#dad blogs

Some Sins You Never Quit Paying For – 5 Keys To Peace In The Midst Of Chaos

“Doc says I have to quit baseball.” “Why? “Some mistakes, I guess, we never stop paying for.”  – The Natural

  Some Sins You Never Quit Paying For . . .

When it comes to circumstances in life, we have a million choices we make.  Every day with the millions of choices we have, our lives can head off into a million different…

Tuesday Tributes for May 3rd

It’s Tuesday and it’s time for another round of Tuesday Tributes! To those that are new to my blog, on Tuesday’s I pay tribute to 5 blogs that have supported me, encouraged me, engaged with me and my readers or has shown a ton of love on my blog in the past week. There have been so many of you that have been so kind to me this past week, and if you aren’t on the list please don’t think you aren’t…

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It's winter 2016 and the blizzards are out of control this year, unless you live in Colorado.  Colorado gets 300 plus days of sunshine every year, and this year it's here with reckless abandon.  Not that I am complaining, I mean who doesn't love a shirtless run with the stroller in February?  The problem with the 60 degree days everyday is that my new Rhea Shoes aren't going to get their proper workout!

I was stoked when the good folks at Rhea asked if i wanted to do a product review for them.  I mean after all, we were just getting a massive snow storm and there were many to follow... until the winter of despair never came.  I was rip rearing and ready to go with ice, snow and water, so I choose the boots instead of the flip flops!  Well if the worst part about this winter is that I choose the boots instead of the flip flops a guy should be pleased with his issues.

So I have been wearing these like crazy in the ColoRADo warm winter long enough to get them a proper break in - and I have been very pleased.  I am a chiropractor by trade, and LOVE what I do.  But I also need to have shoes that won't slip when I adjust humans.  These shoes have not let me down.  The difference is the GRIP-TECH out-sole of all the Rhea gear.  They have this crazy micro-tread pattern that grips and rips whatever you are walking on.  

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If you aren't into the boot, they have sandals or slipons.  If you are a woman, they have heaps of great women's gear also.  The unique feature is that they are not only bomb proof for the weather, they also provide the foot wear at a great price.  You might expect to pay $200 for a set of great boots like this but that is where you would be wrong.  The retail on my boots was less than $90. 

If you are like me and are going to be carrying children this spring when it does get sloppy out, you will want to be sure that you are not going to fall on your face.  This is your best chance to have something on your feet that maximizes those odds!

Explore and Connect with Rhea and Never-Slip Technology

Rhea Footware Website | Twitter |  Facebook |  YouTube |

Rhea sent the gear, of which I am grateful, but my opinions of their gear is my own.  Go get yourself some!  They rock!

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I wrote a book because I believe we can all make a difference in saving and enhancing the lives of not just our children, but people around the world. I am an expert in school-related violence not by choice or research, but because of personal experience.

December 1, 1993: While in class as a freshman at Wauwatosa West High School in Wauwatosa, Wisconsin, the associate principal to Jay Breitlow, then 15, was shot and killed. This entire event shook the community, and he was one of thousands of students who would walk the halls in which his life was taken.

However, it shook his family a little more, as the associate principal, Dale Breitlow, was also his hero. He was also the father.  He was my father.

Writing a book on life, researching, re-researching and going back to that tragic day time and again has been, as you would expect, extremely difficult for anyone effected by violence, yet at the same time it can be therapeutic.

I was always that person that “this could never happen to” - until it did.

In talking or writing about the subject of "guns", it's apparent that anyone engaged is talking about things that are often socially, spiritually and certainly politically charged. At the same time it is everyone's great hope and deepest desire that the thoughts contained the book/conversation/lecture/snippet will raise a new idea save at least one life and create a new thread of conversation.

This article has the ability to become the impetus for change in how we treat everyone from the mentally ill to the perceived healthy; from the school nerd to the athletics star. The day this sentence is no longer relevant is a day for us all to rejoice, as it means we have created a tangible change in schools and playgrounds everywhere.

