daughters

How to Deal with Your Daughter's Hair (and why)

tony — Sun, 23 Mar 2008 14:21:09 -0700

Most guys would rather do anything else than read about hair styling, but if you've got a daughter, hair can be an important issue. Hair is generally seen as a sign of beauty for females, and this is impressed upon girls at a very young age-whenever they get a new haircut or wear a cute barrette, everyone tells them how pretty they look, so they start caring about their hair pretty early on. Plus, girls usually wear their hair longer, so at a minimum, your daughter's hair needs to be brushed through and styled in a way that keeps it out of her face (and the fingerpaints). So before we get to the issue of styling, here are a few pointers on brushing and combing long hair.

Wet hair: Comb through her hair as soon as possible after you wash it (and use a comb, not a brush). Once the hair starts to air-dry, it's harder to comb out the tangles. For girls with thick or very long hair, avoid tears with using conditioner or some spray-on detangler-you can get it at most drugstores or kids' hair salons. Also, for thicker hair, a wide-tooth comb works best.
Dry hair: If you're facing a serious case of bedhead, you need to work through those tangles with care. Take a handful of hair and hold it at the top, near her scalp, then use a comb to pick through the snarls. (It may be tempting to just yank through the tangles, but that technique hurts. A lot.) When all the tangles are out, give her whole head a once-over with the comb or brush.

While a quick brush-through and a barrette are sometimes enough, especially when you're late for school, you will occasionally be called upon to perform a little more artistry. Here are a few basic hairstyles for little girls, from easiest to hardest, and how to create them. (Note: Be sure to use elastics made for use on hair-you can get small ones designed for kids. But NEVER use a regular rubber band, or it will take scissors to get it out.)
Ponytail: Scoop up all of her hair with one hand, and with the other, comb through the hair on the top and sides of her head to smooth it out. You can make a low ponytail at the back of her neck, a high ponytail up at the crown of her head, or something in between. Then wrap an elastic around the hair. Put a ribbon or scrunchie around the elastic if she wants to look fancy. Once you've mastered that, you can also do a partial ponytail, where you just use the hair on top of her head and pull it back.
Pigtails: Pigtails are just two ponytails, on either side of the head. Begin by parting the hair into two sections. You do this by taking a comb, placing the tip at the top of the back of her head, and drawing a straight line down to her neck; make sure the part is straight and centered. Wrap each section of hair in an elastic, a little bit behind the ear, at whatever height she likes. When you're done, look at her from the front to make sure the pigtails are at about the same place on each side.
Braids: Braiding seems hard at first, but after you've done it a few times, it gets easy-it's just a matter of getting the pattern down. Divide the hair into three even sections. Take the right section and cross it over the center section. Then take the left section and cross it over the center section (which was formerly the right section). Keep alternating, crossing the right and left sections over the center section, tightening the braid as you go until you're a couple inches from the end of the hair. Secure it with an elastic. Check out this video to see how it's done. You can also make braid pigtails, parting the hair as described above and braiding each section separately.
French braids: Don't even try this until you've got regular braiding down pat. French braiding is a little more difficult, and requires a degree of manual dexterity, but little girls just love to have their hair French braided because it looks so pretty. You start by gathering a small section of hair at the crown of her head, and dividing that section into three. Then criss-cross each side section over the center section as described above, but the trick is that before you cross a side section, you add a little more hair to that section. It's not easy at first, but it's also not as hard as it sounds-and probably easier to understand if you see it.

Please note that some girls may have hair that requires more specialized treatment; for example, for girls with very curly or kinky hair, it may not be necessary-or advisable-to comb it through. With these girls, you may just need to call in some female assistance. But once you learn how to do a few cute hairstyles for your little girl, she's going to think you're awesome (and the women in your life will be pretty impressed too).

How to Support Your Daughter When She Has Her First Period

tony — Fri, 07 Mar 2008 18:13:55 -0800

Ahh, springtime. Your daughter is growing up, climbing in height, softening around the edges and quickly discarding the child and baby you once knew. She is becoming a woman, and there's nothing you can do about it. She can't be your little girl forever.

As a father, it is understandably difficult, if not downright impossible, to understand what she's going through. Let's face it -- we're men. Puberty for us meant a deeper voice, a growth spurt and some hair. All pluses. Girls started to look a little cuter to us during puberty, as well. Another plus.

For girls, though, puberty is a universally different milestone. Society has placed the impetus on women to be beautiful -- not men -- and it is ironically during this time in their lives that girls begin to understand this more and more. As puberty progresses, young girls grow into the women they will become, and they learn to reconcile their body image with our cultural expectations of the "perfect woman." It is a tremendously fragile and self-conscious journey, and men are not equipped to understand or deal with it.

