Posts Tagged ‘Advice’

Must-read advice for a weekend adults-only mini-vacation

Wednesday, February 4th, 2009

I know some couples who have been married for 20 years and never have had a weekend without the kids since they were born. I wouldn’t recommend this. Married couples need nights out, and even nights away to recharge the romantic batteries. Whether it’s a motel down the road, or a trip a thousand miles away, try to make at least one trip away each year. Obviously, this is impossible in some situations where reliable childcare is not available or affordable for such a long time away. If, however, you have family around, take advantage of their generosity, and overcome your guilt, even if for just 24 hours.

Here are some rules to make that getaway easier for you, and for the kids:

1. Go to a place without kids. You want to be around any kids who will make you feel guilty for leaving yours behind. It will be hard to enjoy yourself if you’re both comparing other rugrats to your beautiful, intelligent, and well-mannered kids back home.

2. Do not call home, ET. Make sure everyone is aware that you will not be calling in, if this is a 24-hour trip. Likewise, no one should call you unless it’s truly an emergency.

3. Go in the middle of the week. Yes that sounds counter-intuitive, but if you go midweek, you’ll score three advantages. You might get a cheaper room (if not a business hotel), the kids will be focussed on school, an you’ll benefit from that illicit feeling that you’re cheating the system and playing hookey. This last might add more spice to your adventure away.

4. Plan events you can enjoy together. That doesn’t mean suffering if she wants to tour a flower garden, but it likely means you golfing alone all afternoon is out. The idea is to spend time together, not to take a mini-vacation away from her and the kids.

5. Drive if you can. Pulling away in a car makes the trip start right away, versus after a long day hassle with the airport. If you can limit your destination to just 1-2 hours away, you’ll be able to maximize the feeling putting distance and minimize the stress of too much travel.

6. Give the kids a big gift. And, do let them watch TV and movies while you’re gone. You’re getting away to be pampered; why not let them enjoy themselves too. A little gift left to be opened after you leave will also help ease the pain of separation, or at least distract them a bit.

While it’s hard to cram in a full year of life before kids in a weekend, it sure is fun to try.

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Take Time To Talk To Your Child About Whatever Crap They Like | The Onion

Friday, January 23rd, 2009

Leave it to The Onion to turn time-tested “get involved and interested” advice into sarcasm. You’ll likely smile while reading this piece since it’s the little devil sitting on your shoulder when you’ re trying to read the paper and your daughter wants to relate the entire plot line, page by page, of the shallow book she is reading.

Being a parent isn’t easy. If you’re anything like me, you know it’s hard to find enough hours in the day for working, sleeping, and raising the kids. But leading psychologists agree that taking an active role in your child’s burgeoning interests is crucial to their development. So, regardless of how busy your schedule gets, it’s important to take an interest in the bullshit your kids care about.

Remember: That stupid crap matters to them, and they need to feel like you give a shit about it.

[From Take Time To Talk To Your Child About Whatever Crap They Like | The Onion - America's Finest News Source]

Still the gist is good: develop a relationship with your kids now so that you’ll have one when they reach adolescence.

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New Year Resolutions for Dads

Monday, January 12th, 2009

Sure, they say that New Year’s resolutions are never kept, but that doesn’t stop us from writing them up. And, I swear, this year, I’m really going to try. The ones I have in mind aren’t that big a stretch. I’m not going to finally “write that novel” or run a marathon. I just want to make a few simple changes. And, I have a new system to try to keep me on track.

  • Spend ten minutes alone each day with each of my two kids. This won’t be too much harder. The only the trick will be to separate them when I’m doing the daddy-focus time. I usually read a 10-12 pages of Harry Potter to my eldest each night, so check that one off the list. For my four-year-old, this will take a lot more “get-down-on-the-floor” action. This may be the most important one of the bunch and something everyone can do.
  • Try to reduce the number of times I say “Don’t” or “No!” to my four-year-old. He’s naturally more rambunctious than my eight year old and he’s starting to protest that we yell at him too much. I want to try to limit the yelling to when it’s really a safety issue or when he’s about to tip over the TV.
  • Gotta get the little buggers eating better food. 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. This one will be the trickiest in the book, since I’m usually overjoyed that the kids want pizza (again!).
  • Do 25 push-ups a day, and 30 by March. 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. Push-ups are great exercise and a good barometer of overall health. I WILL get to the gym every other day and do my stretches. (It’s January 12th and I’m already doing 30 – onwards to 35).     
  • Go greener. Okay, I’m sticking this one in because I’m already doing it, but still there are lots of places to cut. 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. My goal is to make all the kids’ lunch biodegradable or reusable. Out with the plastic bags, in with reusuable containers. I just got these stainless steel bowls for lunches. They are a little clunky and could be used for a jail break, but they are durable and a convenient size, especially if you make circular sandwiches.

