Small Update and New Site Launch

Howdy, strangers! I'm sorry that the BadassDad blog hasn't been updated for so long, but my family is now about half way through our mega-long road trip/camping/family visit vacation. We're happy and grateful for our trip and having a wonderful time. At this point in time, we're visiting family, but next week we're camping along the California coast. It sure is nice to be around people who care about us and our kids and are willing to offer entertainment and care for our kids. We've even been able to sneak out for a couple dates while we've been here!

I expect to do a much more interesting and open up some more discourse on parenting in the next week or so. Right now, I'd like to actually point you away from the site for a while. Today a new site is launching at http://www.tvfreeliving.com and it should be great. How do I know it should be great? For one thing they've asked me to participate and contribute some articles. Head over to TVFreeLiving and subscribe, if you think it sounds like something you're into.

Remember, you don't have to go so far as tossing your box out the window to live TV Free; it's always nice to learn some strategies to help cut screen time out of your life and open the doors and get out and live. Remember, we watch TV because it shows us a world in which TV doesn't exist--the paradox is that we can live in this world any time we want to--just turn it off.

One Year Without TV

This last week was national Turn Off TV Week. It happens to mark the one-year anniversary of my family being without TV. It's hard to believe that it's been only a year, and a year ago I never would have thought that it would last.

Let me clarify, though. My family does own a TV. But we've tamed it. We haven't had or paid for service for a year, but we can watch movies on DVD and shows on AppleTV, should we choose. The virtues of this are found in having no commercials and in being properly mindful about what we watch. Still, we can over do it so things like Turn Off TV Week come along at great times.

We decided to downgrade our TV to monitor status at the end of last year's Turn Off TV Week. It was an eye opening experience for us that made us a stronger family. Without shows to watch, we find ourselves with extra time. We find ourselves spending more time with each other and paying more attention to the family in general. Without commercials, we've cut begging for things out of our family experience altogether. While this year's experiment wasn't nearly as elaborate as last years--as we have cut our watching down to about 10% of what it used to be--we still took some time to ourselves to celebrate not having a light-and-sound-box communicating with us. Last week, we went to the zoo, played outside, read more, spent time at the library, fixed the A/C unit, and took care of my wife while she fought off the worst flu-sore-throat-combination-nightmare of all time. Yes, it can come at bad times, but we managed fine.

This last year without a TV has been nothing less than liberating. No longer do we watch shows that we don't enjoy, or flip channels, or have to sit through commercials while waiting to see what's going to happen to Ben on Lost. No longer do we make plans to be home by a certain time or go to bed at a certain time in order to accommodate the schedule of the small-screen. Our daughters have no idea what Bratz are, who Miley Cyrus is, or just how annoying Elmo can be. They are free from the marketing of those things, free to make a choice that has nothing to do with conformity or acceptance from people who don't know you as anything but a consumer of their products.

We are free of celebrity news. We are free of investigative reports about child predators. We are free of nasally narrators on Swiffer commercials, and Truck Month, and Gwen Stephani, and political ad campaigns, and whatever other forms of Hell that are lurking around out there.

While discussing TV as a medium of popular culture, I offered my students the idea of going without TV for a week and writing about it. Not one student took me up. They laughed and scoffed at the idea that a life without TV was somehow better.

And maybe it's not inherently better. But it's more yours. You manage time differently; watch less and do more. Your thoughts are unencumbered by commercial jingles and Family Guy reruns. Television time is time that you surrender to someone else. It's time that you give up and let someone else live for you. And, my students are right, it doesn't have to be a bad thing.

But shouldn't someone be willing to try going without it for one week? The fear that they expressed over the idea was enough to show the virtues of the project. What is wrong with us that we can't miss a week's worth of shows? What's wrong with our lifestyles if that is frightening to us?

The week may be over, but it's not too late. Try it yourself. Don't shy away from having some extra time for your family this week.

Turn Off your TV and Computer Week

April 21-27th is Turn Off Your TV Week. This isn't just limited to TV, but to "screen time." So, turn off your computer now. Go outside. I don't care if it's raining, do something with your family. We'll talk about things next week.

Should Bookstores be Socially Responsible?

We have a habit of hanging out at bookstores. We’ve had this habit since way before we had kids. In several of the towns where I’ve lived, the local libraries weren’t much to write home about. Besides being terribly under stocked and in the “wrong” area of town, they also had lousy hours and didn’t feel conducive to hanging around being semi-social. So, we got in the habit of frequenting large chain bookstores.

This isn’t anything original to us. Many people are turning bookstores into their own little living rooms. They go, have coffee, a muffin, read the day’s paper, talk on the phone, whatever. In college I often chose to study at Borders instead of the college library because it was closer to my house and it felt like I was out doing something. These places are semi-public spaces that are turning more and more into semi-private places.

This habit of ours leaked very comfortably into our lives as parents. Many Barnes & Nobles have train tables to play with, little stages to play on, and several cozy reading nooks for kids to get into. And of course, when we lived in Austin, we spent an inordinate amount of hours at the world’s greatest bookstore, BookPeople, which was so full of fun activities and a wide selection of books that there was rarely a question of what to do when it was just too damn hot outside.

But with the exception of the above mentioned independent bookseller, being at these places has always come with a challenge for us as parents. My daughters—when they tire of playing with the train or dancing on the stage—want me to read books to them. That much is great. But the problem is distinguishing between books and toys.

The basic rule I’ve come down to is this: books have an author listed, toys do not. So much of what is seemingly a book, isn’t a book at all. There are a million Princess books that have no listed author, as there are with Backyardigans, Elmo, Dora, My Little Pony, Hanna Montana, and every other imaginable character. (Now, I have a soft spot for Disney, thanks to well over a hundred trips to Disneyland, but that doesn’t change my stance about their “books”).

