I didn’t really want to play Risk, but I felt a little trapped.

My son brought it up a few nights ago and said, “It’s Family Game Night! Let’s play!” And then my wife said, “Great!”

So I capitulated, groaning loudly. We started the game.

It’s not that I don’t like Risk. When I was a kid, I loved it. My best friend in second (or maybe it was third) grade, Paul Squizzero, had the game and on Saturdays, I would go to his house, and we would stage rollicking battles on his kitchen table with his family while his mom made us bologna and ketchup sandwiches, which I absolutely loved.

But the thing about Risk that I don’t particularly like is the element of luck. You can have 20 guys in Mongolia and only one in Siam, and with the right rolls, that one guy in Siam could end up winning. It’s not the power of the Siamese training forces. It’s just plain luck. When I was younger I saw some kind of majesty in that, the romanticism of the one fighting for his ideals, but now, when I think of it, it just seems that it is one guy is forestalling the inevitable. He won’t be able to win, he should just give up. Is this the difference in outlook between youth and middle age?

And the rolling, and the changing of armies, and the decision making, the game can be just interminable. It just tries my patience. Boy, I sound like a cranky old man!

But here we were, playing through it. I was grinning and bearing it, like a good dad should. To be truthful, I was probably grimacing more than grinning. I was dealt terrible countries, and my son, bless his little Siamese heart, is an amazing roller.

That first night, it got to be about 9, and we were only about a quarter through the game. I was in third place, far behind, and my wife was way ahead. (She’s very good at strategy games, and she’s a very lucky roller.) We left the board as is, set up on our dining room table, and over the next two days we ate around, over, and through the table, anywhere but where the game was set up.  Each time we played a few rounds, and things were moving. I made an incursion into North America. My son gained Australia. My wife gained South America, and then turn after turn would lose one country only to gain it again.

After three days on and off of this, my son was in the lead. I thought about giving up multiple times.

Risk Day 3: The Final Conquest.

We played a quick round in the morning. I conquered North America! I set up strong borders. I let my wife and son duke it out — she got greedy and tried to swallow Europe whole, but couldn’t quite do it, and my son took it right back. The cards kept on escalating. We had to stop at my turn so that I could go to a telemedicine doctor’s appointment, and my wife could get some work done.

After dinner, we sat down to play, one final time, agreeing we’d finish it off. I had warmed up to the game again. I was in it to win it. I fortified my borders. I took over most of South America from my wife. I managed to take my son’s continents away while keeping two of my own. My wife didn’t have enough firepower to do anything, flaming out on a spectacular set of rolls against my son. I told you he was a lucky roller!

My son turned in cards and got 62 armies. He annihilated my wife’s armies and grabbed her cards. He tried to invade North America through Greenland and failed. He tried to make an incursion into South America through Brazil and failed. He decided not to try Alaska, and let me take my turn. I turned in my cards for a total of 68 armies, and proceeded to romp through Asia, Africa, and Europe, and Australia, taking all of his continents away from him.

Rather than continuing to push my luck, I left strong troops in each of the continents and fortified my borders. I thought my was going to win over the long haul, but he took a look at the board, realized that he was in for a much longer, sloggier mess than he had realized, and decided to give up! I emerged victorious!

The moral of our game-playing foray

There are actually a few morals that I can think of:

• Never get into a land war in Asia.  (Check)
• Spending time with my family is fun!
• It turns out that forestalling the inevitable will work when your opponent is young and impatient.
• You should not always listen to your inner voice. I had a fun time playing Risk, even though I groaned when it was proposed  (I am sure that EMERGING VICTORIOUS had something to do with that.)
• Risk is as much about knowing when to stop as it is about taking actual risks.
• I’m also a lucky roller, and I get it from my family.

A version of this first appeared on Dadapalooza. Risk board game photo: © Albert / Adobe Stock.

