“But my teacher will get mad at me!” he said through hiccupping sobs. “She will have to give me zeros!” “Are you afraid of your teacher? Or are you afraid you’re not going to learn the stuff you need to?” I asked softly. “Both!” he wailed. READ MORE: The Fatherly Guide to Homework My wife and I exchanged concerned glances. This is not at all the reaction we’d expected. This is not at all the reaction we had hoped for or anticipated....

As I write this I am using my asleep 2.5-year-old’s butt as a pillow, so yeah, I sympathize with your plight. In a perfect world, bed-sharing would follow the same rule as breastfeeding: You know they’re old enough to stop doing it when they’re old enough to start asking for it. Unfortunately, we don’t live in a perfect world, and once you’ve started sleeping in the same bed as your kid — which, I should probably note here, should be after your child is older than 12 months, as bed sharing with an infant younger than that has been linked to a significantly higher risk of SIDS — it’s really, really hard to stop....

READ MORE: The Fatherly Guide to Sleep “The biggest myth of all is that there is only one right way to sleep train your child,” says pediatric sleep specialist Rebecca Kempton, M.D., founder of Baby Sleep Pro. “Every child is unique, and most parents end up using a combination of methods to match a child’s needs and temperament.” Read on for other common sleep training myths, busted. Myth #1: Crying It Out Is Damaging Can crying it out damager childhood development?...

The LEGO Education/NASA lessons can be adapted for both at-home and in-class learning and are meant to encourage kids to work together to solve out-of-this-world problems — just like the NASA teams, they’re studying. Sessions will be grouped into three learning themes aligned with the mission: Getting to Space, Testing and Transport, and Working in Space, complemented with such interactive components as the LEGO Minifigures Kate and Kyle as members of the flight and ground crews involved in a typical NASA mission....

Although President Trump evoked the Defense Production Act via executive Order on Tuesday, ordering all meatpacking plants to stay open, according to legal officials, that order might not actually do that might and doesn’t legally compel meat and poultry producers to remain in production. But why is there a meat shortage? And will it affect your family? Here’s Why There’s A Meat Shortage Over the past few weeks, 4,400 meat and poultry workers across at least 80 meat production plants have fallen ill with COVID-19....

Sponge on the Run, the first-ever all CGI SpongeBob movie, finds Gary “snailnapped,” which prompts SpongeBob, Patrick and the gang to embark on a rescue mission and save their friend from the clutches of the powerful King Poseidon, who’s holding Gary captive in the Lost City of… Atlantic City. In addition to flashbacks exploring how SpongeBob met his pals, fans will hear all their familiar favorite voiceover actors, including Tom Kenny, Bill Fagerbakke, Rodger Bumpass, Clancy Brown, Mr....

1. I’ve learned to be flexible. Before kids, I blocked out my day, and life was predictable. I had a team meeting at 9, a touch base with my boss at 3 and a conference call with a client at 4. I knew being a parent at times would make life unpredictable. But dealing with it was different. Yes, I was going to have that meeting at 9, but the baby woke up with a fever and I had to be at the pediatrician’s office instead....

“I was delighted that this bill finally passed,” W.E. Hardman, president of the National Tooling and Machining Association, told Education Week at a press conference a few weeks later. “This law puts control over vocational education where it belongs — in the hands of people with jobs.” Hardman’s implication? Democratic structures were ill-suited to such control. Market leaders were in a better position to determine the value of specific taught skills in public schools....

Senator Joe Manchin was firmly against the plan’s inclusion due to costs, and he could sink the entire package. Today, Democrats unexpectedly reinserted a federal paid family leave guarantee back into the Build Back Better Act less than a week after it was excluded from the White House framework for the bill going forward. Here’s what parents (and parents-to-be) need to know about the latest developments in this exhausting saga… and if it means that paid family leave could, once again, be a possibility for working parents....

In Show Dogs, Max, a New York police dog voiced by Ludacris, teams up with an FBI agent named Frank to stop an animal smuggling operation that is operating behind the scenes at a dog show in Las Vegas. To shut it down, Max has to enter the show. And as part of his preparation, Frank grabs Max’s genitals, which causes Max to freak out. The already bizarre and problematic plotline somehow takes an even darker turn later in the film when another dog tells Max to “go to your happy place” when the judges are fondling his genitals and notes that “inspection of the private parts is the hardest part of being a show dog....