School-related violence, and violence in general, is a real-life problem that has answers. However,  it's the my belief that the questions we are currently asking don’t have solutions.  In my book Love Not Guns, I wrote

I believe that many of the answers for protecting our schools lie directly in the questions themselves. Merely asking the following question puts into motion the foundation for the solution: “How can I create more love?”

Most people don’t have the time or resources to create a platform for global change. Most people are not president of the United States or the mayor of New York City. But that doesn’t mean you lack the ability to create change.

In fact, I believe it means the opposite, in that you have just as much – if not more – direct power in shaping your community. It is far more likely that your neighbor will have influence on you or your family than anybody you see on TV, and vice versa!

For decades, the United States has struggled with keeping schools safe for our innocent and loved. Despite law after law and one new safety precaution after another, the violence and death toll rises.

Why?

Because when we ask questions that center on guns, an implement that cannot by design add to life but can only take from it, there are questions being asked that will never have answers. More or less guns cannot be a question with answers because it's a question rooted in fear. 

Instead, the only thing people seem to agree upon is that a safe and healthy environment for education is paramount to the success of our communities. So why aren’t we focusing on the one thing that binds us all together: love?

Love holds the answer to all our questions when you ask the questions the correct way.

I’m not talking about creating a 1960s hippie revolution all over again, although that might not hurt. What I am suggesting is a practical ways to help your children, neighbors and total strangers.

We are truly at a wonderful time in human evolution where facts are almost exclusively found via fingertips.  This also means misconceptions as well - which in turn can promote fear and/or love to move as fast as your megaphone is loud.

The challenge is to look at every question at every angle and figure out, “When is talking about love not an answer?”  An excerpt from the book gave the idea for change:

I feel that in the end, nobody can have more connection with what is at stake than me as a husband, son and father. I stand by all research, questions and answers in this book.

Since I lost my father, I have struggled to identify with the people who want to ban or limit guns in our communities. I have also struggled to identify with people who want more guns in our communities. I have enrolled in gun safety classes to attempt to connect with one side of the gun conversation, only to feel pulled back to the other side and be the class no-show.

Then one day, a friend of mine asked me if I would consider giving a talk at our local Rotary Club about gun violence. She knew my experience made me somewhat of an expert and that it would be a powerful talk if I would accept. I told her I would think about it, and I internally debated if I really wanted to be back in the public eye again, even if it was just a hundred local friends.

Then while talking with my aforementioned friend and life coach, Dr. Tom Preston, he helped me see that I could talk on this topic, but that my answer was different then just “yes or no” to guns. You see, I can’t identify with either side, or even be in the middle of the conversation with guns because that is not a conversation that ultimately provides answers.

Year after year, month after month, we continue to see the headlines on the news about the latest school shooting, and you would not be alone if you were thinking: “Well, there is no answer.” Yet the fight goes on and on. One state has different rules; one senator wants to change federal laws; one mayor wants more background checks; one city wants guns in the hands of every resident; one president wants different laws than another. It seems as if there won’t ever be a consensus.

Then one day, it will come out for you in a conversation as it did for the author when he spoke with Dr. Tom that the answer we are seeking is different than the questions people were asking. The reason why there is no answer to the gun debate is because it’s the wrong question. There is no loving answer to a question that centers on implements of death and destruction.

The better question, in my opinion, is: How do we solve violence in America? And that answer is with love!

Love starts in asking what you can do for your neighbor.  What you can best do to ensure we are raising children that are rooted to a values system that is deep in love.  If we all believe that life is good, that there is always a blessing in the curses of life then we will always express and experience love.  This does NOT mean life is devoid of challenges. 

In fact challenges are a necessary addition to life.  Different philosophy's, religions and cultures all have unique ways to deal with challenges but there is one thing that binds them all together: they are all required lessons, rites of passage, or part of life.  They are also all rooted in love.