That’s enough! My other resolutions are professional and are overwhelming.

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Throw out the TV – that’s what happy people do

Saturday, November 22nd, 2008

Happy people spend a lot of time socializing, going to church and reading newspapers — but they don’t spend a lot of time watching television, a new study finds.

That’s what unhappy people do.

“We looked at 8 to 10 activities that happy people engage in, and for each one, the people who did the activities more — visiting others, going to church, all those things — were more happy,” Dr. Robinson said. “TV was the one activity that showed a negative relationship. Unhappy people did it more, and happy people did it less.”

[From What Happy People Don’t Do - NYTimes.com]

While the study can’t definitively say it’s TV that makes people unhappy (versus “unhappy people watch a lot of TV), I think we all know all know it’s likely the former. It shouldn’t be much of a surprise since we all know that gorging on basically everything is bad for you. Gluttony, after all, is a deadly sin. Whether it’s too much steak, vodka, gambling, drugs, or just lying around the beach for years (AKA “sloth,” another deadly sin), too much of a good thing is, well, too much of a good thing.

Perhaps turning off the TV is hardest on us as parents. I know that this week, there will be more of our share of Kung Fu Panda and Wall-E than the kids need. We’ll need it however, if we ever hope to get anything other than canned cranberries on the table on Thursday. But reading this article, which can only confirm your suspicions, might help give me the strength to take the remote control in my hand and press OFF… well, maybe after just one more episode of the Backyardigans.

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Sex Challenge!

Thursday, October 9th, 2008

Here’s a link to send to your spouse, especially if you’re ready to try anything to get “sex” back in the phrase “sex life.” Mrs. Young (obviously a pseudonym), in her most recent column, as she always does, refers to the sagging love lives of new parents. She suggests reading such recent books as
365 Nights and Just Do It, both books on couples who made planned effort to have sex every day for an extended length of time. If you mentioned these books to your wife as well, you likely got the same nonplussed reaction I did. It sounded more like a desperate trick than a real romantic plan for greater intimacy.

Well, maybe then, this “challenge” from Cookie Magazine is more in the range of at least conceivable. First of all, it’s coming from a “girl magazine,” so it might have more street cred than if you leave a copy of Men’s Health lying around so that she sees their promotion of every other day ejaculation for a healthy prostate. Second, there’s a prize attached! Three days in Jamaica just for having sex seven times in seven days. Of course, the prize is a sweepstakes that will be won by some woman who has entered the contest without performing the requirements, but you don’t have to tell her that.

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win a trip to jamaica! Enter for a chance to recharge your love life with a three-night stay at Jake’s in Jamaica. Airfare provided by

Air Jamaica. Also, take the Mrs. Young Sex Challenge Survey! [From Community: Cookiemag.com]

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Preparing kids for the challenges of the first days of school

Thursday, October 2nd, 2008

It’s hard to imagine what goes on in a little one’s mind when he goes to the big school, but you can help him overcome some fears by talking to him before hand.

For example, many kids at pre-school and even kindergarten level, are nervous about the bathroom. Reassure your child that he can ask to go any time. Some kids have accidents at school, and he should be aware that this type of thing can happen, and does happen to a lot of kids. If you have given him strict instructions on other people touching him in the bathroom, make sure he is aware of how changes in caregiving my change that policy, for example if a teacher has to wipe him. Some kids will time their bowel movements to avoid school time. Discuss this with your doctor if it becomes and issue.

Buy clothes for your child with easy closures. No child at this point wants to have to ask their teacher to help them button their pants. Just at the moment you are trying to teach them autonomy, don’t burden them suddenly with shoelaces that need to be tied by an adult.

School is an ideal time to teach about making friends. You don’t have to be a car salesman to know the value of walking right up to someone, pointing to something you have in common (your love of sand or the color of your tennis shoes) and introducing yourself. This is not a skill that comes easily, but kids can learn these skills to, especially if you show them how it works, by introducing yourself to other moms and dads.

Lunchtime might also be stressful, if your child has never had to eat on her own. Many kids get stressed at lunchtime because they don’t have the leisure to drag it out like they do at home. Make sure your child has items that are easy to manipulate on her own rather than complicated foods that need to be reheated and might be hard to eat.

