One of the best things my step-father ever taught me was how to build a proper snowfort. Oh sure, I’d carved out a few cubbies in snowdrifts before, but nothing like the labyrinthine lairs I soon began developing like missile bases under the snow. Assembling a good snow fort is an all-day endeavor. It’s work. […]

Wired’s Body Hack blog has been running a fascinating series of posts called “Hacking My Child’s Brain.” Mark Woodman (the author) has a son with “Sensory Processing Disorder,” which causes his brain to plotz if he tries to interpret the signals from all five senses at once, like a “network that drops packets when there […]

If you live in New York, there are two places to live: Manhattan and The Other Boroughs (”Oh, And Staten Island”). In Brooklyn, where I live, there is a neighborhood that is stereotypically filled with fussy parents, called Park Slope. (Famously, an email list discussion last year about the supposed gender of a dropped hat […]

I don’t know if these two are father and son, but I can dream, can’t I? I love how the one on the right would maybe pass muster for a muddy concert if the one on the left weren’t having a spasm. Of course, they may not even be at a concert. This might be […]

Reader “T” reminds us of Matt Baldwin’s fantastic post from a couple of years back, discussing the discovery that their 18-month-old son had been diagnosed with autistic spectrum disorder.
But his “gaze avoidance” tendencies are unmistakable, and he makes very little effort to communicate with others. He knows dozens of words but only uses them for […]

For most clued-in dads these days, fatherhood begins in the delivery room. You refill your baby mama’s water glass, tell her to picture herself in her happy place, and maybe remind her to order the epidural early. The event’s far more down-and-dirty than what the last couple generations of dads experienced (for many of them, […]