The Playground

This morning Hunter got into my pile of books for my own bedtime reading. It was rather amusing having him follow me around demanding that I read him "Unconditional Parenting" by Alfie Kohn

Aarthi Devanathan

3:32 PM

ahahaha

awwww

I wish i could meet Hunter.

One day!

Peter Grace

Yeah, Nate occasionally picks out a random unix book from my shelf and says "read?"

Aarthi Devanathan

D'awwww.

Beofett

I suspect he picked this book out of the pile because it had a kid on the cover. The other books he opened the cover, saw no pictures, and discarded

he is pretty cute, but I'm definitely biased :P

Aarthi Devanathan

hee hee hee

Beofett

@PeterGrace I guess we can't really complain about the kids having good taste in literature!

Steve Jackson

3:38 PM

22

Q: Programming with a baby

I'm wondering what parents programmers (or really any working-at-a-computer job) have to say about staying at home with an infant while trying to get some work done; is it at all feasible? How much work might you actually do? Long term or short term, one child or several; not real relevant righ...

Aarthi Devanathan

@Beofett heh.

hee

Oh Oh!

amazon.com/Uncle-Barbershop-Aladdin-Picture-Books/dp/0689819137/…

I love this book.

it's a gorgeous book and a great story.

Also, if your kid is older, I loved this one, too:

amazon.com/Weighty-Word-Book-Paul-Levitt/dp/0826345557/…

Beofett

Here's the one I got for my cousin's kids:

thinkgeek.com/geek-kids/7-13-years/e74d

Aarthi Devanathan

hee hee hee

Steve Jackson

These are all great! My son loves big words - delicious is the word of the week.

Aarthi Devanathan

@SteveJackson I have tons of children's book recs; I worked in a B&N and a library for several years, and they both had me in the children's section

Steve Jackson

3:48 PM

I think last week was stigymoloch

Beofett

@SteveJackson I have no idea what that means!

Aarthi Devanathan

:O

Peter Grace

amazon.com/Big-Joes-Trailer-Truck-Mathieu/dp/0394829255

Steve Jackson

@AarthiDevanathan Hmmm....how to get to the information in your head. It's a list question unfortunately.

Aarthi Devanathan

@SteveJackson ALAS.

Peter Grace

3:48 PM

my favorite book as a kid.

Aarthi Devanathan

And it's subjective.

@PeterGrace <3

Steve Jackson

@Beofett It's a dinosaur with horns on his head. He loves dinosaurs.

Beofett

@SteveJackson ah! We have a big book of dinosaurs that my son likes to look through, but that one is not in there

Steve Jackson

And trains. And big trucks. And rubber duckies. This age is a ton of fun.

Beofett

While I'm excited about the possibility of him being into dinosaurs (I am a rock hound, and I know some good local fossil sites), I hate trying to pronounce the names

Steve Jackson

3:50 PM

Stygimoloch

Stygimoloch (meaning "horned devil from the Styx (river of death)") is a putative genus of pachycephalosaurid dinosaur from the end of the Cretaceous period, roughly 65 million years ago. It is currently known from the Hell Creek Formation, Ferris Formation, and Lance Formation of the Western Interior (United States), where it lived alongside Tyrannosaurus and Triceratops. It may represent a sub-adult form of Pachycephalosaurus. The type species, S. spinifer, was described by British vertebrate paleontologist Peter Galton and German paleontologist Hans-Dieter Sues of the National M...

@Beofett My son adores Dinosaur Train on PBS (as it combines the two greatest things ever). Each episode usually focuses on a species and the repetition is definitely good for getting the pronunciation down. It's still a little jarring when he can identify them on sight out of context though.

Aarthi Devanathan

I did that, but with constellations and planetary bodies.

Beofett

@SteveJackson we're doing our best to hold off on any television (aside from what runs in the background at his daycare) until he's older, but there do seem to be a ton of good dinosaur shows available that I'm excited to watch with him

that, and the Three Stooges :P

Steve Jackson

@Beofett Yeah, I personally don't watch very much TV at all, but when we watch it together it's a great way to expose him to topics I don't know much about (like dinosaurs) or wouldn't think to introduce so soon (like spelling).

Aarthi Devanathan

What was that show?

It was like, Dinosaurs that were in a sitcom.

Beofett

@SteveJackson A friend of mine keeps "How Things Work" running on the TV for his kids whenever it is on, and it seems to be a great educational tool

Aarthi Devanathan

4:00 PM

amazon.com/Dinosaurs-Complete-First-Second-Seasons/dp/…

Beofett

@AarthiDevanathan I think it was called "Dinosaurs"?

