Can you still be considered an attachment parent if you use a stroller?

I often wonder when it comes to parenting styles; do you have to choose one way or the other? Can you still be considered an ap parent if you occasionally drift over into mainstream parenting practices? For the most part, my parenting style seems to be in line with attachment parenting. I have always been very attentive and responsive to my daughter’s needs which has included breastfeeding, co-sleeping and frequent carrying her in a sling….Read More

Mama needs help: baby wakes her up every night

Got this query: “I am a 30 week pregnant mum of a 20 month old toddler. I was at home for the first year and have worked for 6 months. I co sleep withmy toddler who is still beastfeeding ….. but he wakes so regularly at night …. I am the only one who can feed him back to sleep. He is struggling with excema that seems to be getting worse and the advice that…Read More

Babywearing: it’s not just for babies!

If visions of infants in slings and wraps typically come to mind when you think of babywearing, you might be pleasantly surprised to find out that your carriers can still be quite beneficial for toting your toddler around. You may not be able to carry your (slightly larger) bundle of joy as long as you once did, but nevertheless you can still get plenty of use out of your carrier. Just like younger babies, toddlers…Read More

What’s more important, a parenting schedule or the needs of the kids?

As regular readers of this blog know, I’m a single co-parenting divorced Dad to three children, a 12yo girl, a 9yo boy and a 5yo girl. My ex and I are blessed to live within about a mile of each other and each of us has a place with sufficient room for all of the children to stay with either of us. Linda has stayed in the house bought in 2002, almost seven years ago,…Read More

Why I like living here in Boulder, Colorado

Okay, so this is a bit afield from my day-to-day challenges as a single dad, but I look at this as optimism therapy. Ya good with that? i thought you might be… We moved from the Santa Cruz mountains above Silicon Valley to Boulder, Colorado about seven years ago now, a bit after 9/11, though that wasn’t our motivation for moving. We’d loved living in the mountains and had a fabulous house on two acres,…Read More

The dreaded evening call from the ex’s house

I don’t know if this is a common issue with recently divorced families, but my ex and I have been wrestling with this issue since we first separated over a year ago: the first night our 8yo son is at her house after being at mine, he’ll call and tell me how he wants to switch and be at my house instead. It’s fairly regular and I know he’s having a hard time there when…Read More

Does Attachment Parenting “Break” a Child?

I received an email from a mother who is clearly in a difficult situation with her 5mo boy: she’s been raising him with the basic tenets of attachment parenting, but is now starting to get negative feedback from her family and friends. So she’s not sure she’s doing the right thing… please, read through what she’s written and, if you have some words of wisdom, add ’em here. Thanks. “Hi. My name is Anita and…Read More

The First Sleepover: Success Strategies?

I’m so proud of my 8yo son G- who last weekend tried to have a sleepover at a friend’s house. He ended up calling me at 9:45pm asking me to come pick him up (which I did, no problems, no judgment, no criticism, of course!) but I still think it was a success at some level. What I’m wondering is if there was some way I could have helped set things up to be more…Read More

Cirque du Soleil “O” — Behind the Scenes!

Kismet and good living, that’s all I can figure was how I ended up being friends with Jessica Berlin, social media publicist for the wonderful Cirque du Soleil performing troop in Las Vegas, Nevada. Well, social media helped, but I have very much enjoyed the time we’ve spent together talking about the online world, performing arts, and much more. I have a bit of a background in stage productions, I’ve done lighting and sound for…Read More

Talking with your children while at a trade show

I’ve been on the road for a week now here in Las Vegas, first for the Consumer Electronics Show, then a geeky event called WordCamp Las Vegas (focused on WordPress users), and finally at the Affiliate Summit. That’s a long time to be hanging out in Las Vegas, breathing in clouds of second hand smoke and listening to the incessant bing! bing! bing! of slot machines. It’s hard to remember the kids at a trade…Read More

FDA approves Latisse: drug to lengthen your eyelashes

No, I’m not making this up. WebMD reports that the US Food and Drug Administration has issued approval to Allergan to market and distribute a new drug called Latisse that promotes longer, darker, thicker eyelashes. Turns out that eyelash growth is a rather surprising side-effect of the glaucoma drug Lumigen, also made by Allergan.Read More

Are Chore Charts the Answer to Holding Children Accountable?

