A few months ago, I was trying to get my 1-year-old daughter ready for preschool. She was… uncooperative. As I gathered her shoes, she came running into the living room crying, holding her blanket and a stuffed animal. “No! Daddy!,” she screamed. “Stinky butt!” My daughter, who couldn’t yet complete a sentence, took a phrase…
Category: Development
Distress Tolerance (part III)
In the last installment, I explained that emotions needed to be labeled accurately and validated in order for children to learn how to identify and tolerate what they experience. As children move through their emotional experiences, they begin to understand that they can tolerate other, larger emotional experiences. In other words, they can endure life…
Distress Tolerance (part II)
Previously… I grew up in the 80s and I fondly recall the phrase “previously on __” because it refreshed my memory of what happened in the episode before the episode I was about to watch. These days syndication kills that because Nick at Nite and TBS don’t seem to coordinate their re-runs. But I digress….
Games Worth Playing
My daughter is a senior in high school now, and everything that she does this year seems to be taking on a whole new significance as the school year rushes headlong through her final semester at home. This year is seemingly full of a lot of “lasts,” which, by any measure, makes this an emotional…
One Year Later: A New Dad Retrospective
A year ago, new dad Danny tried to predict what the first year of fatherhood held for him. Fast forward to today, and Danny reflects on his first year of being a dad.
Rhythm & Sol: A Music Career in the Making
When I was around 18 years old, I inherited a 1973 Ovation Model 1111-4 Balladeer round-back guitar. One of my grandmother’s tenants had abandoned it in her rental property in Kansas City, and I happened to stumble across it one summer’s day while I was helping her clean out the storage room. It was a…
What I learned by walking my sorry ass to the bus stop, and why my kids will do the same thing
Near my home, a Washoe County school bus arrives at 7:57 a.m. every weekday to take students to a nearby elementary school. At this stop, a child from the neighborhood sits in their parent’s parked car about 25 feet from where the bus stops. When the bus arrives, the child gets out of the car…
Do Bad Kids Equal Bad Parenting?
John Rosemond: A Primer I want to make one thing plain from the start: I hold author John Rosemond in very high esteem. He and I have never met, and given my relative youth in the profession, for me to invoke the name of someone who has written 15 books and presently possesses national newspaper syndication…
Reno Dads Podcast Episode 5: Baby Names!
Baby Names: Don’t Screw this Up! In this episode, the Reno Dads sit down and talk baby names. Yeah, we’re manly enough to talk about how important it is to get this ONE thing right, on the first day of fatherhood! Stories about how each of the hosts (and their partners) arrived at their kids’…
Rules for My Daughters
Aaron Conrad posted a great compilation of quotes from Walker Lamond’s book “Rules for My Unborn Son.” As a father of two daughters, this list didn’t really speak to me, though it was full of great insight. So, I set out to build my own list of rules for my daughters. As I searched and…
Talking with Your Kids About Death
I remember that day clearly. As I drove my son (then 6 years old) home from school, I came to a stop at a traffic light. “Hey dad,” his little voice snuck to my ear from the back seat. “Yeah, buddy?” I replied, casually. “What happens to us when we die?” he asked me. Oh…
This is Why We Yell At Children
“When one’s expectations are reduced to zero, one really does appreciate everything one does have.” – Steven Hawking Think of three things you do (or used to do) really well. Now, think back to when they were introduced to you and the first time you attempted them. If your “three things” involve an ability such…