Best of the Web: Meet the Internet’s Dad giving life tips to the world, and more

(Upworthy)

Rob Kenney didn’t know what it was like to have parents around. When he was 12, his father abandoned him. He vowed he would never allow his own children to go through the same thing.

Rob and his wife raised their son and daughter into adulthood, and he found himself at something of a loss. When the pandemic hit, he decided to realise his idea – a YouTube channel called ‘Dad, how do I?’. He provided practical advice to kids on subjects such as how to tie a tie, and how to make chocolate chip cookies (you can watch below), as well as emotional support.

The tie video was his first, and he gradually gained more and more followers. Today, he has almost four million subscribers. ‘This dude just adopted everybody on the internet that doesn’t have a Dad,’ commented one of his fans.

‘I genuinely think he was put on Earth to be a Dad,’ says his daughter Kristine, who manages his social media.

The YouTube channel has also resulted in a Dad, How Do I? book.

(Maggie Dent, ABC Everyday)

Every parent has had that moment. You say something sharp to your child, and are struck with the realisation that you sound exactly like your own parents.

But as the author points out in her new season of her popular Parental as Anything podcast, it’s not just the bad sayings you’ve picked up from your own parents. It’s also the baggage you carry from the way you were treated as a child.

Shefali Tsabar, a clinical psychologist and author of The Conscious Parent, says how we deal with our childhood baggage influences the way we parent more than anything else. Because we have emotional wounds of feeling rejected or unworthy, we take our children’s behaviour very personally.

As the author notes, we need to ask ourselves the question ‘Am I being the parent I want to be or the parent I had?’

(Catherine Peasron, Huffpost)

At the start of the pandemic, the author found herself in a situation familiar to so many families: locked down, and trying to pivot between remote work and no day care or regular school.

A post on Instagram by Glennon Doyle saved the author’s sanity. While it was mainly about parents embracing screen time as a survival tool, there was another piece of advice that has remained with the author: ‘the idea that all parents really need to do is finish their days with their kids well.’

Doyle, a former preschool teacher, found that despite all the work put into devising activities and lesson plans, kids remembered most clearly what happened at the end of their day.

The author explores why the last thing you say at night to your kids is so important, and how to make sure you ‘finish strong’ with your child.