^{Originally published on BabyCenter.com February 3, 2016}

For my daughter the words, “Do you want to spend time with Daddy?” often elicit tears and shrieks. I don’t want to say she doesn’t like me, but I’m clearly not her favorite parent. In fact, there are times when it seems like she’d rather be alone than have me in the room at all.

That’s not to say there aren’t times when we’re buddies. If she’s napped well during the day and my wife isn’t around, she’ll play with me, dance with me, and genuinely enjoy herself. But if she’s tired or Mommy is an option at all, she usually wants me to keep my distance.

^{Originally published on BabyCenter.com December 2, 2015}

Sooner or later, technology leaves us all feeling old. As my wife and I browse through Christmas gift ideas, the number of new gadgets out there is making me wistful for the days of Tandy Computers and the Sega Genesis. Now we’re faced with a new question: are our kids old enough for a tablet?

My gut says no, but the more I think about it, the less I have an actual argument beyond pure geezer instinct. I myself didn’t have any sort of real computer until I was in my senior year of high school, and that fact is probably the number one reason I said “No” at first.

This is definitely a first world problem. It’s also a case where I don’t feel like I’m doing harm if I just say “No” to giving my kids a portable screen to carry around. But the more I look into the subject, the more it becomes that my objections are more emotional than logical.

^{Originally published on BabyCenter.com November 5, 2015}

Hockey season has begun, and our son has taken to the ice for the first time. By default, he’s already better on skates than I am, since he’s able to move about ten feet before falling down. This season’s all about learning to skate, which means all the hitting and actual competition can wait.

Hockey is a realm where I have very little experience. I’m a big football fan, and I played soccer, basketball, and baseball at an intramural level in school. But hockey is an area where I’m only passingly familiar with the rules and the idea of hitting a puck around the ice is foreign to me.

Since this is such a new experience for me, and since this is only my second time dealing with the sports-dad scene, I’m learning quite a bit. Here are a few of the basic discoveries I’ve come across so far:

^{Originally published on BabyCenter.com September 23, 2015}

I seem to have fallen over backwards into helping as a coach with my son’s soccer team. As it turns out, you only have to express an interest (or maybe, as in my case, have a brother-in-law who is also coaching) to do this. It’s quite fun, but really weird when parents say, “Hi, Coach.”

^{Originally published on BabyCenter.com June 13, 2014}

I often have imaginary conversations with my 18-year-old self. The 18-year-old version of me is a kid who is stuck in the worst year of his life, suffering through an abusive relationship, and in a spiral of depression that he is not getting any help for.

He’s also a smartass who thinks he knows everything there is to know about life.

^{Originally published March 7, 2014 on BabyCenter.com}

Thanks to the Internet, parents have access to a lot more data these days. The problem is that it’s hard for a lot of people to tell the good data from the bad data.

One of the big errors that people make when evaluating reports floated around various blogs and news sites is the mistaking of correlation for causation. I’m pretty sure that most people reading this have heard the phrase, “correlation does not imply causation” at some point. However, I think it’s worth going into again because so few people seem to realize exactly what it means.