Saying “I Love You” from a Distance (Part 2)
On the school day my children leave my care, I will drop an “I love you” note into their lunch box or a quirky gift from the two-dollar shop.
Do You Speak ‘Childrenese’?
Our children are, in many ways, strangers in the world of adults. They don’t speak our language particularly well – and we seem to have forgotten how to speak their language as we’ve aged.
We Are All Better People When We Get Enough Sleep
Getting Squish to nap regularly is a conscious choice, a discipline. It has me wondering how many parents let their newborns decide their own sleeping patterns and, if so, how much misery it could cause!
7 Proven Tips for a Happy Home
I love this article, published by Time, to help parents like me make the most of these short years we have with our kids: "How to Have a Happy Family – 7 Tips Backed by Research".
Courageous Dads
Courage. It transforms everyday people into unlikely superheroes. We have an amazing 10-week online course for dads called Courageous, starting Tuesday 3 October.
How Present Am I?
Sometimes on the other side of a wonderful parenting weekend, there is a sense that single parenting is a clock-on-clock-off thing. A full parenting weekend involves the tumble and fun and out of sorts and homework and silliness and around-the-house helping out. Then, it goes quiet when I mentally punch off my dad timecard after wrapping up the school drop-off, knowing that the mum shift starts that afternoon. And, while I ...
Can I Ask You a Question?
No wonder I’m so tired! A UK study found that the average child asks around 300 questions a day. How on earth did our parents ever get by before Google? What made me smile was that the research revealed kids were more likely to ask their mother questions because their father was likely to say, ‘Ask your mother.’ Here are my tips for being the best ‘source of all knowledge’ you ...
Colour Me Happy
Sometimes my weekends are a maddening tussle to make the one-after-the-other events that seem to start flooding our Friday and spill into our Saturday and Sunday. Sport, birthday parties, youth group, housework, homework, school socials all back up, one against the other, to make our dad and daughters time fairly frenetic. Leading into my last weekend with Miss 7 and Miss 12, I knew that my Friday to Monday was going ...
Who Matters Most?
My kids and I were watching a Disney movie recently. In the movie, a dad who was coaching his child’s sports team yelled at his son. After the coaching session, the boy asked his Dad, “Why did you yell at me, but you didn’t yell at all the other kids?” His Dad yelled back in exasperation, “I don’t care about the other kids.” I was struck by the irony of this ...
How Music Increases the IQ of Our Children and the Joy It Brings
Ludwig van Beethoven said, “Music is a higher revelation than all wisdom and philosophy. Music is the electrical soil in which the spirit lives, thinks and invents.” Ronnie James Dio, a former member of Black Sabbath, said, “Music, rock & roll music especially, is such a generational thing. Each generation must have its own music. I had my own in my generation, you have yours, everyone I know has their own ...