Even worse are the books that are actually just toys in a book shaped box. They have buttons, make noises, play songs, or are actually filled with little knick-knacks of every imaginable persuasion. They are a real and true blight on the bookstore. And, they are specifically designed to attract children.

Obviously, I can’t explain to my kids that I don’t want to read books without authors to them. But I do try and explain why I don’t want to read princess book after princess book, or why it’s no fun to hear an electronic beep play “muffin man” a billion times in a row for no particular reason. Usually, while they are involved in the initial distraction of the train, the toys, or whatever, I make a round and pick out several books that I would like to read. Some old favorites, like Suess and Sendak, and some new or seasonally exciting ones. Then, I try and persuade them to look at these books with me, as the stories are so much better than the plight of Pinkie Pie from My Little Pony as she tries to throw a party for Minty.

These toy-books are positioned to be the most reachable. They attract children with familiar characters (many of them at least familiar from the grocery store, Target, and kid’s shirts that they play with). And, of course, I’m sure they sell great. Many parents are like, “Cool, you want a book, we’ll buy it.” Or hapless grandparents who aren’t sure what to buy pick them up based on accessibility. They even have line after line of these books that are supposed to teach the child to read—because the parents would have no idea how to do that without the Elmo puppet’s help that’s attached to many of these.

If you want your children to grow up to be readers, you have to look past the marketing. You have to encourage them to read books that are worth reading. In the long run, they will notice the effects of a good book versus a bad book.

On a recent trip to Borders, their seasonal wall was overcome with a new display of Disney Fairies books—all of which burst onto the market the same day as the Borders-Disney sweepstakes. The other four tables around it—together representing the five most accessible areas of books for kids—had signs attached to them as follows: “At the Movies;” “Hannah Montana;” “Make it a Nickelodeon Night;” and “Your Favorite Characters” (all of which, apparently, can be found on TV).

Should bookstores recognize their position as the new public book space? Should something be done to increase library funding for better hours, more pleasing kids areas, and better lighting? Should they lead buyer for Barnes & Noble—the single most powerful person in publishing—recognize the importance of good literature for every age? Or should we just buckle to our typical post-capitalist apathy of, “Hey, they’re a business, they want to make money, Jackass!”

Businesses run from our money. The libraries run from our money. We should expect more of them, and we should, therefore, expect more of ourselves.

Marketing TV to Children

There's a channel called Sprout on many cable services now. There's also the ironically-named channel called Noggin. These are channels that are aimed at 0-2 year olds. The companies that run the channels are really biting the bullet for you here--there are no commercial interruptions on these channels. Just 24 hours a day of television for your baby. This is good, right?

If you read this blog at all, you know what my stance is going to be.

Doctors have told us time and time again that children under 2 should watch zero hours of TV a day. That's zero. Why is this? What's so evil about a channel that is benevolent enough to provide you with kids shows free of commercials?

The medium of TV is unique. The two-dimensional world of television is disorienting to our bodies. Whenever there is what is called a "formal feature," such as a cut, zoom, edit, wipe, whatever, our bodies respond with a particular adrenal reaction. It's called the orienting response. As predators, strange movements like those catch our attention. And in order to react to being disoriented, our blood pressure drops, giving us a moment of calm that last from 4-6 seconds. Yes, this is an exceptionally mild, hardly noticeable to the mind, unless they were to come in huge doses.

During most TV shows, these features occur every--you guessed it--4-6 seconds. During commercials and music videos, they come every second.

Your body knows this. This is why it's relaxing to watch TV. The content of a show itself is not relaxing, otherwise we'd be watching landscapes with ambient music. But as we follow Jack (from 24 or Lost) through a weekly tribulation, we get a dose of Soma.

When your baby sits watching Elmo or Dora and seems to be concentrating or at ease, it's not because they are learning or relaxing. It's because they are mesmerized by the most prevalent drug in history, getting dose after dose from their own bodies courtesy of the TV.

You may wonder why Johnny and Jill seem to be having a problem concentrating in school several years from now.

But we still haven't answered the question of what the channels get out of this. First of all, of course, they are selling products to these 0-2 year olds. They are selling them Dora and Elmo licensed products. And though they may not buy them themselves, and though they may even be too young to nag in many cases, their parents buy them for them. They know that their little Johnny is enthralled with Elmo's World and that the Spanglish-speaking little imp is empowering Jill by exploring.

Second, and perhaps more disturbingly, they're selling them TV. They're creating TV watchers out of them from birth. Since the late 70s, marketing companies have focused their larger clients with the strategy of "cradle-to-grave marketing" (their name for it, not mine). They know that if they can land them young, they'll be consumers all their lives. Then they can rest easy under a Dora tombstone.

When you stop watching TV, you no longer get the relaxation effects leave your body. However, this leaves you jittery and anxious. That's because while the relaxation leaves, but you are left with passivity and lethargy. Anyone who's ever been addicted knows that you don't want that kind of let-down. They know that kids will keep watching, just to stay sane.

Having your children sit forever in front of TV may seem easy. And I understand the impulse to watch hours of TV after a long day. But there has never been a force more damaging to imagination and creativity. Be a badass--turn it off.

Related:
Giving Up TV
10 Ways to Tame TV
10 Alternative to Conventional TV

10 Activities for Toddlers on a Rainy Day

We spend a lot of time outside. For at least a few hours every afternoon, we go outside and play, either on the playground in the backyard, or ride trikes, or play with the neighborhood kids. This is addition to going on walks or feeding the ducks at the pond down the street.

The burden of spending lots of time outside is felt when the weather isn't cooperative. We don't live where it snows, and though we get a lot of rain here, it comes on a comparatively small number of days a year. If they're used to being able to run around and cut loose everyday, a couple days without it can lead to pent-up energies that can result in high octane arguments and first rate fighting. It's no fun, for anyone.