Homeschooling is here indefinitely, and there’s lots of logistics to consider. The biggest for many of us being how to make sure that the kids are learning, and that their homeschooling schedule meshes with our own home/work schedule.

We attempted to have our 11-year-old son follow an academic schedule of sorts at the start. That worked a little, but there was so much crying and whining and “NO, I can’t possibly use THAT pencil!” that I’m not sure how we are going to survive. Here was our original homeschooling schedule, the idea was for 25-minute segments with 15 minutes for resting. It now looks ambitious.

9 a.m. — Social studies. Watched the first part of Crash Course in World History. I asked him to take notes, which he did, but he thought it was boring. I think that was reflexive more than anything else. It turns out he didn’t know a lot of the words, so I had him watch it again, and we went over all the words he didn’t know.

9:40 a.m. — Reading/English Language Arts. He was allowed to read the LitRPG (Literature Role Play Game) novel he’s been reading, but I asked him to summarize each chapter after he read it. This was a huge fight. He eventually agreed. His summaries were poor (and the handwriting very difficult to read.)

10:20 a.m. — Spanish. He’s not actually taking Spanish, but he didn’t want to do Chinese which is what he takes in school, and so we agreed on Spanish using the Duolingo app. (We are still expecting to go back to Barcelona this summer, although the virus may change our plans, so knowing some Spanish would be helpful.)

11 a.m.-noon — Lunch.  Still his favorite subject of the day.

Noon — Writing.  I had him write a five-paragraph essay on why school should only be two hours long. His essay wasn’t bad, but it was only three paragraphs and not that organized.

1 p.m. — Coding/programming.  He wanted to do Minecraft mod coding, which is something he already kind of knows how to do. My wife and I said no: learn Python, HTML, JavaScript or CSS. This turned into a big fight.

1:40 p.m. — Math. This actually turned into phys ed, which was spent playing sports on the WiiU since it was very cold out. He went downstairs to do this, which meant he was out of my hair. This went longer than it was supposed to go, because I wasn’t focused on it.

2:30 p.m. — Physical education. We switched this out with math, which was probably a better idea.

3:20 p.m. — Free choice (but no electronics). He ended up sitting and reading and then counting down the seconds to 4 p.m.

4-6 p.m. — Open play online with friends or alone. This was the only thing that really started on time.

Homeschooling lessons learned

• In retrospect, our schedule was way too much and too crowded. But I don’t want my son on the computer the whole time, and I have other stuff to do that doesn’t include sitting with him and coming up with algebraic problems.
• His handwriting is atrocious. We need to spend some time working on handwriting skills.
• Being a teacher of 11-year-olds requires either the patience of a saint or the hardened feelings of a serial killer. Or both.

The next day, the school did have some assignments to do, but this took maybe an hour to do, all in. There are another six to seven hours of the day to schedule/fill.

Part of me is: OK, let’s take on the role of homeschool teacher, and I will finish all the assignments he’s given, driving him like a slave driver. That’s what he needs is someone pushing him harder, and then he will see the error of his ways and become a genius self-starter (like you know, Elon Musk or Steven Spielberg. Then we will be sitting on easy street, watching his royalty checks roll in like the tide.

The other part of me (probably the sensible part) is saying: NO WAY! Give him rules and structure, but let him figure it out on his own. He will find his own way, and for me to impose my expectations on him is just wrong on a number of levels, and will end up squelching him. He gets where he gets, and I shouldn’t get upset.

I know my reality is somewhere in the middle, but these two extremes pull at me.

I am pretty great with kids (I am a professional clown) and have a lot of patience for other people’s kids, but little patience for my own child. I have a low tolerance for my son’s whining and carping on little details, and his cleverness in trying to avoid work — possibly because I recognize it so much in my own life. When he does that, I get unproportionally pissed off. (Or when he professes that he doesn’t understand something when he clearly does — but saying he doesn’t understand it means he doesn’t have to do it.)

