This piece from the New York Times’ Motherlode is about the funniest thing I’ve read since becoming a parent. Noting a recent addition to the blogosphere that collects the crazy things you find yourself saying as a parent, Motherlode’s Lisa Belkin invited readers to add their own stories to the comments. He are some of my favorites:

“Your sister is not a chew toy.”

“You are so immature.” (to a 4-year-old)

“Do not use cheese to write on the walls.”

I recently found myself telling my daughter to “Please sit down and take off your snout.” (She was dressed up as a dog and it was dinner time.)

I highly recommend checking out both Mommylingo and Lisa’s post at Motherlode if you need a good laugh!

Great Teachers. A great teacher can make all the difference in your child’s life. I know. My kids have had the incredibly good fortune of having some really terrific teachers. According to an article in The Atlantic, Teach for America has been gathering data for more than 10 years and has started to pinpoint some of the key attributes of a great teacher and to use that information to improve the selection and training of its teachers.

Expertise and Perseverance. Penelope Trunk has a post up this week discussing the idea that expertise results from almost daily hard work over a period of at least ten years and not as a result of innate talent. These are the same ideas behind Malcom Gladwell’s theory of Outliers. To me, this discussion raises all kinds of questions about what might motivate someone to spend so much focussed time on a pursuit — and to persevere when they encounter failure. At least part of the answer was offered by Jennifer Kolari last week in her post about helping children succeed.

It Made My Day. I also spent way too much time this week reading this website, which collects little snapshots of things that made someone’s day (h/t to Gretchen Rubin of the Happiness Project). Love this one:

My 3 year old was playing with her LeapPad and in a cheerful voice it instructed, “Push the green GO circle and have fun.” She replied quite seriously, “Don’t tell me what to do.” IMMD

What have you been reading?

Check out Thefuntheory.com, a site that aims to prove that “fun is the easiest way to change people’s behavior for the better.” Here’s my favorite one:

Obviously, this works well with kids too. According to a New York Times article about the Tools of the Mind program, which is meant to promote self-regulation:

“[C]hildren acting out a dramatic scene can control their impulses much better than they can in nonplay situations. In one experiment, 4-year-old children were first asked to stand still for as long as they could. They typically did not make it past a minute. But when the kids played a make-believe game in which they were guards at a factory, they were able to stand at attention for more than four minutes.”

Remember how much more willing you were to eat your veggies when they were laid out in the shape of a funny face? Dropping your sister off at school is so much more exciting when you pretend you are going on a road trip. And, of course, clean-up time always goes more smoothly when you turn it into a race to see who can do their assigned task fastest.

Got any suggestions to make routine or unpleasant tasks go more smoothly by adding a bit of fun?

Happy New Year everyone! To start things off on the right foot as we get back to work and school, here are the winners of the 2009 International Pun Contest: (more…)

Have a perfectionist (or several) living in your home? Maybe they’ll get the message about the importance of mistakes and failure if they hear it from Michael Jordan:

H/T to Jonathan Fields.

A friend of mine turned me on to a terrific new site for moms called The Skinny Scoop which allows you to ask questions (get the “skinny”) or answer questions (give the “scoop”) on any subject. Lots of fun and super helpful when you want to poll other moms about things like the going rate for the tooth fairy, whether you really need a diaper bag, or how much you should tip when you order takeout from a restaurant. It’s also fun to be able to share your hard-earned wisdom – what else can you do with all your toddler birthday party ideas once your kids are in elementary school?

Check out Marc Kielburger, co-founder of Free the Children, discussing child labor on the Colbert Report a couple of days ago. Scroll forward to 5:20 to see his segment.

H/T to @ourkidsnet.

For related posts, check out We Day Toronto is Coming! and Programs Empower Kids to Help.

A new iPhone app, designed by Harvard grad student Matt Killingsworth, is designed to help you find out what makes you happy. Track Your Happiness uses e-mail or text message notifications to ask you how you are feeling and what you are doing several times a day. You decide how often you want to be cued (between 3 and 5 times a day).

After enough data is collected (50 surveys), you receive a Happiness Report that tells you “how your happiness varies depending on what you are doing, who you are with, where you are, what time of day it is, and a variety of other factors.” Killingsworth, who works with Daniel Gilbert of the Hedonic Psychology Lab, designed the app as part of a doctoral research project to collect real-time data on what factors makes people happy.

Want to try it out? Click here. Could also be used by your favourite teenager . . .

Remember the classic Tom Lehrer song about the elements?

Well, there’s a new game in town:

The budding scientists at my house are big fans.

P.S. They also like the other songs on the album, Here Comes Science, by They Might be Giants.

Here’s the second instalment in an unintentional series on Grey’s Anatomy

Click here and scroll about six minutes in to see Isaac, a lab tech-turned-patient at Seattle Grace, as he assures McDreamy that he has survived war, the loss of his family, and the loss of his country, and that he will survive the loss of his legs if Derek is forced to cut his spinal cord to remove a tumour.

Check this out for some Halloween fun

Here’s mine:

H/T to Carolyne Cybulski at the e.p.i.c. School.

Check out this clip (scroll forward to about three minutes in) for a great example of empathy that gets Callie her job back at Seattle Grace