Tales from the Dadside

So many of you may have found yourself with an increased role in parenting those 2.0s.  I know I have.  Not easy.   Wasn’t easy when they were only home a few hours a day; definitely not easy now.   Sharing a few resources that have been helpful in disciplining, teaching, and otherwise constructively passing the time.  Would love to know what’s working for you. #helpabrother.  If your M has primary duty, ask her and pass it along ([email protected]).   Or better yet post on new channel in F3Nation Slack, “DaddyDayCare”, so that Pax around the Nation can benefit.

Here a few lessons learned / resources, in no particular order.

  1.  Hydration.  Apparently, they don’t drink water at school.  They sure weren’t drinking it here.  And waterboarding is not my specialty.   But YHC did come up with a solution.  Stur, https://sturdrinks.com.   0 sugar, 0 calories, 1 squirt and you’re done (stop giggling).   Didn’t want 2.0s to lose the taste for regular water.  So I have them drink 8 oz of water, to get 8 oz of Stur.   Works like a charm.  Brothers are peeing all day long.
  2. Power Struggles.  https://www.positiveparentingsolutions.com. This resource is awesome.  Gist is that kids crave attention and power and they’ll get it in unproductive ways, if we don’t fill their power and attention buckets proactively.  There’s a free overview webinar that’s worth checking-out with M.   Full course is worth it in my opinion. We started it last summer and had a lot of behavior / routine improvement before Covid hit.  I couldn’t image how much frustration / how much yelling we would be experiencing under quarantine if we hadn’t come across this resource.
  3. Education Resource.  Just started abcmouse.com, an educational resource for kids 2-8 years old; $10 a month; you can have multiple profiles for 2.0s on same subscription.  Basically, it walks kids down a learning path with educational games, puzzles, books.  You can largely set them up with it for 30 mins, hour, etc. and walk away, with the assurance that they’ll learn something.
  4. Tablets.  We invested in tablets for the first time a couple weeks ago, largely to free up our laptops and use abcmouse.  Amazon Fire seemed to get high marks, with a relatively low price.    Right now, Amazon has a 7inch Fire Kids Pack for $69 (great deal), arriving end of month.  The Kids Pack comes with a protective case and 2 year replacement warranty.  I wanted a larger screen and didn’t want to wait so we bought a 10 inch and got the kids case separately, and got it in 3 days.
  5. Anxiety.  Covid/Quarantine is stressful on 2.0s too; if they’re young, they may not have the capability to know what they’re feeling, much less be able to express it; heck, YHC is just learning to access my emotions at 42.   We’ve been using http://gozen.com, which has a number of animated cartoon programs, to help kids with anxiety, anger, procrastination.
  6. Sleep.  One of my 2.0s has had trouble falling asleep.  The GoZen folks (above) put together a “Sleep Summit” of webinars from experts on how to helps the 2.0s fall asleep/stay in their bed/learn to sleep on their own.  We’ve been practicing for a a couple weeks now and it’s working. https://bettersleepforkids.com
  7. IndigoOceanDreams.  45 mins of stories that help kids relax/meditate/fall asleep.  We create a playlist on tablet and put on 2.0s  nightstand and it has been a big help. https://www.allmusic.com/album/indigo-ocean-dreams-mw0000756577.  You can find it on Amazon and likely iTunes.
  8. Visit National Parks virtually.  You can take virtual tours of national parks; it’s educational and really helps counter feelings of confinement. https://artsandculture.withgoogle.com/en-us/
  9. Google Arts  & Culture.  https://artsandculture.google.com hosts the park tours above and has a wealth of other virtual tours of historic landmarks & cities and other segments on animals, art, etc.
  10. UNC-TV At Home Learning.   https://www.unctv.org/unctv-at-home-learning/  UNC-TV is offering two blocks of education programming M-F.   4-8th grades: 8:00a.m.-2:00p.m.  9-12th grades: 2:00p.m.-6:00p.m.   Apparently, Dook doesn’t care about you or your child’s education.

 

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