Dad's House » parenting

Cool Parent Points

dadshouse — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 11:37:51 +0000

Cool Parent points.

If you’re a parent, you know what those are.

You earn them when your kids don’t think you’re a nerd, geek, or life-ruining jerk.

i.e., you do something cool.

Seems a few parents in the parenting blogosphere have been scoring cool parent points lately, moi included.

Put on your sunglasses and look way cool as you head over to the Silicon Valley Moms Blog and read about:

More Cool Parent Points Scored

(If that pre-programmed link doesn’t work, you can head straight to SV Moms.)

How cool is that?

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My Sexy Daughter

dadshouse — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 11:33:31 +0000

My teen daughter is a good girl. She gets good grades, participates in sports, helps around the house when I ask her (er… make that, she helps around the house when I give her gas money for her truck!)

So when one of the Hot Moms asked at the Hot Dads blog why it’s okay for men to check out sexy women, yet not let their daughters wear what they want, because isn’t that a double standard? – I reacted!

My daughter is a girl, not a woman. When girls like Miley Cyrus pose nude in bed, with messed up hair that makes her look like she just had sex, I’m disappointed. Fifteen is too young for displays like that. I don’t want my daughter being sexy just yet.

But as a single dad on the dating scene, I have to admit, I do like me a sexy woman. Someone smart, caring, kind, attractive, and compassionate, too. There’s more to a person than their looks and sex appeal. But sexy is definitely an element that turns my head.

I don’t see a double standard in that. Girls are not women. And while my daughter is beautiful, she’s not sexy.

Yet.

As a dad, I hope my daughter meets a great guy some day. I hope she settles down, gets married, has kids, etc. And I assume for her to attract a great guy, she will at some point have to be sexy. Just as he’ll have to be a stud. (And he’ll be smart, caring, kind, etc. – whatever she’s looking for in a man.)

How will I feel when my daughter turns on the sexiness? I certainly won’t start calling her hot. No creepy dad thoughts or remarks from me.

But I do hope she embraces every aspect of being a woman. And part of that femininity is being sexy.

Now then, where’s the Hot Daughters blog… just kidding!!

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Sorry My Son Kicked Your Son’s Ass

dadshouse — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 11:30:09 +0000

It’s wrestling season in the middle school, and I watched a meet last night. My teen son quickly pinned his opponent. So fast, in fact, he looked up at the ref, wondering when the call would come. That one moment of lost focus was all it took for his opponent to waggle free – for a second. My son pinned him again, and this time the ref called it. I think the entire match took less than a minute.

A little while later, I was chatting with a mom who had a boy on the team. She had only been to one other match – one last year where a boy broke his arm in the first few minutes of the wrestling meet. I was there too – it was excruciating for us parents to watch. I can’t imagine the pain that boy was in.

Anyway, the match last night is the first one the mom had attended since that broken arm. Finally it was her son’s turn to wrestle.

Her boy is big and strong, and a woman near us gasped.

“Is that your son?” the gasping woman from the other team asked.
“Yes,” the mom on my team said. “Is that your son going up against him?”

The other woman nodded, and put a hand to her mouth. Clearly, she didn’t like her son’s odds.

Keep in mind, these boys wrestle in a weight class, so they weighed pretty much the same. But the boy from my son’s team was all muscle, lean, strong, ripped abs, broad shoulders. The other boy was out of shape.

To keep things clear, let’s call the strong boy from my son’s team Hulk, and the other boy Wimpy.

The ref started the match. Hulk picked Wimpy up and threw him to the mat. (No, this isn’t WWF. It was a legal throw.) Wimpy’s mom gasped loudly.

Hulk’s mom turned and said “Oh, I’m sorry. I hope my son didn’t hurt your boy.”

If there’s a more polite way to say, “sorry my son just kicked your son’s ass,” I don’t know it.

Photo by emdot, some rights reserved.

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Halloween is Great for Adults!

dadshouse — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 10:30:54 +0000

Halloween is great for adults!

Anyone can see that from this pic. I mean, how often do you actually want police presence at a party?