Aarthi Devanathan

@Beofett Modern Marvels is good for that, too.

Steve Jackson

That's why I was interested in the AAP article, by nature I'm a "TV Bad" kind of person, but I can't deny that it's accelerated a lot of my son's learning.

Aarthi Devanathan

I wish I could have the TV on, but the video portion off.

Steve Jackson

@AarthiDevanathan See that's funny. Because the one thing I do watch on TV myself is sports and I take the opposite tack. There are a number of radio sports announcers I think are quite good though and will listen to them if available.

Aarthi Devanathan

4:04 PM

@SteveJackson Sometimes I just want noise in the background. I usually resort to NPR, but that's not always an option.

Steve Jackson

@AarthiDevanathan Yep, I get that.

Aarthi Devanathan

:D but yes, I remember I loved Dinosaurs (and Land of the Lost) as a kid.

Beofett

6:42 PM

@AarthiDevanathan I know you're in the middle of some fun discussions, but when you have a chance, ping me about an idea for site promotion I wanted to ask about

Aarthi Devanathan

@Beofett have at it, friend. That discussion isn't going to end any time soon, I feel.

Beofett

@AarthiDevanathan Stop me if we've already discussed this....

...but what about having a book club like literature.se, where we choose a popular parenting book and meet to discuss it, with possible awards for best answers/questions related to the topic book?

Aarthi Devanathan

That would be really cool, actually!

Beofett

literature has a user who is offering to send copies of the next club topic to the posters of the best questions, and I'd be willing to do something similar here

Aarthi Devanathan

@Beofett Depending on how big/small this effort is, I could help with that. We could also work to choose books that have ebook copies available; an e-copy is better than no copy

Beofett

6:55 PM

@AarthiDevanathan Here is the format Literature used. I think its pretty good

we'll have to decide what criteria we use for determining nominations

Aarthi Devanathan

nodnod I think I've seen theirs. Hmmm. What would be awesome is if you culled a shortlist of, like, 3-5 books that we could start with, and I could find some read-alongs from other fanspaces. We (you, me, and @Torben and @Hedge if she wants in) can work out the mechanics and make that regular chat event we keep talking about :P

HedgeMage

I was pinged?

Aarthi Devanathan

@HedgeMage start here: chat.stackexchange.com/transcript/message/2399199#2399199

HedgeMage

Nifty idea...

I like the idea/format... a couple of things come to mind that we might have to deal with/ work around...

Aarthi Devanathan

Tell. Let's spitball this.

HedgeMage

7:05 PM

"Good literature" is a huge space -- it covers just about everything except nonfiction and garbage :P "Good parenting books" is a much smaller space, especially considering the quality of most of what's out there.... how many decent books are we going to be able to come up with?

Most good parenting books I know of are pretty narrow in scope. "How to parent" doesn't make a good book. "How to navigate IDEA and NCLB and ADA for parents of special needs kids" or "helping your middle schooler to not be afraid of math" can make a good book, but things like that might not be broad enough to draw a decent audience from our little site.

Finally, most parenting books are directed toward parents of one particular culture -- I guess we can probably solve this by rotating a good variety, but there's not a lot that will appeal to, say, lefties and conservative christians, or upper-class suburban parents and less wealthy, rural parents.

Beofett

Honestly, based upon what I've seen, I'm not convinced there is such a thing as a "good parenting book"

HedgeMage

All my concerns revolve around "how do we find great books for this", NOT "how do we fix this idea" though -- it's a great idea, I'm just worried that we'll get through three books and start running out of ideas.

Beofett

However, for our purposes, I think what is more important than "good" is "provokes questions and interesting discussion"

HedgeMage

true

Aarthi Devanathan

I also think if we run out of "parenting" books that we can shift towards other ones.

Beofett

7:11 PM

yep

Aarthi Devanathan

Behavioral psychology, self-help, whatever.

There's also, "Talking to your kids!" books that are worth a read and LOL.

Depending.

Beofett

I think there are some books that could draw interest, such as the Danica McKellar math books for girls

they aren't strictly about parenting, but they're a topic that might be of interest to parents, and the gender-perspective might provide some interesting debate. Plus the math aspect may provide interest to our normal audience

Aarthi Devanathan

I like that.

