About a year ago I discovered a website called The Parent du Jour.  Even the monolingual among us can probably guess what it’s about: Every day, 365 days a year, they profile a different parent.  And today they’re profiling me.  Some of my answers will be familiar to regular readers of this blog and some cover new ground.  I hope you enjoy reading the profile and that you’ll keep coming back to their site.  If all goes well a couple of Growing Sideways’ favorite parents- Lis Fogt and Chris Huntington- will be parents du jour in the near future.

Here’s an excerpt from the interview:

HOW HAS PARENTING CHANGED YOU AS AN INDIVIDUAL?

I saw this episode of The Dog Whisperer Once. There was this overly energetic, slightly manic dog. A yellow lab, I think. And Cesar Milan’s solution was to strap a weight jacket on the dog. He explained that the dog needed to feel like he was doing work—he needed a sense of purpose—in order to settle the dog down enough so that he could handle the mundane parts of his life—going for a walk, lying around the house. I was like that before I became a father. I was pretty confused in my 20s. Not in any dramatic kind of way—I just didn’t know what I wanted in life. Becoming a father gave me enough structure to begin to fill in the other pieces of my life.  [keep reading...]