No, not 101 tasty recipes for eating children, but rather having kids learn to cook Either part way through or by the end of cooking with kids, I wonder what I was actually thinking. The mess, the sheer volume of mess, but that’s my fault I guess for not organising and cleaning as I go. That said, never, ever pass up an opportunity to have your kids help out with cooking. The quality bonding time, the life skills they get, and the pleasure they receive from having others eat what they’ve made makes up for any mess they make I assure you. Just like with chores and other tasks your kids do, you ..read more

Vote on It? Ha! Drop and Gimme 20 Private What sort of dad are you? Do you dictate every aspect of your kids’ lives? Is living at your house like a military boot camp for the kids and ‘it’s your way or the highway’? OR do you discuss and include your children? Are they part of the process for making decisions on family matters, what chores they do and what they want for dinner? After reading that you probably think the ‘Dadtatorship’ method sounds appalling and you definitely want to run a happy ‘Dadocracy’ style household. But the truth is, you need a balance of both. Your role as a dad and ..read more

Quality time stuck in a box on wheels. Really? Yeah, why not? Whether it’s 5 mins to school or a 2 hour jaunt to visit relatives, it’s time that shouldn’t be wasted. When you have the opportunity to have some quality time away from the distractions of TV or video games take it. For this reason, don’t let kids use iPads and iPhones in cars except for longer journeys, and even then not for the whole time. Kids slouched in the back of a car with a phone three inches from their face is not doing them any good. Aside from the health implications on their eyes and posture, there’s really no need fo ..read more

Let me get this straight, now that I'm single I still have to parent with my ex in order to raise my kids? If there’s one thing I do well as a single dad it’s co-parenting. But then if I’m co-parenting am I still a single dad? Well yes, not in the way some single dads have kids full time, but part time single dadding is still single dadding. Co-parenting is when two or more parents work together to raise a child or children, despite not being in a romantic relationship or living in the same household. Co-parenting can take many different forms depending on the needs and circumstances of the p ..read more

Yeah, you can stop those excuses right now. It's really not that hard to offer your kids something more than TV on a rainy day It's rare, very rare that dads do art and craft with their kids at home. Whether it's something you've always left to their mum or something that you think only belongs in school, it just doesn't happen, and it should. So here is a crash course in art and craft for dads. Children love to do art and craft, they love to use their imagination and create, they love to get messy and learn from their experiences about the way different materials can be used for so many diff ..read more

You remember that woman the kids popped out of? Chances are she's still gonna be part of your life for the foreseeable future Still love her? Hate her guts? Maybe you’re indifferent, perhaps she left you a widower (really sorry if this is the case). But chances are she’s still around. Chances are she’s still in your life. Now the circumstances of your break up are your own. Not here to judge on what led you to this point, but I am here to judge you on how you move forward. You see, you and the mother of your kids are the two single most important people in your kids’ lives. Unless, you know ..read more

Once upon a time when there were only four television channels… Being that you are a dad I’m assuming that you must be old enough to remember those days before Netflix right? Ok, so some of you are younger dads and might not have grown up in a time when there were a couple of TV channels (and that was all!). Let’s travel back in time so we can better understand how we got to where we are and how to move forwards. Movies and TV for Kids When I Were a Lad So in the 1970s when I was growing up we had one TV in the lounge room. It was a thick glass screen inside a wooden box with 5 or 6 buttons o ..read more

Beans on toast again? Sort that out right now Daaaaadddddd. What’s for dinnnneeerrrrrr???? This continues to be one of the most frustrating parts of single dad-dom for me. Not for the cooking part. I like cooking, I’m relatively good at cooking. My kids tell me their friends come over because they like my cooking. It’s deciding what to cook in order to keep everyone happy and when there’s time to cook, that’s the issue. When I’m trying to fit around work, picking up and dropping kids off to various after school activities, getting dinner done at a reasonable time before bed is a big juggling ..read more

Spend! Spend! Spend! Oh hang on, where'd all my money go? Being literate when dealing with money and finances isn’t something that comes naturally to everyone and as such should be actively taught. It’s actually a much trickier concept for children to grasp than you might expect, especially as they pass into adulthood in today’s age of digital currencies. If we want our children to be able to make sound judgements around budgeting, investing, saving, getting loans and how to manage debt, then we need to teach them these things explicitly. Regardless of income or occupation, money in some form ..read more

Life Hack Alert! Organising your little ones has never been easier. ‘What are we doing today, Dad? I’m bored, I’m hungry, can I play Xbox now?’ A day at home, a weekend, school holidays or a rainy day means organising kids for the single dad. Whether it’s one kid or 20, trying to keep them occupied, organised and refrain them continually asking for things or what to do because they’re bored, there’s a hack that makes things much easier. It’s a strategy I modified from teaching classes of kids in Primary School. It worked a treat there, so I bought it home to parenting and everyday life. The M ..read more