Hi Dads,

I made a post over in !fedigrow@lemm.ee about possibly consolidating the many dad groups down to just one (at least for now) to encourage activity.

The general consensus was that we focus discussion over at !fatherverse@midwest.social because, among some other reasons, it’s the only community that seems to have an active mod.

I hope you’ll join me in posting over there!

Just that. Can be accidental pregnancy. Can be that your partner wanted to have kids, but it has to be why YOU made the decision.

Hey dads, my wife and I got an email from the school district this morning saying that someone had emailed threats of violence to a lot of schools in my county.

They said there will be a police presence at all schools, and they don't think the threats are serious.

My wife and I are keeping our son (6) at home today because we're just not willing to take that risk. Are we being overly cautious given what the police say? What would you do?

Edit: Here's an article about the threat that I just saw. Seems like it really was a stupid hoax.

I’ve read that you can teach a child perfect pitch (how to recognize the key of a tone without reference to the sound of a known key) before the age of 4.

What other skill windows exist that I can take advantage of to teach my kid before the window closes?

We got lucky.

My 2-year old is a climber, which I’ve happily encouraged. We went to a new park over the weekend. He naturally gravitated to the biggest play structure with a tall slide and a rope net to get up to the landing of the slide. The landing was about 10-12 feet high.

Youngster climbed up the rope net onto the landing and slid down once, twice… but on time #3 he slipped while swinging his foot onto the landing.

I had prepped myself to catch him if he fell backwards but to my horror he bounced off a rope and then fell through the rope net under the structure the whole 10-12 foot height. With the rope net in between us, there was no way to get to him in time. He landed on his back on the wood chips of the playground.

And in that moment I was scared out of my goddamn mind.

But. Fortunately. We got lucky.

I say we got lucky because:

• his landing was perfect. His lower back took the contact and then transferred the momentum to his upper back and neck, in the way martial artists train to fall.
• the ground was a thick bed of wood chips that clearly absorbed enough of the energy
• the impact on him caused him to bite his tongue and……that’s it. He cried, of course, and bled a bit from that small wound, but after 20 minutes or so had normalized and was ready to try the rope net again. I let him, holding on to him lightly this time, in support of him moving past the creation of a deeper trauma response than what he already had just gone through. And he did the route 2 more times.

It’s been two days since then. A healthcare professional checked up on him yesterday and gave a thumbs up. Youngster has gone on with life like nothing happened. I’m the one still processing the fear and horror. 😂 so it goes.

I will say my reflex blind spots have humbled me a bit. I’ll still encourage adventure but I’ll be making a bigger effort to figure out how I can reduce risk and catch what I might be missing.

Is this sub still active?

Just wondering what you do when the kids always want one parent over another?

Both of my kids are always about daddy (me). Even when mom spends time with them (2 and 5), they’re still asking about daddy all the time and it’s driving her crazy because they always want time with me rather than her.

I absolutely adore spending time with both of them. I’ll bathe them, put one of them to bed (mom gets the other one and we alternate), I help them get dressed in the morning, drive them to school and pick them up about half the time, change diapers and everything.

I’m very aware that you get 4 or 5 years with your kids then they’re not your little kids anymore and that part of all of your lives is gone forever.