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My son cracked his head open with a lamp. My wife’s reaction to his head wound was unusual but surprisingly typical.

Our boy pulled a lamp down onto his head last night, necessitating a trip to the emergency room. A little glue and some Steri-Strips, and he was fine. He’ll have a scar in almost the same place where his father got his first scar at about the same age.   Of course, because it was…

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My children visited a bookstore on the last day of summer. Their behavior was shocking.

We spent the last day of summer on the Connecticut shoreline. Among our choice of activities was a visit to our favorite bookstore, R.J. Julia in Madison, Connecticut.   Elysha and I once spent hours in bookstores, but when our children entered our lives, that changed. We tried for a while to do some tag-team…

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My best piece of parenting advice

It takes a special and exceedingly wise breed of parent to ignore a temper tantrum like this and instead retrieve the camera and document the moment for posterity. My wife is that kind of parent. She gets it. I have a great deal of parenting advice to offer. Most people think that I am full…

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She’s worried about her husband’s diapers. She should be more worried about her child’s early morning routine.

Slate’s Dear Prudence answers a question from a reader whose husband is a lifelong bed wetter who wears a diaper and rubber pants to bed each night. The reader is worried about the possibility of her children discovering their father’s secret and wants to know if they should be proactive and tell the kids before…

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I hereby release myself of all parental guilt regarding the iPad. It was shortsighted, stupid, and purposelessly nostalgic.

I brought my son downstairs for breakfast. As we stepped into the kitchen, he saw the iPad on the counter and said, “iPad! Chair! iPad! Chair!” This is the two year-old version way of saying, “Father, I would very much like to take a seat in my favorite chair and make use of that glorious…

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Declare your parental pride. Make the world better for the parent of a newborn.

I saw a friend last week who recently had a baby. She told me that of all the advice she received prior to giving birth, my warning about all the parents who will attempt to make parenting sound miserable and ruin her day was the most helpful. “I can’t believe it, but you were right.…

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A unicorn and the tendency towards loss aversion result in cleaner teeth and a new idea in behavior management.

The pre-gifting of the stuffed unicorn as a reward for the excellent behavior that we expected from my daughter during her recent dentist appointment was a stroke of genius on my wife’s part because of the nature of loss aversion. In economics, loss aversion refers to people’s tendency to strongly prefer avoiding losses to acquiring…

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My 3 best pieces of parenting advice

A reader recently asked me for parenting advice. She is pregnant, reads my blog regularly and would like to know what are some of my best parenting tips. I was honored by such a request, though I know that some might think it crazy to ask for parenting advice from me. I’m certainly not an…

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The thread of melancholy is unavoidable for this parent

Slate’s John Dickerson writes about the regret he feels about not inviting his parents’ friends to his wedding for Slate’s wedding issue. This paragraph, which deals with parenthood, was especially poignant for me: There’s an indefinite point in your tenure as a parent where you start to realize your kids are leaving you. For us,…

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I abandoned the Catholic Church at the age of seven. Credit my Catholic mother.

Paul Elie, a senior fellow in the Berkley Center for Religion, Peace and World Affairs at Georgetown, suggests in the New York Times this week that Catholics (of which he is one) give up their faith as a form of protest against the recent practices of their church. Resignation: that’s what American Catholics are feeling…

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