Summer’s here and that means planning more one-on-one time with each child and with my wife. Without the same kind of tight schedule, I can spread out for a day to take my five year old to a pint-sized theme park. My eight year old wants to go to more baseball games. And my 12 year old prefers to attend a rock concert or two. We have a couple of local ticket discounters that we signed up for and that really help make concerts, ball games, and plays cheaper. The best, in terms of quality entertainment and price, has been Goldstar.com, which discounts tickets in cities around the country, including Los Angeles, Chicago, Minneapolis-St. Paul, and New York, among a bunch of other locales. What kinds of in-town activities are you all doing during the summer? What concerts or ball games have you gone or will you go to?
In an effort to get the word out about FamilyManOnline.com and Father’s Day, I’ve agreed to post on T-Mobile’s Facebook and Twitter pages. There will be a different father each day through Sunday. I’m up tomorrow, (Tuesday, June 15), so check it out!
With Father’s Day coming around on June 20, I’ve gotten a chance to check out possible gift ideas. My personal wish list includes a new digital video camera and an iPad, but those aren’t fitting the family budget at the moment. In addition to my favorite presents — the one’s my children make for me (even if they draw pictures of me that make me look more bald than I am) – I appreciate gifts that make my life a bit easier.
Enter the Car Trunk Organizer and Cooler from RedEnvelope.com. As some of you may know from my columns, I am proud to drive a “Father Ship.” The ample trunk space is nice in my minivan, but it is a serious challenge to find anything amidst the piles of sports equipment, jackets, school papers, and more. So I wanted to try out this organizer, which promised to keep my car’s backside in order. The product is a rather sleek and classy looking thing, befitting a Jaguar more than an Odyssey, but it does look spiffy in black with the silver piping. Three easily washable main compartments flexibly hold a grocery bag in each one or any combination of the groceries, several baseball gloves, extra clothes, or even your laptop. The separate cooler has a sturdy handle to carry a small picnic or a passel of snacks. It can be slotted into one of the compartments or toted separately. Pockets on either side of the organizer can keep papers or paperbacks or sunscreen. I would’ve liked some kind of water bottle holders in case I only had a couple to stow in the organizer, but it can hold them upright if you prop other items against them in the cooler.
Fully expanded to its two-feet, the organizer won’t take much trunk space and influence the rest of your trunk to look neater. The whole thing can be velcroed down when you’re not using it, though you will likely want to keep it busy full-time. You can even take the whole organizer out with the reinforced handles to transfer it to another car or carry it out to the park if you’ve packed it with the day’s necessities.
A while back, I wrote a piece called “Taming the Hulk Within,” in which I aired my struggle with keeping cool, especially around the kids. In talking to other parents, it seems anger management is one of the most common regrets we have. For me, it’s frequently about the feeling of not being able to control my children’s behavior, which is followed by my frustration with what’s really worth controlling in them, which is followed by the feeling that I do not want to be a wimp with my whining child. The ideal is to be calm in directing my children, but there are all these stressors that I allow to fray me. Financial restraints are probably the biggest culprits at this point. So my children hear me yell way too much. The good thing is that my kids know I love ‘em. Yet, I’m still looking for ways to put the chill in my hot-headedness.
A recent study acknowledges what I and many other parents go through. A LiveScience.com story explains that, “Having children was also associated with angry feelings and behaviors, such as yelling, particularly in women, the survey found. ‘There’s obviously a lot of joys and benefits that come with parenthood,’ but other aspects of parenting, such as having to discipline a misbehaving child, can cause feelings of anger and annoyance,’” said study researcher Scott Schieman.
It’s interesting to note what the study said regarding women and yelling because I hear more about men yelling from the dads I speak with. Whoever is doing it, we all have our work cut out for us. Especially during the holidays, when extended family, spending issues, and more time with the kids will put added weight on our emotions. These days, I’m trying to allow myself to leave the room rather than keep trying to control the situation. I also find that talking over possible upcoming stressors with my wife helps me head off some of what triggers my anger. The goal is to feel better about myself and to role model for my kids how to handle emotions. It helps, not all the time, so I keep searching for every tool I can get.
How about you all out there? What do you do to keep calm?