This is a guest post from my friend Kevin Savetz. There comes a time in every family in which the debate over chores begins. How old should a child be when he or she is first assigned chores? Should the child be rewarded for completing these household tasks or does pitching in just come with being part of a family? If there is a reward, what should it be: cash or privileges? Many parents believe…Read More

Do you publish photographs of your children online?

Look around you at the different photographs that make up the distinctive design of my blog (if you’re reading the RSS feed, just this once click on this link — GoFatherhood! — so you can see what I’m talking about). Maybe it seems a bit odd for me to write about whether or not to publish pictures of your children online when I have a Web site design that’s built around photos of my own…Read More

Is Gluten-free food and cooking just a fad?

It seems like everyone knows someone these days who is ‘gluten-free’. Is this a fad? Why is ‘gluten’ all of a sudden such a buzzword? One reason is because (some) American doctors are finally considering gluten intolerance and Celiac disease as a culprit for a host of maladies in children and adults such as indigestion, gas, bloating, constipation, diarrhea, mouth sores, failure to grow and thrive, inability to concentrate and mal-absorption. It can also cause…Read More

A working mom’s perspective on attachment parenting

I asked a friend of mine, Susan, who is one of the work-at-home mom bloggers behind 5 Minutes for Mom to share her thoughts on attachment parenting. Susan, her twin sister and their mother together own a pedal car store, a rocking horse store and a network of blogs. She has two little girls — a one year old and a three and a half year old. My first baby taught me about attachment parenting……Read More

Attachment parenting and Waldorf school helps keep your kids slim?

Among the waves of email I get from my blogging efforts are some that are targeted to this parenting / daddy blog, which is definitely cool. In fact, sometimes the messages are from vendors or PR agencies who are hoping that I’ll write about their product or service. Some are cool (I have some samples of a new product from the company that makes Emergen-C, for example, coming in the mail) but some, like this…Read More

What will Halloween look like in twenty years?

I know, I know, this is going to be a bit of a rant. Hey, it’s my blog and you’ve been warned. 🙂 I remember when I was a kid our Halloween costumes tended to be more improvised than purchased at the local Halloween costume store and the entire holiday had a rather underground “harvest festival” sort of feel to it, with benign scares and very little that was truly frightening. That picture on the…Read More

How you can really help eradicate global poverty

Today is Blog Action Day with a focus on poverty, but I have to admit right up front that I’m not a big fan of these “action day” events because they mostly feel like a way to alleviate guilt rather than an avenue to really help anyone. I think having hundreds of people write about the same topic on the same day is just overwhelming, not particularly effective. Nonetheless, since there are lots of bloggers…Read More

My son gets his tonsils removed, and it’s a success!

Today was a momentous day in my son’s life: he went under the knife and got both his tonsils and adenoids removed. Why? Because his tonsils had become infected and swollen and a source of infection in his body, making him have a never-ending level of ill health. Me, I also had my tonsils removed when I was 8, and have almost no memories of it other than how cool it was to be in…Read More

I don’t want to meet Candace Bushnell’s Sex And The City women as teens

I bumped into this article a few days ago: Sex and the City’ gets teen spin in Variety.com and have been thinking about it every since. Now, I’m a guy, but I want to say that, at least in the first season or two, I thought that HBO’s Sex and the City was edgy, funny as heck and sexy. Linda and I both enjoyed watching it and were occasionally shocked by what they addresses but…Read More

How did my 4yo learn how to do this stuff?

Maybe this is just me being a proud papa or something, but I’m pretty blown away by what my 4yo has been doing lately. I know that younger siblings tend to learn faster because of the influence of their older siblings, but still… Today while we were driving around, K-, my 4yo, wanted to write a letter to a little pal of hers. So she took a pad of paper and a pen and, as…Read More