12 Dec

Dad and Buried Posted in discipline No comments

Parental Guidance is Annoying

Parents and children have different perspectives.

This is obvious when you’re a kid, particularly a teenager, because parents just don’t understand. But it becomes even more obvious, blindingly obvious, when you become a parent. Suddenly, parental guidance isn’t just a hassle, it’s your daily responsibility!

We usually don’t want the same things that our kids do. There is some overlap: we want them to be happy, to have fun, to be healthy, and they, presumably, want those things too. But we have different definitions of those things, and different methods for achieving them.

Which means that some of the things that make us good parents also make us bad ones, in our kids’ eyes.

28 Nov

Dad and Buried Posted in Scary Mommy 3 comments

Surviving the Family Road Trip

My parents live in Connecticut, about two hours away. We often take a family road trip to visit for the weekend, especially in the summer, because they have a pool — and also because my six-year-old prefers Grandma to me.

My wife and I dread those trips. Not as much as we dreaded them when we lived ten hours away, but at least back then we only had the one kid to worry about. Sure, two hours is a lot shorter than ten, but that eight-hour difference is more than made up for by the nightmare that is a screaming baby in the backseat.

We had a family road trip or three over the long Thanksgiving weekend. And, thanks to the approach Mom and Buried and I take, we survived them all. You can too!

10 Nov

Dad and Buried Posted in Lists 2 comments

How to Distract Kids From “President Donald Trump”

There are a lot of posts going around from shell-shocked, well-meaning parents, discussing ways to talk to our kids about the fact that Donald Trump was elected President. (This is a good one.) There’s much to unpack: how he won, why he won, what this means for the future of our country, what it means about the present of our country, etc.

I have no answers to any of that (except the last one: there are a lot of ignorant and/or racist and/or misogynistic and/or short-sighted people in America). My oldest is only six years old, and while Detective Munch may not know much about politics or elections, he knows a bully when he sees one. He knows Trump is a mean, angry name-caller, even without the “benefit” of understanding the constant bigotry, misogyny, and xenophobia that comes out his mouth.

What he doesn’t know is why the country would elect someone like Donald Trump to lead it. And neither do I. So I’m not going to bother trying.

30 Sep

Dad and Buried Posted in Gender No comments

Disney’s World

Earlier this year, when I wrote about the lack of Disney in children’s lives earlier this year, a few people chimed in to tell me I have a blind spot because I don’t have a daughter.

Which is exactly right.

But Disney is not just about girls – nor is it particularly absent – when you consider all the properties they own. Which you’ll be able to do at will this fall, since Disney is now on Netflix.

How To Explain Trump To Kids

My six-year-old won’t be watching the first presidential debate tonight because a) he’s six and b) he doesn’t need to hear the terrible things people will say during the debate, and by “people” I mean me and by “terrible things” I mean the filthy words I will be yelling at the screen every time Trump speaks.

In a perfect world, Donald Trump will get crushed in November and retreat back to one of his gross hotels, never to be seen again except all the time everywhere because he is a craven opportunist with absolutely no shame and the media worships him. But that’s fine, he can have his TV appearances, so long as I never have to explain to my kids why a misogynistic bigot is President of the United States.

But it’s possible, and in order to be prepared for that possibility, I’ve begun trying to think of ways to explain President Trump in terms my six-year-old can understand.

Dad and Buried

Tag: TV

Parental Guidance is Annoying

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Surviving the Family Road Trip

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Disney’s World

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