One of the things I’ve had to learn as a step-father is “the stern voice”, the voice of fatherly authority. Nothing cuts across the cacophony of children of play or the havoc of an inter-sibling argument like the stern voice, an often it’s the only way to get through to a misbehaving child who […]

“Always leave on a good note”. This is the advice Lisa Hendry of Productivity @ Home gives in her article Building Confidence in Children.The idea is to always let children finish a project, activity, or whatever with a success, however small — a homework problem done correctly, a goal scored, etc. That way they’ll remember […]

One of my lifehack.org co-writers, Chris Brogan, wrote yesterday about Blogging for Kids. We don’t do this at my house — the kids haven’t expressed any interest in blogging, and I’m not going to press the issue — though the two “tweens” have MySpace profiles (customized by mom, marked “private”, with friend adds vetted […]

Cultivate Greatness has a powerful, long piece on current research into the role parental praise plays in encouraging children to succeed. As it happens, it’s not all about building up self-esteem by telling your children how smart they are. Instead, researchers find that kids do best when parents commend their hard work — and […]

One of the deepest fears a lot of parents have in this digital age is that their kids will fall into the seedy side of the Internet — or, worse, head there on purpose! When my partner decided it was time to get her kids a computer, I took a good hard look at the […]

Carrie Kirby of the blog Wise Bread shares some advice on responding to toy recalls with a little more rationality and less panic in How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Recall. The recent rash of toy recalls sucks, absolutely, but with a little knowledge and patience you can minimize your children’s risks […]

No fair me taking credit for this one since I learned it from the kids’ mother; then again, she can start her own blog, right?
Here’s the hack: we always keep 4 or 5 juice packets (Capri Sun) in the freezer. She started doing it for the kids’ lunches — it would keep everything in […]

One of the trickiest aspects of being a step-ad is that, unless your partner is a widow or has absolutely no contact with her ex-, you are automatically locked in a relationship with her ex. And, given that your partner left him for a reason, chances are he’s a jerk.
I’m lucky enough to have […]

The Wall Street Journal had an article recently about child art collectors, whose wealthy parents supply them with the cash to buy works by classic artists like Cezanne, Pissaro, and Rembrandt as well as contemporaries like Jeffrey Koons, Nao Matsumoto, and Michael Vasquez. We are treated to the somewhat unseemly sight of art gallery owners […]

A few months ago, our 11-year old girl came home from spending the weekend at dad’s with a proposal. Her 11-year old step-sister, a competing martial artist who spends a lot of time out of town at competitions, was going to be homeschooled and her step-mother thought she should join them.
Now, there’s some history […]