character

Do words matter?

Toby — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 17:34:38 -0700

Greetings dads,
There is a local case here in MA that received National press - the arrest of Harvard professor Gates.
Here is a link to it that includes the police report: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/07/23/police-officer-obama-butt-arr...
I do not want to open a can of worms of who is correct; I would like to discuss the President's words. He said that the Cambridge police acted "stupidly."
Each day, my wife and I work to teach our children how to communicate, and we cannot stand them calling anyone stupid. Again, not taking sides for or against the President, the Professor, or the Police, should the President of the United States done a better job of choosing his words?
I look forward to your comments.
Cheers,
Toby

Raising Boys with Purpose

tony — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 10:52:11 -0700

by Tony Chen

You may have seen that we here at Savvy Daddy have recently added a distinguished Panel of Experts. You can see their bios here, but basically these folks are profs, physicians, clinicians, and academics that are savvy gurus on topics relevant to us dads trying to raise great kids. These experts have been gracious enough to answer real questions from real dads - email me your questions (tony at savvydaddy dot com) and I'll be passing along the most relevant & compelling questions to them. Today, we are honored to present to you Michael Gurian, a NYT best selling author of 25 books about parenting children in our culture.

Dad Question: In your book THE PURPOSE OF BOYS, you mention that 85% of the world's Ritalin is given to boys in the U.S.? Why do you think that is the case?

Gurian: American families are confused about what developmental path boys ought to be on. Given what immense variety of boys there are, we become even more confused. We forget that boys are on a different developmental path than girls, maturing concentration and focus centers in the brain somewhat later, and needing some different kinds of care than girls do in order to fully direct their "boy energy" and find their gifts, abilities, success, focus, and discipline. Ritalin is a powerful drug that "fills in the blanks" for us when we don't know what to do with boys. While some boys do desperately need it, most boys (especially at seven or younger) don't. What they need is a three family system, and clearer direction toward success, purpose, service, and follow through.

Dad Question: What would you recommend I do if the teacher believes my 7-year-old son needs to be medicated?

Gurian: THE MINDS OF BOYS has a chapter that lays out five steps to take. Included in these are: get two opinions from two psychologists or neuro-psychologists trained in male brain development. 7 years old is VERY young to be medicating. Watch out. And remember, though teachers and pediatricians are brilliant people, they are generally not qualified to diagnose a boy (especially if just basing their diagnosis on personal observation) with a brain disorder.

Dad Question: I'm a little discouraged by how difficult it is going to be to raise my son well in this culture that "wars" against boys. Do you have any words of advice and encouragement for a young dad trying to raising purposeful sons?

Gurian: SELF-EDUCATION is key here. There is no "tip" or "magic bullet." Fathering and mothering both go best when we become educated on the developmental path of our child, AND THEN trust our instincts. THE PURPOSE OF BOYS and NURTURE THE NATURE are good tools for understanding. They and most educational tools will ultimately help a father set up a structure for child-raising, in tandem with mother and extended family, that provides: love, attention, discipline, direction. A couple things to add: even if you've been fathered or parented badly, you can re-educate yourself and then trust your instincts. The soul of the father is vast and deep and loving--we do our work as men and we come through with good instincts, at some point in life. Another thing to add: it is great if moms and dads DO NOT parent the same way. Don't worry if you are strong/silent but mom is talkative/emotional or you are talkative and mom is silent. It's great for a boy to have more than one approach to developing his own variety of gifts and approaches.

Dad Question: There is so much male-bashing and dad-bashing in the media. How do we counteract that in our homes so that our sons can grow up with a healthy self-esteem?

Gurian: To grow up with healthy self-esteem, boys need the care of mother, father, and five other strong mentors during boyhood and adolescence. Self-esteem is built through bonding relationships and task focus in a system of caregivers that is organized or "led" by the two parents, but then also expands beyond them. If you have set up this system for your son, you'll find that he can even go through times of abject failure (i.e. where it appears his self-esteem is crushed) and he'll come through fine. FAILURE IS GOOD FOR CHILDREN. We only fear that it will lead to long term downsides for boys when we don't have in place a system of many "families" caring for the boy. A final thing to add: as much as possible, a man has to MODEL health for his son, including healthy spiritual time. Do spiritual things with your son, like sitting by a river and praying/meditation (or whatever fits your spirituality or religion). Model self-care for your son. Admit your mistakes when you make them, and lead with your strengths when the boy needs your strength. Your sons will thank you later in life (and so will your daughters, too!)

Have a question for Michael Gurian? Send your questions to me via email (tony at savvydaddy dot com).

