Be A Good Dad

Teasing Games

by beagooddad on June 30, 2010

Geetle – Giggles is teasing me.

BAGM – Kind of like you were teasing Pookie this morning.

Geetle – But she thinks she’s in charge of me.

BAGM – Hmm. It sounds like teasing is only fun for one of the people involved.

Giggles – Me.

Geetle – Mom!

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Talking to people with verbal disabilities

by beagooddad on June 23, 2010

People frequently have trouble talking to kids with special needs. It can make people feel self-conscious to talk with people who may not be able to communicate back normally. Over the years, I’ve watched a lot of people try to talk to Pookie and give up after getting what seem like strange responses back.

Here is a video about how to do it the right way. This is Ricky Stanzi. He happens to be the quarterback at the University of Iowa which happens to be my favorite team. The team is doing some volunteer/outreach work with Camp Courageous which is an organization that works with people with disabilities.

So Ricky is being interviewed and in the gets approached by one of the people from the camp. Watch how Ricky doesn’t miss a beat as he switches to talking to a guy that a lot of people would have trouble holding a conversation with. The way he pays attention to the body language and listens and talks is textbook on how you should talk to people that have verbal disabilities. Ricky doesn’t give one indication that he is feeling awkward or embarrassed and that’s while a news crew video camera is filming him about other stuff. He doesn’t even acknowledge that the cameras are around. He just talks to the guy about what the guy wants to talk about. He just talks to him like he’s a friend and they are just hanging out.

That’s how it’s done.

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My favorite part of Father’s Day this year

by beagooddad on June 22, 2010

BAGM wrote up a post with the details and some pictures of what we did on Father’s Day weekend.

My favorite parts of the day, though, were playing catch with a football with Geetle for about a half hour, having Giggles sit on my lap and knock my hat off over and over, and watching Pookie dribbling a basketball and shooting some hoops.

I’m a big fan of big events and all that but there is something so nice about just being able to relax in the front yard with the kids.

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Librarian for a day

by beagooddad on June 18, 2010

For one of my summer classes (that I’m about to drop because it will be too much of a time commitment over summer), I’m supposed to do 60 hours of community service. I volunteered at the library and had my first night on the job last night.

They put me to work right away shelving books and after a brief training period of how alphabetizing works, and a few practices, I was off and running for about 2 1/2 hours of work.

A few years back, my dad and I did these really awesome built in bookcases all over the front room of our house that is now our library. They are stocked with books as well as the short bookcase near my bed and under Pookie’s bed and the big bookcase in the girls’ room and the bookcase in the basement and a few baskets where unfiled books end up.

BeAGoodMom organizes by look. She gets these neat piles of books that are sideways next to another stack of books that is up and down. It looks very pretty and probably allows us to get more books on the shelves. Hardcovers end up next to each other buy height and paperbacks sometimes get stacked two deep.

I, however, like to organize by author and then title. Sometimes I’ll mix it up and do author and then original published date which makes it easier to find the next book in a series.

I’ve lost the battle in our house.

But I lived to fight another day…at the library. It was awesome. In addition to just putting the books where they belong, we also have to fix the books around it that are out of order. Some people do yoga, some people do shopping, some prefer chocolate. I think I might have found my stress release shelving books.

The person training me (she remembers the Great Depression) commented on how nice it was to have someone that actually new the alphabet and told me what a great job I was doing. I can’t remember the last time that happened at my real job and I do things way harder than alphabetizing on most days.

Unfortunately, I realized that I’m just not going to have time for 60 hours over the summer. That works out to just over 8 hours a week and I just can’t commit to that. But maybe I can find a way to get in a 3 hour shift every week or two.

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