Your daughter will probably start to show signs of puberty at around 10 years old, although it can happen anywhere between the ages of 8 and 12, generally. The beginning of female puberty is known as thelarche, and it is characterized by the development of breasts. Around 18 months later she will begin to grow underarm and pubic hair, and then in another six months or so she'll begin menarche -- her first period.

Of course, as her father you won't know when she gets her first period unless she tells you. It's not necessarily apparent, although there may be some warning signs. All girls experience menstruation differently, and some girls take it harder than others. You daughter may experience flu-like symptoms, such as headache, backache, sore legs and nausea. The most common symptoms, of course, are cramping and discharge.

This is not something your daughter will want to discuss with her dad. Likewise, it's probably a decent bet that you're not really all that interested in discussing it with her, either. In situations like these, it's best to call in the wife. As a father you can certainly take a role in her development, but only if you're asked to. Otherwise, you can really only be supportive of her -- by understanding that she's changing, and by being sensitive to her moods and her needs. It's a strange job, and you may find yourself in over your head, but it's the easiest way for all involved.

For the single father, however, ducking out isn't always an option. With no wife to turn to, you may start to feel a little bit like a deer in the headlights. You haven't the slightest idea what you're going to do -- how can you even approach your daughter with something like this?

Find a woman -- Your best bet, in all honesty, is to find a woman who can help. Your mother is an easy first choice, as are any female relatives. In the absence of family, choose a close female friend to help. Even an ex-girlfriend who you are on good terms with would work. You can learn as much as you want about menstruation and cramping and pubic hair growth, but none of that is going to help you when your daughter needs to apply her first Tampax. You need a woman.
Brush up -- Where experience isn't possible, we can only rely on knowledge. That is to say, it's time for Menstruation 101. In all likelihood you won't even need this stuff, because your daughter will have already learned it in school or on the Internet. Even if you do need to tell her what it is, you'll probably be so nervous you can't finish. Still, it doesn't hurt to get to know your enemy. These two articles (here and here) will give you everything you need to know.
Point her in the right direction -- If your daughter inexplicably doesn't know the first thing about menstruation, it's going to fall on you to teach her. Rather than put yourself through the embarrassment of discussing it with her, you can help her find some information. Web sites like DotGirlProducts.com and Tampax.com have lots of information on puberty and menstruation, and some even have testimonials from other girls about their first times.
Don't make her feel weird -- Some websites discuss throwing menarche parties for your daughter's first period, with jewelry and dancing and female friends and other girl stuff. DO NOT DO THIS. This is the territory of the girl's mother or your chosen symbolic menstruation instructor -- not her father. In other departments, don't embarrass her in front of her friends, try to avoid making references to her being a child or otherwise underdeveloped, and don't make her feel ugly ... ever.
Take her out sometime -- Sometimes it's best to just go out and have fun and not worry about it. Let her know that you want to take her out and do something with her, whatever she likes. Make a daddy-daughter date out of it, with dinner and a movie, if you like. Talk about innocuous things and just generally enjoy your daughter's presence. She'll enjoy it, as well, and she'll appreciate the gesture.

You're in enemy territory here, and it's okay to be scared. If you've got a good wife on your side, however, you've got nothing to worry about. If you're stuck out here on your own, this may be more of a problem. Stick it out, however, and just keep one thing in mind: your daughter is becoming a woman. That means she's still part little girl, and you better enjoy it while it lasts.

Daddy I Want

stublandford — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:15:43 -0700

Again our cast of characters -

Me (The Daddy)
The Bean: Age 7
The Butterfly: Age 5
The Loving Understanding Wife

About an hour after I'd finished Daddy I Want to go to the Beach, I was supposed to take the Bean and the Butterfly to eat at our favorite (read closest) Mexican restaurant, La Parilla. This usually involves the girls eating cheese dip for dinner; however, recently The Bean has started eating refried beans. Go figure.

In the book, the main character (Lily) won't go to the beach until her sandals, her Mermaid Barbi, her swim goggles, etc are found. By the Daddy. Lily waits and paints her toes while the Daddy looks high and low for Lily's belongings (she doesn't feel the need to help).

Lily is based loosely on The Bean. However, in this instance, it is The Butterfly's turn at bat.

Get this: I announce that it's time to get in the minivan (the convertible is in the shop, I swear.) The Bean is all excited. She dashes to the garage and proceeds to strap herself into her car seat (yeah, they grow up so fast, but it can be very convenient).

But The Butterfly throws a fit. She doesn't like the dress she's wearing. She wants the one that Grammy got her. She shrugs when I ask what it looks like.

So we go through her closet and the laundry room. I don't have a clue what I'm looking for, but somehow we find it.

Get your Crocs, I say. Let's go, I say.

No!

Crocs are stupid. I want my sandals. SANDALS!!!

Stop me if this sounds familiar.