Out on the deck

Toby — Sun, 31 May 2009 06:22:49 -0700

Greetings Dads,
Although we live in MA, our (my) grill is fired all four seasons. There is nothing like cooking outside and over flame! This is not a forum to discuss charcoal vs. gas, but we can have that debate another time; rather, let's compile a list over our favorite grill meals. As with all cooking / menu creation, it is easy to get into a rut - this will provide some new ideas for all.
I will get the ball rolling:

1. Chicken drumsticks
Prior to the grill, set in a baking dish, cover with beer and cook in the oven for 45 min a 350. This will pull out some of the fat.
Grill over med heat turning every 4 min. Depending on your kids' taste, BBQ sauce on or on the side (Dinosaur BBQ, and Stubbs are 2 of my favorites).

2. Chicken Breasts
Easy to cook and can be prepped ahead. Use a gallon size ziplock bag and cover with your favorite sauce.
Teriyaki or Salt & Pepper with olive oil & lemon juice, Asian sweet chili sauce are 3 of my stand bys.

3. Burgers
Weather you craft your own, use Buba Burgers, or those from the butcher counter, a burger will always please. Don't forget the cheese:
Munster, Provalone, or Humbolt Fog (for mom and dad).

4. Fish in Foil
Take a whole fillet and make a pouch with some aluminum foil. Add some salt & pepper, lemon, wine or beer, favorite herbs and seal tights.
Cook skin side down on high, there is not need to flip. Time will depend on the thickness and fat content of the fish: trout will cook faster that Mahi Mahi.

5. Grilled veggies
Peppers, asparagus, tomatoes, heads of romaine lettus - use your imagination and go crazy with that side or salad.

Looking forward to your suggestions.
Cheers,
Toby

Chef Dads

Savvy Soldier Daddys

Toby — Sun, 24 May 2009 15:08:36 -0700

Thank you to all the savvy soldier daddys out there. For those protecting us, stay safe!

Welcome home to those who have returned. Enjoy the clip.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kerMm0HG1mk&feature=related Cheers, Toby

Fighting is Bush League

Toby — Sat, 18 Apr 2009 06:54:17 -0700

For the Wall street Journal - Great Lesson Here:

* Need a Real Sponsor here

* SPORTS
* APRIL 15, 2009, 3:09 P.M. ET

Why the Red Wings Don't Fight
In Detroit, Dropping the Gloves Is Out, Speed and Finesse Are In; Don Cherry's Lament

* Article
* Slideshow
* Comments (27)

Kids and cell phones

Toby — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 06:31:34 -0700

This is a piece I found in the Boston Globe Magazine this morning and loved. Enjoy the read!

No Cell for You
She's 11. She can wait.

By Thomas O'Rourke | March 29, 2009

Our 11-year-old daughter enjoys researching her favorite cellphone styles and colors on the Internet. She actually believes (incorrectly) that she will soon be the proud owner of a pink Razr phone, which according to Overstock.com, is more than just a communications device. It's a statement about who you are.

Here's a statement about who she is.

She's a kid with no job and no ability to pay a phone bill. She's also a safe, hovered-over kid, with no emergencies to communicate. My reluctance to support this purchase is not just about the money, though I am cheap. Nor is it just about my annoyance at having my own phone. It has more to do with the trouble kids can get into with texting, surfing the Internet, taking and sharing photos, and generally walking through life with a phone permanently affixed to their ears.

It's not necessary and can only lead to requests for more. It's a slippery slope that follows the logic immortalized in Laura Joffe Numeroff's classic children's book If You Give a Moose a Muffin.

Here's my version. Give a girl a cellphone, she'll lose it and want an iPhone. Give her the iPhone, she'll want a matching iMac. Give her the iMac, she'll want a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren ($495,000).

This also holds true for other requests, such as: If you tell your daughter she can pierce her ears when she's 12, she'll talk you down to 11. When the ears get pierced at 11, younger sis will bargain for 10. The 11-year-old will want to pierce other body parts, get a tattoo, wear Apple Bottom jeans and the boots with the fur, and have the whole bar looking at her. Soon, she'll be dancing around a pole at a gentleman's club. It's just a bad idea.

So no, my dear, you will not be getting a cellphone soon. But I'd be happy to read you If You Give a Pig a Pancake. And if you are ever in an emergency, just ask to borrow the cellphone of anyone around you. Everyone has one. As you frequently remind me, you are the only person on the planet who doesn't.