No chief would tell his young warrior to expect to hunt dinner and for it to be easy.  Yet time and again challenge presents itself to our society and the responses are becoming more and more dramatic and fearful.  There is no love in fear.  There is no response in violence. 

Today, when you leave the house, or come home or meet a friend for lunch ask yourself this one question to start creating change in the world: how can I express and seek more love today.

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Big Flu. Swing Flu. H1N1.  Remember these global pandemics?  Now we have Zika.  Out of seemingly nowhere this new pandemic is gripping mass-media.  Is it something to be concerned about or is it something else?  Anytime a vaccine is fast-tracked for success in a matter of weeks I put on the skeptical hat.  Today a great article written by Dr Joseph Mercola makes it evident that he thinks so.   I tend to agree.

In the U.S., approximately 25,000 infants are diagnosed with microcephaly each year.77 Brazil has about 70 percent of the population the U.S. has, and now reports just over 400 cases, 17 of which tested positive for the Zika virus. So is this really the global emergency it's being made out to be?

And more importantly, is Zika virus really responsible for these birth defects? Colombia reports that 3,177 pregnant women have tested positive for Zika virus, yet no cases of microcephaly have occurred.78

The evidence suggests implicating Zika virus may be a matter of convenience — leaders of the public-private partnership between industry and government are quickly blaming the rise in microcephaly on disease-carrying mosquitoes in order to sell more GE mosquitoes, to sell more toxic insecticides, and to have an excuse to develop and sell more vaccines.

All the while, they are keeping hidden some of the most likely culprits — poor nutrition and toxic environmental exposures like pesticides, as well as vaccines given during pregnancy when the fetus is most susceptible to harm. By throwing up a convenient veil in the form of Zika-infected mosquitoes, business can not only go on as usual, but grow and expand profits to boot.

I have no immediate answers to this problem, other than a firm suggestion, and that is to put on your thinking cap and assess the situation based on what the actual evidence shows, and do not just go by the sound bytes regurgitated by the talking heads. Sooner or later the insanity must end.

We cannot expect a healthy infant and child population when pregnant women are assaulted with toxins at every turn. And MORE toxins is NOT the answer! This really should be self-evident.

More research is coming out by the year that states that the role of genes is vastly overrated in the role of our children's health.  Instead there are people like Bruce Lipton who are showing that epigenetics has a much larger role in the future of our babies.  Lipton has gone on record in his books to point out that genes are largely done with their work shortly after conception.  Human - check.  Male or female - check.  Skin color etc are also checked off. 

But then it's largely on to mom, and then Dad after birth to create environments for growth.  Consider the stresses: thoughts, trauma's and toxin's that contribute in a good and bad way to development.  I hope you enjoy the info-graphic below to guide expecting mom's toward a healthy epigentical environment for their little ones.

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Well happy days are here again for this Dad.  My toddler is 21 months and with each passing day, is learning to more efficiently pull apart the house at the seams.  The infant, now in his third week of life, is learning exactly how to stay fully attached to my wife’s breast without being put down, for what seems, ANY moments of his young life. 

It’s the life you have heard, and likely experienced as being the best thing in the word (for example seeing your children talk and coo for the first time) and the worst thing in the world (sleepless nights on end and a house that just can’t stay clean).   So you ask yourself “why do you do it?”  Which immediately elicits the response, “why wouldn’t you do it” and round and round we go.  The life you couldn’t live without and the life that drives you to drink… coffee… all…     day…      long…

One reason I do it, seeing and hearing my daughter develop. 

I was reading a book by Zig Ziglar the other day(Developing the Qualities of Success) and in the book he talked about our children’s developing vocabulary.  He states in the book that within the first 11 years of a childs life, the life we live-by-example is what our kids will imitate.  He further goes on to mention that 65% of the working human vocabulary is acquired by age 3.

