Category: Parenting

  • Wendy’s, Google, and Instagram

    Three times the media missed important context in the last week. I read a lot of High Quality News and avoid the Low Quality variety (see the helpful way that Ad Fontes Media defines these categories). Even topflight news can be so focused on short term events that they forget to ask context questions, by which I…

  • On Being a Dad

    Would Father’s Day be different if we called it “Dad’s Day” instead? Today is Father’s Day in the US. It’s a minor holiday compared to Mother’s Day.* Viewed from the beginning of the parenting journey,** this makes sense. The mother carries what in any other context would be considered a parasite for nine long months. Doing this…

  • How Risk is Changing

    The world seems more dangerous today than it ever has before, but study after study shows that we’re safer now. Hans Rosling’s Factfulness, Matt Ridley’s Rational Optimist, and Steven Pinker’s The Better Angels of Our Nature are three books that dig into this. In part, life feels more dangerous today because we have so much information about bad things that happen…

  • Should you look at your kid’s smartphone? Digital parenting tips #2

    (This is the second in a series of practical tips about parenting in the digital age.) My last column described conversations that parents should have before giving a kid that first smartphone. I held back talking about one important topic because it needs its own discussion: should you look at your kid’s phone? The short answer…

  • Have this talk before your kid gets a phone: digital parenting tips #1

    (This is the first in a series of practical tips about parenting in the digital age.) Parents of adolescents worry about when a kid should get her* first smartphone. It’s a legit worry. On the plus side, smartphones connect kids to a vast world of information, resources, entertainment, and community… and that’s the down side,…

  • Beware the “Words with Friends” scammers

    New predators are stalking older women via chat in online games. Here’s how to protect yourself and your family. My mother is nobody’s fool. She is also such a fan of the online Scrabble knockoff “Words with Friends” (WWF) that I might use the word addiction to describe her relationship with the game and only be…

  • SHORT: Don’t Miss REDEF Original on Truth in Advertising

    From the “too long for a tweet” department: I just finished Adam Wray‘s powerful Fashion REDEFined original article “With Great Power: Seth Matlins on how Advertising can Shift Culture for the Better.” It’s about Seth Matlins‘ efforts to change how advertisements featuring too-skinny and Photoshopped models body shame girls and women (men too, by the way).…

  • Notes from Bergen 4: the world is less virtual than we think

    It’s 8:30am as I begin writing this post.  Just minutes ago Kathi and our son trotted off towards the University of Bergen, where she’ll drop him off for his last day at Nygard Skole — the Norwegian immersion program he’s attended this year — before going to her last day at the University.  My daughter…

  • Notes from Bergen 3: Paternal Victories

    “Dad,” my teenager daughter asked one recent morning as she picked her way through over-easy eggs, seedy toast and Earl Grey tea. “What have you eaten for breakfast?” At a quick scan it’s an innocuous question, but down, deep down, subterranean with stalactites, a parenting victory glints in dim light. Here’s what I mean. This year…