Why children need sports

Toby — Sun, 08 Feb 2009 05:53:12 -0800

Greetings dads, For those who have not seen the movie "Miracle," get it TODAY! My favorite scene is when Herb Brooks skates his boys to their knees and says this famous line: "When you pull on that jersey, remember the name on the front is a hell of a lot more important than the one on the back!" This is the lesson children, and their parents, will learn through sports. It does not matter your nationality, color, political party, or last name; to be a member of a team, one must be able to play and get along with those on the team. Children learn how to deal with winning and losing - lessons that seem to be vanishing to today's "I'm entitled" culture. Get your kids involved, you don't have to be the dad that coaches the team, but go to backyard, go to practice, go to the games. Sports do not only keep your kids healthy, sports develop their character. Cheers, Toby

Man make fire, man feel manly

silly_sad_machine — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 08:08:02 -0800

By silly_sad_machine

My father kept a fire burning in an old iron woodstove during the winter to heat our house. We lived in very, very rural Oklahoma, and while we had electricity and (eventually) satellite TV, central heat and air was a novelty to which we had never been introduced.

My father woke early - always. He was up long before we were, and when he finally woke us to get ready for school the fire was already burning hot. My sister and I would rush down from our bitterly cold second-floor rooms and scramble to be the first in front of the woodstove's single blower.

When I was old enough my father put me to building fires. He showed me exactly how to do it, as well. You laid out two sticks of wood about a foot apart, and you stacked about four more sticks of wood across the first two. The effect was to make a little cubby to shove in paper, cardboard and other household tinder.

I built a lot of fires in that woodstove during my teenage years, and I always used my father's method. As far as I knew, it was the only way to build fires. But it was amazingly difficult to do. Paper burns hot, but it also burns fast. You could cram that little cubby so full that paper wads were bursting back out onto the floor, and you'd still only get about 20 seconds of good, hot flame. With sticks of wood that were easily as big around as a softball, 20 seconds wasn't good enough.

My father never had a problem with it, though. His hands were like magic in the stove. He'd carry in a load of wood, toss in some paper and there was your roaring fire, no questions asked. But I can remember countless times when I admitted defeat, unable to get the fire to start after several tries. These were no "Leave it to Beaver" moments, though, and my father didn't toss an arm over my shoulder and give me a heart-to-heart. Not being able to start a fire was a black mark against my manhood, and he let me know it. Although he didn't put it so seriously (way too sarcastic to be serious), these were the things a man did, and by God I needed to learn how to do them.

Today I'm building fires in my own fireplace (our woodstove has a stone hearth built around it ... much better than my father's). It was built by my grandfather when he built the house, and its giant presence forms the base of the house's support structure.

The presence of an iron grate on the floor of the stove, however, prevents me from using my father's method of starting fires. It had been some years since I'd really built one, and I suddenly had to adjust and find my own method. In doing so, I learned something very interesting.

My father's method for building fires sucked.

How could the man honestly believe that he was teaching me to build fires if he never taught me anything about kindling? Watch any survival show and you'll learn there are three keys to building a fire: tinder, kindling and fuel. The tinder catches the flame, the kindling stokes the flame and the fuel burns and puts out heat. My father's method involved wads of newspaper (tinder, I guess?) and gigantic sticks of just-seasoned wood. That's it. And yet, somehow, he pulled it off.

As it turns out I can build a pretty good fire too, and it doesn't take me 10 tries, either. Although my father didn't teach me a good method for actually stoking a fire, I think now that maybe that's not what he was trying to do. Maybe he wasn't really trying to do anything, but what he did do was give me a deep and abiding fondness for a roaring fire in a black iron fireplace. It makes me feel like a real father and a real man like nothing else I've done in my life, and burning a fire in our home is like rekindling the heart of our family's legacy.

No, there was no way he was aiming for that. I think he just wanted an excuse to call me a puss.

The Beauty of Competition

wonkitime — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 17:09:15 -0800

By Darius Alexander

I've been doing a lot of research lately about schools and institutions. I want to make sure that I find the best one for my new son or daughter. But I find one major thing lacking in many of those places: competition.

These days it seems that nobody encourages competition anymore. If I can barely find it in schools, where else will I find a healthy sense of competition. There are some soccer leagues where they no longer keep score. Many schools give trophies to children simply for trying. I've even heard of some places playing around with the idea of doing away with the ABCDE grading system and going with shapes or some other system so students do not feel as bad when they fail on a test or assignment.

One of the goals that our schools should have is to teach our kids some basic life lessons. I realize part of this is my job as a dad, but extra-curricular sports teams are one place where we expect our children to compete. We also want our children to compete in the classroom for better grades.

