Category: TechyDad

A Clone of My Own

With advances in technology, some people are dreading the arrival of human cloning.  Not me, though.  I welcome it.  After all, there is too much that I want and need to get done and too little TechyDad to go around. My first clone’s job would be my day job.  Don’t get me wrong, I love what I do for a living, but working 40 hours a week is a massive time sink.  There are so many Read More...

Tantrums, Glaring Eyes, and Baby Bans

The other day, while shopping, JSL declared that he was thirsty.  We hadn’t brought any water and the store was remodeling where their water fountains usually are, so I asked him to be patient while we shopped and we would buy him a drink at the end.  He was good as we walked through the store and bought our various items.  As we neared the checkout line, however, he began to melt down. Knowing tha Read More...

NHL and the Poultry Based Curse

While the rest of the world watches a young wizard battle against a dark lord who tosses about curses such as Avada Kedavra, Crucio, and Imperio, we’ll be dealing with some curses of our own from NHL.  No, NHL’s not trying to hit us with the killing curse.  He’s tossing chickens around instead. Apparently, a few weeks back, NHL was watching Mickey Mouse Clubhouse on Disney Channel.  During the Read More...

A Kid’s Eye View of Marriage

For some reason, JSL has been fixated on marriage recently.  We live in New York so it is possible that he picked up rumblings of what was going on here recently.  Of course, from the eyes of a four year old, the concept of marriage gets distorted slightly, but to humorous effect. JSL once asked me why I married B.  I replied that I loved her very much.  That was both the right answer and the wr Read More...

Ties and Stereotypical Gifts For Dad

This Sunday is Father’s Day.  All over the country, dads will open gifts from their family.  Many of those gifts will be the stereotypical gifts given to dads on Father’s Day.  Tools for grilling, electronics, sporting goods, items emblazoned with a favorite team’s logo and, of course, ties.  However, while ties might be a stereotypical gift, I’ve got to admit that I like them. I did Read More...

Daddy Guilt Over Time For Me

Last weekend, my boys were playing on the floor and I opened the newspaper.  After a couple of minutes, they began asking me to play with them.  My first instinct was to put the paper down and play.  Most times, that is just what I would do.  This time, however, I wanted to spend some time reading the paper.  Suddenly, I felt an overwhelming sense of guilt, like I was being an awful father Read More...

Handling A Bully Situation

Recently, we needed to deal with a bullying situation in NHL’s school.  A child, with a history of violent acts, punched NHL in the stomach hard enough to send him to the nurse and cause bruising.  The punch was in retaliation for NHL telling the child that he shouldn’t be jumping over people (NHL included) to reach his seat.  Around the same time we were dealing with this, I saw @sociallysmart ( Read More...

Teaching Lessons From Geeky Lore

This past Sunday, NHL and I were heading to his weekly Hebrew lessons.  As we drove, I began to worry.  You see, it had been a couple of weeks since his last lesson (thanks to Passover) and NHL, while very bright, has a tendency to give up easily if a task seems difficult to him.  He’ll insist that he can’t do it and will complain endlessly, stubbornly refusing to even try, until we wear him down Read More...

My Finicky Child’s Passover Hunger Strike

Like many nearly-four year olds, JSL is a very finicky eater.  For lunches and dinners he tends to like only about five or so foods: Macaroni and Cheese, Pizza, Chicken Nuggets, Cream Cheese Sandwiches, Greek Yogurt and maybe a couple more.  Even if you stick to a “JSL approved food”, say pizza, you can still run afoul of JSL’s finickiness.  I make pizza at home and JSL will peel off the cheese Read More...

Difficult Decisions

When we were children, decisions might have been tricky to make, but there was no real downside.  Did you want chocolate or vanilla ice cream?  Should you play with the figures or blocks?   Which cartoon would you watch?  No matter which decision you made, you would still have ice cream, you would still play and you would still be watching cartoons. At some point, our decisions became more Read More...

Disney Dad

Last week, we headed to Disney World so my wife could attend the Disney Social Media Moms conference.  While she attended sessions to learn how better to utilize social media, I was left alone with my boys… and three park hopper Disney World tickets. Our first day together, we headed to Epcot to go character hunting.  It also happens to be Epcot’s annual International Flower and Garden Festival.  Read More...

The Importance Of Room To Play

When we purchased our house, we turned the upstairs room into a combination playroom and computer room.  We had many good days playing with baby NHL there.  When he got older and his baby brother was born, though, going up the stairs (which are perilously steep) became harder and harder to do safely.  Since it wasn’t being actively used, we began to use the room for storage.  Have a box we nee Read More...

Fabulous Film Fathers

With the snow and cold weather out, my boys and I have been taking advantage of Netflix and our local library to watch some movies.  I’ve noticed a couple that showed some good examples of fatherhood.  Just a warning: Spoilers Be Ahead.  If you haven’t seen Despicable me or Shrek Forever After yet, you might want to bookmark this article and come back later.  Otherwise, dive on in. Despicable Me The main ch Read More...

Commercial Interruption

For the longest time, NHL’s television watching habits were blissfully commercial free.  He would watch DVDs, kids channels (where the only commercials were for their own shows) or DVRed shows (commercials quickly skipped by).  As he’s gotten older, though, he’s come to notice those little bits of advertisement.  I’d like to announce that my savvy son has realized that these are just crass attempts to se Read More...

What Was My Post About Again?

A few days ago, I was walking into work and thinking about blog post topics.  I suddenly thought of a great topic.  I mulled using it for my Tuesday post, but decided instead to use it for my upcoming Dad Revolution post.  There’s one small thing standing between you and reading this fantastic post, though.  My memory. You see, in the handful of days between Monday and today (Thursday since th Read More...

When Parenting Styles Collide

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, Amy Chua argues that “Chinese Mother” parenting is superior to the typical Western parenting style.  She claims that pushing your child to get straight A’s via extreme measures while denying them the ability to choose their own extracurricular activities is a better method for leading children to success.  While I couldn’t disagree more, there have been pl Read More...

New Year, New Goals

It’s a tradition for many people to make resolutions on New Year’s.  We examine our lives, plan how we’d like to improve ourselves and then go through with it… for a few weeks, that is.  Then our old habits tend to return and the resolutions are forgotten until the next New Year’s when we promise ourselves that this year will be different. Despite the failure of many people’s resolutions, I st Read More...

Busting Failure Fears

Recently, NHL has been refusing to complete assignments in school.  He’ll claim that they are too hard for him when we all know that he is perfectly capable of completing them.  We’ve spoken with him and believe that one of the problems is that he’s afraid to fail.  He so fears not succeeding at what he’s doing that he’d rather not make any attempt at all.  This is something I can grea Read More...

Parent, Interrupted

Earlier this week, I was reading Blogging Dangerously’s Busted post.  In it, Kit recounts speaking with a guy who told his version of “cheating on his wife.”  He would go into a hotel room and emerge, 8 hours later, with rumpled clothing.  The twist was that nobody would accompany him.  He would have “cheated” by getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. That got me to thinking.  So Read More...

A Warning About Super Powered Kids

A few days ago, Derek Markham from The Good Men Project wrote about Seven Essential Superpowers that dads should possess.  That got me to thinking.  It isn’t just dads (and moms) that possess super powers, but kids too.  I’ve compiled a list of 4 child superpowers.  Now these are just the ones that immediately came to mind.  I’m sure there are more so feel free list additional ones in Read More...