The stress and commotion of the workplace can attach to you like a leech. By the time you get home from another long work day, any desire you had to do anything with your family can suddenly become the lowest of priorities. You kick your feet up and reach for the remote, but ... You know dang well that your kid and family need you. They want you to play, help with things around the house, and plan for the future. But you are just so exhausted. So how does one find the "life" in work-life balance? I've been on a constant search for that during the past few years. I look to determine … [Read more...]
Family Bloopers Should Be Savored, Preserved for Later
“Dad, tell that story again about the time I stabbed you.” My younger teen daughter, Lindsay, makes this request every few months or so with a giggle. And while she’s the villain of the story, it also features one of my not-so-flattering moments as a parent — one of those many bloopers that all families experience when things don’t go as planned. At age 4, Lindsay attended a summer art class that she absolutely loved. When my older daughter, Lauren, and I went to pick her up from class one day, only Lindsay and the teacher remained. She was not quite finished with her art … [Read more...]
Anger Management for Parents: Prepare for Before, During and After
Think back to your childhood. Do you remember your father’s (or mother’s) angriest moment as a parent? Chances are it’s replaying in your mind right now in vivid detail. That’s because raw anger, while sometimes useful for action, often results in dramatic, destructive and regrettable parenting. As a father of teenagers, I’ve had my share of parenting moments, usually involving a disciplinary situation, when I could have used some intervention. But I’ve also learned a few things about anger management along the way. My first tip would be to think of parental anger as a three-stage process: … [Read more...]
Balanced Worldview in Children Helps Them Cope, Understand
"Everybody’s crazy, drive safely.” That’s the mantra of my mother I remember best from my teenhood. Granted, her negative, imbalanced worldview was simply a way to contain her anxiety as I began to drive. Her words returned to me recently as my children increasingly navigate the internet, originally dubbed the “information superhighway.” Like most parents, my wife and I implemented age-appropriate internet restrictions as our children grew. But we learned that as children age, they need to develop the same critical thinking skills adults use when wading through the sea of clickbait … [Read more...]
Should I Be a Stay-at-Home Dad? Some Advice to Consider
It is hard for me to believe that I recently marked three years since I choose to become a stay-at-home dad. When my wife was became pregnant in early 2015, the initial plan was for us to do the same thing for our latest bundle of joy that we did for our first child nearly four years before: each of us would take a few weeks of leave then put our baby in daycare so we could return to our full-time jobs. When we found out we were having twins, those plans completely changed. Having three kids in daycare would probably put us in the poor house because, for some reason, daycares don’t have … [Read more...]
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