Today’s the day. Â Another year slips into our memories as the clock ticks forward into 2012. Â As parents, nothing should be more cherished than time, for it is a resource that can never be replenished. Â A moment past is just that… a moment that has moved from now to then. Â A moment that can no …
Continue reading Father Time and FatherhoodKids and Teens
As I have now watched my three kids grow, evolve, morph and mature from helplessly adorable infants to helpful and independent young adults, I find myself thinking a lot about my own evolving role as a parent. Â As much as our kids change, so do we, and so do the strings we have attached to …
Continue reading On Parenting, Kites and BalloonsThe title of this post says it all. A a dad of daughter who is now 19, while she will always be a cutie in my eyes, I can fondly remember when she was the age of these incredibly cute (and talented) contestants on America’s Got Talent. Â I love seeing the parents in the wings …
Continue reading I Looked Up Cute In The Dictionary and This Is What I Found…When I was a kid my parents made me ride the bus to school. I hated it. Seriously. In fact, I rode the bus to school until I was able to get my driver’s license and drive to school. What is really telling is that I drove mom’s station wagon. Yeah, I was willing to …
Continue reading Do Your Kids A Favor And Make Them Ride The Bus“I hate those quizzes dad.” Â That’s what my 10 year old told me. Â He got a Facebook account for Christmas and his friends immediately started sending him Facebook quizzes and polls. Â You know what I am talking about… “which garden tool are you?” Â and “So-and-so just took a quiz to see how smart you are. …
Continue reading Kids Are More Tech-Savvy, But Does That Make Them Smarter?If you have more than one child at home do you find that they often “tattle” on each other? I have written about digital tattle tales before and on a recent trip to San Francisco I was thinking about it again, and how, in my case, counting on one or more of my kids to …
Continue reading Checks And Balances: Is It OK For Your Kids To Be Tattle Tales?It is Independence Day but I find myself considering “independence” in more ways than the birth of our nation. Having recently gone through both a High School and a College graduation with my kids, lately their independence has been on my mind. Â So, to celebrate parenthood on the 4th of July, here is a quick …
Continue reading 10 Milestones In Your Child’s Path To IndependenceRegardless of what we may think, in the end, it is our kids who hold all the power.  They are the ones who (sooner than we think) will start taking over and running things in this fast paced, high tech digital world we live in.  I was reminded of this in the presentation below by …
Continue reading Respect Kids: They Will Own You One Day!The Cast of Dads recorded our latest show on April 3rd, the same day Apple released the now much ballyhooed iPad.  Of course us geek Dads couldn’t help but talk about it, even though only CC already had one.  (NOTE: CC’s daughter Emily – pictured below – gives her own child’s eye view of the iPad here.) …
Continue reading Cast of Dads #15: iPad, You Pad, We All PadThe Cast of Dads have been on quite a roll lately and after our “live video” show from Austin Texas we recorded another audio episode the week before Easter.  Due to C.C.’s knee surgery, we are a little late posting the show, but we hope you’ll agree it was worth the wait.  We were all a little …
Continue reading Cast of Dads #14: Car Seats, Common Sense & The Grill Of Your DreamsIt is Easter Sunday and I am sitting in a Starbucks reading and writing (fortunately, there is no arithmetic.)  The only signs of Easter here are the bunny ears my caffeine wielding Barista wears, fully qualifying her as an official “Bar-Easter.”  Instead of popping handfuls of Cadbury Mini Chocolate Eggs and biting the heads off of hollow …
Continue reading An Eggcellent Day To Be Silly (Or Remember When…)A few weeks ago I wrote about “5 Things You Should Never Say To Your Kids” and there were some great comments and discussion that followed the post. Â Thank YOU for chiming in. Â In the spirit of countering the negative with the positive, I thought I would follow up with a few things that we …
Continue reading 5 Things You SHOULD Say To Your Kids (A Lot)Words ???are powerful. Words spoken by a parent to a child are very powerful and often can carry far more weight and impact than we realize, so as parents we should choose our words carefully.  With that in mind, here are: 5 Things You Should Never Say To Your Kids 1) F#&*! – You need only …
Continue reading 5 Things You Should Never Say To Your KidsNext??. ?Next. Next. Whoa! NEXT! Next. Hey now! Next. Next. Next…  If you have been clicking on “next” a lot lately, perhaps it is because you have been one of the millions of Internet users checking out the latest on-line fetish fad, Chatroulette.  If you live in a cave and haven’t yet heard of Chatroulette Jon …