So we've spent a lot of time trying to navigate these inside times. We have a mix between old standbys and new favorites. Play around with some of these and see what works for you.

1. Playing Rice
This is one of my wife's inventions. On the kids craft table, she sets out buckets, funnels, measuring cups, spoons, and bowls. Then she fills the buckets with rice (dry, obviously, as cooked rice would have some pretty frustrating results when poured through a funnel). The kids are happy to "play rice" for up to two hours at a time. Two hours! This is a great time to clean the kitchen or read a book. You could probably also play beans, or play macaronis, or something.

2. Play dough
This is an obvious one. Play dough, or any comparable knock-off, is cheap and versatile. They really bank on you buying a lot of accessories for playing with the stuff, which you really don't have to. Household utensils work wonders with the stuff. And, if you really want to get affordable, with a little bit older kids, it's easy to find a recipe and make the stuff. They get a kick out of it. Plus, you can find recipes that harden in the oven for painting. Great for the holidays. That brings us to...

3. Painting
Watercolors are fine, and washable paint is okay. But, really, any acrylic craft paint can be washed off if caught in a relatively short period of time, and the colors are so much more bright and vivid.

4. Shaving Cream Paintings
If your kids get sick of the regular old painting, or if they like finger painting, then this is a great activity. Mix shaving cream in a bowl with the desired food coloring. Then, they can spread the colored fluff all over a page to make intricate designs that bleed into each other. Fun.

5. Shaving Cream Cleaning
Shaving cream does a great job of cleaning surfaces like tables and counter tops. Let the kids spread it all over the place, and when it is wiped off, the table is shiny clean. Pretty awesome to have fun and clean.

6. Build a Fort
The only drawback of turning the couch or the beds into a fortress is how often they'll want to do it in the coming days. Having small, cozy places to hide and stay is wonderfully comforting to a toddler. It may serve as inspiration to make a cozy reading nook in their room.

7. Throw a Party
This can be especially fun if you know that the next day is going to be unpleasant and you want to turn the tides by setting up a morning surprise. Put up streamers, hang balloons, bake a cake, play dance music, set up simple games like pin the tail on the donkey.

8. Music Time
Getting the family together to sing is engaging and very good for child development. If you're not musically inclined, look at it as an opportunity to learn along with your child. Get a used guitar, buy a book, and learn some children's songs.

9. Dress-up
We have a dress-up trunk in our kids' closet. It's full of old clothes, aprons, sunglasses, Halloween costumes, and the like. It's great to pull out on rainy days.

10. Bake something
Making bread, muffins, biscuits, or cakes can be a lot of fun for kids, especially if they know they're going to get to eat them later. This may be better for older kids, and it is best if you can find different responsibilities for the kids to be in charge of in the process.

When seen as an opportunity to break from routine, enhance artistic skills, and spend some family together time, bad weather can be a good thing. If you have some other activities that get you through a rainy-day schedule, please post them below.

Not Willing to Give Up TV? 10 Ways to Tame it.

I’ve had a lot of response for my post, Giving up TV. In fact, on a normal day, the “hits” on that post register about 100 times more than hits on any other post. What’s the deal with that? Are we so fascinated by the idea that we actually can live without TV that it deserves to be met with such curiosity and excitement? Are there really people out there who haven’t thought about giving up their TV addiction? I don’t pretend to know the answers, but as long as I have the attention of a pretty large number of people, I want to encourage this movement away from media-dependence. You’ve probably noticed how pervasive the TV is.

With the TV on in our houses, our day is not our own. We make our schedules around it. We make decisions based on it. We give corporations a window into our houses. We hand out kids over to the corporate culture without thinking about it. And we pay for most of it.

And yet…

We are so fascinated with what they have to say about the weather that they say it every six minutes on morning. Then, after they’ve told us about the weather, they promise more about it in another six minutes. And we tune in again. Why is the weather so important to people in the morning? Bring a sweater! Put an umbrella in your car or bike! You don’t need to know what the day has in store! They’re probably wrong and you probably have a pretty good idea yourself.

We alter plans and possibilities of human interaction because of what’s on TV. They have molded your day when this happens. I once had a date tell me that she had to go home because TGIF was on ABC. Okay, it probably wasn’t the “quality” programming that was driving her away, but it seemed like a logical excuse to her. It seemed so because this isn’t uncommon. A friend of mine in college said that he called his mom because he was having a rough time adjusting and she said, “Let me call you back after Big Brother.” We establish and nurture relationships with the characters on TV even at the expense of our own friends and family.

The corporations that have us pay for their service make money not only from us but from the channels and advertisers on the other side of things. We are paying to watch ads. The shows are really just unfortunate side effects for the TV companies (unless, of course, they present good places for product placement). And we willingly sit our kids down to watch shows that leave them desiring cheap, useless merchandise that they don’t really want. Kids, especially pre-teen and teenagers, feel worse about themselves after watching commercials.

And I know what you’re thinking, “I’m not affected by commercials.” Then tell me why advertisers pay $200,000,000,000 a year for advertising on TV? You’re telling me it doesn’t work? You just don’t see the big picture like they do. It works. Trust me. Or trust them, at least.

But there are ways that you can help these strange events happening under your own roof. For one, you can get rid of the TV. But many just won’t do that. Luckily, there are other ways.

So. You’re not willing to give up the TV?