The big question

So how do I NOT be a hard-ass while at the same time get him to be excited about school, and get him to (MOSTLY) be a self-starter about this stuff? I welcome your advice and hard-fought stories in the comments.

A version of this first appeared on Dadapalooza.

Photo: © Aksinia / Adobe Stock.

Each year, the Chicago Public Library Foundation sponsors a great program called One Book, One Chicago (OBOC).  The question that the program asks is “What if all of Chicago read the same book at the same time?”  It started in 2001, and over the years they have continued to add programming supporting discussions around each title.

In 2013, they expanded the idea so that it’s not just about a book, but about a theme emphasized in the book, and that the program offerings would expand throughout the system.

This year the theme is “Imagine The Future” and the book is Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Chicago born author Philip K. Dick.

In case you don’t know the story, here’s a synopsis (courtesy of OBOC)

By 2021, the World War has killed millions, driving entire species into extinction and sending mankind off-planet. Those who remain covet any living creature, and for people who can’t afford one, companies built incredibly realistic simulacra: horses, birds, cats, sheep. They’ve even built humans. Immigrants to Mars receive androids so sophisticated they are indistinguishable from true men or women. Fearful of the havoc these artificial humans can wreak, the government bans them from Earth. Driven into hiding, unauthorized androids live among human beings, undetected. Rick Deckard, an officially sanctioned bounty hunter, is commissioned to find rogue androids and “retire” them. But when cornered, androids fight back–with lethal force.

There are all kinds of events going on in support of the book.  These include discussions, film series, lectures, and more.  There’s also a Spotify playlist (provided by community radio station CHIRP), Maker Lab programs, walking tours, art programs, and game nights.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN ONE BOOK ONE CHICAGO

There are over  84 events scheduled with OBOC, so I will highlight a few that look especially great, and encourage you to go over to the OBOC website and explore all the programs for yourself.

Please note that not all of these are suitable for all ages, and the book itself is also geared at an older set, so please use your own discretion on bringing young children.

SCIENCE FICTION BOARD GAME NIGHT.  Various branches will be hosting board game nights, and playing science fiction games including The Resistance, Coup, Star Fluxx, Smash Up: Science Fiction, and Grifters.  SEE AVAILABLE DATES AND BRANCHES

CHICAGO’S UNBUILT PROJECTS.  Author and historian Max Grinnell will talk about the many projects that might have changed Chicago. These include  the unified Civic Center, Frank Lloyd Wright’s mile-high skyscraper, and other projects. Grinnell will also lead a set of walking tours around the city that showcase the future and the past of Chicago.
See a Schedule for Chicago’s Unbuilt Projects
See Schedule for Max Grinnell Walking Tours

HOW TO INVENT EVERYTHING:  Author Ryan North will discuss his guide for waylaid time travelers and how they would build and sustain an entire civilization.
Thursday Feb 21 at 6 pm Pritzer Auditorium, 400 South State Street .FIND OUT MORE

THE SCIENCE OF STAR WARS.  Physicist Dirk K. Morr discusses the physical laws and concepts underlying the scientific advances portrayed and Star Wars. He will discuss which are possible and which are beyond our reach. FIND OUT MORE

IKEBANA FUTURISTIC:  See the Universe through Ikebana free style floral arrangements that transcend time and space.  A hands on workshop led by expert Margot Wang.  SEE TIMES AND PLACES.

To find out more about One Book One Chicago, visit http://www.onebookonechicago.org

With Passover beginning tomorrow night, I’ve been reflecting of late on my hard relationship with Judaism.

On one hand, my identity is very much as a Jew, at least culturally. I had a bar mitzvah. I’ve been to Israel. I can read Hebrew (although my understanding is limited). I went to a Hebrew high school, and even taught there for two years. I know the blessings by heart, or mostly. I have Passover Seders in my house, we occasionally have Shabbat, and I can “Oy vey” and “Nu, so …” with the best of them. I married a Jewish woman, and we stepped on the glass. And guilt? Do I know about guilt! That’s part of the reason for writing this.

