The short answer on how to handle toddler tantrums without yelling: calm your own body first, get down low, say almost nothing, and hold the boundary you already set. That's it. Everything below is just detail on those four moves. I learned it the hard way. My youngest went down in the cereal aisle because I said no to the box with the cartoon tiger on it. Full starfish. Screaming like I'd taken a limb. And I did the thing I'm not proud of. I got loud, grabbed his arm and tr

Most of what I know about being a dad did not come from a book. It came from getting it wrong on a Tuesday morning with one kid missing a shoe and the other one negotiating over toast. The dad hacks below are the ones that survived that. Not clever ideas I read somewhere and never used. Actual fixes I still reach for. Some of them will look too simple. That is the point. On a hard day you do not need a parenting philosophy. You need something you can do in ten seconds while h

One night, I sat in my car outside my own house with the engine off, not quite ready to go inside. The night before, I had shouted at my two kids for not going to bed on time. It didn’t call for shouting, and I wasn’t proud of myself. That’s usually when the question turns up. So what makes a good father, really? Not the version printed on the card. The version you can hold yourself against on an ordinary Tuesday. After years of getting this wrong in front of witnesses, here’

When my kids were little, I had a three-times rule: if I had to repeat myself twice, my voice changed on the third. It got louder, sharper, and sounded a lot like my father’s. There was no specific reason for my reaction. It could be a missed bedtime, late for school, clean up your room. If it is something I wanted done, and it wasn’t being done, then that was a problem. My kid finally would do it, with a lowered head and no smile. That would follow me for the balance of the

I was on a call with someone earlier this week and my son came to my home office. We had glass in the doors, so we made eye contact. I still had 10 minutes on a 30-minute call, so I waved to him that I needed a few more minutes. When I got done, I left my office and looked for him. He had already left. Most likely, he just wanted to tell me he was heading out with friends for lunch and doing some shopping. But I couldn’t take two minutes to stop…make him the priority…and list

A strong father-son relationship isn't built in one big moment. It's built in a hundred small ones, most of which you'll forget by dinner. I didn't really understand that when my first son was born. I thought there would be some obvious handoff, and one day he'd look at me a certain way and I'd know we were solid. It was the first few days he was home, and we just sat on the couch watching the Yankees vs Boston baseball game. He slept perfectly on my chest. I think we both to