Only when it’s a sexy cop!

Today, Dad’s House rides a witches broom over to the Silicon Valley Moms Blog with a fun post about adults and Halloween.

Halloween is Great for Adults

Then come on back and I’ll cuff you.

Or if you’re dress liked this sexy cop, you can cuff me.

Photo by pena2, some rights reserved.

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How to Cheat at the Kissie Game

dadshouse — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 10:03:05 +0000

Some nights my kids and I play a kissie game when they go to bed. They crawl into bed. I’m supposed to kiss them on each cheek. (Yes, they’re both teens. You’d think they would have tired of this game a decade ago. But no, they still love it.)

They squirrel their bodies like crazy, cover their cheeks with a pillow or their hands, burrow down under the covers, whatever! But somehow, I always manage to kiss both cheeks.

How do I do it? I cheat.

I either use my nearly 200 pounds of manly strength to pin them down. Or I pretend my glasses got knocked off my face. Or I fake injury. Or I tickle them. Whatever it takes.

Hey, it’s not like there are rules about how I’m supposed to kiss them or not. The only rule is that I kiss both cheeks. I do that every time we play.

I guess you could say if there aren’t written rules, I’m not really cheating. But the point is I do whatever it takes to accomplish my goal. I’m thinking there’s a decent life lesson in there to teach them.

Of course, I’m too busy gloating as the victor to remember to bring it up.

To paraphrase Julius Caesar: Vini. Baci. Vici.

Or in my case, Baci. Vici. Arrivaderci.

I kiss. I win. Goodnight.

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Teen Daughter – Curfew, Shmurfew

dadshouse — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:07:22 +0000

My teenage daughter has her driver’s license, her own (used) truck, her own cell phone, and her own set of friends. In other words, I’m starting to not see her much lately. She’ll take off on a weekend afternoon to hang out, or engage in Nerf-gun wars. She’ll take off on a weeknight to study with friends.

I’m suddenly having to set and enforce curfews.

She’s nearly an adult, and she’ll be heading to college in a year, so I’m trying to give her as much curfew freedom as possible. With freedom comes responsibility, right? And what better time to learn responsibility than when you’re living at home with a parent to guide you.

On a recent Saturday night when my daughter was out with friends, she texted me an hour before her midnight curfew: can I stay till 1?

I texted back: where r u?

She texted that they were at a friend’s house, watching the Sound of Music on DVD.

A one hour extension seemed perfectly reasonable to me, especially since she’d given me decent warning. I asked who else was there. She told me – a mix of boys and girls, and the girl’s parents were home. I said fine, be home by 1am.

At 12:30am, she texted again: can I stay till 2?

WTF? When she texted the first time, she would have known what time the movie would end. I was guessing they were moving on to some other entertainment – Wii, or cards, or Craig Ferguson on TV.

I figured this was a teaching moment. Since she wasn’t giving me any compelling reason to push her curfew to 2am, I decided she could live with her first request.

I texted back: no.

Five minutes later my phone rang. (My daughter never calls me. She only texts)

“Hi, Mr. Mott,” a girls’ voice said. “This is your daughter’s friend Maxine.” (Name changed to protect the innocent.) “Can your daughter sleepover tonight?”

Huh? This was way beyond watching a DVD, or playing Wii. I mean, sleepovers are fun and all, and I’m fine with my daughter sleeping over at a girl’s house. But for me to be asked by my daughter’s friend? In the middle of the night? When I’d already been told there were boys?

“No,” I said. “Tell her to be home by one.”
“It’s just girls sleeping here,” the friend said.
“That’s great. One o’clock.”

Sometimes a dad has to be firm with his daughter.

Especially when he’s usually a pushover.

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Dog Days of Summer

dadshouse — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 10:00:48 +0000

It’s the dog days of summer, and plenty of kids are bored.

How’s a parent to cope?

Laze on over to the Silicon Valley Moms Blog today, and cool your heels reading about:

Dog Days of Summer – And We Don’t Have a Dog

A hair of the dog that bit me will do you some good.

Woof.

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