Attachment Parenting Blog: Raising Children with Love
Run by an attachment parenting dad with three kids, this site is your best place to learn more about attachment parenting, keep up-to-date on parenting news, and much more.
Hey Mattel! Now you can put Bratz to sleep once and for all
Here's the thing though: I hate the entire concept behind the Bratz toys and am frankly aghast that any parents buy it. Hold on, before I rant too much, let's have a bit more detail about the lawsuit itself: "A U.S. District Court jury in Riverside, Calif., found toymaker MGA Entertainment guilty of contract interference and copyright infringement when it hired doll designer Carter Bryant away from Mattel in 2000." Who knew that doll designers were to be courted and stalked like secret agents? Analysts estimate, by the way, that the Bratz line brings in over a billion dollars in sales annually, which must look very nice to Mattel given that its cornerstone doll line, Barbie, is down 6% in sales. Nonetheless, that doesn't change my basic objection with the toy line, that it glorifies and "sexifies" teen girls in a way that's alarmingly exaggerated. Even the name is a play on "brats", which no parent in the world would want their child to be, would they? Looking at their pouty lips and general posture and attitude, it's a surprise that MGA Entertainment didn't just call them "Slutz" and cut to the proverbial chase. If the brand intellectual property does transfer to Mattel, then I dream of a press release announcing that Mattel is going to shut down the entire Bratz line and replace it with something like "Angelz", a similar line of toys that are themed after nice girls that behave well, not bratty girls that are self-indulgent gits. But it's quite possible I'm alone in my deep dislike of the Bratz line. I mean, 1.1 billion in annual sales suggests that some people are buying the stuff. I just don't have a clue why that is... Good adventure books for 8yo boy?It's very exciting to see my son G- learn how to read! Six months ago he was proud to sound out rudimentary street signs and newspaper headlines, and now he's leaped straight to "level 4" beginning reader books, skipping the first three levels. Important caveat: my kids are in a Waldorf school, and the Waldorf educational approach has them starting reading later than more traditional pedagogical approaches, it's typically not until 2nd grade that they really get going. A-, 11yo, is an extraordinarily strong reader, so I have quite a bit of confidence in the approach... Anyway, the problem is that G- wants to read books that are topically a bit beyond where I think he's comfortable... Like just about every boy I've ever known -- myself included! -- he's into dramatic stories and his two favorite topics are Star Wars and Harry Potter. Problem is, they give him nightmares and make him have nighttime fears, so while it's fun to read about Darth Sith and Lord Voldemort, they're really not appropriate and certainly not the best stories for him. He does really like The Magic Tree House series, we've enjoyed The Hardy Boys books, but what I'm wondering is if there are some books that are written for beginning readers but live somewhere on the continuum between Magic Tree House and Harry Potter? A series that has some "coolness" to it, has fun stories with action and adventure, but are still very mild and don't have troublesome images, scary covers, or overly aggressive themes. It'd probably be a bonus if there's a strong Dad character in the story (I am highly troubled by how many children's stories involve either one-parent or zero parent family units, but that's another discussion entirely) Anyway, blog reader gang, any recommendations on books or series I could steer him towards so he'd enjoy what he's reading, think it's cool, and not be troubled by the storyline and pictures? Thanks!! Flip-flops for a good cause, spread the wordIn a tragic event last May, our friend and neighbor Steve Parrish lost his college-age son, and Lesley, his daughter and our occasional babysitter, lost her brother, in a mugging gone wrong while he was on spring break in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico. Watching them come to peace with the terrible occurrence has been an amazing thing. I'm not sure I would ever have the grace to manage even half as well, and certainly hope never to find out. Soles4Souls has arranged a program where 2 pairs of flip-flops will be donated for every pair purchased. This program is mentioned as part of the rotating headline banner on their site plus it is described more fully on the site under “Ways to help”. Continue reading Flip-flops for a good cause, spread the word The power of reflective listeningThis last weekend was a rare treat: five days of solo time with G-, my 8yo son, and it was a delight. Five days of "dude time" with lots of bonding. We both really had a great weekend, and a busy one too, including hanging out with friends watching the final match of the Euro 2008 soccer competition. Most of the time, of course, A-, my 11yo, and K-, my 4yo, are in the mix too, and while they all get along pretty well in the big picture, there are unquestionably moments when they aren't communicating clearly or their individual needs are, um, blinding them to the more harmonious path. (Did I phrase that elegantly enough?) Continue reading The power