My Neck, My Back (The Trampoline Makes ‘Em Crack)

I think I went a little hard on Jolene last night. I jumped all over her for a solid hour, and my back and neck haven’t been right since.

Oh, yeah, Jolene is our trampoline (I’ll explain later). She’s a 15-foot Skywalker that I assembled to 95 percent completion, then disassembled back to the point where I made a fatal mistake, then reassembled, a 5-hour process in all. 

Did you know you don’t need any training or certification to assemble these deathtraps? Just the ability to read, operate basic tools (hope you bought the “good” drill)  and interpret vague illustrations that make Egyptian hieroglyphs look like calligraphy.

The Sports Dad: Let The Dream Live A Little Longer

Bless his heart, like many boys his age have dreamed since forever, my 9-year-old son, Truman, wants to be a Major League Baseball player. 

Of course, I, being a man of a certain age who once was a boy his age, know how this story ends when your tallest parent is 5 feet, 6 inches tall and has no discernible athletic talent. 

But I’ve been wondering … does he need to know what I know? 

The Sports Dad: A Sport For Every Season

The issue of single-sport specialization — and the associated risks — is back in the headlines this week, and as someone who wrote about this trend more than a decade ago and has since become a youth sports coach, it is a topic of great interest to me.

The bottom line: Don’t do it.

If your child is the next Alex Morgan, Serena Williams, LeBron James, or Ronald Acuña Jr., maybe it’s worth the risk, but let’s be realistic: He or she probably isn’t destined to reach the highest levels and make millions of dollars.

The Sports Dad: Give ‘Em A Dang Trophy

The trend in recent years has been to slam youth sports culture — particularly the concept of participation trophies — for the downfall of the younger generation.

Alpha males and others who spend their free time being mad online would have you believe that rewarding a child for dedicating a big chunk of their free time for three or four months to physical activity in a team environment is all that is wrong with the world. 

Gasp! How will our society overcome this travesty?

Travels With Kids: Walt Disney World 101

If you live in this part of the country and have kids, there’s a pretty good chance a trip to Walt Disney World is in your not-too-distant future.

As one-time (and future) annual passholders — we let ours lapse but have found Mickey withdrawal too much to bear — our family can offer a few tips and tricks to help make your visit a little more magical (or economical, but probably not both). 

The Sports Dad: Beware the Ides of All-Stars

All-star season can be a source of great joy and pride for youth sports coaches, players, and parents alike. It can also be a source of stress, frustration, and disappointment.

For every kid who gets the opportunity to represent his or her town or county at the all-star level, many more will be disappointed to be left off the roster. It’s even more heartbreaking for the older children in an age division to miss out, considering many only have a viable chance of making all-stars every other year. (For example, 10-year-olds naturally are more likely to make all-stars in a league for 9- and 10-year-olds.)

Regardless of which end of the equation your child ends up on, though, the entire process can be a positive one if everyone involved handles it in the right way.

The Dad Life: The Village

Frequent readers of this column might get the impression that I sometimes have my hands full parenting two children, especially in the case of our just-turned-5-year-old Princess who got a couple extra smacks with the sass spatula at the genetics lab. 

And they would be correct. 

Travel With Kids: Toy Story Land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios

Every trip to Walt Disney World comes with a mix of magical anticipation and anxiety-ridden trepidation, especially when young kids are in tow, and those competing emotions ramp up even more when a new attraction opens.

As Disney devotees, my family braved the opening weekend crowds last summer to check out the new Toy Story Land at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and both the magic and the anxiety lived up to our expectations. 

The Dad Life: Road Trip!

School is out for the summer, and for those of us with kids that can only mean one thing. Well, actually it means several things, like increased childcare expenses, skyrocketing grocery bills, and enduring the wicked summer heat in the name of getting the little heathens out of the house to burn off some steam before we all lose our bleeping minds.

But most of all it means we’re free to get out of town. Untethered from the school schedule, we can travel to our hearts’ content (assuming those unfortunate souls with “real” jobs have the vacation days). This newfound freedom affords us the luxury of longer journeys than usual, to exotic locales like Kansas or Ohio to visit family and feed cows.

The Dad Life: F You Alice Cooper

Spring is a special time in the Lowcountry, as we begin to thaw out from our two weeks of winter and pack away the hoodies for another season. Beach days become more frequent and our legs and feet are freed from the unnatural restraints of pants and closed-toe shoes.

Bees will buzz, kids will blow dandelion fuzz … sorry, too much Disney. Oh yeah, the kids. They LOVE summer. The pool is open and school is closed.

OH NO, SCHOOL IS CLOSED.