Age THREE?!  Zig references the “65% by age 3” thing as a “study done in Missouri” and frankly I couldn’t find any study that supported that – however Zig is known sometimes for having loose quotes.  Love that man.  It also got me researching and I stumbled onto this website.  It states here that by age 3 a young human has a vocabulary that expands to somewhere around 1100 words.  When you consider how many words that are inside the young brain, that have yet to be expressed it gets you thinking that old Zig might now be that far off.

For example there is a brain that is receptive and storing data (words, pictures emotions etc) which is MUCH deeper than the expressive brain that comes out in the spoken words.  So what do we want our children to hold onto and HOW do we want them to hold onto it?  The answer: What you do is what your kids will learn.

30 Million words

In a now famous study published by Hart and Ricely  it was found that by the age of 3 children may have a learning gap of 30 million words.  It further detailed that within a child’s early life the caregiver is responsible for most, if not all, social simulation and consequently language and communication development. As a result, how we the parents interact with children is of greatest consequence.   The way we speak lays a critical foundation and impacts the way our children process future information many years down the road.

Hart and Ricely found that the largest communication gaps for 3-year-olds were based on one variable: socio-economic status.  Meaning that the more money a family had the more they were likely to speak in positive and word dense sentences.  I don’t know about your, but for me, and for the world, much has changed since 2003.  In fact I would argue it has much more to do with the nature of the interactions.  In 2003 it was much more challenging to put a kid in front of a TV than it is today.  Irrespective of how much money you make, today, it’s easier than ever to have a endless cartoon supply from Netflix.

The point is the same, there is a huge potential word gap for our children that is largely solved, or broken, in the first three years of life.  To that end I found a really great website that has led me to purchase (yet another) book to learn more. 

What’s a parent to do.

According to the website ThirtyMillionWords.org and the founder Dana Suskind who wrote the brilliant book Thirty Million words

A child’s early language exposure is increasingly acknowledged as pivotal in language development and, more importantly, in ultimate educational and intellectual achievement. Studies have demonstrated a large inequality in children’s early language environments, with children from families of lower socioeconomic status hearing approximately thirty million words less than their peers from families of higher socioeconomic status. Furthermore, the number of words a child is exposed to between ages 0-3 is significantly correlated to the child’s ultimate IQ and academic success.

Ms Suskind, like me and Zig, believes that there is much more to be done for children than make money and have a fabulous house to live in.  The more parents talk to their children, the faster children’s vocabularies grow and the higher the children’s IQ test scores are at age three and later. Neither genetics nor a lack of potential lie at the heart of this inequity; rather, the thirty million word gap is a consequence of parental knowledge.

This is the foundation upon which she has built the Thirty Million Words® Initiative.

So I picked up the book, and the book like the website can simply be stated as follows.

TUNE IN: by paying attention to what your child is communicating to you.

TALK MORE: with your child using descriptive words to build his vocabulary.

TAKE TURNS: by encouraging your child to respond to your words and actions.

What we do as parents matters.  It matters every single day how you demonstrate your life and how you are choosing to express it to your children.  Choose wisely young and old parents, our future depends on you!

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My wife and I love to vacation in Mexico – the mixture of the pool, the beach and the sunny days brings us back there 3 times a year.  Before we had our first born it wasn’t an issue to think about preparation.  We just threw a swimsuit, a couple pesos and clean underwear in a bag and we were off.

Now, as many of you parents know, vacation means packing an assortment of “other” less fun items.  This is including but not limited to diapers, wipes, creams, pack-n-plays, kids books, toys, curtain clips, sound machines, blankets (because who knows who-did-what-with-whom on those hotel sheets), stuffed animals, special foods and if you are lucky you get packed along also. 

Of all these things to possibly be stressed about, what I don’t want to worry about is having more stress once I actually get to the beach.  This means I don’t want to be chasing my kid all over the resort worried she might fall into the pool.  I want to be able to have a cerveza (or 3), order 2 sides of guacamole and still have the will to go out for dinner at night.   If I am playing Daddy Day Care, or worse my wife is stressed out, my vacation stinks. 