Continue reading From Chatroulette To Dadroulette!At the opening of this episode you will hear a promo for The Boom Effect, an auction and fund raiser for fellow dad and good friend Tee Morris who recently lost his wife.  Tee will be raising his little girl known as “Sonic Boom” on his own, and the Podcasting community has been very supportive …
Continue reading Cast of Dads #10: Walking The Line OnlineLIAR.  It is a four letter word that can be far more hurtful than other familiar expletives. This is especially true when the liar in question is someone you love dearly and completely.  As parents we spend our lives hoping to instill in our children a sense of truth, trust and responsibility.  We teach them …
Continue reading They Say Truth Hurts, But Lying Is More PainfulMany moons ago, when I was just a mere tike, when my Mom and Dad taught me to “share” they were mostly trying to get me not to explode in a hissy fit when my younger sister or one of my playmates wouldn’t let go of my Legos or give up my G.I. Joe. Life …
Continue reading Teaching Kids To Share In A Digital AgeAs one year winds down and another begins it is always a time to look back and look forward, to reflect on the year that has passed and to plan for the year ahead. 2009 was both a challenging and rewarding year as we battened down the hatches both at work and at home to …
Continue reading Reflection and Affection The Cast of Dads could not resist getting together to record one last podcast for 2009.  Certainly one of our highlights of the year was getting together because of the Sony DigiDad Project, and we have been having a lot of fun sharing our stories and just “shooting the breeze” together ever since in …
Continue reading Cast of Dads 4: Happy New Year (and Making it to Midnight!)As parents we are many things. At times we are the masters, at times we are the mentors. We have to be both teacher and preacher. We have to lead and feed and seed our children so that they grow into happy and productive adults. We live in stressful and complicated times and now, more …
Continue reading Opening Doors To Your Children’s DreamsDisney sent me the above email. I opened it up and decided to try it out. I already had registered with their site before (for what I have no idea) then it was just a matter of uploading a recent pic of my daughter and typing in her name. After you make your own video, …
Continue reading Put Your Child On Santa’s Nice ListThanks to technology, our kids are growing up in an amazing time. Homework assignments that I would have had to use construction paper, crayons and Elmer’s Glue to complete are now being accomplished with laptops and PowerPoint.  Stacks of papers and notebooks have been replaced by files on key chain sized USB drives.  Those are just …
Continue reading How A Social Media Guru Helped My Son With His HomeworkMovies, bowling, pizza, arcades, museums, concerts, shows, Ice Capades, circuses, Chucky Cheese, Dave & Busters, ice skating, rollerskating, sporting events, shopping, pottery, fairs, carnivals, planetariums, aquariums, theme parks, amusement parks, skiing, go-carts…  There are no shortage of ways to spend money to entertain our kids, and spend we do.  As much as they have fun …
Continue reading The Best Things About Fatherhood Are FreeWe are in that awkward time between Thanksgiving, and New Year’s, when the various “Holy Days” (a.k.a. Holidays) kick in.  Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, or some other seasonal ritual, one thing is certain, you will be inundated with the commercialism of the season.  Black Friday, Cyber Monday, mauling at the mall, the …
Continue reading Happy Melancholy-days! Five Reasons NOT To Be A Scrooge This Year!Everyone has family secrets…things that all the relatives know, but are better left unsaid outside the family circle. The worse family secrets are the ones we label as the “skeletons in the closet” – the things we truly dread anyone ever finding out about. No Bones About It… Not all family secrets are bad. In …
Continue reading Family Secrets Don’t Have To Embarrass You!My wife and I are preparing our oldest son for kindergarten. This is a huge step for him. Our oldest has Down syndrome and we decided to hold him back a year in preschool. Now, however, he is ready for kindergarten. While I am excited about the new things my son will be exposed to …
Continue reading Words Can HurtTraditions in a family are really important in creating a history that bonds and binds.  Having family traditions leads to having family stories that are told and re-told over the years, recalling memories and emotions that can often only be fully appreciated by the members of the family who have participated in the “tradition” first …
Continue reading “Funky Wig Man Loves Olivia!â€I’m the cook in our house. Whether it’s an elegant gourmet meal or hamburgers and hot dogs, my wife is not ashamed to say that I do all the cooking. For my daughter, who’s approaching six, making ice cream is something she’s always loved and now it’s something we can easily take out of the …
