Oct202017

Girl running with ballon

Learn From Your Kids and Live in the Now

There was a great tragedy in my family the other day. It came suddenly, while I was sitting at the kitchen table and my kids were playing outside. The idyllic quiet of early evening in the country was jarringly broken by my daughter’s hysterical scream.

I jumped up and, heroically abandoning the Facebook post I was working on, ran outside to save the day. But I was too late.

As I followed my son’s finger pointing up high into the darkening azure sky, I saw a faint speck growing smaller and smaller, and I understood my daughter’s pain.

Her balloon, Balloony as she so creatively named it, was making a frenetic escape to the stratosphere.

Oct152017

Dad with small child

The Dadding Hour

I’m not going to bother trying to pinpoint an exact 60-minute span that constitutes The Dadding Hour, because it varies from week to week and really refers more to a chunk of time than an actual trip around the clock (you know, like how The Witching Hour might be from 4 to 10), but it…

Oct42017

Toddler eating snack

The Most Important Parenting Advice: Always Have Snacks

Basically, if you’re the parent of a baby or small child, you’re used to strangers passing out unsolicited advice. So here goes: always have snacks ready, be prepared to lose your shit every once in a while, don’t buy any nice furniture, and know that you may never feel like you know what you’re doing. I promise you, most of us feel the same way.

Sep282017

Wall of lockers

Finding the Right School Combination for Special Needs

Back in his preschool days, my son was diagnosed with a vision issue that got him a disability label, plus some behavioral issues adding to it. But there is a vast difference between qualifying for services, and receiving services. In Pennsylvania, where special needs care for the under-18 set is administered on a county-by-county basis, there is also a vast difference in care by ZIP code grouping.

Sep202017

Gray image of child with a red rose

Parenting in the Gray

A baby’s ability to see shades of color develops by five months old. However, I think that black and white tunnel vision merely changes to a moral world view of black and white.