The Dad Issue 2019
Burlington’s Dad Guild Supports New Fathers; Books That Celebrate Boys’ Sensitive Side; How Yoga Can Make You a Better Parent
Destination Recreation: History Hike at Little River State Park
Little River State Park in Waterbury offers many activities, including boating and swimming on the Waterbury Reservoir, camping, and mountain biking. But what I really love are the hiking trails, which bring to life the land use history of Vermont’s forests. As a college ecology and environmental science instructor, I’m kind of a geek about…
How to Roast a Cricket & Other Life Skills: A Homesteading Couple Publish a Guide for Adventurous Kids
When I was a girl growing up in a small New Hampshire town, my father, a college professor, bought a nonfiction book about a mother and her teenage daughter who bonded when they acquired a milking cow. While parenting three adolescents, my dad sometimes jokingly threatened that he was going to buy a cow to…
Habitat: Mud Kitchen
Early childhood educator Tara Gravelin grew up around tools. Her father is a woodworker and, as a child, she used to watch him cut, sand and build. That secondhand knowledge has been useful in Gravelin’s latest endeavor — building mud kitchens. The 38-year-old Burlington mom of two boys, ages 4 and 6, has designed and…
Junior Journalists: Integrated Arts Academy Second Graders Cover the News With a Weekly Paper
In 2014, second grade teacher George Leal launched a class newspaper at the Integrated Arts Academy, an arts magnet school in the Old North End of Burlington. That year, the 7- and 8-year-old staffers decided to use their lunch break to investigate an attempted robbery at a neighborhood store. Leal initially pushed back on the…
Big Top Talent
Come, one and all! Circus Smirkus, a youth circus headquartered in Greensboro, will perform throughout Vermont this summer as part of its annual Big Top Tour. The tour, which runs from June 29 to August 18, includes 69 shows in 16 towns in five states. It begins and ends in Greensboro, with stops in St.…
Detecting Depression
Diagnosing anxiety and depression in children under 8 is notoriously difficult. The signs are subtle. And kids that young sometimes don’t display noticeable symptoms. University of Vermont researchers have used artifical intelligence to detect these conditions — known as internalizing disorders — in young children by analyzing their speech patterns. Their study, published in the…
In Tune
Tween and teen female singers take note: Choir director and music teacher Jessie Pierpont is launching the Vermont Girls Choir in Burlington this fall. Auditions will take place this summer. Pierpont aims to enroll 25 girls, ages 12 to 18, in the choir, which will practice two afternoons a week at the First United Methodist…
Jazzed: Precocious Performer Lights Up Festival Stage
Name: Lulu Barr-Brandt Age: 12 Town: Burlington The 36th annual Burlington Discover Jazz Festival brings live music to town for 10 days starting May 31. On the lineup are Patti LaBelle, Bobby McFerrin, Brian Wilson and Burlington 12-year-old Lulu Barr-Brandt. Asked how she decided to book a kid for a two-hour, paid gig, festival managing…
Jeffrey, Donata, Aniela, Edgar & Mira
Kids VT: Jeffrey, you’re a stay-at-home dad to these three kiddos! How long have you been at it? Jeffrey: I’ve been home a little over a year. I stopped work before Mira was born. I had a job where I was traveling 100 days out of the year. And that was tough enough with two…
Up With Down Dog: How Yoga Can Make You a Better Dad
Most of the guys who attend my men’s yoga class for the first time come because someone — usually a spouse or partner — “forced” them to. Unnerved by images of yoga classes crammed with stretchy women in stretchy pants, they understandably feel that “it’s not for me.” That’s too bad, because it’s men —…
Times Are a Changin’
When I was growing up in suburban New York in the 1980s, it was rare to come across a family in which the dad played the primary role in childrearing, cooking and cleaning. Undoubtedly, we still have a long way to go when it comes to gender equity on these fronts; women employed outside the…
Defining Masculinity: Books That Celebrate the Sensitive Side of Boys
Atlanta-based photographer and writer Kate T. Parker traveled around the country with her camera to capture portraits and quotes from boys ages 4 to 19 for her new book, The Heart of a Boy: Celebrating the Strength and Spirit of Boyhood. The book follows her 2017 release, Strong Is the New Pretty: A Celebration of…
What is toxic masculinity and how can we help our sons navigate it?
My son loves to play basketball. His enthusiasm and passion for the sport are contagious. His father and I never played so we’re happy to leave coaching to the people who know what they’re doing, but we do spend time talking about his “head game” — how to stay mentally strong in various situations, like…
#Squadgoals: Burlington’s Dad Guild Helps New Fathers Connect and Learn From Each Other
On a Friday night in May, a line of pinball machines blink and glow along the wall of a narrow suite in a nondescript building on Williston Road in South Burlington. At 8 p.m., the space — known as the Pinball Co-op — is buzzing with a few dozen mostly male patrons working the flippers…