Big deal. This doesn’t mean you can’t join the fight against it. What the TV’s function is in most households is really the acknowledgement that you’re there, you’re alive, you’re awake. People wake up and turn the thing on as a symbol for “clocking-in” for your day. It will remain on, even if muted, for the rest of the day as long as you are in your house. For some people, this even means turning on TVs in multiple rooms. This TV being on is comforting for us. We were raised that way. We may even perceive our pets to prefer the presence of the all-knowing box. There are some very solid steps that you can take to tame the beast.

1. Mindful TV Watching
TV doesn’t have to be mindless. Only watch TV when there is something that you want to watch. Read that last sentence again. Make it a mantra. There is no reason to flip through channels seeking you-know-not-what. And don’t turn on the TV just because the kids want to “watch something” or “watch TV.” Ask them what they want to watch. Turn it on if you think that’s a good idea. Don’t offer suggestions, make them discern what it is they want to do with their time; this shouldn’t be just to waste time.

2. Impose Time Limits
I use to really make fun of friends of mine who said, “My mom only lets me watch an hour of TV a day.” But first, let us look at that statement. What, besides TV, does a parent let their child do for more than an hour a day? There just aren’t that many activities that we do that beg for four or five hours of our time every day. And those that do should hopefully give you some sort of product, like a backyard deck or a new guestroom, after a certain number of days.

3. Flexible Limits
You don’t have to stick with a certain amount of TV every day. I know parents who give their kids tickets to watch shows. This often results in siblings coordinating TV watching plans. Or, you can sit down on Sunday and map out a plan for the week—which shows are “important” to watch or a special movie night or some such.

4. Time Frames
Or, maybe TV watching is free in the morning, when little kids wake up too early and parents follow suit, but then goes off after everyone has had breakfast and gotten dressed for the day. That would at least encourage a view of TV watching as having a docile purpose in the day rather than a dictator of it.

5. Keep kids away from certain shows
What shows? Shows that are nothing but commercials masked in plots. Shows like Dora, Power Rangers, and the like. If there’s a huge amount of products associated with it, you should urge them in a different direction. These shows created misplaced desires and they direct those desires by changing characters, adding characters, encouraging collection, etc. And when you kid does collect them all, they will only see how unfulfilling it is when the movie comes out and all the old characters become irrelevant. Instead, shows like Arthur that are more closely associated with books can be a better alternative (but don’t fall for something like a Dora book—those things are like poison put to print when your child wants you to read it again and again).

6. Get Rid of Cable
And I don’t mean “buy Dish!” I mean, get rid of all those damn channels. How many of them do you watch? They spread the good channels out within their three or four strata of service options so that you have to get 150 channels to watch five good ones, but 200 channels to watch nine good ones. And having cable really detracts from the idea of mindful TV watching. Maybe you have a good antenna and can get the local channels. But I don’t recommend getting “basic cable” because a) they’ll talk you into getting a bigger package at less money and b) because you don’t need to send their kids to college—stop lining their pockets.

7. TIVO
I have no experience with TIVO whatsoever. But I have a few problems with it. 1) you’re paying for a service; 2) you probably still have cable; 3) You have to fast-forward through commercials when they should be automatically blacked-out. So, instead:

8. Get an AppleTV
I swear they’re not paying me to say this again. But with one of these expensive systems hooked up to your TV, you can only watch shows that you decide to pay for. You will automatically limit TV to shows that you actually want to watch and you will cut out commercials altogether. Plus, you never, ever have to change your schedule around a show (though you’ll often have to tell your neighbors not to say anything about Survivor until that weekend). I would happily rather pay for a show that doesn’t have commercials than watch a show for free that does. I’ve been saying that for at least 10 years before the AppleTV came out.

9. Get a DVD player
Oh, you have one? What’s it there for? I’ll tell you what it’s there for: mindful watching. Only shows you want, no commercials. This is especially helpful with the increased presence of quality TV shows being put on DVD compulsively and online things like Netflix getting them to you.

10. Get a blanket
To put over the screen. Make it hard to turn it on. Only take that blanket off when you really, really want to watch something. Bonus points if it’s a pretty blanket or a tapestry.

And, as always, there are plenty of alternative to watching TV at all. You will find yourself with more time, more energy, and more room for your families. Such are the things that being a badass dad are all about.

10 Ways to Claim your Day

Note: Please check out Steve Olson's website to see the article that I penned about Education Vs. Schooling. Thanks again, Steve, for letting me guest-post.

Most mornings I teach an 8am class. Morning classes are my favorite; you haven't hit that afternoon lag, the coffee is fresh in your system, and you know that you're knocking one out right out of the gates. But I am constantly and consistently harried by students who droop and moan about how "early" it is.

But it doesn't just happen in the 8am classes. 9am, 10am, and even, I swear, half the time in any 11am classes I teach.

I'm sad for these students. They don't feel like they've made a decision to be there. They don't feel at all responsible for their presence--which goes to show how responsible they feel for the work we'll be doing. And I'm not a boring teacher, which I at least credit whith why they don't fall asleep.

What I want to tell them is this: It's your day. No one snuck up and took it from you. You're spending it right now and it's never going to come back, and you will have never known that it was yours in the first place. Wake up, grow up, take responsibility, and take charge.

With that advice in mind, I'd like to detail some of the things that make me feel ownership over the days I spend. Sure, some days slip past with me feeling dragged along the whole time. This is especially easy to fall into when you have kids and even easier when you have a set routine. At any rate, here are some ways to claim your day, feel free to mix, match, and ignore as you see fit:

1. Wake up Early
I know this isn't a popular one. But if Benjamin Franklin knew the benefits of early to bed, early to rise a couple hundred years ago, why in the world do we still struggle with it? Why can't we learn that these aren't words made in folly? I tell my students that the day starts at 8am. You can't possibly expect to wake up after that and have any control over your circumstances; they day has begun without you and others are already making the decisions that are going to run the rest of the cycle. I love to wake up early--regardless of the time I go to bed--and feel ripped off when 8am rolls around and others are sharing my day with me. Plus, it's possible to get a little extra time for yourself--or for you and your wife.