The Butterfly proceeds to sit on the floor and not help. So The Bean (she's come back inside wondering WTF) and I do a room-by-room search for sandals.

We finally find them and go off for a wonderful meal of beans, cheese dip and Margaritas.

Savvy Daddies Worldwide

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.

my 3-year-old daughter is crazy about boys already!

savvydaddy — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 10:24:49 -0700

(submitted anonymously) My daughter is 3 years old and boy crazy already. Even from 4-5 months, as soon as she was done breastfeeding with mom, she would basically be looking for me. When her male cousin would come over, she would follow him non-stop with her eyes. Now, she's 3 and all of her friends are boys. She "protects" the boys in her class from the "mean older girls." At her last birthday party, she hitched her arm with this 8-year-old boy and kept say, "Josh is my very favorite!" What do I do with this kid? I'm getting a little worried - do I really have anything to worry about? Anyone else deal with this kind of stuff?

----- submit your anonymous questions here.

Wonderful Cookbooks to Share

Toby — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 02:31:43 -0800

Greetings dads,
I have found 2 cookbooks that are not only fun for the kids, but the eats are good for us too. Check out: "Betty Crocker, Kids CooK!" I know, seeing Betty's name on here threw me off at first, but it has been a winner in my house (Yah smoothies), and I my Goddaughter raves as well. The 2nd is "DK Children's Cook Book, Quick and tasty recipes for young chefs." The Noodle soup with shrimp is a favorite! Betty Crocker is better for the littler ones in your fam and Children's Cook Book works for 8 and up.
Enjoy!
Cheers,
Toby

PS
Let me know if you would like some heads up on other cook books

Chef Dads

When your children are in the hospital

Toby — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 17:43:45 -0800

Greetings dads,
We are an active family and do not slow down in the winter: hockey, skiing, sledding, but we recently dodged a bullet.
Two Thursdays ago, my six year old daughter got a bit out of control skiing a hit a tree - thank God she was wearing her helmet.
I drove to the hospital from work to find her crying on a back board with a brace around her neck, a broken clavicle asking me to take her home. We knew from the Cat scan that there were some long-term issues and she would be off to Children's Hospital in Boston. My wife spent Thursday with her, I took over Friday, Sarah returned for Saturday, and Lily came home on Sunday. The care at Children's could not have been better: from the nurses, the Dr.'s, anyone who had contact with Lily was fantastic. We are so happy to have her home: she is up and about and back to school for some 1/2 days. I have been reflecting since and thinking how close we came - thank God she was wearing her helmet!
Enjoy every day and have fun with your kids; don't forget how important they are to you.
Very Best,
Toby

Revenge of the toys

wonkitime — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 10:09:09 -0800

By Phil Stott

So after writing a couple of weeks ago about the challenges and advantages of taking it easy with gift spending over the festive season, I have a couple of things to report. First is that my daughter Maeve (a one-year-old) received a much bigger Christmas than either my wife or I anticipated. And the second is that, although I've broken my budget -- something that happens every year -- it's not been by as much as I might have expected, given the amount and quality of gifts we've accumulated.

There are a few reasons that Maeve's first "real" Christmas has escalated from one main gift towards the super-sized without overstretching the Stott family budget. A few weeks ago (right after I wrote the initial holiday spending piece, in fact), my wife and I took Maeve for a day out to the winter fair at the school my wife used to teach at. As with all good winter fairs, there was food and shopping aplenty -- including a full room dedicated solely to second-hand toys, a previously untapped market for me. I'm not going to reveal the full extent of everything we bought there -- I'm convinced Maeve is like Stewie from Family Guy, and can read but is hiding it from us to her advantage -- but suffice it to say that for $15 we picked up enough mint-condition toys to give any one year-old a decent Christmas, and for $50 we would have needed a second car to get everything home!

(The sad side note is that there was so much other stuff in perfect or near-perfect condition that would have made any child happy, but while I can give second-hand toys to my own kid, I can't give them to the "Toys for tots" program my office is running this festive season. I understand that there are sound reasons for not accepting some second-hand toys, but a blanket ban seems a little harsh, if indicative of the times we live in.)

The second-hand thing is something I've really come to embrace since becoming a parent. While I flirted with thrift store shopping as a poor student -- poor in that I couldn't afford a decent winter coat but always seemed to have money for beer! -- finding stuff for kids seems much easier, and entails much less in the way of digging through racks of mold-infested tat. Part of the reason is that people tend to overbuy for children, whether their own or someone else's, and kids grow and develop so fast that the clothes and toys they get can end up very lightly used, if at all, by the time the child is too old for them.