I want my son to know Judaism. I want him to have a bar mitzvah, and know the blessings over wine and bread and matzoh. I want him to know what a lulav and an etrog are, to know the sounds of the shofar being blown. I want that to be part of his identity, for him to feel connected to this group of people who have struggled over great adversity and managed to survive for thousands of years. He is part of that struggle, as I am, and as my parents were before me, and their parents before them.

On the other hand, I am not a practicing Jew. I don’t fast on Yom Kippur or eat matzoh at Passover. I don’t regularly stop working on Shabbat or even light the candles. I eat pork and shellfish with abandon. I’m not a member of a synagogue, or even go to synagogue with any kind of regularity (and when I do go, I kind of resent it). I have a great doubt that any of those things will help me in an afterlife I don’t think I believe in and haven’t gotten much spiritual comfort from.

I don’t think I’d go so far as to say I’m an atheist. I believe there is some creator, but not one I have a “personal relationship” with or who cares whether I work on Shabbat, or eat cheeseburgers. And while I feel I am a part of the grander scheme of Judaism, I have never felt a part of an individual community of Judaism. Well, maybe for about 10 minutes, but certainly not on a sustained level.

The most spiritually moved I’ve felt has been at the theater and, occasionally, while sitting on a rock jetty with my back to the shore, watching the waves roll in. (Yes, my spiritualism is a tampon commercial.)

When my parents were alive, I was more active in my Judaism. I kind of felt I was doing it for my mom, and not for me, and when she passed away, I decided to stop. Since then, I have become increasingly more ornery about practicing Judaism.

When my wife and I lived in New York, we were part of a synagogue, but I never felt very close to that community. Perhaps because it was my wife’s community, perhaps because soon after I started going there was a great deal of flux due to the spiritual leader leaving, perhaps because my wife got involved in the behind-the-scenes of synagogue politics, and I saw the worst of it.

In the Passover Haggadah, there is a parable about the four sons: the wise, the wicked, the simple, and the one who doesn’t know enough to ask. Each has a question about what is going on, and you are supposed to answer each differently.

When I was younger, I always cast myself as the wise son, the one who includes himself, and asks the question “What did God command us to do?” But now I’m pretty sure I’m the wicked son, the one who holds himself apart from the group, and asks the question, “What did God command YOU to do?”

So I’m in a quandary. I feel like I’m Jewish, but don’t really believe in (or do) all of the stuff that makes one Jewish. And I want my son to be Jewish, or at least know about Judaism. But I’m setting him a bad example, at least as a Jew.

I’m sure I’m not alone.

I feel like I have two choices:

1. Fake it ’til I make it. Set a better example as a Jew, even though I am not getting much out of it. That might mean more synagogue time for me, more fasting, more “religion for the sake of religion” instead of for the sake of me.
2. Don’t fake it. Explain as best as I can to my son why I want him to be involved and knowledgeable and, when the inevitable charges of hypocrisy come, parry them by letting him know that when he’s 18, he can make his own decisions.

Is there a third option? A fourth option? For those of you who are religious doubters, what are you doing to help give your child/children a basis in religion?

A version of this first appeared on DadaPalooza.

Last month my family slept under a Tesla Coil, and we lived to tell the tale!

Although I haven’t run my family through a Geiger counter recently, I’m pretty sure that there will be no radiation burns.

We spent the night at the annual Camp-In of one of the best museums in the country,  Chicago’s own  Museum of Science and Industry.  This was our first time doing so, and I don’t think it will be our last.

But first, a little backstory.  This is one of our favorite museums and had been even before we moved to Chicago.  Once a year, we’d make a pilgrimage from New York to Chicago to the MSI, to see the humongous train set of Chicago, the giant doll house, walk inside the coal mine, and take the tour of the giant submarine.

