Kathy Hollenkamp is a kindergarten teacher in Illinois. Every year, the class discusses Thanksgiving, and then the children make a recipe book where they explain how to make their families' traditional dishes. The books are then given to their parents, who no doubt get a kick out of them as much as you will. Click the pictures in this Tweet to bring up more pages from the 2017 cookbook. Do not skip Jayden's Carrots.
As requested: 2017 Kindergarten Thanksgiving Cookbook
In this video experiment, Cut handed a baby to quite a few people who had never held an infant before. Watch their faces, and the awkward way they hold the child. Most found it a surprising experience. They all had different reactions when it was over. One contains NSFW language.
This is also an illustration on how different the world is with reliable birth control. Once upon a time, it would be difficult to find an adult who had never held a baby, because people had many siblings over quite an age range before they ever dealt with their own children. -via Tastefully Offensive
People giving parenting tips often come across as guilt-tripping, with the subtext being "You're doing it wrong." Reading this list, it occurs to me that encouragement, reassurance, and advice is much better given when people simply talk about their own experiences instead of telling you what you should do. We're all just doing the best we know how as we go along. Buzzfeed complied a list of reader-submitted observations about raising children and how it changes you (or most people, because there are always exceptions). They are spot-on yet hard to properly convey to someone who hasn't specifically asked about it.
1. That as your children grow, you'll miss the person they were.
"Where is that 3-year-old who crawled onto my lap to read books and covered the driveway with chalk art? Where is the 10-year-old who quietly drew for hours every night? Where is the goofy 14-year-old who told me hilarious stories about his day, every day? They're gone, forever." —Jessica Margolin
3. That for the most part, raising a child simply involves a lot of really boring tasks.
"Those moments of exhilaration or despair are real, but few and far between. There's no such thing as 'quality time', only 'quantity time' in which those extraordinary moments sometimes occur. I don't care about anyone who would 'take a bullet for their children' because we would all do that. What I care a lot about are the parents who simply show up every day. And the next day. And the next. Tying shoelaces, singing the f[*****]g 'Little Green Frog' song 50 times, keeping a running mental account of food intake to decide if the next meal should be heavy on the protein or fats or fiber, and smiling when their kids walk in the room even when they would kill for five minutes alone. Yep, these are the people who deserve an award for perseverance." —Imogen Moore
As to #1, the only thing you can do is to appreciate the new person your child continually becomes. And believe it or not, you'll eventually miss #3 ...a little. There are 24 of these observations in a list at Buzzfeed.
When kids let the strange and silly stuff knocking around in their head spill out onto the page it usually just makes us giggle and say "um, okaaayyyy" at the ridiculousness of it all.
But when kids write dark and creepy stuff on the page accompanied by creepy and often violent drawings we can't help but look at the kid differently from that day forward.
These terrifying little notes were written by kiddos who don't really know the ramifications of what they're writing, and yet they weren't afraid to let their parents or whoever know exactly how they feel, threats and all.
He doesn't mention the biggest difference: taking care of a baby is intense, but temporary, while a cat is mostly the same its whole life. Inman left out the part that spans about two decades, in which you are constantly confronting a child with brand-new problems you never encountered before as they grow and develop. No doubt Inman will have things to say about that as time passes. -via Matthew Inman
Having just welcomed my first child I am now in the process of figuring out how to live my TV and music lovin' life with a newborn baby around, a baby that is a mere five days old yet somehow knows our voices well.
My exhausted wife needs sleep and so does our little baby boy, and yet if he hears our voices he wakes up and starts crying, wanting his parents to hold him once again.
While looking for a method of communicating non-verbally we came across this super badass chart created by How To Be A Dad that taught us military hand signals we can use while our little man is sleeping.
We've already used the "Oh god it smells awful!" and "I will throat punch you!" ones a lot...
A new study from the Copenhagen Studies on Asthma in Childhood Research Center (COPSAC) in Denmark has found that having cats around the house can help newborn babies avoid developing asthma. In a study of 377 babies who have mothers with asthma, scientists studied a gene variant (TT) that doubles the chance of developing asthma. They took environmental samples in the home and had mothers fill out surveys over time to try to isolate factors that affect the chances of the child developing asthma. They found that when the home has a cat when the baby is born, the TT variant is not activated.
