chrisbrogan

I grumbled when my 8-year-old wanted me to take her to one of those tree-cutting places. I grumbled more when the woman said it was $60 for the privilege of doing all the labor ourselves. I’d set out to buy a Charlie Brown Christmas tree (you know the type, right?), and I couldn’t see myself …

Continue reading Happy Holidays And Tree-Cutting

My daughter is eight. She’s been stuffed in front of cameras since before she was born (ultrasounds count, right?). There’s probably no escaping that she’s going to become a media making child. Recently, she asked me to help her shoot a commercial for Moon Foam, this kind of modeling clay that feels like compressed cotton …

Continue reading Making Media With Kids

I received a curious jar of things from my friend, Jason Falls, on behalf of Wonderopolis.org. It’s a site about literacy and how we can help kids learn more. You’ve gotta see what came out of the bucket (this video runs about 4 minutes long): The site, Wonderopolis had a lot of ways to get …

Continue reading Literacy Comes in Many Packages

I’m watching the recent movie adaptation of Astro Boy, a year or so after my daughter watched it. There are so many emotional upheavals and elements I probably didn’t want my daughter to see without some conversation. She’s a smart kid, but this movie is all about rejection. There’s tons and tons of situations of …

Continue reading Parental Guidance

Harold (my 4-ish year old) wanted to shoot a video: The fun of doing this is that he knows how to open Photobooth (on a Mac). He knows how to switch it to video and hit record, and he knows how to speak to the camera (kind of). When I think about what our kids …

Continue reading Sharing Tech With Kids

I’m going to admit that I’m on the fence. With this ad for Huggies Diapers (click through if you can’t see it in your reader), the ad itself is a bit awkward (adult women making “oh he’s HOT” faces at toddlers – yes, it’s tongue in cheek), but I dunno. Diapers that look like jeans? …

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I’ve been reading Robert Kiyosaki’s books lately. You’d know Rich Dad Poor Dad. I’ve read another six of them. In so doing, the topic of teaching your kids about money and even business came up. Now, most of us, when faced with thinking about teaching our kid about business, think about chores, or maybe a …

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My daughter and I wanted to go out and do something special together. I suggested a nature walk. To make it really fun, I gave her a Sony Bloggie camera (disclosure: SONY gave me the camera to try out, but I’m not obligated to use it for any particular projects) so she could capture some …

Continue reading Amping Up Special Time

This holiday season, my daughter asked for a plush kitty. My boy asked for anything Thomas. That’s it. Know why? The picture is pretty much the reason. My kids don’t get a steady input of toy ads so as such, they don’t really seem to have as many interests in such. Now, I used to …

Continue reading The Best Thing I Ever Did

I’ve been traveling a lot. It’s not easy on my family, but they all know that the goal is good enough to support. Today, I had 20 minutes with my boy before jumping in the car to go to yet another event. Here’s what I did with the time: If you can’t see the video …

Continue reading Finding Daddy Time

I shot a 5 and a half minute video of my family vacation at Disneyland in California, or rather, just a bit of the vacation. Here’s the clip: My thought when I did this was, “video should be fun, simple, and not exactly a complete capture of every moment of the vacation.” We had two …

Continue reading Making Media on Vacation

The other day, my wife took the kids to the New England Aquarium. Supposedly, they had fun. They told me about penguins pooping on the rocks, and about the sharks. Officially, the sharks never eat the other fish in the tank. (Here, the woman saying this wiggled her eyebrows.) But what my kids will remember …

Continue reading The Simplest Of Pleasures

I travel a lot lately, and one thing I’m asked quite often is how I recharge or how I maintain my life balance. Let me start by saying that I haven’t really figured out a great balance for my life, but I can say that I am doing lots to keep it all juggled. I …

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I travel. Lots. I will travel more in 2009 than I have in my life to date. And yet, I have to maintain a relationship with my wife, my daughter, and my son. It requires every bit as much planning as it would for your business meetings. Here’s what I do for re-entry. Make it …

