Category: Parenting
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The Doofus Dad Stereotype is Still a Thing, Unfortunately
Our older son is at a Friday night birthday party in the next neighborhood up the road. Our younger son requested a viewing of Frozen. My wife, their mother, is – as of this writing – stuck on an airplane that is runway-bound while it waits out a nasty Central…
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Free-Range Parenting: Knowing When to Let Go
I asked our 9-year-old son if he thought he and his 6-year-old brother were old enough to walk the mile between our home and the neighborhood community pool without me or Mom. He shook his head “no” before I finished the question. “Maybe in one more year,” he said. “But…
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High Anxiety: the Price of Parental Expectations in Youth Sports?
An Ithaca College study published this month in the Journal of Applied Sport Psychology confirms again that we, as parents, have absolutely no idea what we’re doing. This is especially true, according to the study, for parents of kids aged 6-18 who participate in competitive swimming, tennis, gymnastics, bowling, wrestling,…
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How to Adopt a Kitten
One sunny day in January 1996, we decided to adopt a kitten. We drove to the Humane Society of Pinellas County to pick one out. We found a litter of six tabby kittens just out of foster care, a furry, mewling mass squirming around their recumbent mother in a covered,…
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Oren Miller: He Has Shown Me How to Live
We want context at the end. We want order, or some sense of purpose. We want it to matter. We want to tell our stories, and we want them to make sense. It helps with the pain. It helps with the sadness. It helps to remind us that the reason…
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What’s Important
What’s important? It’s a question. The question, really. It’s also an imperative statement reminding you to recognize and acknowledge something you ought to appreciate in the moment. I’m thinking about what’s important. Do you know? These things we write. These stories we tell. This used to seem important. It might have been,…
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Why We Should Care if CEO Dads Choose to be Engaged Parents
The thoughts and experiences of several CEO dads regarding work-family balance are detailed in a new article posted to TIME. This quote from Ernst & Young’s Mark Weinberger sums up why it is important to tell the stories of these high-powered, high-stress, high-responsibility executives: “You can have all the initiatives…
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What do we tell the children?
What do we tell them? What do we tell the children of Gaza as the tears stream down their faces, leaving tracks in the layer of dust that settled on their cheeks after bombs turned their homes into craters? What do we say to the terrified children of Syria, where…
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9 Things Han Solo Taught Me About Being a Dad
As a child of the ’70s, I considered Han Solo the epitome of manhood. Fiercely independent, yet secretly sentimental. Skeptical, but willing to believe in magic if he sees it with his own eyes. Secure enough in his own skin to pursue a princess, but not above taking a wide-eyed…
Carter Gaddis, Writer & Editor 
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