John Canemaker, an animation historian and professor at New York University, recently explained to Vox that animation wasn’t always a perfect Pixar science. No, drawing cartoons was painstaking and often required animators to come up with creative hacks to save time. One example: drawing characters with rounded features instead of angular ones. But there was a problem with this “rubber hose and circle aesthetic,” and it wasn’t just that it sounded unintendedly sexual....

“There’s a lot of things that get put on the market that we know are dangerous and we know will make car seats work less effectively, but they still get marketed and they still get sold,” says Dr. Benjamin Hoffman, chair of the American Academy of Pediatrics Council on Injury, Violence and Poison Prevention. “The priorities are not around the demonstration of safety and efficacy, the priorities around getting things out into the market, and then waiting and waiting to see what happens....

In other words, it’s a dramatic departure from the status quo for working- and middle-class parents. Here’s what you need to know. How big is the new tax credit? The tax credit is $3,600 for each kid under six years old and $3,000 for each kid aged six to 17. There is no known limit to the number of kids that can benefit from the package. How will the money be disbursed?...

But, even those on board with open relationships can have a hard time figuring out how to execute them. How do you bring it up? What open-marriage rules do you discuss? What are some missteps to avoid? Here, John*, who lives in Arizona and has had an open marriage for about six months, talks about how the arrangement came to be and how he, his wife, and his partner make things work....

My son was always good at completing and doing his homework. He’s a really hard worker. But he always struggled with spelling. When we went to the parent teacher conferences, the teacher made a comment that he was doing really well in all of his subjects, but he was failing within that area. When we spoke to him about it, he got really emotional. He said he’d actually been getting in trouble with the teacher because he wasn’t doing well....

In Alaska, North Dakota, Montana, Mississippi, and Wyoming, you could be paying as much as $16 per hour for an evening to yourself, according to average salary data collected by Indeed.com. Maybe it’s because these low-populous states have a supply issue? Or maybe parents here are just willing to pay more to get out of Dodge (actually, Kansas is one of the cheaper states) If you live in Texas, Georgia, or Ohio, however, you’re in luck....

School days elsewhere in the world are in fact radically different from our own. Each country has its own specific rituals and educational norms, and beneath those lie foundational assumptions about the value and purpose of education, parental involvement, the balance of responsibilities in a child’s life, and childhood itself. Only by looking at what school days look like in other countries can we get perspective on how our kids’ school days stack up....

“I hear many parents talk about missing out on the moment. They describe it feeling like their children grow up in the blink of an eye,” Klow says. “This suggests not having fully taken in the moments over the years as they were occurring. One significant downside of not being present is that life can pass us by.” The idea of being present or mindful derives from Buddhist practice and was first brought to the U....

Why You Should Make a Children’s Vaccination Plan Now Unlike adults, children require special consideration when getting vaccines, explains Dr. Kenneth Alexander, chief of infectious diseases at Nemours Children’s Hospital. “The thing that parents have to keep in mind is that the FDA is asking that COVID vaccines be given two weeks before any vaccine and two weeks after,” he says. Those guidelines present a potential for serious disruptions in a child’s standard vaccine schedule....

Ask Dr. Laura Markham, author of Peaceful Parent, Happy Kids, if grounding works and she’ll answer with a leading question of her own: “How did it work for you?” Savvy fathers and mothers tend to respond by observing that grounding doesn’t necessarily change children’s behavior, but does tend to change how they feel about the “fairness” of their guardians. Markham finds the universality of this response pretty compelling because it speaks to what parents want when they pass a judgment and what they can do to assure that outcome....

You’re not married, and you just found out your girlfriend is pregnant ⏤ what’s the “right” thing to do? That’s exactly the question I was confronted with a few years back. I had been dating a wonderful young lady from a traditional family for about nine months. Her mother was a Methodist pastor, and her father worked in agriculture ⏤ a real salt-of-the-earth type guy. I’m sure they never suspected that their daughter would get pregnant out of wedlock, and there’s an expectation when you’re expecting… to get married fast....

There’s also this: It’s fun. For kids, backyard camping offers relief from overstimulation (all that screen time) and an opportunity to experience night, which is a distant country for those with bedtimes, in a brand new way. That said, for backyard camping to work, it’s important to set some ground rules. So Fatherly asked Cody Lundin, founder of the Aboriginal Living Skills School, and Todd Christopher, an environmentalist, writer, and educator who runs the Green Hour campaign which aims to get kids outside regularly, to do just that....

Alan Kazdin, Ph.D., a renowned professor of psychology and child psychiatry and head of the Yale Parenting Center, has spent years developing methods for encouraging creative play and discouraging inattention. “Play and imagination, playing pretend, playing with voices — at a certain age, that’s a very normal part of development,” Kazdin explains. “It’s critical for kid’s development.” When and How Should Parents Model Imagination for Kids? According to Kazdin, there’s no “right” age to start modeling imagination and creative play....

Family rules are a good way to help your kids learn how to behave, but they’re so much more than tools to promote obedience, says psychiatrist and couples therapist Kathryn Ford, MD. For one thing, rules are an important way to convey your personal values to your kids. “The guidelines you set up for your family are a way to help your kids understand what you believe and how to implement those values,” she says....

“The holidays bring out the worst in people,” says Lisa Helfend Meyer, a Certified Specialist in Family Law and founding partner of Los Angeles-based Meyer, Olson, Lowy and Meyers. “Everyone has such high expectations that are usually unrealistic and usually go unfulfilled.” While it may sound like some sort of Hallmark-ian movie manipulation, the key to making it through the holidays is to put aside petty squabbles and make simple gestures that embrace the generous spirit of the season....

That’s according Chris Cole, a 3-time X Games champion and 2-time Thrasher Magazine Skater Of The Year who’s been pro for so long, he managed to have 2 kids in the process. He’s taught dozens of kids the basics, which is really all you need to do, because once they’re comfortable cruising, you’ll never catch them anyway. Age Is Just A Number When it comes to skating, start early and exercise common sense....

RELATED: The Best High-Tech Baby Gear For Your Nursery If your living situation includes a lot of shared walls, it’s possible your neighbors are less excited about the new arrival of that adorable little Bukowski than you and your partner. While you may selfishly want to keep the kid from hearing the great battles of Westeros, Kramer across the hall is also within crying distance, and he wants serenity now....

“Men characteristically present less of an emotional spectrum than women,” says Kevon Owen, an outpatient psychotherapist based in Oklahoma. “Anxiety looks like being grumpy, being grumpy looks like being grumpy, being overwhelmed looks like being grumpy, confusion, frustration, hunger go on and on they all look the same.” The best way to come to terms with being grumpy, per Owen, is to better identify what is going on. Are you overworked?...

My kid rocks. She’s a smart second-grader who loves to read and play and all that stuff. She loves us. She tells us that every night. Here’s the thing: She’s a total space case. She can’t do ANYTHING without my wife and I telling her to do it a half dozen times. So every day, I tell her to get her socks and shoes on, eat breakfast, brush her teeth....

READ MORE: The Fatherly Guide to Divorce and Kids Prepare Kids For Divorce By Working Together, Even When It’s Difficult “Even after you get to the point where you know you’re divorcing, you still have to parent together,” explains child psychologist Dr. Scott Carroll, author of Don’t Settle: How to Marry the Man You Were Meant For. “You’ve got to work together as parents even though you’re not together as a couple and that can be profoundly difficult....