parenting
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Taking My Kids to See White Santa Might Be My Most Unwoke Parenting Act and I’m Sorry
Please forgive me, for I have sinned. The other night, I participated in an act of personal fraudulence and general unwokeness that has caused me great shame as a black man generally and a writer here specifically. We’ve had a good run here, you and I, over the past couple of years, sharing humorous tomes…
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Being an Advocate for My Child Is One of the Most Important Lessons I’ve Learned as a Parent
Children are tons of fun. Sure, they’re a lot of work, too, but you get used to that, and pretty soon the work is just part of life. On a daily basis you get to marvel and laugh at the new discoveries of infants and toddlers, the smarts and progress of your preteens, and, from…
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Babies Aren’t Birth Control. Field Trips Are Birth Control
One of the great things about being a parent is watching your child (or children) blossom into whatever kind of person they’ll become. The possibilities are endless, and that potential can warm even the coldest heart. Yay, babies and kids and shit. Part of this blossoming typically includes moving through the ranks of education, from…
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These Portraits of Dads in Madagascar Offer an Intimate Glimpse of Black Fatherhood in Other Parts of the World
With an endless array of pristine landscapes and animals that are native to no other region in the world, the country of Madagascar—located in the Indian Ocean—draws in hundreds of thousands of tourists every year from nearly every country in the world. But beyond the images of lemurs and baobab trees that were made famous…
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USA Today Declares Devoted Father LaVar Ball ‘Worst Sports Parent Ever’
I should begin this article by comparing LaVar Ball to my father, but I can’t because … I don’t know that dude. I definitely am not as familiar with LaVar Ball as apparently USA Today’s Nancy Armour is. Armour, in response to Ball’s announcement that he was switching his son LaMelo’s high school, declared Ball…
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I’m Empty-Nesting … Now What?
Two weeks ago, I dropped my son off to college somewhere in Virginia. It wasn’t a tear-filled dropoff. You know the ones you see on television with parents sobbing as they walk away from their child’s college dorm? Yeah, that’s not how we roll. An hour before I dropped my son off, I asked him,…
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I've Pretty Much Stopped Drinking. Asterisk.
In 2009, I became a parent to a beautiful daughter. She is the light of my life. From 2010 to 2015, I lived two very separate lives: Daddy PJ and Partyin’ PJ. When I’m with my daughter, I’m on my Ps and Qs; I don’t even drink when she’s with me unless her mother is…