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Learn to Love Game Night Granted, you will likely spend a good percentage of your parenting time stuck on the edge of a Candy Land board, waiting for a frenetic toddler to pull the double-orange already FOR GOD’S SAKE, so you can get out of the peppermint forest or whatever and be done with it. Board games with kids can be a nightmare, but board games with grownups will forever remain an excellent reason to get together and drink....

A little history: The Imperial Troop Transport was used to move the Empire’s soldiers from location to location. But, it was never really part of the films. It was mostly just a cool-looking toy that let you stick in a bunch of action figures side-by-side. In The Mandalorian, it actually appeared on-screen. So, because it’s a toy again, the circle is now complete. It started as a toy! The new toy comes in vintage-inspired packaging....

“Unfortunately what most parents do is yell, scream, criticize and threaten,” says Larry Koenig, developer of the Smart Discipline system “A lot of discipline, unfortunately, is done without a lot of planning to it and it’s done unfortunately with anger.” That’s unsurprising, of course. The need for discipline is often the result of a kid doing something dangerous, rude, or destructive. Sometimes they’ve done it not out of spite, but to test boundaries....

“I recommend waiting to make sure the pregnancy is viable,” says Ferne Traeger, a psychotherapist, executive coach and founder of Beyond the Boardroom. “Pregnant women can now take a blood test at approximately 10 weeks that rules out certain chromosomal abnormalities. Many women announce their pregnancies once the results of this test are in. At this point, dads might begin to consider whether they want to take paternity leave and, if so, for how long....

So how can parents who now work from home talk to their employer about situational changes or proposed adjustments? Stewart Friedman, professor of management at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business, Director of the Wharton Work/Life Integration Program, and author of Parents Who Lead, stresses that parents need to frame the conversation as a business proposal that is in their best interest but makes it also seem mutually beneficial to their company....

Just Narcissism or a Disorder? It’s important to understand that there are parents who have sub-clinical narcissistic tendencies and those who have a mental health condition known as narcissistic personality disorder or NPD. The disorder is more prevalent in men than women, but is exceedingly rare, affecting maybe 1-percent of the U.S. population. So while the chances of parenting with or being raised by someone who has NPD are vanishingly small they are not nil....

As was widely reported in the great wild world of “where can you stream things” media, all the Charlie Brown Holiday Specials have largerly been relegated to only-Apple TV-status. This meant that, for Halloween, if you had wanted to watch It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown, you were only able to do so with an Apple TV+ account. Granted, there was a period of “free’ streaming, but still, the rest of the holiday Charlie Brown specials appeared to exclusively reside with Apple....

RJ La Porte and his husband, Cole, adopted their baby daughter Molly Jean four months ago. Although their process was easier than most, it was still grueling. However, the constant interviews and meetings the process required helped them prepare for the big transition to come. Not that they find it easy. While the North Carolina couple don’t often go on dates; they have new and creative ways to tend to their marriage — and new family....

It’s been four years since I became a single parent. Now, I’m staring down my late-twenties and chasing my 5-year-old every day. He’s a smart, kind kid whom I love with every fiber of my being. I’ve grown a lot and learned so much along with him. Now, as I gear up for many more years of parenting, I wanted to look back at some things I’ve learned as a young, single parent....

Having two young kids is tough. It’s an experience that leaves you sleep deprived and riddled with gray hairs. Children are well worth that exhaustion, but my wife and I love our family just the way it is. That’s a nice way of saying we don’t want any more kids. I’d always planned to have a vasectomy after we became a family of four. Tubal ligation — the permanent contraception available to my wife — is a risky procedure, though Guttmacher reports it’s also three times more common than the far simpler and cheaper vasectomy....

It didn’t take long for me to realize that the mixing of my American and Vicky’s British cultural mores was going to lead to some seriously befuddling situations. The second time that I casually slipped my hand into Vicky’s on our third date, she didn’t return her hand to within an arms distance of mine for the rest of the evening. Vicky’s actions, I later learned, didn’t have anything to do with her attraction towards me but were in line with a reserved nature that is common in Brits....

Sarah V.* knows this devastation first hand. She and her husband live in a section of Northeastern Ohio where opioid abuse is rampant. Over the course of 12 years, they’ve adopted two children and served as foster parents more than 20. Of their 20 foster children, half were infants born addicted to drugs. Here, Sarah talks about the challenges of the system, what makes adoption during the opioid crisis more difficult than previous crises, and adopting her first daughter, who was born at 28 weeks and going through opioid withdrawal....

Of the 32 companies that provided Fatherly with figures — some did so on background or later questioned previously supplied numbers — 25 had a median salary of over $70,000. The average American salary for a 40-hour-a-week worker is $44,564. The reason that well-to-do workers also receive attractive parental benefits isn’t mysterious. Companies have to fight for talent and leave allows employers to not only attract workers with options, but — and this is more important — retain them....

According to Bloomberg, the US inflation rate hit another 40-year high in May, rising to 8.6 percent after easing slightly in April. Experts had hoped the slight dip in April would mean we’ve seen the peak of inflation rates and price pressures would lower. But that’s not what happened. Food prices were up more than 10 percent last month compared to May 2021, BBC News reports. And energy costs surged higher by 34 percent....

“That’s not how you do a push-up,” his 7-year-old brother corrected. He positioned himself on hands and feet, as if doing a bear walk, and thrust his pelvis downward sharply several times. He looked over at us triumphantly. “It’s called ‘Awkward Dog,’” he said confidently. If these shenanigans were any indication, the next week of workouts promised to be a hot, hilarious mess. The workout we were using came courtesy of an exercise program called Double Time from P90X creator Tony Horton....

What the decision comes down to is this: Is it riskier to get the vaccine and potentially experience side effects that could harm yourself or your baby, or is it riskier to hold off on vaccination and potentially get infected with COVID? One thing is certain: COVID is particularly dangerous during pregnancy. Pregnant women with the disease are 22 times more likely to die than pregnant women who aren’t infected, according to a JAMA Pediatrics study of more than 2,100 women from 18 countries....

Yes Day stars Jennifer Garner and Edgar Ramirez as Allison and Paul, parents who feel as if all they ever say to their three kids and co-workers is… NO. That all changes when one of the kids tells Mom and Dad about a fad sweeping Los Angeles: Yes Day, where, for 24 hours, kids make the rules. That leads to a busy family day spent water balloon fights, rolling down the windows at the local car wash, riding roller coasters, and more....

On the most recent episode of The Joe Rogan Experience, the host was speaking with comedian Bridget Phetasy about Pete Buttigieg taking parental leave to care for his newborn twins with his husband Chasten. Rogan was dismissive of the idea of men needing to take leave, citing a “back-in-my-day” line of thinking that puts him in the esteemed company of Tucker Carlson. (Who, last week, went on a homophobically-tinged rant about Buttigieg taking time off to figure out how to breastfeed....

Let’s start with the K’Nex build itself. Assemble the 809 pieces according to the color-coded instructions and you’ll end up with a two- and a half-foot-tall roller coaster. An included motor (that runs on two non-included AA batteries) powers two Ferris wheels that lift the car to the top of the track. The car starts its descent through a series of sharp turns to the bottom where it resets for another trip....

The result is Kano ($149), a dead simple kit that teaches kids 6-to-14-years-old how to build a computer from the ground up and then program it. Kano recently went from Kickstarter phenomenon to wide distribution in less than a year by tapping into two powerful trends. First, there’s a growing sense that coding literacy needs to be a key component of early education to ensure the U.S. remains competitive globally....