+1

Beofett

others, such as Dr. Sears' books (and yes, I loathe Dr. Sears) are mainstream enough, and in sufficient quantity, that we could probably get some interest

HedgeMage

/me pokes things to see if she's really back

Reading the backscroll, I'm much more confident that we won't run out of usable books in the next couple of months, thanks :)

So... what will our first book be?

Beofett

7:19 PM

@sarato Please let me know if you're okay with the current Skeptics question/answer. I spoke with a moderator from Skeptics and he's concerned about your question being closed as a duplicate there if it gets migrated

@HedgeMage Punished by Rewards is one that has been brought up by a user in an older question, and has some unconventional perspectives that will probably spark at least some debate, if not necessarily questions and answers...

I read the first few chapters, and then got annoyed with it and stopped reading

HedgeMage

<-- goes to read the description

Aarthi Devanathan

Heh heh.

Beofett

but I'd take one for the team and push through it

This one might be more fun/accessible. There's a line of them, with several that would fit in our scope

HedgeMage

@Beofett that could work -- it sounds like one of those "yay, you noticed something... but don't really understand the implications of it" books, which should lead to plenty of debate :P

Beofett

There's not anything controversial in them, though. I can't see much discussion arising from it, but possibly some questions/answers

Aarthi Devanathan

7:25 PM

@Beofett I like the idea of that. Not every book has to be divisive, imho

Beofett

This one just seems like fun, but I haven't gotten ahold of a copy yet

Here is another one that came up before, and sparked some discussion (although it may have been on skeptics... I can't remember for certain)

I could definitely see questions/answers and discussion on that one

HedgeMage

@Beofett That one doesn't seem like it'll get us much content/engagement. Yay, you finally figured out how to wrap a baby in a blanket... moving on...

/me looks at the other two

Beofett

@HedgeMage that one is actually a series of games/activities based upon age range, targeted (supposedly) to stimulate certain areas of development (e.g. "pick up frozen peas to train fine motor control/pincher grip", "make a pots and pans set of instruments", etc.)

but yes, it does not have much depth at all

although some good geeky humor

HedgeMage

I've heard the Tiger Mother one referenced a few times... that might be a good one to stir up discussion without being super-controversial.

Beofett

I wouldn't be so sure it wouldn't be controversial. The reviews on Amazon had a lot of very offended people

I'm hesitant to suggest this one, but Jenny McCarthy's book on Autism would possibly get some interesting debate going. Highly, highly controversial debate, I suspect

Aarthi Devanathan

7:34 PM

mmhmm

Beofett

She also has a general book on parenting

The Happiest Baby on the Block is another that I've heard a fair amount of buzz about (although the person who advocated it to me has a child who wound up being a walking, talking temper tantrum)

676 5 star reviews on amazon

HedgeMage

Having clicked on a few of these, I'm now getting really amusing combinations of recommendations on Amazon.

Beofett

lol

HedgeMage

For example, "How to Win Friends and Influence People" followed by "'I Love You's Are For White People"

WTF

Beofett

One more: The 90-Minute Baby Sleep Program was loaned to us through the same person who talked up The Happiest Baby book. It struck me as being full of pseudo-science

@HedgeMage uh, wow....

It's recommending to me "Daddy Needs a Drink" and "The Three-Martini Family Vacation"!

Also "Raising the Perfect Child Through Guilt and Manipulation"... it must know my parents

HedgeMage

7:45 PM

roflmao

Steve Jackson

I've heard this one is good, but I haven't even seen it anywhere: amazon.co.uk/Parenting-Book-Nicky-Lee/dp/1905887361

HedgeMage

You know, browsing the parenting section on Amazon is kind of depressing. Everything that's a bestseller is dubious at best and absolute quackery at worst.

People suck.

Wow... just... wow.

Beofett

Yeah, that's pretty much how I feel about any parenting book that isn't intended to be obviously humorous

HedgeMage

Wow... best recommendation combo ever:

A book about why you can't get pregnant followed by The Ethical Slut

Beofett

....

Steve Jackson

7:54 PM

My buddy got me this one when we were expecting. Great book :) amazon.com/Pregnancy-Sucks-Men-Miracle-Miserable/dp/B000EHTAIM/…

This is the best parenting book I've read and it wasn't that great: amazon.com/Kazdin-Method-Parenting-Defiant-Child/dp/0618773673

Someone suggested in meta - themed chat events. I think that's a great idea too - less homework involved :)

HedgeMage

hehe :)

I think we have one of those coming up next week.

Steve Jackson

Ahh it was @Beofett. Great idea sir.

HedgeMage

I'll bbiaf... I need to get some stuff organized before this afternoon.

