Don't and Do Not - there is a difference!

Don't and Do Not - there is a difference!

I saw a study that the human subconscious can not understand the word "don't".

Which is why whenever you tell someone "don't" do something they do it anyhow.

"Don't slam the door" all the other person brain hears and computes is "slam the door".

"Don't lie to me" they hear "lie to me".

"Don't throw rocks at your brother" they hear "throw rocks at your brother".

Say "Do Not" and they will stop the action instantly.

Try it - it will work.

I use it all the time with my 2 yr old and it works.

If I say "Don't" he continues, if I say "Do Not" he stops.

Hope it helps.

Have you been there yet?

Going to the zoo!

We went to Lincoln Park Zoo in beautiful downtown Chicago.

What is funny is what a 2 1/2 yr old is really interested in.


There he was 2" (thru the thick glass) from a full grown ape and he only gives a glance.

Out of all the animals we saw he talked about a bug birds nest we saw.

Just found it funny and proves that we have to stay on their level when we are playing with and entertain a toddler.

He did say he had a "fun day today" later that night.

New Parks

My son loves exploring new parks around our home, and really what child wouldn't. Even though they are small they get bored with the same old same old park all the time.

I've been thinking of making a park map website for my area with Google directions and ratings then sell some ad space to pay for it.

Daunting Task for Mr. Mom: Get a Job

by Sue Shellenbarger
Wednesday, May 19, 2010

provided by

Outnumbered and Often Isolated, At-Home Dads Face an Extra-Hard Slog Back Into the Work Force

Much has been written about the challenges awaiting at-home mothers who decide to return to work. Few of them, though, have a tougher time of it than the stay-at-home dad.

More from WSJ.com: • Tips for At-Home Dads Heading Back to Work • What's Your Net Worth? • Speeding College to Save $10,000

Compared with at-home moms, who outnumber them by more than 5 to 1, at-home dads face a bigger stigma among would-be employers, and they often have fewer opportunities to network from home. Also, they are returning to a labor market where men have suffered major setbacks; heavy job losses in male-dominated industries and middle management have led pundits to label the latest downturn the "he-cession."

A record 7.4% of fathers in married-couple families with children under 18 were home in 2009 while their wives worked, based on unpublished Bureau of Labor Statistics data set for release next week. That is up two percentage points from 2008 and the highest on record, says Sandra Hofferth, a University of Maryland family-science professor and researcher on family time use.

At-home dads who succeed in landing jobs often have to go to extreme lengths to do so. Morgan Attwood was at home full time during the workweek for two years after the birth of his son. He kept a hand in his career field by working weekend hours that no one else wanted. The Columbia, S.C., photojournalist reported for one or two Friday, Saturday or Sunday night shifts each week at a TV station while his wife, a college professor, was home with their son.

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Giving up weekends "destroyed our social life, and that was kind of a bummer," he says. But staffing at the station was so light on weekend nights that he had a chance to learn every job there. The payoff came last January, when the station hired him full time as a producer.

David Hallowes is taking another tack—acquiring new credentials. The Salem, Mass., father intended to go back to work 2 1/2 years ago but found it far harder than he expected. A former operations manager and controller who quit his job four years ago to care for his newborn daughter, he spent a year seeking work in 2007 and 2008 but had trouble getting interviewers to focus on his job skills.

"I'd be there with a resumé with almost 12 years of professional experience, and I wanted to talk about what I could bring to the job. But instead, I'd spend the hour talking about what it was like to be a stay-at-home father," he says. Career coaches advise being ready with a quick, confident explanation of why you decided to stay home, then shifting the focus immediately to your suitability for the job.

The rejections were dispiriting, Mr. Hallowes says. Many men quit trying at this stage and join the ranks of discouraged workers. Mr. Hallowes delights in his daughter's growth, and in the close bond he has with her, but his desire to return to work has become a passion, he says. He enrolled in grad school full time last year, taking evening and weekend classes while caring for his daughter in the day. He recently earned a master's degree in investment management and will soon take a professional exam for financial analysts. Now that "we're in a new economy, where the ranks of stay-at-home dads have almost doubled," Mr. Hallowes says, he hopes the stigma on at-home dads will ease. The challenges and self-reflection of the past 2 1/2 years will make him a stronger manager, he says.

"It's doubtful you will find anyone who is as hungry as I am to return to work," he says.

