My dad taught me cashflow with a soda machine
After a brief, failed experiment paying me to do chores, my dad tried something really neat. It clearly took a bit of legwork, but maybe there are some transferrable lessons for parents who want to lay an entrepreneurial foundation.
He gave me a vending machine.
posted by elemenopee
on Nov 11, 2011 -
100 comments
H'ween parent filter Halloween is for little kids, but it's also for scares. I found this to be helpful in determining when it's appropriate for the twixt to meet.
posted by Straw Cab
on Sep 23, 2011 -
34 comments
The Age of Mechanical Reproduction by Paul Ford.
When it comes to IVF, in-vitro fertilization, nothing is normal. Your world is upside-down. Your doctor compliments your wife on her monkeys. Then, when every dollar and exertion has gone toward a single hour of hope, it begins to snow.
posted by foggy out there now
on Jul 11, 2011 -
98 comments
Parents Kathy Witterick and David Stocker welcomed their third baby into the world this year, but t
hey won't tell anyone whether Storm is a boy or a girl. “We thought that if we delayed sharing that information, in this case hopefully, we might knock off a couple million of those messages by the time that Storm decides Storm would like to share,” says Witterick Storm's brothers, Jazz and Kio are also encouraged to wear their hair however they wish, and pick out clothing they like.
[more inside]
posted by roomthreeseventeen
on May 22, 2011 -
334 comments
"We were wondering if you would petition to be emancipated," he said in his lawyer voice. "What does that mean?" I asked, picking at the mauve paint on my hands. I later discovered that for most kids, declaring emancipation is an extreme measure -- something you do if your parents are crack addicts or deadbeats.
"You would need to become financially independent," he said. "You could work for me at my law firm and pay rent to live here."
This was my moment of truth as an objectivist. If I believed in the glory of the individual, I would've signed the petition papers then and there. But as much as Rand's novels had taught me to believe in meritocracy, they had not prepared me to go it alone financially and emotionally. I began to cry and refused.
posted by fernabelle
on Apr 15, 2011 -
102 comments
Message With a Bottle is a pretty darned charming tumblr by a stay-at-home dad who writes post-it notes to himself about parenting and fatherhood.
posted by Shohn
on Mar 24, 2011 -
33 comments
"As a baby, Todd was fed only fresh vegetables, fruits, and raw milk; when he was teething, he was given frozen kidneys to gnaw. As a child, he was allowed no junk food; Trudi sent Todd off to birthday parties with carrot sticks and carob muffins. By age three, Marv had the boy throwing with both hands, kicking with both feet, doing sit-ups and pull-ups, and lifting light hand weights." The Man Who Never Was is a 2009 Esquire profile of Todd Marinovich, whose father programmed him from birth to be a great NFL quarterback. He almost succeeded.
posted by escabeche
on Jan 11, 2011 -
67 comments
Spiegel has an interesting article on the ol' Nature Vs. Nuture battle. They focus on 2 recent studies. One, looks at socioeconmic status and IQ, and concludes: "A person's intelligence can only truly blossom if the environment gives the brain what it desires." That is, IQ of the poorest in the study appeared to be almost exclusively determined by their socioeconomic status. In the meantime psychologists, neuroscientists, and geneticists have developed a very different perspective. They now believe that the skill we term "intelligence" is not in the least fixed, but is actually remarkably variable. "The low IQs expected for children born to lower-class parents can be greatly increased if their environment is sufficiently rich cognitively,"
posted by Blake
on Sep 10, 2010 -
25 comments
Anita Tedaldi shares her experience
terminating an adoption at the NYTimes blog
Motherlode. Her response to the support and criticism in comments is
here; in a subsequent Motherlode post Lisa Belkin
muses on the ethics of blogging about children.
posted by lalex
on Sep 9, 2009 -
59 comments
Thinking about becoming a parent? You might find the US Consumer Product Safety Commission's
list of recalled items fun! It looks like there's just under a zillion things out there that might harm your new tot. And that
doesn't include ... y'know ...
toys.
posted by GatorDavid
on Aug 6, 2009 -
23 comments
The novlist Julie Myerson has written a book, The Lost Child, about her son's addiction to cannabis, the violent behaviour she says this caused and her tough love policy.
Extract. Her son is
angry that she's published it, and says his parents over-reacted: "I wasn't doing anything that most other teenagers do, but such was their naive terror of drugs they were acting like six-year-olds". It comes out through
MumsNet that Julie Myerson was the anonymous author of a Guardian column, "Living with Teenagers," which described her children's behaviour candidly without their knowledge.
Extract. Myerson first
denied this. The Guardian discusses whether it was
right to publish the columns. Myerson is
interviewed about whether she was right to publish The Lost Child. Her partner, and son's father, Jonathan Myerson supports her:
This is an emergency. Her son says she's
addicted to writing.
[more inside]
posted by paduasoy
on Mar 15, 2009 -
160 comments
