Good books for fathers and parents

Hi all,
Just had a thought today that I might need to go back to my fatherhood and parenting reading material... my son has really been exerting his independence lately, so gotta remind myself what to do in these situations! Today, for the first time, he was really keen on telling me and my wife to do: "Don't change the bed sheets!" to me, and when my wife tried to feed our newborn, "Don't feed her!" This of course, combined with lots of whining, kicking and screaming. Joy oh joy. Well, I think he was really tired and the feelings of slight jealousy towards his baby sister were starting to creep in. He is good most of the time though, and in the end we managed to get him to conclude that his baby sister can't drink orange juice and can't eat cookies, so she has to drink milk. It is always great to add a bit of sound logic to the situation to help smooth things over.
Nevertheless, it may be time to hit the books again. Here are two books that I found to be excellent and worth reading:
1) The Complete Secrets of Happy Children, by Steve Biddulph. This is actually two books in one... The Secrets of Happy Children, and its follow-up, the appropriately titled, More Secrets of Happy Children. This book gives lots of practical tips on parenthood, being a dad, the correct language to use when talking to your children, disciplining, soft love, firm love and special considerations for raising boys and raising girls. There are many good tips and ideas in its pages. We have used and applied many of his ideas with our kids, and he really gives you a lot to think about.
2) The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Families, by Stephen Covey. Need I say more than Stephen Covey. I mean, Stephen Covey, loving father of nine children plus highly successful entrepreneur. That says it all. If you haven't heard of the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, please get out of the hole you are under and google it right now and then buy it. Then get this follow-up, where he applies the Seven Habits specifically to family life and parenting. Especially since he is a father, who also managed a career, there are many great pieces of advice for fathers here on how to cope and be a terrific father that your kids will love. He has so many great ideas and thoughts. There are lots and lots of great stories in this book from his own experience (he had enough of them, with nine kids and all). This includes the classic "green and clean" story, which is worth the price of the book alone in my opinion.
So I think I may re-read these books, cuz the time seems right to do so. If any of you out there have ideas for good books for me to read, please leave a comment and let me know. And if you have read the above books and have an opinion about them, feel free to leave it here!
Happy reading,
TBD

Pee-pee and really long train! Wow!

It was a rainy day today, so I thought I would blog a tip for my fellow fathers for rainy days.
If you have a Chapters near you, check it out. There is a Chapters near us, in Vancouver, that has a nice Thomas the Train Engine track and trains set up in the section where the children's books and toys are. This is the Chapters at Broadway and Granville. What is great about this set up is that you can pick up some books or magazines and read them while your child/children play with the train set. I did that with my son today, and it worked great. He played with the trains contently for almost two hours with minimal need for my intervention.
My book and magazine reading was only interuppted by his need to go "pee-pee" and for him to show me his really long train. (Oh, and a couple of times when the really long train came apart and some minor repairs were in order).
My boy loves to play with other kids and build really long trains, so this was the perfect spot for him today. Since I like to read, it was the perfect spot for me too. I had to practically beg him to leave, he could have stayed there all night. I wouldn't have minded staying longer myself, to read some more, but of course we had to get back for dinner and beddy-bye. So to convince him to leave, I bought him a book and told him we would go home and read it. That worked nicely, although I only condone such actions when absolutely necessary :-) ...but he played really nicely anyways, so I thought he deserved a new book... I have to admit, it was a book that I have wanted to get for awhile too. I will write about it in a future post.
So, check out what your local Chapters or bookstore have to offer for kids. The children's section of your local library also may have something similar. If they do, and you like to read, you are in for a rainy day treat!
Until next time,
The blog blogg daddy