Feeling like a curiosity, or a circus sideshow act, as some men describe it, is a pitfall that trips up many job-seeking dads. Dennis Findley, a McLean, Va., architect, says he learned during his 11 years at home with his twin sons to sidestep the problem by keeping everyone he met focused on the fact that he was an architect.

"At a cocktail party, the conversation turns to, 'What do you do?' Someone says, 'I'm a lawyer, what do you do?' If you say, 'I'm a stay-at-home dad,' the conversation ends. What are other men going to talk about with you? 'Do you like Velcro on your diapers?'" he says. Instead, he always answered, "I'm an architect."

Mr. Findley also held to the principle that no networking opportunity is too small, and during his years at home he seized every chance to meet people, from community projects to manufacturers' seminars. These tactics helped him build a residential architecture practice from home and aided his eventual return to work at an architectural firm in 2006.

In another lesson, Ira Montague says he learned not to mention "stay-at-home dad" on his resumé. A former creative director for an ad agency, the Wayland, Mass., father has been home with his adopted daughter, now 4 years old, for three years, and looking for work for about half that time.

At first, he proudly put his fathering role on his resume. "I thought it could be an asset," Mr. Montague says. But like Mr. Hallowes, he found interviews "went off on tangents, talking about how lucky I had been and what a great experience I had," he says. "I would leave thinking I had made good connections" but then would hear nothing. His resumé now lists only his professional experience; he mentions his time at home with his daughter in cover letters.

Dads sometimes organize networks of their own to ease the isolation they face in neighborhoods populated during the day by at-home moms; those can also double as back-to-work networks. Mr. Montague set up an informal work-finding group with a half-dozen friends and former co-workers called "Creative Services"; members give each other referrals to free-lance and project work.

Recruiters say dads should consider full-time temp work, or even a career change, because many of the executive or middle-management jobs they had aren't coming back. Firms that have traditionally helped at-home mothers find flexible, temp or part-time work are seeing a rising tide of males. At MomCorps, an Atlanta staffing firm, men in its 45,000-worker database have risen to 10% from 5% five years ago, says chief executive Allison O'Kelly. Flexible Resources, a staffing firm in Stamford, Conn., has seen a doubling of male applicants in the past year to more than 100. Among hundreds of attendees at several career re-entry conferences held since 2008 by iRelaunch, of Newton, Mass., 5% to 10% were men, says Carol Fishman Cohen, an author and the firm's co-founder.

For some job-seeking dads, the toughest transition is the mental one. "We really have to hit this hard with men: We have to tell them to park their egos at the door," says Nadine Mockler, co-principal at Flexible Resources. "With men, their entire identity is in their work, and with women—not so much," she says. "They have to be willing to take off their big-company hat, roll up their sleeves and, if an employer wants them to go buy paper clips, they may have to do that."

Write to Sue Shellenbarger at sue.shellenbarger@wsj.com

It happened again

It happened again............. I get in the car by myself and drive for a few miles before I realize the Wiggles CD is playing!! It used to be RUSH - HELP ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Follow me on Twitter

Follow me on Twitter @GladtobeSAHD

Can anyone help me understand?

Can anyone help me understand?

Blues Clues - why can everything talk except Blue?

Disney - Why does Goofy wear clothes, stand upright and talk but Pluto is just a dog?

Dinosaur Train - Dinosaurs can build and operate a train but nothing else?

The Wiggles - Why were they allowed to be made? Really - I need 3 other guys to act like idiots with me and we'll make millions!

Curious George - The guy has no name and New York City where everyone is OK with a monkey walking around?

Anyone else or is it just me?

Stay-At-Home Dads Grapple With Going Back To Work

March 24, 2010

Kevin Folk's new job requires a lot of multitasking, effective time management, a calm demeanor and excellent diaper-bag packing skills.

Folk was laid off from the National Association of Home Builders last summer, shortly after the birth of his twin boy and girl. Instead of entrusting the babies to a babysitter while he looked for work, he decided to stay home — at least temporarily.

"It's so rewarding," he says. But Folk is starting to think about getting a job this summer. "I just had a phone interview last week, which is hard to do with kids," he says.

A Growing Number Of At-Home Dads

Even before the recession began, the number of stay-at-home dads was on the rise. According to the Census, in 2006 there were 159,000 fathers with working spouses who stayed at home to care for their families, up from 105,000 in 2002.