Continue reading You Scream. I Scream. We All Scream for Ice Cream!One of the worst memories of my childhood was during one of my first summers at Sleep Away camp.  (NOTE: I know, I must have had a darn good childhood if the following story is one of my worst memories… I did!) I must have been 9 or 10 years old.  It was visiting day …
Continue reading 5 Tips For A Successful Summer Camp Visiting Day!The waiter poured the glass of wine for my son and we raised our glasses to toast… Despite my instinctive fatherly discomfort and concerns, it was a ritual we could not avoid. After all, we were celebrating his 21st birthday… IT’S MORE THAN I CAN BEER… Yesterday, my son Zach turned 21. It is nerve …
Continue reading Drinking With Your ChildrenSometimes our urges to help our children succeed can get a little out of hand…
Continue reading It's Only a Matter of TimeAs a dad myself, Father’s Day is always a double whammy – I get to honor my own dad, and all he has meant to me, and I get to be honored by my own kids and take some special time with them to reflect on what it means to be a father. We learn …
Continue reading Giving And Receiving On Father’s Day!Love Hurts. Perhaps there is a reason cupid walks around with a quill full of arrows. With every piercing of the heart that leads to blossoming love there is also the distinct possibility of the pain associated with removing the arrow when a relationship experiences turbulent times. Trust me, I know firsthand the awful feelings …
Continue reading Love Hurts (And So Does Seeing Your Kid Cry…)Is sibling rivalry alive and well in your home? If you have more than one child, you are well aware of the many challenges of brotherly and sisterly love and the many levels (physical and emotional) at which siblings are prone to compete with each other, consciously and unconsciously. As parents, one of our greatest …
Continue reading Spy vs. Spy: When Siblings Spill The Beans…Curses! It is clear that our society has become more and more accepting of what was once considered “foul language” (not to be confused with “gobble, gobble” or “tweet, tweet” which is a different kind of “fowl language”). Words that were strictly verboten when I was a kid are now regularly spoken (and thus heard) …
Continue reading Curses! Soap Tastes Like $#*%!Thanks to the annual wonders of Daylight Savings Time it is still dark out when I wake up at 5:30 in the morning.  The start of day routines take on a quiet and almost eerie feeling with the misty morning moonlight casting it’s glare as I walk the dogs, rub my eyes and text my …
Continue reading When The Bus Stop Stops…I drive carpool most mornings lately. I do it because it gets me out of the house and on my way to the gym. It works. And we have a very specific routine in the mornings. That routine includes what streets we take to get to the school. It’s all very predictable. We never deviate …
Continue reading Don't Be Afraid Of Change!Ok, not everything… but an awful lot.  From ages 15 – 19 I worked as a summer Camp Counselor at Camp Winadu in Pittsfield, Mass (where I had also been a camper from age 10).  In addition, during the non-summer months I continued working as a counselor in New York City for a childrens play …
Continue reading Everything I Know About Parenting I Learned At Summer Camp!I don’t know about you, but the older I get the harder it is for me to keep my mouth shut.  It seems I have an opinion about everything and I almost always feel compelled to share it.  I may be able to chalk it up to being older and wiser, but it still doesn’t …
Continue reading Learning To Bite Your TongueIf you are a parent, you have probably experienced some variation of “take your child to work day” – you know, the one where your son or daughter tags along to the office and you plop them down in front of a computer and hope and pray they will be able to occupy themselves with …
Continue reading Bring Your Work To Kids Day!Image via Wikipedia Today I had to have a difficult conversation with my daughters. It was made harder because we live apart, they in the UK me here in the US. So over the phone I had to break the news that I had received only a few hours earlier, that their Grandmother, my Mother …
Continue reading Difficult ConversationsGreat entertainers like Art Linkletter and Bill Cosby recognized the attraction of the pure innocence and good humor of kids being kids.  When he was younger, my middle son Ethan (now 18)  seemed to be constantly auditioning for his own regular slot on “KIDS SAY THE DARNDEST THINGS.”  Some of my all time favorites were …
Continue reading George Washingmachine And The New Year’s Revolution!There is lots of talk about Rockstars here and here, but I am going to talk about the Rockstar under your roof… the Rockstar you are raising. I have three Rockstars in my house, and only one of them is a musician. The musician, my middle son Ethan, is an accomplished guitarist and studies music …
Continue reading How To Raise A Rockstar!