2. Start the day Writing
Pull out a notebook, a computer, or the backs of bills and start writing. It doesn't matter what you write. If you have no idea what to write, make it bland. Make lists about what your expectations for the day are. Or what you hope to avoid. If something is bothering you from the days before, write about that. Writing doesn't just serve as a form of communication. Writing is a way that people who practice it can metabolize things. Let it all run out onto the page.

3. Exercise
I used to hate running. I mean, really, really hate it. That's why one day I chose to start doing it three times a week. I figured that if I could start my day facing down something that I was afraid of, that I hated, and get through it, the rest of the day would be cake. Plus, it's good for you and all of that. I had a book that coached you through running a 10k in 13 weeks. It was a step-by-step regimine; a mixture of running and walking that brought you from coach potato to runner. I did it, it was wonderful, and I stopped. Why did I stop? Beats me. But I've got to get back into it. I was happier, healthier, and rested better when I was a runner. And I felt like I had conquered something that had always held me back. Plus, the time to myself (rarely more than 45 minutes a morning) was great. Yoga is another thing that you can do in the comfort of your own home, often with even small kids immitating you (or, in my case, sitting on me during the hardest poses).

4. Read
We've talked about this before, but reading can be a great way to spend your day. I take a book with me wherever I go. To the store, to work, to the mall, everywhere. You never know when you will have to wait somewhere and you can sneak five or ten minutes of page time in. If you're stumped about what to read, check out recomendations here and here or at the Badass Bookstore.

5. Turn off your TV
Did you think I wouldn't mention it this time? The TV is the biggest time-suck in the world. You burn less calories than sleeping while watching TV. It's a tunnel from corporate marketing firms right into your living room.

6. Go for a Walk or Hike
We are creatures meant for walking. Yet we never do it. Walking does wonders for your legs and for me it really helps to clear my mind. Taking the time out of the week to drive out to a good hiking spot does wonders for my entire family.

7. Meditate
This is another activity that is hard to do with your kids around, but if you do it before they wake up or after they go to bed, it can really keep your day on track. There are tons of books and blogs written about the subject and the benefits seem indisputible. While there are lots of different ways to do it that may speak better to you than others, there really isn't a bad way to do it. Carving out time for this activity will lower the volume on negative parts of your life and raise it on the good.

8. Ride your Bike to Work
Riding my bike to work and back is one of the best things I've ever done for myself. I know that many of us don't live close enough to our jobs to make this goal a reality. But when we bought our house, we had biking to work in the forefront of our minds. Our last home featured a 45 minute, heavily trafficked commute to my job and it was terrible. It added unwanted stress and really detracted from any peace I might find in a day. Biking to work actually decreases stress and by the time I'm in my office (clothes changed and all), I am more relaxed and ready for the day. When I get home with my totally nerdy bike helmet on, I've already shed the stresses of work through my pedals. Paul Dorn keeps a wonderful Bike Commute Tips blog that is really worth checking out.

9. Clean up at night
The hypocracy alarm just went off. Our house is as messy as any I've been to. Toys, laundry, dog chews all over the place. But if you can manage to get your house to a good, managable place, cleaning up at night will help you to wake up to a clean morning. Your day will start off on the right foot and you'll be able to concentrate on all those wonderful kids activities that serve to make the house messy again. Clean. Repeat.

10. Turn off the Internet
Again with that damn hypocracy alarm. Don't worry, I'm an English Professor and I see the irony in all of its levels when I suggest this. I'll go further and say that you shouldn't turn it off until you've had a chance to visit the Badass Dad Store and clicked on all of our sponsers over there on the right--->. But just because I'm a guy who wants to make a buck on the Internet doesn't mean I'm wrong with this advice. But I digress. Really and truly, the Internet can be the biggest time-suck of them all. Especially if you have Stumble installed on your browser (and most of the traffic to this site is from Stumble, so again, I get it). There's nothing inlcusive or promotional of family bonding about the Internet. It should really be kept to a minimum if you want to feel like the day was yours when you go to bed at night.

***

There's nothing that's more of a shame than being dragged around by other forces all day. And there is nothing better than being engaged in your present life. So next time you find yourself complaining about how much there is to do today, or how early it is, or when will the kids just go to bed already, ask yourself this: how much of your life are you going to wish away?

5 Reasons to Simplify Your Life

Welcome Carnival of Happiness and Meaning readers!

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There are a million reasons to simplify your life. If you're new to fatherhood or if you've been around for a while, you've probably discovered that there aren't enough hours in the day to fit in all of your responsibilities and to take care of your family. Simplifying your life is a step to reclaiming the time of your days and showing your kids an impeccable way to live their lives. As we venture down this road, it is important to clarify reasons why we should. The following 5 reasons should help us scratch the surface.

1. Overwhelming amounts of media excert too much control over how we relate to our families.
Media, like advertising, would have us believe that the role of father does not include taking care of family. When advertisers direct marketing at men, they generally portray men who are unattached, with their friends, or at work scoring a big pitch in the boardroom. There is almost no room in advertisments for men to be with their families. This only happens in ads that are aimed at women, usually shown during daytime TV and in Women's magazines.

There are reasons for this. Advertisers think that men, in general, have a greater need for autonomy in a relationship than women do. The idea is that once a man is in a family, he will feel stifled and trapped by his identity as father, though empowered by his ability to provide for the family. And, as in so many other cases in our lives, the products want to prey on that assumed emotional relationship. The ads want us to forge a relationship with that product that will be fulfilling for us, melded intricatley with our unspoken desires to run away from our family. They, in fact, are hoping that the product will represent an escape for us.

