A Tumblr account dedicated solely to proving  ’My Parents Were Awesome‘.

Share these vintage zoo posters with your little animal lover.

The Washington Post has launched a new blog: On Parenting.

Jeanne Sager sees no-hit piñatas as a symbol of all that’s wrong with the child rearing world.

Excellent litjournal Five Dials has just published an issue devoted to parenting, with Darin Strauss, Heidi Julavits, Alain de Botton, and others.

A little NSFW, but if the Today show can handle it… The new children’s book Go the F@#k to Sleep is sweeping the nation.

If you watch The Dog Whisperer, you will recognize that directive. It’s what Cesar, the star of that show recommends when coming in contact with an unstable or misbehaving dog. And though I’ve recently had to utilize these commands in relation to my daughter, she is not a dog.

You see, she is just six months old and has entered a new stage of her development which is causing her to react in a new way to people who approach her. Now mind you, she sees her immediate family on a regular basis. We have a weekly dinner at my parents’ house which is attended by my folks, her five and seven year-old cousins, my sister and her husband. Not to mention that we entertain at least one visitor in our home per week; but still, lately she’s been greeting her friends and family with a protruding bottom lip and eyes welling up with tears. The more her guests try to give her a soothing voice and perhaps even a reassuring touch, the more she retracts into my arms and amps up into an actual cry.

This cool reception from her usually lasts about five or ten minutes, then she’ll settle down and go back to her old self of huge smiles and a willingness to be held and played with by everyone. It’s just, I have to admit, a little embarrassing to me as her parent. If I’m being honest, I feel like people might think we’re raising a clinging monkey that we never socialize. Or that perhaps it’s a sign of something just plain wrong with how we are doing as parents. I don’t personally think these things, but I worry that others might see it that way.

I’ve asked around and the consensus is that she’s just processing recognition on a new level. Her awareness is even more keen and she’s firing on more cylinders, so her reaction to stimulus is going to be more pronounced.

At any rate, that’s why we’ve instructed folks to just ignore her at first. Just literally pretend she’s not there. Let her take you in and after a few minutes she’ll make the first move. So far it’s working like a charm; I just hope that this phase will pass sooner rather than later.

Anyone out there have any experience with this?

Geek Dad over at Wired.com wrote a really interesting post, listing 100 things that your kids may have to read about in history books (or will they be called history Kindles?). Some things won’t be missed, like the “The scream of a modem connecting” or getting lost, because “With GPS coming to more and more phones, your location is only a click away.”

Some of the endangered activities make us a little wistful, like “Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind,” or “Looking out the window during a long drive.” How about “Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment”? Solitude and time with your own thoughts are important to kids and adults alike. Makes us wonder if we are heading toward a world with too little time to reflect.

How about this one: “That there was a time before reality tv.” We’re very sorry kids won’t know about that!

Times change. Can’t help but hope that people will always read books and write letters, but you never know. What things do you think your kids will never know? Does it make you hopeful or worried?