BEST MUSEUM IN THE COUNTRY

Even at some of the admittedly great museums we’ve been to, including the Queens Science Center, the Philadelphia Children’s Museum, the Franklin Institute, etc., MSI Chicago is the standard by which all others are judged.  We figured out that being a member is a great deal!  (If you plan on visiting the museum more than twice in a year, and you drive there, you will do better to be a member than not.  I did the math.)

But we’d never taken advantage of this special member opportunity. Once a year, the Museum stages a camp-in where 600 lucky people get the opportunity to spend the evening at the exhibits. Members get to select sleeping spots next to many of their favorite exhibits, there are smores and music and giant sized games, and more importantly, the museum is open until 11 pm, so you get to go to all of the exhibits you want, relatively uncrowded, and at your leisure.

This is apparently a thing for Chicago museums.  I did a little research and it turns out that same night, the Planetarium was having an event as well, and the Aquarium, the Zoo, the Field Museum, and the Chicago Cultural Center all have similar programs.) Furthermore, it turns out that the Museum has a similar event coming up called the Snoozeum.    I don’t think you have to be a member for this one, and it seems like it is much more crowded.  Next one is December 15.   Find out more here.)

After we made plans for the camp-in, my son’s class planned a field trip to the museum for the day before.  We were already planning on surprising him, so we kept it up.  He would never suspect.  During the field trip, as I brought him and his 4 classmates around, we couldn’t see everything he wanted to see.  “Next time we go, ” I kept telling him.  He didn’t realize the next time would be literally the next day.  Later that night, reviewing the field trip after dinner, I jokingly told him that the museum was so big that we could sleep there and still not see everything!  He laughed, not knowing that less than 24 hours later he’d be doing just that!

SLEEPING UNDER THE TESLA COIL

We checked in around 6 pm, brought our stuff over to a potential sleeping area, and started exploring the museum.  In addition to my son, we brought his older cousin, who also had a fantastic time.  Dinner was in the cafeteria, which serves surprisingly good food, and where one of our favorite exhibits is (The Rube Goldbergesque Swiss JollyBall Machine. )

This is not my video, but a pretty good look at the jollyball apparatus.  We watch this every time we go to the museum!

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6SLd0eQK9g]

Many of the exhibits you still needed to have timed tickets for, although they were all included in the price of admission.  In the one night that we were there, we saw The Mirror Maze, the U-505 submarine, the chicks, the bike exhibit, the extreme ice exhibit, the circus exhibit, the body exhibit, the kid’s imagination center, and ended our evening with a late night tour of the Coal Mine.   And of course Jollyball.  Even after seeing that, we didn’t see everything-  we didn’t go over to the space center, see the trains, the smart house, the fairy house, or see the brick by brick lego exhibit. (we had seen that the day before)  The Robot exhibit had not yet opened, sadly.  It’s open now, and it looks fabulous!

What was great about all of these is that because the museum was so uncrowded we could still see all of those things and take our time about it.  We normally only see about half of that in a museum exhibit.

Some things to know if you go next year.

1. You have to be a member to attend.
2. They don’t shut off lots of light for safety reasons.  Many people brought tents so that they wouldn’t be sleeping in the light.  We had picked one place, but the boys thought it was too light, so we moved to a place that was equally light.  Next time, don’t trust the boys!
3. Many people (clearly veterans) brought blow-up beds.  We slept on the ground in sleeping bags, which was not nearly as comfortable as we would have hoped.  Next time, a blow-up bed.
4. We brought everything in to the museum using a wagon.  The museum is almost entirely handicapped accessible, so that wasn’t too much of a problem.  I definitely recommend it, as the museum is large, and your stuff is probably heavy.

Overall, it was a great experience, and we would do it again!

And we are also planning to sleep around (at the other museums!)

Find out more about the Museum on their website http://www.msichicago.org

(Read more about this and Adam’s other adventures at www.dadapalooza.com.)

I was waiting in line at Trader Joe’s when I had deja vu and an epiphany.