Booo...

So we took the plunge when Selom was 7 months old and enrolled her in infant swim lessons.  We have a local infant swim school in Colorado called “Swim- Float-Swim”, which is named due to the idea that if a baby falls in water s/he needs to first swim for a few seconds, rest via floating, and then try and swim again to safety.  The location was very convenient, albeit a bit pricey, but the peace of mind we were after was totally worth it.

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We watched a couple other parents at the first lesson, as they watched their screaming bundle splash in the pool we decided to chat it up.  They were totally unfazed by what appeared to be imminent death to our uninitiated eyes.  “It’s just the first couple days in the pool that you fear for your child.... and then you get right over it” said a young mother.  My wife’s dinner-plate-sized eyes indicated she would need a month or three – or perhaps something medicinal.

But there we were.  And in she went.  Tears ran.  On all 3 of us.

Turns our baby, and yours, can float.  It also turns out that if you teach children not to freak out in the water, they can chill out, cry for help, and breathe all at the same time.  All we could do is watch in horror... at first.  Then that Mom we spoke to turned out prophetic.  We did get used to it. As Selom grew proficient in the pool, so did we. 

Eventually when our daughter learned to swim, then float, then swim we were allowed into the pool with her.  That is after all the idea right?  To have fun in and around water?  I can honestly say some of the BEST moments of vacation for me are no longer relaxing around the pool – although that does still happen en masse.  My favorite moments are now swimming with my daughter.

This past summer we went to the Caribbean side of Mexico, near Cancun.  We rented a condo that walked right out to the pool.  No questions asked, we had no fear with what our 16 month toddler would do.  One of the bonuses of your kid in swim lessons, is that s/he has carnal awareness of what that big hole filled with sparkly stuff is.  It’s water.  It’s wet.  And at first it sucks to get in.  Her mind says “I want nothing to do with that stuff.”  BRILLIANT!!

Now unless we get in the pool, Selom wants nothing to do with the water at all!  Woohoo my book stays dry and I get to order another round!  When it’s time for mom or dad to jump in, now she wants to join in.  This past summer,  I was in Daddy heaven.

In particular one afternoon in general Selom was in total love jumping in the water.  Straight up jump in to our arms or sometimes just dive in and swim to us.  Either way, she wanted to swim.  My wife was swimming in the pool and I had just returned from a little snorkel on the beach.  In true awesomeness fashion I left my goggles (and banana hammock) on and joined in.  Selom was already jumping in the pool and I noticed that when I looked underwater her eyes were wide opened looking for me.

After doing this 3-4 times (and every time she would come up she would sign for “more” jumping in) she began to notice she could see me thru the goggles.  As she swam underwater I could now see this huge ear-to-ear grin and wide open eyes.  I was certain at that moment in time I was looking at pure love.  Just pure happiness and love.

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I knew that if I had died, I would see that face, that smile that underwater giggle fully trusting in her mission to get to daddy and give him a hug.  It was the neatest thing.  Something about the mix between the cute baby face, the trust in me to jump in the water and the quiet of being underwater with her.  Time stood still.

When we got home and our local pool opened up this summer we spent many a lazy afternoon swimming and enjoying being alive.  We don’t worry if Selom wanders into the pool or if she even goes to the deep end.  She knows what she is doing.

Even if your family isn’t around water that often, I want to encourage you to enroll your little ones in swim classes.  If nothing else, all you need to hear is one story from a firefighter or EMT who couldn’t save a baby that fell into a pool or lake to be moved to action.  They are true stories friends, babies can easily drown in water.

The children that are not harmed by water are often scared to death to go near water as their parents helicopter the living love out of them.  You know these parents that everything is a “danger” or “no no no we don’t climb on boulders” types.  Let your children explore.  Swim lessons are another step on the path to freedom and exploration.