I guess my point is this: Competition is good for our kids. Without competition, what gives our kids the drive to excel? I want my kids to be competitive. I want them to try to do better than their classmates. I want them to have a drive to succeed and set themselves apart from the rest. I say this, of course, knowing that there has to be limits to the amount of competition. I don't want them to do anything that is unethical, hurtful or anything else in order to achieve their goals. But I do want them to have a healthy sense of competition. Without that healthy sense of competition, they will never give it their all for that big promotion. They will never strive to rise to the top of their class. They will never strive to be the team's MVP.

Hopefully, this trend isn't going to stay around too long. I don't know about you, but I want my children to have that healthy sense of competition. When they don't do well on a test, I want the teacher to make red marks all over their paper instead of the "friendlier" green marks that they use today. I want my kids to feel a sense of regret (or at least some motivation to do better next time around) when they get an "F" on a test or fail an assignment. Maybe it will make them strive harder to do better next time. In short, I just want the best for my kids. One of the ways to accomplish this is for them to have a healthy sense of competition. And if they can't get it at school among their peers, where can they get it?

Lessons from the first year

Philmundo — Wed, 10 Dec 2008 17:04:44 -0800

By Phil Stott

My daughter Maeve turns one this week, and I thought I'd take the opportunity to sum up some of the best tips, advice and things I've learned about parenting in general since my life ceased to revolve around me.

1) Breast feeding is nature's gift to fathers. Really. Take two modern-day dads and put them side by side, and I'll pick the one with the bottle-fed child immediately. He's the one with bags under his eyes from the through-the-night feedings. The other one, well, the most he's had to do is bring baby to the owner of the hardware before drifting back into sweet oblivion. For the same reason, breast pumps are evil (just kidding!).

2) Always keep a selection of toys and books close at hand at diaper-changing time. Anything, in short, that will encourage your child to lie flat on their back and not attempt to crawl off the edge of the pad before you've had a chance to clean up the aftermath of the jar of prunes you fed them because they seemed "backed-up."

3) Leave them alone. Not literally, obviously, but if your child's content playing by him or herself, leave them to it. Last weekend, I lay on the couch and watched Maeve pull her socks off and play with them for 45 minutes ... well it seemed like 45 minutes anyway. Maybe it was five, but it was at least five where I did nothing but observe.

4) Making baby food is not difficult: there are lots of recipes that can be made in a single pot and then pureed in a food processor. It's cheap and you get the added peace of mind of knowing exactly what's in their food.

5) Most convenience stores sell nothing a baby can eat. Except, if you're lucky, overripe bananas.

6) Strangers in grocery stores will offer parenting advice on a regular basis. While exceptionally rude, being rude back fixes nothing. Apart from your sense of satisfaction.

7) There is nowhere to change a diaper in New York City. The Midwest, yes. Europe, everywhere. But when in the Big Apple - try your luck in a five star hotel. Some of those posh bathrooms have couches that can double as changing tables. Plus, no-one will tell you they're for customers only, and there's a much higher chance they'll be clean.

8) 7:30 is a lie-in. No, really.

9) An instruction booklet is nowhere near as helpful as a neighbor with three kids when it comes to installing a car seat for the first time.

10) There's too much advice out there to pay attention to all of it. Doctors in the U.S. tell you not to introduce X,Y and Z foods until your child is a year, while in Europe the same foods are part of a child's diet from 6 months on. Do your best to stay informed, but trust your instincts (and for at least the first year stay away from honey [botulism - who knew?], sushi and, uh, Chinese formula).

11) As parents, we are doomed to a life of continually finding out why the things our parents did made sense, and what a great job they actually did in raising us.

12) Just when you think you've got it down, everything changes. Kid sleeping through the night? Give it a week or two and you'll be getting up at 4 a.m. Eating solids? Expect them to start spitting them out any day now. The good news is that it works both ways. Kid waking up at 4? Give it a week or two.

13) Children are not nearly as expensive as they‘re cracked up to be. No-one needs even half the stuff on display in those big box retailers, and the difference between the top of the line items and the less expensive ones often comes down to a label. The same goes when registering; baby registries are just like wedding registries -- designed to get money into the store rather than stuff you need (or even like) into your own home. My rule of thumb here is "if it had been available, would my parents have used it?" The vast majority of the time, the answer comes back "no".

14) Nothing is too extreme for getting a crying baby to sleep. Maeve used to need to be swung in her car seat, while I've heard of other parents driving their kids around until they drop off. Others, meanwhile, seek out cobblestones for the roughest stroller ride imaginable. In short, if it works, do it (as long as it's safe, obviously).

15) No matter what fatherhood (or life) throws at you, good or bad, "all things must come to an end, and this too shall pass."