I was by myself, having just dropped my son off at school. The guy in line in front of me was with his 2-year-son. The kid was still learning to talk well and use his words, still learning to walk like an expert — a cutie in a parka, looking around at the world.

As kids often are, the boy was both interested and scared of me. As the dad chatted with the clerk, he kept half an eye on his child who was looking at me, looking away, hiding behind his dad, coming back out. I made faces at the boy. A familiar dance for the father of a toddler. The cashier, enchanted by the kid, gave the boy extra stickers and sent him on his way.

“Oh wow! Say, ‘thank you,'” said the other dad. The kid mumbles a few words, the cashier smiled, the dad smiled, and then they were off. The cashier turned to me, still smiling, and there was a weird transformational moment when she took off her “isn’t that kid cute” face, and it was immediately replaced by her more professional “thank you for shopping at Trader Joe’s” face.

I loved being that Toddler Dad, and I miss being that Toddler Dad, and sometimes I long to be that Toddler Dad. I had it all figured out then.

I had a sense of already having played this scenario out. But in that previous experience, I was the dad of the cute little toddler that everybody loves. And the guy behind me in line, he was just some random guy making faces at my kid. Probably thinking of his own kid and the times they had when his child was a toddler, and how he misses having that toddler.

The epiphany I had was this: I will never be that dad again. I will never have a toddler again. My son is 8, going on 16, and he’s never going to be that cute little boy hiding behind his dad’s pant leg. He’s going to be his own self now. Cute is not the word, but handsome, or charming, or perhaps even infuriating. He was that cute boy. But now he’s someone else.

I loved being that Toddler Dad, and I miss being that Toddler Dad, and sometimes I long to be that Toddler Dad. I had it all figured out then. I sometimes feel at a loss now.

I understand that being a dad is a continuum, being a child is a continuum, being a person is a continuum, and it always changes — usually just when you are getting the hang of it.

When you are a new parent, people tell you, “It will go by so fast.” And you don’t believe them because it’s moving very slowly, and there are thousands of diapers and poopy bottoms and crying babies and non-sleeping nights.

But it goes by so fast …

A version of this first appeared on Dadapalooza.

My son’s room is a perpetual mess. Hey, he’s 7, I don’t blame him. My office is a mess, too. And I’m 7.29 times older than he is!

But last week, when I could no longer find the covers on his bed because of the layers of stuff strewn across it, I felt enough was enough. (My office is almost at that point, but not quite.) I resolved that we had to clean it up.

So we spent his pre-bedtime activities (usually spent reading) by clearing his bed, putting toys away, throwing away broken toys, shoving Legos into boxes. We are in frenzied activity mode .. well, I was. I was pulling everything off of the bed, trying to put it in piles, threatening to throw stuff away. My son, however, seemed perfectly content to move one book at a time and then lovingly place each book with tender care into its proper place.

During this time, I found a bunch of what I thought were failed attempts at paper airplanes. Crumpled up and half folded pieces of white paper, very few with writing on them, that have been lying on the bed for weeks. I repeatedly ask, “Are these trash?” To which my son doesn’t respond. “I assume that means yes,” I said, mostly for my own benefit, then I threw them in the trash.

Amazingly, we manage to do everything we need to do, clearing off the bed and making it mostly presentable about five minutes before bedtime. About three hours later, as I am going to bed, I feel a sense of accomplishment, and a small self-loathing for not having had him do five minutes every day before he goes to bed.

The next morning, my son gets up in plenty of time for school and starts getting dressed. Suddenly I hear a wailing.

He comes into the kitchen, actual tears in his eyes and a couple of crumpled pieces of paper in his hand, saying, “You threw away my airplanes. You threw away Frogger!”

I tried to explain, but he would not listen. He’s wailing and crying, and saying, “I need Mom. You are the worst dad ever!” I gather him in my arms to comfort him and he starts kicking me. I told him that we could rebuild them. He said, “I’ll NEVER BE ABLE TO RECREATE THEM! WAAAHHHH!”

