Daddy Clay and Daddy Brad welcome Asha Dornfest the genius behind the parenting blog and web site "Parenthacks." Parents serve as bloggers to give their best advice. Amazing tips for moms and dads. A great place to discuss everything from gadgets to poop. Just like us. DadLabs Ep. 35 The Lab.

Daddy Brad: Hello, hello and welcome back to the Dad Labs. I’m Daddy Brad.

Daddy Clay: And I’m daddy Clay.

Daddy Brad: Uh, Daddy Clay?

Daddy Clay: Yeah.

Daddy Brad: There’s a woman. Woman. Right there.

Daddy Clay: There is?

Daddy Brad: Right beside you.

Daddy Clay: Didn’t she see the signs?

Daddy Brad: Obviously not.

Daddy Clay: That’s not just some woman, that’s Asha Dornfest. She’s the founder and publisher of www.parenthacks.com. Brad, you big nitwit. Hey, Asha!

Daddy Brad: Oh, how’s it going?

Daddy Clay: We got her here because she’s got one of the best parenting sites out there on the interweb: www.parenthacks.com. If you haven’t visited there you’ve got to go check it out. Thanks for coming, for being a being a groundbreaking presence here at Dad Labs.

Asha: I do break a lot of ground and it’s a pleasure to do it here at Dad Labs.

Daddy Clay: The first woman interviewee. This is so big for you. This is such a huge honor for you. And I’m happy for you.

Asha: It is actually. Thank you.

Daddy Clay: So tell us a little about parent hacks.

Asha: parent hacks is the parenting site that you probably have always been wishing for. It’s the kind of advice that you get from your best friend or your wise neighbor and it’s a place where moms and dads can share those tiny bits of information that they manage to scrap out during the day that may not help anyone else but it’s going to probably change the lives of other parents.

Daddy Clay: Cool.

Daddy Brad: Tell us about some of the greatest hacks you’ve gotten?

Asha: I‘ve gotten over a thousand amazing hacks in the last year believe it or not. And in fact, one of the latest hacks that I got which I really liked was from a mother in Alaska named Michele who arranges her fridge magnets into a word of the day so that her five year old can now talk about his life using words like astute and morose. And so as you can imagine the conversation in their house has gotten a lot more interesting.

Daddy Brad: Wow, astute.

Daddy Clay: My kids can say “butt.”

Daddy Brad: Mine are getting there. Any dad hacks?

Asha: Absolutely. We’ve got about 50/50 readership so dads are a huge part of parent hacks in fact, and what I think makes the conversation so great. One dad in particular, Stu, wrote the top parent hack of 2006, which I’d like to share with you right now.

Daddy Clay: Please.

Asha: It’s called “The Problem is The Problem, Tot The Kids.” So, Stu’s got older kids, what that means is he’s talking with them a lot, they’re not babies anymore, he’s not dealing with diapers, he’s dealing with issues with his kids. And so as you can imagine that means there’s a little bit of conflict every now and then, they’re pre-teen kids.

Daddy Clay: What?

Asha: I know, it happens. It’s going to happen to you too. It will. Anyway, so there used to be a time when Stu and his kids would be fighting about a problem and he’d be on one side and they’d be on the other and there’d be a lot of finger pointing. Until Stu really discovered that once he and his kid got on the same side of the line and they both started thinking about the problem as the problem instead of each other as the problem, that’s turned everything around for them and they’re able to really get through things a lot easier than they were.

Daddy Clay: So it’s not just gadgets and gizmos, there’s also sort of parenting philosophy and other sort of deep philosophical information on parent hacks also?

Asha: Yes, but don’t get me wrong, we’ve got poop.

Daddy Brad: Oh yeah!

Asha: We’ve got poop. We’ve got all the other stuff that you deal with on a daily basis as a parent. But we’ve got a lot more too.

Daddy Clay: Troy, she said poop. Can we say poop on our website?

Daddy Clay: Poopy poopy poopy.

Daddy Brad: That’s so astute.

Daddy Clay: Okay anyway, Asha thanks so much for coming into the Dad Labs, we really appreciate you breaking new ground here. If you’d like to visit parent hacks you can of course click on the link that’s below this piece, you can also go to my blog, it’s in my blog roll. You can also go up to that thing up there and type in www.parenthacks.com and hit return and you’ll go right there. It’s the cool thing about the interweb.

Daddy Brad: Hey, I kind of like having women here. It’s neat.

Asha: Maybe I can come back.

Daddy Brad: Yeah!

Daddy Clay: Does that mean we have to take the signs down?

Daddy Brad: Well, yeah.

Daddy Clay: Shoot.

Daddy Brad: That was a very astute interview.

Daddy Clay: Thanks for coming in.

Asha: My pleasure. This has been great.

Daddy Clay: Do you want a beer?

Asha: Got a Diet Coke?