Commeradarie, power, acceptance, and independence are the emotions that these products will use to get under our hoods and make a sale. What Miller beer hopes is not that you'll see their ad as a logical argument and say, "Hey, awesome, I'll go out and make a purchase of some Miller Beer." What they hope is that you will be with your friends, enjoying company, and someone will say, "It's 'Miller Time.'" When that happens, the advertisers have found their way in. They have melded with you on a pre-rational level and whatever they paid for that 30-second commercial has now bought them more air-time--but this is air-time in your life. They bought a moment of your life without paying for it. Someone sold it to them without asking your permission.

(This happens again when your daughter puts on the high-heeled shoes and smears lipstick on, trapsing about the room so clumisly but with a serious air of adulthood. Then, someone says, "Wow, what a Kodak moment!" For me, the moment is always ruined once it has been sold to a corporation, but hey, that's just me. )

So we find ourselves living in a society where the primary role of fatherhood is that of breadwinner, working for the weekend when we can finally take off our shackles and hang out with the bros. However, we students striving to be Badass Dads know that our role doesn't end there. There's cooking, cleaning, story-time, play-time, museums, playgrounds, music, bright sunny days out there that we want to share with our children. Stepping away from media entertainment can only help out our sanity. We want to step away from societal expectations and forge lives that we can be proud of at the end of the day.

2. You don't have enough money to buy it all.
If you are anything like me, you live paycheck to paycheck. Congratulations if you don't, but that doesn't mean that you can't stand to save a little more. The pace of our lives is really absurd when you sit around and think about it. Of course, they'd rather have us not think about it so that we remain resigned to a life of chasing the star of consumerism. But as consumers, we are constantly told that whatever it is that we have, it just isn't enough. Or, it at least isn't good enough. We are asked to forge relationships with products rather than people (such as a Civic ad that suggests that the car will never say, "it's not you, it's me"). But products are made to give out, to be unreliable, and to be replaceable. Cutting back on what you buy can make you realize that you are not what you own. You can derive meaning in life without buying things all the time.

3. The Environment
I know it might sound ignorant of me, but this is the reason for simplification that took me the longest time to come around to. For whatever reason, I've always felt like anything pertaining to global warming and all of that was nothing but hippie nonesense and alarmist jaberwocky. But I look at the problems in this world that could be solved if our parents had built a more renewable infastructure, and I see that I have a responsiblity to make things a little easier for my kids. Getting rid of a car, bussing to work, recycling, buying local, not using products that are made by known abusers of the environment, composting, growing your own food, and so many other things are in your individual power to take control of. And, they generally save you money, make you less of a "consumer" and make you healthier.

4. Better relationships.
Having products and brands being the bond between you and your loved ones is shameful. Yet, we do this all the time. Just a few years ago, having a cell phone was too expensive for most people. Now, it has been normalized and everyone thinks that they have to have one. But something that cell phones do is destroy conversations. "What's that you say? Destroy conversations? But they're about conversing, right?" No, cell phones are not about conversing. Like so much of "the information age," informaion has been boiled down to its basest forms. The accessiblity of cell phones and text messages make it possible for us to send quickly digestible snippets of information to each other at any time of the day, not matter where we are.

So what ends up happening to most of us is, we talk to our wives on the way to and from work. We talk to them when we are in the store. Something interesting happens, we text our brothers. We have a quick question, we can get a hold of our dads for a quick answer. But then, the next time we see our brothers, our dads, or our wives, we have nothing new to talk about. The information has been exchanged already, in quickly consumable tidbits. Why not sit down and talk when you get home from work? Why not save that question for your dad for the next time you see him, or sit down in your livingroom to have a phone conversation with him? Why not keep that interesting story under your hat for the next time you have a drink with your brother?

5. It's healthier
I struggle with my weight. And my life is by no means perfectly simple. But I know that if I make my own foods from scratch, ride my bike to work, and build a fort in the backyard for my daughters instead of buying them a new Xbox, I'll be better off. Don't get me started about our idea to build our own house (check out the badass bookstore for books on the subject). I'll feel better, be healthier, and set a better example for my children.

Bonus. Personal Satisfaction
There's a reward that comes with doing things yourself. Food tastes better when you make it yourself. The days are longer without TV to drag you down. You're more at ease if you know that no one can reach you via cell phone when you're at the store or on your way home. You enjoy time better with your friends and family if you haven't been constantly brought up to date about their lives through texting. Ultimatley, your quality of life will be improved.

10 Great Alternatives to Conventional TV

Recently, I detailed a little bit about how my family has given up conventional TV. It seemed a little bit overwhelming at first. But ever since then, our lives have been much more peaceful. We visited our families in California over the holidays and just about lost our minds thanks to the endless chatter of TV comercials in their houses. In fact, not a day goes by without one of us talking about how glad we are that we made that decision.

It takes a committed husband and father to help the family make this decision. It's not easy for many of us. If you're someone who has never had a problem with TV, and your family doesn't waste too much time and money with it, then congratulations. If you're like I've always been, then it's a change that needs to be made.

But if jumping off the deep end scares you, maybe this list can help you chill. This doesn't have to be an all-or-nothing game, after all. No TV at all may be the best, but there are options to help you wean, or to help you get the addiction under control and make it simply another activity. There are lots of ways to tame the flat-screened beast in the corner of your living room without giving up on the entertainment.

1. Buy an Apple TV (or similar item, if such exists).
I know, I know--here I am preaching against consumerism and yet I'm plugging a product. The fact is, however, that this product is a wonderful tool to get rid of a lot of the clutter that TV brings into your house. Of course, it's stupidly expensive, but we had a good sized tax-return that year so we didn't feel so bad. Besides, with how much money we've saved on cable/satellite, it's paid for itself.