Apparently within all those crumpled pieces of paper were some experimental airplanes that he had worked on weeks before, and my tossing them away clearly was a capital offense.

I managed to calm him down, and get him to school, just barely. By the end of the day, there was still some residual anger, and by the next day he was back to his normal loving self.

I completely understand his anger, but at the same time I see it as completely irrational. I told him I didn’t mind him getting crazy upset about something important. But these are not important. (If I had been the worst father in the world, I probably would have destroyed the rest of his airplanes. But I resisted that urge. I am not a monster.)

I’m upset that he kicked me, which should never be the right response to anything, irrational or not.

But I forgive him. As I said up in the first paragraph, he’s 7. I don’t blame him.

A version of this “worst dad ever” tale first appeared on Dadapalooza.

Gator Dad is a delightful picture book about an involved father who happens to be an alligator.

Written and illustrated by best-selling author Brian Lies, the book tells a day in the life of our hero, the Gator Dad. He starts in the morning asking his young gators to wake up and squeeze the day. And they squeeze quite a lot into the day including breakfast, playground, adventures in a park, some old fashioned romping around at home, quiet reading time, some cuddling time, and finally bedtime (with one last squeeze for good luck!)

This is a picture book, so it is short and an easy read, but it’s no less meaningful. According to the book jacket, the book comes from the author’s experiences as a stay-at-home dad, including comments from random strangers that he was just babysitting his kids. Does this sound familiar anyone?  I bet it does.

The illustrations/paintings are wonderful and full of  whimsical and anthropomorphic details. For example, the book’s title page shows Gator Dad drinking a cup of coffee with a frog leg in it.  The copyright page shows a kid’s picture of his family featuring his gator dad and siblings.

There are also some homage/references to other children’s books, including Put Me In The Zoo, Knuffle Bunny, and the author’s own Bat series, which has been translated into eight languages and read aloud on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday by Scott Simon and Daniel Pinkwater.

To find out more about his work, visit his website: http://brian-lies.squarespace.com/

Parenting is a job no school prepares you for. Every new parent starts a complete neophyte. Sure, you may have practiced diapering your friend’s kid, or attended one of our New Dad Boot Camps, and maybe you were great at swaddling the baby doll when you went to your doula. But let’s face it — nothing prepares you for when your baby refuses to sleep at 3 a.m., or when you are not quite sure if your child swallowed your earphone buds, or how to baby-proof your hotel room. You learn by doing, by making mistakes and by improvising solutions. It’s the ultimate in on-the-job-training.

But here’s the thing — once you’ve got the experience, once you’ve innovated and tried doing stuff and figured out a great or clever solution to a thorny parenting problem, who can you tell?

Enter Parent Hacks, the online community started by Asha Dornfest in 2005. That community’s mission was to share their on-the-job learning solutions with each other and the rest of the Internet so that new parents would not make the same mistakes, and be inspired to implement and improve upon the solutions already in place. In other words, parent hacking!

Dornfest has collected 134 of the best tips gleaned from the website into a book, Parent Hacks, available April 5, 2016 from Workman Publishing. There’s actually more tips than that because interspersed between the numbered tips are various listicle suggestions (six ways to get rid of laundry stains, 16 quick-fix dinner ingredients to always keep on hand, seven pretend games you can play lying down, etc.) and some odes to common household objects you can use for not-so-common purposes (the laundry basket, empty baby wipe tubs, pool noodles, among others).

Some of our favorite parent hacks

Many of the book’s hacks are for parents of kids ages birth to 5; however, there are still a lot of great shortcuts here for parents of older children (my child is 7.) Here are three I’ll continue to use (as you can see, some are not specifically parenting related, although they definitely apply):

• No. 10: Use toothpaste to mark the spot for picture frames.
• No. 66: Trace your kids feet so that you can shoe shop without them.
• No. 81: Put the ketchup under the hot dog, rather than over the dog.