of reflective listening How we're managing Video Game TimeOkay, this is an update following my earlier plea for help metering video game time. You should start by reading that blog entry and seeing what I wrote about and, more importantly, the great comments people left with their own ideas and practices. I took the different suggestions and thought a lot about the dynamics of my own children and what they do and don't need, and came up with the following... Continue reading How we're managing Video Game Time How do you meter video game playing time?It might be a sign of us buckling under to cultural pressure or perhaps the ongoing weight of constantly feeling like we're saying "no" to our children as they too process the divorce and changes in their lives, but Linda and I have agreed to let the kids have some Nintendo Wii play time this summer and each of us bought a unit and hooked it up. First off, the Wii is one amazingly fun and brilliantly engineered device. With its motion-sensitive wireless controllers and the forced feedback mechanism, it's light years ahead of the Playstation 3 and Xbox 360, based on my experiences with all three. Continue reading How do you meter video game playing time? Press Release: Divorced Women's Dating Styles[ this is one of the more peculiar press releases I've received in rather a while... ] From Debbie Nigro Approximately 30 million women are transitioning thru divorce in the United States. There are many different stages. Debbie put this friendly list together so both women and men can better identify the different levels before venturing into the dating scene. DIVORCED WOMEN'S DATING STYLESDamaged Daters - You don't trust anyone anymore with your heart. You've been burned. You are not so quick to jump back into another relationship, but you go anyway because you think you are supposed to at least try. Your cynical vibes smell defensive and stink up the room. Wear extra perfume. I Don't Care Daters- You are not interested. You're energy is focused elsewhere. You need time to to find out who you are. You go just because someone's very nice but you really don't care, but you don't let him know you don't care. He doesn't pick up you don't care so he calls you again and you go again...even though you don't care. ... continues Continue reading Press Release: Divorced Women's Dating Styles Signing "Ask for ID" on my credit cards invalidates them?I had a weird experience at the Post Office this afternoon when I tried to buy a roll of stamps and am hoping some of my blog pals can offer up some thoughts... When I got the latest wave of credit cards I decided that this time, instead of signing them, I'd write "Ask for ID" on the back, as a bit of a fraud protection and identity theft prevention. So far, it's distressing to see how few people actually care about asking for my ID, even when I point out that's what I've written on the back. But that's another story. This afternoon, we popped into the local Post Office and dutifully queued up until it was our turn, then asked for a roll of stamps, $42, and presented my credit card to pay. Continue reading Signing "Ask for ID" on my credit cards invalidates them? ... and still, sometimes bedtime just stinksLast night I was at a workshop until 10.30pm, which wouldn't have been a big deal if my kids would have cooperated with the babysitter and gone to sleep when they were supposed to. But they didn't and when I walked in, there they were, sitting in the living room, lights low, like zombies, waiting for me. I chalked it up to the exacerbated separation fear brought on by our separation and the two different houses that they now inhabit: in fact, it was the first time they had a babysitter at bedtime here, rather than an afternoon playmate. Still, it was a drag, and it took until almost 11pm for G-, our 8yo, to finally pass out, and his usual bedtime is around 8pm (though it typically takes him 30 minutes or longer to finally go to sleep). Continue reading ... and still, sometimes bedtime just stinks Taste Test: Hansen's Junior Water
I said "sure, but no guarantees anyone will like it, that we'll write positively about the product or that we'll ever actually write about it in the end." They were okay with that clause and sent us a box of little juice boxes and a nifty little USB flash drive with product pictures thereon. Unfortunately.... Continue reading Taste Test: Hansen's Junior Water I'm a movie geek, I admit itSo here's something weird: I'm a huge fan of the cinema, both for the classic films and the latest big productions. I average a movie a day and have seen thousands upon thousands of movies in my life. I have seen about 95% of the American Film Institute's Top 100 Films, for example (I blogged a while back about having seen only 89 of them, but have seen more since). Go to the Internet Movie Database (IMDB) Top 250 Films and I've seen all but about 20 or so. (subtract all the Italian films and I've seen almost all of 'em. How about you?) "Hi, my name's Dave and I'm addicted to films". "Hi, Dave." The irony of this is that even after our split and the resultant morphing of our relationship into divorced adults, co-parenting, Linda and I are still intent on raising our children as media-free as possible. So, no movies. Continue reading I'm a movie geek, I admit it How do you explain sex and "Free Condoms!" to your kids?