Your child may be scared of other small details that don’t worry you at all. He might think the school nurse means lots of shots. Or the school bus looks like a big scary tunnel he might get lost in and never find his way back home. Explore and discuss things like this with your child by asking him about his likes and dislikes about the school.

With a very small amount of putting yourself in their shoes, you can easily take steps to ease into the transition to school.

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Don’t let this happen to you! – Man arrested for leaving child in car during late-night movie

Monday, July 21st, 2008

I always feel horrible for the parents who are arrested for doing something all of us have done at one point: drove without a seatbelt, left the car seat at home, and the worst, left the car seat on the car and pulled away with baby on top. Some of these stories are so sad and injust, just compounding a tragedy that has had major costs to a family. Any harried parent with multiple children has to sigh, and think, “there but for the grace of God…”

However, when you read stories like the following, you have to wonder how some folks made the decision to be parents in the first place.

A man anxious to see the new Batman movie missed out on the ending after police arrested him for leaving his child in the car. The 2-year-old boy was found sitting in a car in the parking lot of the theater Saturday night.

Even though it was dark outside, temperatures in the car were still high, and that wasn’t the only threat facing the child.

This happened in South Salt Lake at 1:00 in the morning. The child had been in the car for well over two hours in a parking lot that has signs that say “park at your own risk.”

[From ksl.com - Man arrested for leaving child in car during late-night movie]

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Parents to our parents – What one daughter wishes she had done differently with an aging parent

Friday, July 18th, 2008

When you have kids of your own, you sense the changing of the generations. I hope your parents are young and you have thirty years before you have to think of elder care, but likely they are old enough you have to at least imagine the need some day. This article, written by a New York Times writer specializing in old age issues, still feels she made several mistakes in caring for her older mother.

What I Wish I’d Done Differently
By JANE GROSS
Looking back on the last few years of my mother’s life, with 20/20 hindsight and the belated knowledge that came from four years of reporting about aging for The New York Times, my single biggest mistake was not finding a doctor with expertise in geriatrics to quarterback her care and attend to the quality of her life, not merely its length.

Given the crisis in supply and demand — too many old people and too few geriatricians — I may not have succeeded. But if I had, many of our crises might have been avoided. Those include unnecessary trips to the emergency room that left her in worse shape than she had been beforehand. It also includes surgery to remove a benign tumor from the outside of her spinal cord after it had already done the worst of its damage and with no regard for her advanced age.

[From What I Wish Id Done Differently - Caring for Elderly Parents – The New Old Age blog – NYTimes.com]

Her other three mistakes were:

2. accepting the “conventional wisdom” that nursing homes are uniformly bad and barely fit for a dog, and to be avoided at all costs. While she liked assisted living, it did not provide enough care as her mother got older, necessitating many changes, all of which were added work and destabilizing to her mother and the family.

3. thinking that a move out of the home to assisted living was the best choice. Once the move is made out of the home, you lose all opportunities for home care, and a nursing home becomes the only option when assisted living is no longer possible.

4. not fully understanding the limits of her $7000/year long term care insurance policy. It would have paid for 24/7 in-home care, but helped very little for assisted living. Once her mother was in a nursing home, the money went directly to the nursing home along with all of her savings until she ran out of money (when Medicare took over because she was “impoverished.”

As Jane Gross, the writer, points out, it’s hard to know how to avoid any mistakes since the sands are rapidly shifting in elder care and benefits, but her biggest words of advice are to research the situation now before you need it, since “haste, often the result of panic, is the enemy.

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Sick house? Tips for cleaning the air in your house

Tuesday, May 13th, 2008

There has been a lot of talk about sick houses — houses that actually make you sick because of construction materials, cleaners, paints, solvents and pesticides. It might be hard to change houses, but there are things you can do to to make a house less toxic for you and your kids.

1. Get an air purifier and put new allergy rated filters on your furnace every 6 months. Whole house air filter systems work better than portable units. Ideally, use built-in or window unit air-to-air-heat exchangers in rooms where people spend the most time.

2. Get lots of plants. Experts recommend at least two tropical houseplants for every 12×12 foot area to clean up airborne toxins. Use ferns, spider plants, bamboo, and palms close to breathing zones like next to your bed, or TV chair.

3. Open the windows wide. Turn off heat or A/C and open the windows for 10 minutes each day to help rid the house of indoor pollution. Caveat: your allergist may tell you to keep all windows and doors closed during allergy season.\

4. Keep new pollutants out of the house. Every new TV, appliance, or laminate/particle board-based piece of furniture is a source of new toxins into the house. Environmentalists suggest setting these items in the garage a few days to air them out before bringing them into the house.

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