There are a few great things about the Apple TV. One is, you have to download every show you're going to watch. This means that you watch nothing without purpose. While it used to be easy to just flip on the TV for one show and then get sucked into hour after hour of mindlessness, you get to decide if it's worth th $1.99 to watch 20/20 or not.

Another great thing about it is the pictures. It takes the pictures from your computer and puts it up on the screen as a slide show. You can play music from your music library and have an ongoing slideshow of your family's trip to the Grand Canyon. This feature really is what our TV is primarily used for these days.

2. DVDs
If it's a rainy day and there's no way to go outside, we can break out the DVDs. They're cheaper than ever, if you know where to shop, and easy to get via renting through the mail. We buy DVDs of old cartoons that we enjoyed, though we're frequently surprised by the violence (Popeye never beats a guy up the same way twice!). But they are commercial-free and don't have nearly as many product tie-ins as so many of today's cartoons.

3. Hikes
If the weather is nice, there's nothing like them. True, if you get home from work late, it's not going to be a great option for you. But on the weekend or another day-off, there's not a cheaper or more engaging way to pass the time. When we started hiking, we had to carry both of our kids on our stomachs or backs in order to cover any ground at all. Now they usually lead us down the path. If you take a packed lunch, you can spend the whole day. And the days out hiking are long, beautiful, and happy ones.

If you're not sure where to hike, the 50 Hikes series has helped us out a lot. So has the 60 Hikes series. What the heck, knock it up to the 100 Hikes series if you're worried about getting your money's worth. And the American Hiking Society has lots of free info on finding hikes, too.

4. Gardening
Kids can get very involved in this activity. So can dads. It can be a lot of fun to search out the kinds of things you can grow in your yard and go for it. If you don't have space yourself, you can try and search out community gardens. Also, there are plenty of books that have very creative gardening suggestions just for outdoor play, such as Rickard Louv's The Last Child in the Woods.

5. Go to the Zoo
Again, you may need more than just the few hours after work for this one, but it's worth it. One of the worst things about TV is that it is all made up of second-hand experiences. Children learn much better through first-hand experience. I used to be on the fence about zoos because of animal rights. And while I still hate to see them caged, I've visted a number of rescue zoos and have seen the good of what zoos are doing. Plus, a show about an elephant can get my daughters watching for maybe five or ten minutes. Watching the baby elephant at the Houston zoo can be an all-day engaging activity.

6. Go to a Museum
We bought a family membership to the Museum of Natural Science. It was well worth the money.

7. Go to a Bookstore
I love libraries, don't get me wrong. But sometimes they're not the best places in the world for kids my kids' ages. A one and three year old are honestly just a little too loud for most libraries. On a rainy day, heading out to the big-chain bookstore is just what they need. Often these stores have things out to be played with and "stages" where the kids like to "dance." The problem with them is that products are often placed in very kid-accessible places that aren't books. They look like books, but they're really electronic toys. I work very hard to teach my children that there is a difference between toys and books. Many times they need my help in picking out a suitible book. But you know what? They need help with a lot of decisions, like what to eat for dinner, so don't feel bad telling them that you don't want to read them the Elmo book.

I also feel like I need to give a shout-out to the bookstore with the best ever kid's section, BookPeople in Austin. They have great books, puppets, and readings.

8. Make Cookies
Cookies are pretty easy and fast to make. It's engaging for my kids and promises a pretty nice reward at the end. I've also had a good deal of luck with them helping to make biscuits and bread. Of course, they have taught me that biscuits are better with chocolate chips in them. They're right.

There are lots of great recipies in the book The Art of Simple Foods by Alice Waters.

9. Pick up a guitar
Or other instrument. It depends on how old your kids are, but if they are old enough, you can learn an instrument with your child. I play 12 instruments with varying degrees of success. I've taught myself 11 of those. You can pick up an instrument for yourself and one for your child used or on Ebay and a book won't cost you much more. My daughters can't play yet, but they love to sing along with the guitar or banjo. And, honestly, if you've never played before, in one afternoon you'll be able to wow any toddler with your skills. You have plenty of time to get better.

10. Games
This is a no-brainer, I guess, but we often over look it. My girls are almost old enough for very simple board games, but they're not there yet. I'm telling you, though, you wouldn't believe how much fun they have with hide-and-seek. Remember that many of these games, board or otherwise, are very new to your kids. Watching them have fun is worth standing behind a shower curtain for a few minutes while they look for you.

Naturally, there are about a million more things you can do. Keep an eye out for more alternatives to conventional TV. Though many of these things take more effort than the sitting in front of the tube routine, you'll find that they're many times more rewarding. Plus, without TV, your days will spread out before you like a landscape; you'll wonder why you've thrown so many hours away.

Giving Up TV

Do you watch your kid’s shows with them? That Dora really freaks me out. Honestly, my girls only got in one or two episodes of Dora before we got rid of our TV service and relegated it to monitor status. Honestly, since getting rid of TV—at least in the conventional sense—we’ve never been happier. Heck, we even try talking to each other once in a while.

That freaky little girl Dora really gets under my skin. Some characters in kid’s shows are made out of a creative or artistic vision. But Dora and many of her compatriots are made by marketers for marketing reasons. She appeals to a very broad market because she is fashioned to reach across racial and ethnic barriers. Surely there’s nothing wrong with that by itself. What’s wrong with that picture is that under the guise of multiculturalism, she’s really preaching homogenization; her all-powerful ubiquity is bringing hours of common experience into millions of homes every day.

She’s nice. She’s sweet. But the girl doesn’t blink. Not at all. Not even once. Watch an episode and check it out. Her bright little eyes stare out at you unforgivingly. She begs your child’s attention not only through the use of hypnotic eyes, but by screaming every word she says. The pitch of her voice is specially designed to keep your kids attention. And that’s what we want when we sit our kids down in front of the TV, right? We want them to be absorbed.