The result surprised co-author Hans Bisgaard, professor of paediatrics and the head of COPSAC. Not because the results will lead to any new treatments—they will not—but because the study shows that the genes behind a disease can be switched on or off depending on the environment around us.
“For me, this is the core message because it’s a recognition in the direction of how disease occurs. It documents the interplay between genetics and the environment we live in, and in particular that this occurs very early in life, both during pregnancy and in the home,” says Bisgaard.
As a new father I'm sure I'll be searching online for tips and fatherly advice when I have questions, but most of all I'll be consulting the video series How To Dad because the dad in the vids really has his head together.
In this episode the How To Dad dad answered a question sure to come up when my son has reached toddlerhood- How do you get a toddler with lots of energy to fall asleep in the car?
Meet Yoni and Nina aka Yonina, an Israeli couple who enjoy singing in sweet harmony to their adorable and adoring little baby, and every week they post a new video to YouTube to spread the love through song.
This particular video featuring Yonina singing Matisyahu's One Day went viral, and even though their singing is sweet and the beatboxing is fresh people online are pretty sure the baby is the secret to their viral success.
Children's books seem like timeless tales to the kids who love them, and yet parents find there's a whole new batch of tales being told by the time they have kids, the old stories left by the wayside.
When I was a kid Richard Scarry, Dr. Seuss and the Berenstein Bears were all the rage, and an old classic called Raggedy Ann was enjoying a revival thanks to the animated features released in the late 70s.
Nowadays most kids have never heard of the Raggedy Ann stories created by Johnny Gruelle, and people will call someone a "goody two-shoes" without realizing the name comes from a story published by John Newbery in 1765.
And even though there are a dozen or more imitators out there today the original sensory exploration book The Touch Me Book by Pat and Eve Witte has been placed on some faraway bookshelf time forgot.
The mind of a child works in ways we adults typically cannot comprehend, and what makes perfect sense to their very young brains often seems like pure madness to our adult minds.
Those crazy kids' thoughts are hilarious, but when a kid says something that makes perfect sense yet sounds a bit sinister we stop laughing and our mind starts racing.
We find ourselves wondering who let the little evil mastermind into the house in the first place, let alone gave them their own room, and as the kid's campaign of wickedness continues they go from being a mere brat to our archenemy.
Toddlers typically aren't self conscious, or fashion conscious for that matter, but they do make great models because they're adorable and they'll pose for photos all day long if you make the shoot into a game.
But eighteen-month-old Augie Polites ain't playin' no games when it comes to modeling, and he's already giving his famous model uncle Aristotle Polites a run for his money.
A post shared by Augie and Aris (@babyandthebody) on Oct 2, 2017 at 5:04am PDT
Little Augie may not have ripped abs, sexy stubble or paychecks from modeling gigs like his uncle, but thanks to his mom's Instagram account @babyandthebody he's about to become more internet famous than his uncle will ever be!
Christy Keane's daughter Charly was born deaf. She's still an infant, but recently got hearing aids. We've seen older children and adults get emotional when they hear sound for the first time, but Charly is so young, she doesn't understand what's happening or how to react. Her facial expressions are precious.
She's instantly delighted, then confused, then a little scared, then delighted again. She never takes her eyes off her Mommy, though, so you know she's going be alright. You can see more of Charly at Instagram. -via Digg
A fifth grade class is studying World War II. One homework assignment was to define some of the terms they learned in class. This student, a cousin of redditor LeBronJameson, used Google Search to come up with the answers. Sometimes that helps; sometimes you get busted, especially if you didn't pay attention at all in the classroom. I hope he/she learned to double check and maybe get a second source. -via reddit
These days children are being introduced to tech gadgets like tablets and smartphones at an earlier age than ever before, and I constantly see parents appeasing their toddlers by allowing them to stare at their smartphones.
So it's only a matter of time before toddlers figure out how to create their own Facebook accounts on mommy's smartphone, and according to this hilarious Toddler Facebook mockup from mommyshorts their posts will be hilarious to read.
Even though they'll have to pretend to be at least 13 years old we'll know the truth, especially when they talk about naps, forgetting people's names and pooping in the bathtub...on second thought it'll be just like when really old people post on Facebook!
