SON: "Daddy, may I ask you a question?"
DAD: "Yeah sure, what is it?"
SON: "Daddy, how much do you make an hour?"
DAD: "That's none of your business. Why do you ask such a thing?"
SON: "I just want to know. Please tell me, how much do you make an hour?"
DAD: "If you must know, I make $100 an hour."
SON: "Oh! (With his head down).
SON: "Daddy, may I please borrow $50?"
The father was furious.
Read MoreChildren and young adults will soon be heading back to the classroom for another year of schooling, if they haven’t already. The excitement is palpable. Children and parents are busy purchasing and labeling school supplies, clothing, lunchboxes, and other related items. Teachers have been working diligently to ready their classrooms, organize materials, and foster an engaging, productive learning environment. Administrators have toiled throughout the summer to have everything in place for day one, including back-to-school programming for students and professional development for teachers.
Read MoreThe second necessary component for parental success is influence.
Our job is to become as influential as possible in the minds and lives of our children. Here are three ways parents can become more influential:
Become great listeners and create a safe space for children.
Demonstrate love, not a desire for control.
Personalize relationships and approaches with each child.
Many of us hold a wistful view of parenting.
Back in the “good old days” childrearing was simple. Parents used an authoritative approach, and their kids would listen and comply. By contrast, today’s parents have it much harder, and must deal with a myriad of challenges that our parents never faced.
But that thinking, too, has its flaws. Until the 1960s, authoritarian parenting was the way to go. It started to fall out of favor as society became more democratic and respect for authority began to show signs of cracking.
Read MoreMy wife and I got an email late Thursday night that our kids’ schools were closing for Friday and all of this week at the minimum.
So, how will we stay productive with the kids home?
And, of course, we are not alone.
As COVID19 becomes more and more disruptive, many working parents, particularly those with young kids and without regular domestic help, are dealing with the added challenge of managing their workloads while providing proper care for their children.
Here are some strategies that can help working parents get through this trying period while still getting things done.
Read MoreProbably the hardest morning for me is Monday.
It's the day that my wife drives carpool and I am responsible to get our little one out the door.
As you can imagine, it's not always so simple.
He's got his own agenda, isn't the quickest to get up in the morning, certainly doesn't love to get dressed.
Giving him breakfast is a challenge.
Helping them decide on what he wants for lunch is a challenge. In general, it's a challenge.
Actually, a lot of the key things that we do when we want to negotiate with our kids, we also need to be thinking about what we want to negotiate with adults too.
Read MoreHow did you spend your Father’s Day?
Full disclosure: I’m one of the purists (if I can call my self that) who says that “every day is Father’s Day”. So, in my house, there’s no big celebration, no gifts of ties or toolsets.
Instead, I rolled up my sleeves and got to work. Putting together my kids’ pool, that is.
Pools, even the inflatable variety, take real work to assemble and properly fill (I did well on the former but not so great on the latter – hard to get it all even and fully balanced, but that’s for a different post).
But the weather was hot, and the kids were pining for the pool, so out went dad in his finest shmatas (Yiddish for upscale yard attire) for hours of fun in the sun (before the real fun began, of course).
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