AUTHOR’S NOTE on No. 81:  I live in Chicago, so I think we will stick to mustard: ketchup on a hot dog could get you reported to Child Protective Services!

A few of the hacks seem pretty obvious. No. 78: “Cut food with kitchen shears” is an example. I mean, how does that qualify as a hack? That’s why they call them “kitchen” shears, right? But I’m guessing that some of my favorites might seem obvious to someone else.

Hacks for moms … and dads?

Most of the hacks are unisex, meant for any parent, but probably about 15 of them are mom-centric and not meant for the dads who are reading. (No. 8: “Use a frozen sanitary pad to help with vaginal healing” comes to mind. Although I’m sure many new dads pray for quick vaginal healing, so there’s that.)

I didn’t see any dad-specific hacks in the book, and a quick browse of the website didn’t reveal any either.

Fatherly.com did have some pretty funny videos of some pretty clever hacks by dads; I especially liked this one, which featured a video of an ingenious batting practice solution. Maybe this should be in the sequel!

Craighton Berman illustrated Parent Hacks in a fun and whimsical style, and each hack is clearly illustrated. The background of each page is graph paper, which adds to the feeling that you are getting the ideas directly from the hacker.

Overall, I think this would be a great book to get for a new parent, or if you are a parent of a toddler. It will still be of value if you are a more experienced parent, but you may have already solved that solution (And if you have, and you’d like to share it with other parents, publish a photo or video using social media with the hashtag #parenthacks. Future parents will thank you for it!)

If you’ve got a great parent hack, or more specifically a dad hack, we’d love you to share it in the comments. Otherwise, know that this is a great book for dads and moms alike.

My son is now 7, and much to his chagrin, he’s still in a car seat, not a booster. We have a booster, but it’s for guests or travel mostly. Whenever it is convenient (and many times when it’s not) we strap him into the car seat because of the 5-point harness. He’s going to be in that car seat until he physically doesn’t fit into it or he starts driving, whichever comes last. Here’s why.

During the spring, we were driving home from one of our sojourns. We were on a busy road in Yonkers, N.Y., in my wife’s Toyota Matrix. My then 4-year-old was in the back (in the car seat, of course) and I was driving alone. We had come to a complete stop right in front of a patch of hospital/medical buildings, waiting for the guy in front of me to make a left into one of the doctor’s offices.

I was intent on the guy in front of me, waiting for him to move so I could move, so I wasn’t expecting the sudden jolt from behind. I also wasn’t expecting to be pushed about 4 feet forward directly into that guy’s car.

A van had struck us from the rear. I’m not sure exactly why, but it seems the guy had taken his eye off the road (we think he was looking at his cellphone) and when he looked up he realized that he was moving a lot faster than he thought he was. He rammed right into us.

5-point harness saves the day

My first thought was of my kid, who looked up and said brightly, “What happened, Dad?”

“I’m not sure, are you OK?”

“Yeah!” he said.

I then got out to explore the damage and figure out what the heck had happened.

It didn’t seem too bad at first (our airbags didn’t go off) and I thought we were going to escape with a mild fender-bender until I realized that our car’s whole frame had been crunched, moving the rear end in toward the tire. When I tried to move it, the frame of the car was impinging on the rear tire. The entire back, including the trunk, would have to be straightened. The insurance company declared it a complete loss.

I had a minor bruise where my seatbelt had held me in place, but no serious whiplash or lasting consequences. My son — absolutely no injury at all. He barely knew anything had happened. His car seat had kept him safe. And he was excited because we got to ride in the tow truck (and without a car seat, I have to add).

After that harrowing experience, my wife and I agreed that he would be in the 5-point booster as long as was feasible. And that’s where he’s been ever since.

If you still need convincing of the power of the 5-point harness, take a look at this harrowing safety test video. This shows a test between the booster and the 5-point harness, in which the harness wins hands down.

So stay safe out there!  (And 5-point harnessed!)