Single Dads

Quick!  Here’s a test:  is day care really good for your kids?

The headlines blared this week. “Does Day Care Make Kids Behave Badly? Study Says Yes” (ABC). “Child Care Leads to More Behavior Problems” (Fox). “Day-care Kids Have Problems Later in Life” (NBC). “Poor Behavior Is Linked to Time in Day Care” (New York Times). And, ironically, “Bad Mommies” (Slate).

It’s useless to rail at the press for leading with the bad news and for ignoring the researchers’ caveats that no cause-and-effect conclusions can be drawn from their data. Still, coverage like this feels designed to twit working parents. And it turns out that in the case of day care, the headlines and the stories really were alarmist—even wrong.

Thank the Slate for this.

Ladies and gentlemen, shall we face facts?

American culture is built on the dollar.  We live in a time of almost unfettered capitalism.  This is in itself not a bad thing.  However, the good must be taken with the bad; in order to have that new house on the block, to pay for that education, to buy that expensive car, or even to simply make ends meet, more often than not, both parents have to work.  Observation tells you this, a little research will bear out this theory.

 With this in mind, day-care businesses thrive.  Single parents, married parents, separated parents - they all use day-care, and there’s a lot of money to be made in day-care, if one is willing to be able to effectively and safely deal with several children that are not their own.  Good day-care is worth it’s weight in gold.

 That said, to say that too much day care is bad for kids is probably not as much of the problem as not enough parental involvement for kids.  Shifting the blame to day-care providers is…somehow disingenuous.  As a parent, you know if your child is getting unruly, and you should be able to sense if they might have problems socializing later.  That is a parental responsibility.

Watch.  Listen.  Learn.  Act.  Don’t play the blame game.

You are going to see quite a few new items here on Single Dads.  This website, being a labor of love, will go through several changes as more features are incorporated and as it gets ready for Prime Time.  There have been many additions to the blogroll, including:

Daddy Types- A weblog for new dads.

Parenting Hacks - Real world parenting tips from actual parents, naturally.

Parenting Ideas - Features practical parenting ideas and tips.

T’mornin’- A single mom’s weblog.  She’s a friend of mine.  I don’t discriminate against mothers.

ringloss - Another friend’s blog.

Jaxed- A internet culture-oriented blog/website.

Engtech - A great WordPress blog for getting new blogging ideas and techniques.  I owe this site a debt of gratitude.

You’ll see posts being removed and things being moved around as we tinker with site design.  Hopefully you’ll see couple of new pages appear with some new features.  Basically I would like this to be a site that you look forward to reading, and if you have suggestions, please feel free to comment and let me know - I might try to incorporate them into the blog.

Recently I’ve been doing a little guest posting on a website called Shakadoo.com.  What do they do?  Take a look at their first page:

Shakadoo is a site written and created for those who love their home. Whether you live in a condo or a castle, Shakadoo has a place for you.

Shakadoo has several different “shaks”: the LoanShak, WorkShak, ShakYard, Shaktronics, Shak In Style, Shakhammer and the Love Shak, Baby (love that title).  It’s an interesting community that they are trying to build there that I would recommend that you check out.

However, don’t think that my “pro” blogging job will decrease my regular blogging output.  You see, I know how to use Google.  Ah, the Internet is a wonderful place.

There are some single dads out there that I owe a post to, though.  I haven’t forgotten about you.  Expect it tomorrow.

Digging through the Internet, I happened to, by chance, come across this article that attempts to explain why smart people are not the happiest people in the world’s big tent.

Western society is not set up to nurture intelligent children and adults, the way it dotes over athletes and sports figures, especially the outstanding ones. While we have the odd notable personality such as Albert Einstein, we also have many extremely intelligent people working in occupations that are considered among the lowliest, as may be attested by a review of the membership lists of Mensa (the club for the top two percent on intelligence scales).

Education systems in countries whose primary interest is in wealth accumulation encourage heroes in movies, war and sports, but not in intellectual development. Super intelligent people manage, but few reach the top of the business or social ladder.

Children develop along four streams: intellectual, physical, emotional (psychological) and social. In classrooms, the smartest kids tend to be left out of more activities by other children than they are included in. They are “odd,” they are the geeks, they are social outsiders. In other words, they do not develop socially as well as they may develop intellectually or even physically where opportunities may exist for more progress.

Their emotional development, characterized by their ability to cope with risky or stressful situations, especially over long periods of time, also lags behind that of the average person.

Adults tend to believe that intelligent kids can deal with anything because they are intellectually superior. This inevitably includes situations where the intelligent kids have neither knowledge nor skills to support their experience. They go through the tough times alone. Adults don’t understand that they need help and other kids don’t want to associate with kids the social leaders say are outsiders.

As a result we have many highly intelligent people whose social development progresses much slower than that of most people and they have trouble coping with the stressors of life that present themselves to everyone. It should come as no surprise that the vast majority of prison inmates are socially and emotionally underdeveloped or maldeveloped and a larger than average percentage of them are more intelligent than the norm.

This was posted on Scribd, by Bill Allin, who is a sociologist who is most certainly more experienced than I on topics in this realm.  Thank Digg, where one can find many articles worth reading.

I would say this.  Read the article.  Think about it.  Then, steel yourself for the Part 2, coming soon (assuming that I can find the original posting), where I will explain to you in minor detail why this might be correct, and how a person can change this tendency without losing their mind, shunning society, and dying, finally, a broken old man on the street.  Or a broken old woman in some other way.

Lifehacker brings the goods on kids’ freeware.

KidsDomain has put together a massive list of freeware for kids, sorted by subjects such as Art, Science, Math, Creativity, etc.

There is a lot of stuff here, and it’s all free. Try building a train diorama, or printing out one of dozens of free coloring books, or check out the free card games (Caveman Cards, anyone?). This would be a great site to visit with the kids for a few rainy/snowy day activities.

I am so all over this. If Kids Domain can keep kids occupied in a healthy, educational, and creative way, they certainly have my support. I will be quite pleased to give them a try, and will probably blog the results, knowing my general geekitude.

Let’s take a look at the obvious.  Here’s an interesting editorial in the Buffalo News.

When it comes to figuring out what’s gone wrong with our culture, we can usually rely on the American Psychological Association (APA) to catch on last. Thus, it came to pass a few days ago that the APA released its findings that American girls are sexualized. And that’s bad.If you missed the headlines, it may be because of stiff competition from the breaking news that Anna Nicole is still dead and Britney is still disturbed. Irony doesn’t get to be ironic when it’s that conspicuous.

The APA report found that girls are sexualized in nearly every medium and product - from ads and video games to clothing, cosmetics and even dolls. Anyone who has walked down an American street the past few years has seen the effects - little girls dressed as tartlets and teens decked in bling, while mom takes pole-dancing lessons at the gym.

We shouldn’t need a scientific study to tell us that sexualizing children is damaging, but apparently common sense isn’t what it used to be. We can now assert with confidence that most of the primarily girl pathologies - eating disorders, low self-esteem and depression - can be linked to an oversexualization that encourages girls to obsess about body image and objectify themselves.

This has to been common sense.  Unfortunately, it’s common sense that is… not so common as one would think.

It is a daddy thing.  Even if you’re separated from your daughter some of the time, which certainly makes things more difficult than the attentive father would like, make the time that you have with your kids count for more than play time.  I’m convinced that your kids pick up on everything that you do.  Teach them something by both your actions and by your words.  Hopefully that will pay off for you and your kids.