Beofett

@SteveJackson thanks! I'm really trying to figure out whatever we can do to stir up interest in the site

Aarthi Devanathan

:D

HedgeMage

8:08 PM

What if instead of basing it on books people would have to go out and buy, we do "e-workshops" on various parenting topics in chat. Get 1-3 experienced people in an area, or a special guest, to do a super-short presentation, and then take questions and do round-table discussion?

There's less of a commitment needed from participants (no money, no homework) and we can really do our own thing instead of relying on books.

Aarthi Devanathan

And if they become a hit, i can promote that

Beofett

@HedgeMage That was sort of where I was going with my meta proposal, although the special guests/experienced specialists/presentation angle is a definite improvement

HedgeMage

8:37 PM

@Beofett @SteveJackson @AarthiDevanathan: What are some topics we might want to do, so we can figure out which ones we have the chance of recruiting good experts/guests for?

Aarthi Devanathan

@HedgeMage Something about traveling for the holidays slash not angering relations.

Since, you know, my extended family hates me.

Beofett

@HedgeMage Infant sleep patterns is always a popular topic. Gifted children in the classroom might have a fair amount of appeal. Dealing with temper tantrums is another good topic

Aarthi Devanathan

Gifted kids I can participate in, having been labeled one my entire scholastic career.

Hmm. How about work/life balance for kids?

Talking about, like, arts and extracurricular activities

Like I did choir for ages but never did sports though I wish my parents had encouraged me more to do them.

HedgeMage

/me nods

Beofett

promoting healthy nutrition

peer pressure

Aarthi Devanathan

8:41 PM

bullying is a hot topic

Beofett

indeed

Aarthi Devanathan

homosexuality almost always is.

unless it's on here, in which case it's "agenda-driven"

HedgeMage

foster parenting / adoption

Aarthi Devanathan

exchange students?

HedgeMage

determining if your kid has special needs and what to do if that's the case

Aarthi Devanathan

8:43 PM

we have nutrition -- physical fitness should be one, too

oh!

social media and parents -- how much sharing is oversharing?

HedgeMage

heh

Beofett

maybe we could engage members from other sites for some cross-site subjects, like fitness and nutrition?

HedgeMage

families and the internet is a good one in general -- I have a presentation I do, and I can get one of my guys from FBI cybercrime to hang out with us

Beofett

@AarthiDevanathan that's a great topic. Its been the topic of a number of seminars around here

Aarthi Devanathan

@Beofett They hate nutrition. /seriousface

HedgeMage

8:45 PM

it's funny because it's true

Aarthi Devanathan

looks like we have a winnar

Facebook it is.

HedgeMage

/me chuckles

What else? I want to make a long freaking list so we have it in our heads and can recruit people when we meet them.

Aarthi Devanathan

i think we have a long freaking list

/grumpypants

sorry -- this afternoon has pretty much killed my niceness.

HedgeMage

totally understandable

I'm in an unflinchingly good mood due to impending arrival of new appliances

so there's no getting me down today :)

Beofett

transcript of a session on parenting and social media from a seminar I attended (although I did not attend that particular topic session)

Aarthi Devanathan

8:48 PM

@HedgeMage I am jealous of your good mood.

I think I'll go kill nazis.

Oh hey!

VIDEOGAMES.

HedgeMage

rofl

Aarthi Devanathan

always a good topic for a parenting chat, given how many dads these days grew up with an N64

HedgeMage

@Beofett it's yelling at me for not having silverlight... is there a more readable version somewhere?

Beofett

Good idea... I was looking for pointers on how to make money by having Hunter farm gold for me in World of Warcraft!

HedgeMage

@AarthiDevanathan Hey! This mom grew up with an Atari 2600 :p

Aarthi Devanathan

8:49 PM

Same difference.

HedgeMage

Nothing alike at all

:p

Aarthi Devanathan

;)

Beofett

@HedgeMage sorry, all videos and powerpoints they provided require silverlight :(

we were apparently lucky to get that much. 1 of the sessions I was at failed to get recorded, and another was 15 minutes in before they figured it out

HedgeMage

sheesh

silly people

Beofett

i just gave my own presentation on social media about a month ago, but it was targeted as an introduction for retirees

@HedgeMage I wish I still had mine

@AarthiDevanathan Oddly enough, my Wii is the first Nintendo system I've ever owned

Aarthi Devanathan

9:02 PM

huh. not even gameboys.

okay off to take care of Stuff n Things

/waves see you all

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