free condoms It didn't take more than a second or two for him to ask "Daddy, what's a condom?" Ah, well... Hmm.... Continue reading How do you explain sex and "Free Condoms!" to your kids? The Secret Joy of a Proper Child Residence ArrangementWithout doing any research or checking with anyone, when Linda and I separated, we decided on a quite complicated two-household arrangement that maximized the solo time each child had with each parent. We did check after a month or two with a local psychiatrist and her comment was basically "wow, if you can do this, it's good for the kids, but I think it's going to prove difficult." Our arrangement, on a typical week, was: Monday: G- with me, A- and K- with Mom, Tuesday G- and K- with me, A- with Mom, Wednesday, A- with me, Thursday A- and K- with me, Friday A- and G- with me, Saturday no-one with me, and Sunday everyone with me. As a reminder, A- is 11, G- is 8 and K- is 4. For those of you familiar with divorce and dual-household setups, what's wrong with this arrangement, over and above that each parent only has a single night where they're without children? Continue reading The Secret Joy of a Proper Child Residence Arrangement How do single dads (and working mothers) cope with summer holiday?I feel a bit trapped right now. Linda and I are changing our parenting time arrangements so that all the kids are with her some days and then they're all with me on other days. If you've read parenting post divorce type books, we're probably going to be moving to a 2-5-5-2 arrangement. Prior to this we had a more complicated 2-2-2-1 sort of arrangement, staggered, so that each child had solo time with each of us every week. Too many darn transitions, though, so we're moving to a more normal, more common arrangement. The question that looms before me now, however, is: what happens during the summer? As regular readers know, we have an 11yo girl, an 8yo boy and a 4yo girl and even during the school year, it's very tough when I have all three because the 4yo gets out of school at 12:30, so I end up with half-days of work unless I can arrange play dates or other afternoon activities for her. Worth noting is that our two houses are just barely more than a mile apart, so there's no distance or travel involved and the kids can easily keep all the same friends and social activities in either residence. But summer vacation, stretching out a long twelve weeks, suddenly seems overwhelming to me because the days that I have the kids, I'm now thinking I will have to not work at all, effectively axing my available work hours by 50%, with a commensurate hit on my income. Continue reading How do single dads (and working mothers) cope with summer holiday? Fun, random photographs from our Hawaiian Holiday
Anyway, that doesn't change that we had a great time in Hawaii last month and are ready to go back (particularly since tonight we're supposed to see 3-5" of snow tonight here in Colorado). So let's jump in. What I'm going to do here is show a picture then have a commentary about it immediately following. The pics are big, enjoy! Continue reading Fun, random photographs from our Hawaiian Holiday Overheard: exactly the wrong way to tutor someoneI am hanging out at one of my favorite haunts, The Cup, in downtown Boulder, Colorado, sharing a table with a couple of guys who are working, laptop adjacent to laptop. From what I can glean, one of the guys is a tutor with a local group of some sort, while the other guy is either a senior in high school or a freshman at CU. Yup, a buddy just stopped by and the tutor said "I'm tutoring, catch ya later" to his friend. So I'm right about their working relationship here. What strikes me though is that there's precious little learning or teaching going on here and that this relationship is much more characterized by the tutor dictating concepts to the student. Continue reading Overheard: exactly the wrong way to tutor someone AudibleKids: Fun new site for kid's audio books
What's interesting is that the material is broken down both into categories (Animal Stories, Biographies & History, Classics & Poetry, Fables, Fairy Tales & Myths, Fiction, Mysteries, Nonfiction, Parenting & Teaching, Sci-Fi & Fantasy, Study Guides & Foreign Language) and by age and school grade. Now maybe it's just me, but do we want kids listening to parenting audio books? :-) Continue reading AudibleKids: Fun new site for kid's audio books |
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After a hotly contested court case between huge toy conglomerate 
Sometimes being a blogger is crazy fun, like when the PR agency from 
Rather an amusing situation happened over the weekend: I was in the touristy downtown area of Boulder with G- (8) and K- (4) having a good time wandering around. We'd just stepped out of Ben & Jerry's after enjoying some delicious ice cream and G- spotted someone across the pedestrian mall with a basket and a sign that said
First off, I will apologize that I'm not going to post any pictures of my kids here. I know that most daddy bloggers and mommy bloggers have a different perspective on things, but I don't have pics of my kids online because it's important to me that I put in all possible effort to protect their privacy. That's also why I don't refer to them by name but rather by using the admittedly Victorian convention of first initial + dash, as in D-.
I dunno about you, but my kids really enjoy listening to books on tape / audio books, and so I was pretty excited to see that Amazon.com's new acquisition Audible.com has launched a site specifically focused on children's material called