But that's only part of the picture, says Aaron Rochlen, an associate professor at the University of Texas at Austin. Rochlen, who studies gender roles and psychology, says many dads with working wives try to work part time or consider themselves "consultants." But many are, in fact, the primary caregivers to their children.

By that expanded definition, he says, there are about 2 million at-home dads. That number has also likely risen during the recession because about 70 percent of the lost jobs affected men.

Re-Entering The Workforce

At a play group for stay-at-home dads and their children in Arlington, Va., there are several fathers who found themselves sidelined from the workforce during the recession.

On one side of the room, Michael J. Madsen shows off baby photographs. Madsen just sent his notice giving up his part-time gig teaching commercial photography. When he re-enters the workforce, he says, he'll do so as a baby photographer.

Although Madsen is happy for now staying at home with his son, other dads in the play group say they've considered what it might be like to start working again after their hiatus from the office.

When Dave Cavey, his wife and their two daughters moved back from Abu Dhabi last summer, Cavey could not find a job. After a couple of months of paying more than $2,000 in child care while he engaged in a "fruitless" attempt to find a job, Cavey decided to pull the kids out of day care and stay home.

"I definitely don't miss looking for a job," he says. But he is concerned about letting his skills atrophy or putting a big gap between jobs on his resume. So he's running for a position on the board of his condo association, and he is volunteering for the National Park Service and the City of Alexandria, Va. "I'm trying to do things to pad my resume," he says.

Rami Cohen's architecture firm lost lots of business, so it furloughed employees to two days a week — then, temporarily, to no days a week. That left Cohen available to care for his 2-year-old daughter, Aviva, while his wife worked.

Cohen says he enjoys taking care of Aviva full time. When work picks up again, when the economy improves, he says he doesn't know how he'll feel about working full time, though he might not mind discussing things other than Sesame Street and snacks.

"There's something to be said about having a little bit of a breather," he says, referring to time spent in the office.

Full story at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125057317&ft=1&f=1001

Parent - Job Description

If it had been presented this way, I don't believe any of us would have done it!!!!

POSITION :

- Mom, Mommy, Mama, Ma
- Dad, Daddy, Dada, Pa, Pop

JOB DESCRIPTION :

- Long term, team players needed, for challenging, permanent work in anoften chaotic environment.
- Candidates must possess excellent communication and organizational skills and be willing to work variable hours, which will include evenings and weekends and frequent 24 hour shifts on call.
- Some overnight travel required, including trips to primitive camping sites on rainy weekends and endless sports tournaments in far away cities!
- Travel expenses not reimbursed.
- Extensive courier duties also required.

RESPONSIBILITIES :

- The rest of your life.
- Must be willing to be hated, at least temporarily, until someone needs $5.
- Must be willing to bite tongue repeatedly.
- Also, must possess the physical stamina of a pack muleand be able to go from zero to 60 mph in three seconds flat in case, this time, the screams from the backyard are not someone just crying wolf.
- Must be willing to face stimulating technical challenges, such as small gadget repair, mysteriously sluggish toilets and stuck zippers...
- Must screen phone calls, TV and Internet usage, maintain calendars and coordinate production of multiple homework projects.
- Must have ability to plan and organize social gatherings for clients of all ages and mental outlooks.
- Must be a willing to be indispensable one minute, an embarrassment the next.
- Must handle assembly and product safety testing of a half million cheap, plastic toys, and battery operated devices.
- Must always hope for the best but be prepared for the worst.
- Must assume final, complete accountability for the quality of the end product.
- Responsibilities also include floor maintenance and janitorial work throughout the facility.

POSSIBILITY FOR ADVANCEMENT & PROMOTION :

None.

- Your job is to remain in the same position for years, without complaining, constantly retraining and updating your skills, so that those in your charge can ultimately surpass you

PREVIOUS EXPERIENCE :

- None required unfortunately.
- On-the-job training offered on a continually exhausting basis.

WAGES AND COMPENSATION :

- Get this! You pay them!
- Offering frequent raises and bonuses.
- A balloon payment is due when they turn 18 because of the assumption that college will help them become financially independent.
- When you die, you give them whatever is left..
- The oddest thing about this reverse-salary scheme is that you actually enjoy it and wish you could only do more.

BENEFITS :

- While no health or dental insurance, no pension, no tuition reimbursement, no paid holidays and no stock options are offered; this job supplies limitless opportunities for personal growth, unconditional love, and free hugs and kisses for life if you play your cards right.



And people continue to apply for the job!