Dora is one of the new characters of children’s TV. Forged by the sterile minds of marketing psychologists, she’s designed to be loved by children. Her brother, or cousin or whoever Diego is, is the same way, but with a slightly more, well, boy slant. Everything from how she looks to how she talks, to the colors used in the show are researched and computed. She’s not meant to just be a passing character during Saturday morning cartoons, she’s specially engineered to stay with your kids in their minds, to occupy space, like any good commercial jingle.

You may point out that there are no commercials during a Dora episode. This is true. Except that Dora is a 30-minute commercial for all things Dora. If you do a quick product search of Dora on Amazon, here are the places you’ll find Dora products: Toys and game; books; home and garden; apparel; sports and outdoors; baby; health and personal care; office products; VHS; DVD; electronics; home improvement; software; jewelry and watches; gourmet food; music; beauty; grocery; and, amazingly automotive. I don’t think that Amazon has any departments absent her presence.

Taking kids to the store is a tough job. We do our shopping on the weekends most of the time. And, usually, I try to take the kids by myself in order to give my wife—who is primarily a stay-at-home mom—a little bit of alone time. Wrestling the girls through the aisle can be a pleasure or a burden, depending on any number of a myriad of factors. But I have experienced the same things that many of you have—the power of nagging. Researchers have found that nagging is responsible for 40% of purchases related to children. And every single section of the stores that I frequent has something branded by Dora. I can’t imagine facing the already-hostile isles of Wal-Mart or Target (two stores we’re trying to cut back on) with my girls begging for Dora apples and Dora car mats. It’s hard enough when they want you to buy things that they actually want, without throwing in things that they’ve been told they want.

Last Spring, my wife clued me in to National Turn Off Your TV Week. I was skeptical at first, but we gave it a shot. Within a few days of not having the TV on, we got bored. It was raining outside. The urge to turn that thing on was amazing. But that afternoon, after painting, playing with clay, and introducing the toddlers to hide-and-seek, it was obvious that the boredom had done its job—it had forced us to become creative. The next day there was still rain, and we found an indoor bounce-house playground that is half-priced on Tuesdays. I’d never been in a bounce house before, but it was great. When the weather cleared up, we found hikes near our house and then made plans to go camping that weekend.

I called the satellite network and cancelled our subscription to their service the next week. The salesman tried to get a hold on what I was saying. “You mean, you’re getting rid of your TV?”

“Well,” I said. “Not physically. I mean, we will still watch movies once in a while, I suppose.”

“I can upgrade your package at no cost for three months.”

“No, thank you,” I said. “We don’t want your service.”

“You’ll have nine movie channels at no charge for three months.”

“I’d rather not have any channels at no charge. We’re getting rid of TV.”

Still, my students don’t believe me. It’s been 10 months since I’ve seen a commercial. It’s been 10 months since I’ve seen Fox News. It’s been 10 wonderfully quiet months. And we've found lots of alternatives.

There are other benefits, too. When Christmas rolled around, all the little girls in our neighborhood had elaborate plans for what they wanted. All 2-5 years old, they wanted Polly Pocket, Bratz, and Barbie. They knew how to ask for every single product by name. When I asked my daughters what they wanted for Christmas, Solstice looked up at me and said, “Umm, presents.” When I asked what kind of present, she answered, “A blue one. With a bow.”

There is a little more asked of a father who decides to give up TV. There are no games to watch, no late-night talk shows, no easy way out of parenting for the day. But what we gain by making the decision is the reward of creativity, fresh air, and the knowledge that your kid doesn’t have to compete with noise and hypnotic stares to make their own decisions.

Related:
Not Willing to Give Up TV? 10 Ways to Tame it.
10 Alternatives to Conventional TV
Marketing TV to Children

Articles by Subject

Fathering
On Being a New Dad
The Breastfeeding Father
In Defense of Fatherhood
Putting Family First
10 Rules for being a role Model
Communicating with your Spouse
Education vs. Schooling (On Steve-Olson.com)
Baby Wearing
The Power of Language in Childhood
The Sex Talk
Potty Training
Activities for a Rainy Day
Changes
Imagination and Curiosity
Should Bookstores be Socially Responsible?
Is Bedtime Badtime?
Camping with Children
Father's Day
Traveling with Kids

Consumerism
Giving Up TV
10 Altertatives to Conventional TV
20 Great Books to get you Reading
Not Willing to Give Up TV? Tame it
9 Ways to be more Productive
Marketing TV to Children
Should Bookstores be Socially Responsible?
One Year without TV
Why I hate Hannah Montana

Communicating with Family
Putting Family First
5 Reasons to Simplify your Life
Valentines Day
Communicating with your Spouse
The Power of Language in Childhood
The Sex Talk
Potty Training
Activities for a Rainy Day
Changes
Imagination and Curiosity
Is Bedtime Badtime?
Camping with Children
Traveling with Kids

Education
Hostile Educational Climate of Testing
Education vs. Schooling (On Steve-Olson.com)

Simplifying
5 Reasons to Simplify your Life
10 Rules for being a role Model
5 Quotes to Live By
9 Ways to be more Productive
Activities for a Rainy Day

Living Mindfully
Communicating with your Spouse
Education vs. Schooling (On Steve-Olson.com)
10 Ways to Claim Your Day
20 Great Books to get you Reading
5 Keys to Mindful Behavior
5 Quotes to Live By
The Power of Language in Childhood
9 Ways to be more Productive
Activities for a Rainy Day
Changes
Should Bookstores be Socially Responsible?
Why I hate Hannah Montana