In a new study, based on questionnaires given to 549 parents with at least two children aged 5 to 18, researchers found that using screen time as a means of relaxation is tied to poor parenting, and that parents who were experiencing more psychological stress tended to use screens more often, especially to unwind. Poor parenting included behavior such as only sometimes enforcing rules depending on your mood, yelling at your child, nagging them about little things, and saying mean things to make your child feel bad....

“We didn’t have a lot growing up as kids, and now that I’m a parent, my mom is my absolute hero knowing that she was able to feed and clothe and take care of all of us without losing her absolute sanity,’ Abdoo says. Now the Executive Chef and Partner of Pig Beach BBQ in New York City and proud father of a preschooler, Abdoo has incorporated popcorn into professional and family life....

But they can’t. Social isolation and playdates just don’t mix. If the idea hasn’t sunk in yet, it must. A few playdates here and there amount to a massive amount of contact with people, places, and things that could all be carrying COVID-19. It’s basic math, and the odds are not in the favor of humans. But loneliness and boredom crush rational thinking. Seeing people isn’t rational, it is instinctual....

And I don’t mean a couple of minutes. I mean half an hour. My daughter was born in downtown Manhattan and would proudly tell you so, but she’d be the first to admit that New England has its advantages. Yards are chief among them. We’ve got two, front and back, and they’ve been a revelation for both her and me. In New York, I’d run for cover the second a drop of water touched my nose....

RELATED: Qube Tents Connect To Make A Giant Camping Fortress The 3.8-meter diameter POD Tent Mini sleeps four, while the 5-meter POD Tent Maxi sleeps eight. Both can stand alone or connect with separately purchased tunnels to create a compound of sleeping and socializing quarters. There’s even an optional sleeping cell that assembles inside the Maxi for added peace and tranquility as you camp out under nature’s peace and tranquility....

Fortunately, Dr. Anish Sheth has seen it all. A gastroenterologist who, we kid you not, goes by the nickname “Dr. Stool”, Sheth has just released his new book The Complete What’s Your Poo Telling You. It’s an exhaustive guide to what comes out of the human butt, and while it may not be the poop guide we deserve, it’s surely the poop guide that we need. Fatherly spoke with Dr....

Railbiking is a growing activity in the U.S. and abroad where riders pedal open-air carts along unused train tracks. Evolved from a 19th-century German rail vehicle, the draisine, railbikes are recumbent surrey bikes with four wheels that slot onto tracks and are spaced for the railroad gauge beneath the carriage. Since rail bikes are powered by foot pedals, a family of up to four can accelerate to speeds up to 15+ mph and slow down with the easy use of a handbrake....

For the past several seasons, youth sports officials have been dealing with a lot of chaos. According to Business Insider, officials have been struggling with finding referees and umpires to cover all the games. The pandemic simply escalated an existing issue, and now there’s a shortage without a quick fix. “There were so many referees quitting at an alarming rate before corona,” Brian Barlow, a soccer referee who has been working the job for 14 years said....

Up next is Guy Raz, host of NPR’s TED Radio Hour — the show that combines TED‘s world-changing thinkers with Raz’s signature enthusiasm to make commuting less miserable nationwide. Most know Raz as the former voice of All Things Considered. Your kid may know him for his Breakfast Blast Newscast on Sirius Radio. His sons’ friends know him as “Coach” this time of year. Despite his many hats, Raz would walk away from his award-winning career if that’s what it took to be home at a reasonable hour to cook, lip-sync MC hammer, and wrestle with his (remarkably well-read) 4 and 6-year-old sons....

RELATED: The Best Kids Camping Gear For First-Time Campers Another in the recent wave of coolers that do more than chill drinks, Ryobi’s aptly-named 18-volt Cooling Cooler is a battery powered ice box that pumps frigid air into your tent. Now, it doesn’t have a built-in A/C. What it does have is a ventilation system that blows air from the cooler out. Considering there’s already ice in the cooler, the setup makes perfect sense....