Stay At Home Dads 101 Tips

Good information:


Stay At Home Dads 101

* SAHD Survival Tip #1: Knowing your baby is your number one priority is the first step
* SAHD Survival Tip #2: Find a way for both you and the baby to get out of the house
* SAHD Survival Tip #3: Find a way to connect and talk with other dads
* SAHD Survival Tip #4: Make Mommy happy - clean up and pitch in around the house
* SAHD Survival Tip #5: Treasure this time with your child


SAHD Survival Tip #1: Knowing your baby is your number one priority is the first step

My wife and I knew several months before Tessa's birth that I would be staying-at-home with the baby. But being a SAHD wasn't going to be my only job. I have my own consulting business and worked from home even before Tessa's birth.

But as a stay-at-home dad, I knew my priorities would have to change. I had to learn to ignore the cell phone and the e-mail. I had to switch gears from being only a workingman to being a family man.

Putting Tessa first above everything else made our transition together much smoother. Tessa learned early that when she fussed or cried, I was there for her instead of trying to soothe her while sitting in front of a computer screen. Ultimately, by making Tessa my top priority, our bond has become strong and our time together has been very positive, and that has made me more confident as a father and SAHD.



SAHD Survival Tip #2: Find a way for both you and the baby to get out of the house

Take it from me, although my time with Tessa has been wonderful, our days together are long and can sometimes get boring. Before Tessa came along, I always thought babies slept about 20 hours a day. I was completely misinformed.

Tessa, who is apparently very similar to how I was as a baby, doesn't really nap. She knows when its nighttime and then she sleeps. When its daytime though, it's her time to explore her new world. On a good day, Tessa might nap one or two hours. An average day though is a 10 minute nap here, maybe 15 minutes there for two or three times at the most. I'm not joking.

This lack of napping makes for a long day. To help break up the day, Tessa and I took lots of little trips out. We went to the coffee shop and would sit and have a bottle. Walks were popular little trips as well. Whatever it is you enjoy doing, just bring along your baby. It gets her out into the world and interacting with people and gives you a break from the monotony of sitting at home.



SAHD Survival Tip #3: Find a way to connect and talk with other dads

This one is really important and might not be thought about by many new stay at home dads. Becoming a dad is a huge adjustment, let alone becoming a SAHD. Like I mentioned earlier, in the beginning I was a nervous wreck. I had so many doubts about myself, I felt like I was an awkward teenager all over again.

Fortunately, my best friend was a young dad as well. He also had a daughter. Although I didn't have the time now like I did before to hang out, I made time at least once a week to go visit my friend or go grab a bite to eat or beer with him. We spent many of those outings just talking about what it was like to be a dad. The more I was able to bounce things off my friend, the more confident I felt in myself as a dad. My gaining confidence resulted in helping Tessa and I get into a good routine and things settled down nicely from there.


SAHD Survival Tip #4: Make Mommy happy - clean up and pitch in around the house

I'm going to be honest here. This wasn't my strong suit before the baby. I continued that trend even after Tessa's birth. But I started to see my wife acting as if she wasn't too happy with me. I, of course, acted indignant about it but when I finally clued in that I needed to get out of the "I stay home with the baby, so I don't have to do anything else" mindset, I started seeing some of the little fights and arguments my partner and I were having disappear.

The tension in the house went away and we all started to enjoy our time together more. Bottom line: Staying at home with your children doesn't give you a free pass. If you're kids are a little older, get them involved in cleaning up and pitching in around the house.


SAHD Survival Tip #5: Treasure this time with your child

Being a stay at home dad is the most difficult thing I have ever done in my life. At the same time, I love every minute of it. I feel so lucky to be able to spend so much time with Tessa. Sometimes when I'm home with her and I'm watching her smile at me, I can't help but forget about all the difficulties and stresses in life. I forget about those e-mails I have to answer and those projects I have to finish up. Instead, I sit and just enjoy the moment with her. Tessa has one of those smiles that lights up everyone around her and my advice to any SAHD is to enjoy each and every one of those moments while you can.

I love advertising!

I love advertising,especially when it's creatively funny!


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lYE02_ypz-4&feature=player_embedded

This is one of the main reasons we decide to be a S/W.A.H.D.

This is one of the main reasons we decide to be a S/W.A.H.D. This is so disturbing it make my stomach turn. Satan will have a special place in Hell for these people.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2010/03/20/earlyshow/saturday/main6317454.shtml?tag=contentBody;cbsCarousel