Parenting advice from non-parents?

Sometimes it can be hard to take advice from a “childless bystander” but in a recent op-ed, the New York Times’ Frank Bruni makes it easy. His observations of modern parenting are deeply amusing and often true, especially his take on gratuitous praise and how parents sabotage their children’s eating habits by talking about them excessively. A few points seem a bit tired: when he describes modern parents as prone to “boundless fretting” it feels like Judith Warner’s Perfect Madness or New York Magazine’s July 2011 issue all over again. Happily, he concludes with the observation that most children turn out fine no matter how they are fed, transported, soothed, disciplined, etc. He’s certainly right about that. That, and the fact that all children these days eat way too many chicken fingers.

This is what we're talking about!

 image from Livaudais

 Thanks to friend Deirdre for drawing this article to our attention.  It is now official - you can have too much of a good thing, i.e. parenting.  This NY Times opinion piece by Madeline Levine supports our position that sometimes the best thing you can do is get out of your child's way.  And on that note, we will be out of your way and out of the office for the rest of August.  We look forward to catching up in September.

Best,
Elizabeth & Elizabeth

Who Needs Sleep?

While we would prefer not to enter into the co-sleeping debate, or into any  other kind of debate with people who elect to never really get a good night's sleep for about 18 years, we thought the below worth sharing.  Thank you to our friend Rich for posting this.  In this way we also discovered a funny (if not mannerly) dad blog called HowToBeADad.  It is a beguiling mix of profanity, diagrams and dad geek.  Happy Monday.

                                                                                                     Photo from HowToBeADad