachy about being a good parent, and she is somewhat correct. Because I have a work at home job, and can spend a lot of time with my kids, I do have the moral high ground in helping with homework, forcing them to eat daily carrots (their only vegetable) and keeping them at piano practice way longer than they want to. And I don’t have to do all that after 9 hours of working with a boss I can’t stand. Even so, on long holidays, even I can get testy with them, especially my younger boy who everyday is asking for more GoGo dolls or another LEGO because he’s bored (and this 4 days before he’s zooming in on the big Christmas score).
Category Archives: Thoughts and opinions
Signs of the inevitable separation
This week, as I do every year, I am putting together the 30 page iPhoto book recapping our year as a family. I add highlights and special pages for each of our kids detailing their adventures and triumphs. Most of the pages, though, are family shots of me or my wife hugging our kids desperately, while they still smile brightly in the embrace. I give the book to both grandmas as well as my wife. For years, it’s come in their stocking and my kids still always impressed that Santa knows so much about our family. My mother just sent me an email saying she often pulls the books down and pages through them, marveling at how the kids grow and change.
What is fair? Preparing kids for the cruel world.
I just had to pull the kids apart during an argument over lunch. “It’s not fair,” complained my son, now 7 years old.
Where did they get this idea of fairness in life and how and when do we disabuse them of the notion that some omniscient justice will always be available to them.
First, I now realize that nursery school is all about instilling this idea of fairness in little kids. In our attempts to socialize them, we constantly affirm the idea of each person having “their turn.” To keep control of the pre-school masses, it’s important for them to see some structure in the way things work, and that there is hope for their own satisfaction if they just wait their turn.
OT: Rant on email and forum spam
I have been very patient, but my personal and professional spam is now out of control, consuming more and more of my day as I try to weed through what are legitimate business propositions for GreatDad and Pregnancy Magazine, and what is pure garbage. Most of the time, it’s easy, but it still takes time. Then there is the curse of friends’ hacked email accounts, where they send you links and files to open. These are clearly not come-ons I’m going to react to, but I still dutifully look at their emails. And then there are also all the spam emails I get like this to my newsletters (at) GreatDad and Pregnancy accounts, from people I don’t know, but which could very well be a consumer inquiry, suggestion, or complaint. I still have to open them.
Not everyone likes new Parentlode column by Lisa Belkin
Lisa Belkin, who has written the Motherlode blog on NYT.com for years, has decided the grass is greener over at The Huffington Post. This in itself, I find kind of sad, since Lisa has built her reputation attached to the New York Times brand, but so goes the world of new media. But the story has made an interesting turn since Ms. Belkin used the move to change the name of her column from Motherlode to Parentlode. Whether she did this, as she says, because ‘“Motherlode” doesn’t really fit in an era when fathers are every bit the parent,’ or because she needed a new name, is anyone’s guess. However, the NYT doesn’t agree that this is a good name, or at least that it doesn’t run up against their trademark on the use of “motherlode” for a column of this type.