So far, my wife and I have spent next to nothing on clothes or toys for Maeve, as we've been fortunate enough to have a few neighbors and colleagues with slightly older kids, so we've benefited greatly from others' clutter -- oftentimes getting full outfits that still have the store tags on them. The only problem I had was getting over an initial twinge of pride ("I'm capable of providing for my own child") -- something that evaporated as soon as I comprehended the sheer amount of stuff that people accumulate when kids come on the scene. At that point, pragmatism overtook pride as I realized it would be downright stupid not to take advantage of an entire stream of good-quality free stuff that we'd have ended up buying anyway.

As for the other main reason our holiday shopping exploded, I have two words for you: recession and bankruptcy. If you've got kids and you haven't been down to your local branch of KB Toys to snap up the bargains, there may still be time. I'd been expecting a full-on melee to be in progress when I arrived at ours, but was surprised to find that the crowds were light enough to make it some of the least stressful holiday shopping I've done so far. Come to think of it, it's probably a reflection of why the firm went bust in the first place -- I only realized we had a KB Toys in town when I saw a guy with a sign promoting the going out of business sale. Turns out it was right next door to our usual grocery store!

Anyway, the point of this wasn't to gloat about making out like a bandit in the recession (although that does feel nice!), but to point out that there's more than one way to skin the holiday shopping cat - especially with the economic mess out there this year, which has actually benefited people like me who tend to leave their gift buying until the last minute. I also wanted to point out that, although I may dole out advice on gift giving, I'm as likely as anyone to overshoot the boundaries of my well-crafted plans -- especially where my kid's involved. The trick is to try and do it when opportunity arises. As my own dad said when I called him lamenting the volume of stuff we'd bought: "You have an attic. You don't have to give it all at once." On which note...I'm off to see what I can find in the sales for next Christmas!

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."

A tale of two children

Philmundo — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 17:16:48 -0800

By Phil Stott

So it turns out that my kid's a nightmare. Well, at least in comparison to my brother-in-law's almost-eleven-month-old daughter anyway. A month younger than Maeve, she also happens to be an exceptionally docile creature.

I met her for the first time last Thursday when my wife's brother, and his wife, came out to New York to visit us. Despite having waited in the rain at a train station for at least five minutes following a 30-minute train ride from the airport and a five-hour flight from Phoenix, she didn't melt down when I arrived to pick them up. Maeve? Not so much-not a big fan of strangers, she takes a long time to warm up to new people, especially men.

The next step was the car ride home. Maeve is at the stage where we pretty much drive around with the same song on repeat in order to keep her calm (Coldplay's Viva La Vida, since you ask-she seems to like the intro). On good days, she'll fall asleep, or play with something long enough to forget that she hates her car seat. On bad days, you don't even want to know. But Maeve's cousin? Smiled as she was put in the seat, babbled a bit, fell asleep until we got home, didn't even cry when we woke her up taking her inside. No music required.

Initially, I put the even-tempered performance down to the fact that she was tired from traveling and being on a plane (completely ignoring how Maeve reacts to tiredness), but over the course of the weekend the gulf in personalities showed up so often that it became difficult to ignore. When the two girls were playing together, it was Maeve who consistently stole her cousin's toys, and yelled whenever something was taken away from her. It seems like it was always Maeve who had to be told to be gentle, to give something back, to share (all fairly abstract concepts for a not-quite-one year old, I know, but you have to start somewhere, especially when your kid's the tyrant and the other's parents are right there).

Not to belabor the point, it was also Maeve who was responsible for my wife and I alternating shifts bolting food at the table and standing outside with the stroller and an arsenal of toys at a Manhattan tapas restaurant. Her cousin, aunt and uncle, meanwhile, got to enjoy its warmth and comfort in full (for the 20 minutes it took us to scarf the meal and chug the wine we'd ordered, that is), the way one can when a baby sits contentedly in a high chair. And did I mention that she's so quiet they can take her to the movies?

I have no idea if there's a reason behind the differences in behavior, or if it's just the vagaries of fortune. I've contemplated the idea that it's something to do with the difference between breast and bottle feeding (Maeve gets the former, her cousin the latter since she was four months old), but that seems an unlikely conclusion-not to mention a deeply unscientific one to reach off a population sample of two. I'm pretty sure that it's not a question of discipline at this age either. Maybe it's the difference in climate between Phoenix and New York, or just that being a New Yorker, however young, gives one what might be called an edge.

Whatever it is, I do know a couple of things for certain. First, no matter how she behaves from time to time, in this father's eyes no kid will ever be better than Maeve, more fun to be around, or more loved. And the second thing also happens to be the best bit of parenting advice I've come across to date in my short career: this too shall pass. That was the thought that crossed my mind as I drove away from the airport after dropping the relatives for their flight home. One that was followed, naturally, by the fervent hope that we'll get revenge in the well-behaved baby stakes. My fingers are already crossed for some retribution during the terrible twos!