Continue reading Re-Entry After a Long Trip

What do people do when you have an older kid and a younger kid in the house, and the older kid wants to consume media that messes with the younger kid? That’s the issue at hand in the Star Wars Dilemma. I’m wondering if you’ve had this happen at your house. My daughter is 6.5 …

Continue reading The Star Wars Dilemma

I was checking out various offers and ideas for what dads might want to do for 2009, and I stumbled across BookSwim, a site that lets you rent books and give them back when you’re done. It’s like Netflix for books, which seemed pretty cool to me, and further, they had children’s books. If you’re …

Continue reading Save Money in 2009 by Renting

My daughter is six. She’s having a bit of trouble fitting in at school, and frankly, with us. I know the reason, though. She’s going to be famous. It’s true. I can tell. She’s creative, a true outlier, someone who doesn’t even know there is a trend, let alone that she’s bucking it. And she’s …

Continue reading Tell Them They'll Be Famous

I was sent a LeapFrog Didj to evaluate, for my six year old daughter. She was already a Leapster user, and enjoyed it, but she’s clearly getting a bit too old for the content there. She aces all the games, and that’s no fun- not being challenged. So, getting into the Didj was a cool …

Continue reading LeapFrog Hops Up to the Didj

My family has been away for a few weeks. In fact, they’ve been away for enough weeks that I legitimately miss them deeply. Even the kids. I’m picking them up on Friday, which is a couple of days from now. Doing some back-of-the-Chinese-food-delivery-bag-left-on-the-table-for-days math, I realized: holy cow! That’s two days from now. Now, when …

Continue reading Domestic Blitz

My dad got into computers in the 1970s. Sometimes, he’d take me to work and I’d play this Star Trek game on a computer that had to print out the “screen” on paper. Sometimes, I’d destroy reams of paper chasing a Klingon around. I had no idea how much I was underfoot, but my Dad …

Continue reading Kids on the Web

There are some things dads have to teach their kids, and I think one is how to take compliments well. One of our fine readers (if I could find your twitter DM, I’d call you out by name) asked me to address this, because she has a wonderful and amazing teenager who happens to be …

Continue reading How to Take Compliments

Reading this post about how it’s a Federal offense to buy too much cold medicine has me bummed out. You see, this impacts things like Benedryl, which we’ve been permitted by our doctor to give to my daughter from time to time when she can’t sleep. She often has a racing mind and can’t find …

Continue reading I Want Benedryl Back

It’s that time of year again, when parents have to avoid drug stores and Wal-Mart as often as possible, if only to get away from multiple requests for a second costume, or another set of make-up, or a third pumpkin carving kit. It’s also the time of year when we look at costumes that are …

Continue reading Halloween Costumes for Kids

I’m sitting across from Paul Kontonis from For Your Imagination and I wanted to plug Dad-o-Matic, but Paul is cooler than me, so he shows me DadLabs instead. Turns out he’s got over 200 videos already on the site by dads for dads. It’s really great to look at, and I highly recommend checking it …

Continue reading We Love DadLabs

Playspace Finder is a resource that mashes on top of Google Maps and gives parents a place to mark down a playground, notate what’s there, provide pictures, ratings, reviews and more. It’s a really great idea (and by great, I mean “simple”). I did a quick scan of some areas around my house, and there …

Continue reading Find a Place to Play

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When I was six, my grandfather would take me on his sales route. He sold candy. (How popular is a candy salesman?) He started buying me comics at various stops like Flo’s Variety on the hill, and Depot News downtown. I owe a lot of my ability to read to comics. And to this day, …

Continue reading Comics and Kids

Every week, I go to the grocery store and my eyes glaze over as I roam through the food aisles looking for that perfect balance of what my daughter WILL eat and what she SHOULD eat. She’s actually quite good with fruits and vegetables, but buying these at the beginning of the week just guarantees …

Continue reading What are You Packing for Snacks