A new study by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse says the key to keeping your kids off of drugs is to be a “hand-on” parent. What does that mean?

Well, these parents monitor their kids’ TV-watching and Internet use, they put restrictions on what music their kids buy, they know where their kids are after school and on weekends, and they give regular chores to their children.

How about you?

Warmly,

Mark Brandenburg

Mark Brandenburg MA, CPCC
mark@eqnow.org
www.markbrandenburg.com
www.eqnow.org
Phone (+1) 651-766-9976
"Helping Men Succeed" ... read more >>

I was sitting on the couch playing guitar when I heard the bathroom door open. Alleke scampered into the room looking for music like kids after an ice cream truck. She had escaped her bath in her birthday suit, which made my music her victory song as she giggled and galloped circles around the room.

Much later after Alleke had exhausted herself with spinning in circles, she crawled into my guitar case with a blanket and closed her eyes.

I strummed a lullaby. ... read more >>

What makes music and dance important?
From birth children really respond to music and movement. For example we use it to calm a baby who is tired or upset, or we can use it to energise children at a party.

Music and dance is a great medium for moving and learning because most children love music and dance. It helps to build an awareness of emotions and is a great form of physical and emotional expression.

For young children music and singing are great for language development and speech and memory skills because of the repetition. We know that children's brains develop very fast in early childhood and music and movement helps make connections between different parts of the brain.

How does music and dance help with physical activity and movement? ... read more >>

Why are fine motor skills important?
Fine motor skills are important because children need them for activities like writing, playing instruments and playing sport later in their lives.

Once a child can hold a pencil or cricket bat without having to think of "how" to hold it, they can then concentrate on what they are going to write, or how they are going to hit the ball with the bat. This is called automaticity, which is the ability to do something without thinking about it.

It's important to note that being active isn't just about doing full-on physical things and playing sport. It's anything and everything involved in moving your body and having body awareness. For example, in younger children it's about knowing where their fingers are and what they can do.

SPARC aims to develop the skills in our children to be active and healthy from a holistic perspective – so it's about food and lifestyle too. ... read more >>

"I love that he's funny, he's entertaining and he's always there when I need him most. I'm proud to have a dad like that, who takes on conservation issues around the world."

"I love him very, very much." - Bindi

Steve said his daughter had inherited his love of animals: "The most important thing in Bindi's life is that she's grown up in a zoo. Bindi's passionate about animals, but she's also into singing, dancing and dress-ups, like any other little girl.

"I'd do anything to spend time with my daughter." - Steve (Dad)

Loving words from Bindi and loving words from an INSPIRATIONAL Father ... read more >>

THE LONG DRIVE

My family and I recently had the occasion to drive most of the length of the North Island, returning home from visiting the relatives. It was a landmark journey - the first long haul car trip undertaken with James, whose toddlerish exuberance is still peaking.

Toddlers aren't meant to sit down for extended periods of time - it is hotwired into their developing brains to runjumpbouncecrawlswingplayshout, not sitsitsitsitsit. So the aim of the game was keeping the small person happy and by extension, us. This wasn’t just pure altruism at work either; we wanted to get to the end in one piece. Avoiding minor catastrophes in the back seat was going a long way towards avoiding a major catastrophe on the road. So we thought it out, took all those incremental lessons learnt from short trips and rolled them together into one big ball of diversionary tactics designed to get the most out of the journey for James and us. Here's what we learnt: ... read more >>

Well for all the dads who missed out on the 80's and for those who remember all the great songs, here is a blast from the past by Madonna.

Music for kids - my favourite subject. After about 5 months of listening to Baby Einstein I'm at the point where I'm seriously considering sending the CDs off to "willitblend.com" ... Music especially made for babies and kids using a certain set of instruments (to stimulate their development) generally sucks. So I was glad to hear that some people in the music industry entirely agree with this and put together a series of CDs that sounds good to kids and adults.

A reader of diyfather.com pointed us to the "For the Kids" series by Nettwerk and VH1 Save The Music. Even better, Holly of Nettwerk managed to get permission to allow the download of one of the songs from the CD ... click here if you want to listen to Barenaked Ladies - "The Other Day I Met a Bear" .

Here's the full track listing and CD cover.

... read more >>

Hmmm ... interesting perspective from the BBC Comedy Page on rapping dads and babies:

(here is the direct link to the file in case your browser doesn't play the video)

One of our blog readers and dad Matthias Wichtrup has told us about his solution to the problem of making babies go to sleep: compose music and play it to them. Here's his story:

I am a musician and I have a little home recording studio. So I created for my son 10 CDs with slow-moving sound collages which is the perfect way to put him to sleep. On each CD I put 80 minutes of this very relaxing music and I have to say it really does work - and not only on babies!

Sweet Dreamy World - Soothing and calming bedtime music for babies

Listen to a sample of Sweet Dreamy World here: ... read more >>