“Let the Sunshine In” is a concert in San Francisco to be held this Monday (May 25) that exhibits the power of a community to help young people in need. The musical extravaganza honors Christopher (Chris) Rodriguez, an 11-year-old Oakland boy who was in the midst of a piano lesson when he was hit by a stray bullet and paralyzed from the waist down. Produced by musician-producer extraordinaire Narada Michael Walden, the event will feature Sting, Bob Weir, the Narada Michael Walden Band, and other new and established musicians. Proceeds from the concert will go to the Narada Michael Walden Foundation, the San Francisco Conservatory of Music scholarship fund, and music education programs in the Bay Area. If you live in the Bay Area or happen to be visiting San Francisco, check out this benefit concert to be held in Louise M. Davies Symphony Hall.
No matter how hard I try, I often wake up to a rainy day and say, “What the heck am I going to do to keep the kids entertained?” Part of the problem is that I’m often lazy and would rather sit in front of an old movie with my wife, and stick my kids in front of the TV for an endless loop of cartoons. While I have no real problem with age-appropriate TV for occasional extended periods, if it means preserving sanity for my wife and me, I have enough of a responsibility pull to think about more active endeavors. I’ve even written suggestions on this topic, such as eschewing the video games and breaking out the board games (which I’m gonna do), but I’m always looking for new ideas. So, would you readers be so kind as to suggest one favorite bad weather day activity?
It’s only fitting that a day celebrating the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr., comes before the inauguration day of our first African American president. These days are made more inspiring following my biannual trip to various Southern U.S. states with a group of high school students. We made the journey, visiting numerous Civil Rights locations, including the Rosa Parks Museum and the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Alabama, and the Ebenezer Baptist Church where Martin Luther King, Jr., preached in Atlanta, Georgia. Seeing all of these places last November, right after the nationwide election, was deeply moving for my students and I.
But no place held more significance for me than the Lorraine Motel, now housing the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis, Tennessee. Please forgive my sentimentality, but the place has real power, particularly on the upper floor where the room King stayed in is preserved. There, as I looked through the glass that separates visitors from the spot where King was assassinated for peacefully challenging discrimination, I felt like I was touching the bottom of a deep lake of hatred, only to spring back up on the knowledge that our country had looked beyond race to elect a person based mostly on his accomplishments and ideals.
And so, we parents have a unique two days on January 19 and 20, 2009. They are 48 hours in which we can teach our children about equality and human progress through our personal stories, great books, music, videos, and a television broadcast of the Presidential Inauguration. There are so many resources to choose from, but here are a few. If You Lived at the Time of Martin Luther King is a wonderful book for older kids and Martin’s Big Words: The Life of Martin Luther King, Jr., is great for younger ones. The latter book is also part of an inspiring video on African-American culture from Scholastic Video. Look for classic songs about the Civil Rights movement and listen to contemporary musician Will.I.Am’s Barack Obama-inspired song, “Yes We Can” in music and on video. And, of course, watch the inauguration together, live on TV, on YouTube, or recorded.
May we all enjoy this pinnacle in our nation’s march toward true equality and may it help bring us enduring peace for ourselves, our children, and all future generations
With the winter holidays in progress, here’s something that comes in a small, free package. Charity and Jam Band delivers a sweet and languid version of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star” as a free download off their Web site. The new recording is part of the group’s new Song of the Month offerings and marks a happy return of a recording artist whose last album earned numerous accolades, including the Family Man Recommends title of album of the year for 2006. Welcome back Charity and the Jam Band and Happy Holidays to everyone!
An idea I was given years ago about stretching a dollar and teaching kids about the world has a ton of value in our current state of national financial affairs. If you can’t exactly afford to travel around the world, show your kids about various cultures by taking them around to ethnic spots around your town, this summer. Eat at varying restaurants, visit museums dedicated to particular cultures, and hang out in parks where the mix of people is different than you are normally used to. Prepare the family with Web browsing about cultures and be ready to answer lots of questions about the wonderful wide world that may very well be in your city or very nearby.
You want soul-searching and painstaking observation? Read one of this site’s columns for this “month of the dad.” In the meantime, here’s what I’m dreaming of for Father’s Day:
1) A Garmin navigation system for my car. I admit it, I need directions to everything — and my wife, who knows how to get everywhere, is the person who got one first.
2) The 100-song iTunes collection of the best of Stevie Wonder. I can never get enough Wonder, especially from the ’70s.
3) Given that the above two are currently out of our price range, how about just a few extra “Yes, Daddy” replies to whatever I tell my kids to do for one day? Or, better still, one dead-serious comment of “You’re a genius” from my wife? Then again, maybe the Wonder collection is most likely.
So, what are the other dads out there hankering for, this Father’s Day?
