Parenting FTL: Mom uses Chuck E. Cheese/Police Station as free childcare Sunday, 28 February 2010 21:39 Written by Joeprah

Chicago, IL -- Apparently one mom though that Chuck E. Cheese offered more than just skee-ball, pizza that tastes like cardboard and creepy looking costumed characters that try to hug kids too much.

Late Sunday morning, ‘mom’ called into police after seeing coverage of her daughter on TV. Her alleged two year old daughter was found at the Chicago area Chuck E. Cheese at 1830 W. Fullerton Ave. around 10:30 PM the night before. Mom’s excuse for leaving her daughter at a police station over night? Confusion. She said there was some disconnect between herself and the child’s aunt on who would take the girl home.

Seriously--that’s not confusion, that’s stupidity or a full out lie. As a parent, you watch your kid until you have solid confirmation that someone else is taking over. Normal people don’t just leave their kids at home and assume a sitter will come over because they have good intuition. Nor do we go to Chuck E. Cheese and leave our kids behind for the scary mouse to watch over.

So far none of the ‘mom’s’ story is confirmed—if there was an aunt, if she is the mom or if she was apologetic for the entire debacle.

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Escaping the Parent Trap Wednesday, 17 February 2010 11:42 Written by MichaelHawkins

If you're looking for a parenting book that not only tells you "what" to do to help balance your life, but also tells you "how"  to do it, then Escaping the Parent Trap -- 14 Principles for a Balanced Family Life is for you.  [Published in 2006; ISBN:  0-78144-266-4].  Written by Debbie Cherry, the book contains fifteen chapters of good advice.  Here's the snippet from the back cover:

"Nobody's a perfect parent, but anybody can be a great parent.  You CAN escape the "parent  trap" and be effective while maintaining a balanced, satisfied life of your own.  In a fresh new way, Dr. Debbie Cherry offers you solid, practical tools that will help you navigate the maze of marriage, work, and parenting without becoming exhausted and burned out.  As a result, you'll become a more effective parent and better able to foster your children's faith development, enabling them to be all God created them to be."

Yes, the book is written from a Christian perspective (Cherry is president of a Christian mental health facility) but it's not "preachy".  There is much to learn from this book.   Published four years ago, the information is timeless and very applicable to parenting today.

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Road Trips: On the Road (Never) Again Monday, 16 November 2009 00:00 Written by steelydad

At 9 PM Central on Thursday, Oct. 29, the Steely Family embarked on an ambitious adventure that most parents dare not even mention. What am I talking about? The Family Road Trip.

So far, the trip has been pretty eventful, complete with overnight stays in Wal-Mart parking lots and dances with crazy drivers. During one stretch through Kansas, we were greeted with a noisome odor. Being that we were in rural Kansas, I assumed it was produced by bovine manure. However, this particular scent had that distinctive “human” quality. I took a quick peek in the backseat at Steely Daughter and was stricken by absolute fear at the site of my beautiful daughter covered in poop after having a colossal blowout! She had it all over her hands so this emergency required swift, evasive and direct intervention. Needless to say, we will be one pair of pants short on our return trip.

This incident, along with some others, required me to take pause and ask the question: why do (sane) people go on road trips? More specifically, why do parents go on road trips with their kids? This trip has been different from all previous road trips. What happened to the romance of the road I recall, the road I knew intimately when Steely Wife and I camped across this great nation for our honeymoon (we subsequently enjoyed an Alaskan cruise but our camping adventure was our REAL honeymoon). The road I engage today is a distant relative of the one I once knew. The victim of an evolutionary defect that robbed it of its soul? Perhaps. Or perhaps it is me who had undergone the metamorphosis. Perhaps my psyche no longer requires the challenge of rugged survival on the road, but instead relishes in the creature comforts of the Four Seasons (or even the Sleazy 8, which is just as good as the Four Seasons after a sleepless night in a Wal-Mart parking lot).

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My Self-Styling Daughter Sunday, 08 November 2009 17:54 Written by sinatra70

This day began innocently enough: sleeping in a bit; a casual breakfast for the kids; getting ready for church.  The weather was beautiful, the sun was out, the birds were singing.  To me, there was absolutely nothing out of the ordinary on this Sunday morning.

My wife, on the other hand, discovered something very much out of the ordinary.  As I was shaving, she knocked on the bathroom door, and I opened to find her glaring at me.  First thought:  "Oh, geez!  What did I do/not do/forget to do?"  Actual statement:  "You need to come see this!"  Next thought:  "Oh, geez!  One of the girls has pulled one of my signed presidential memoirs/nice coffee table books/laptop computer down and decorated it with markers!"  Actual sight:  my two-year-old with freshly shorn locks.

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