Dear Mr. Dad: I have two grandchildren, ages 4 and 6. I love them dearly but really don’t enjoy babysitting. They run around, climb on the furniture, break things and generally wreak havoc in my house. It takes me a good hour to childproof the house before my daughter drops them off and then another hour to put everything back. I’m exhausted!

How can I be a good grandma and enjoy time with the kids?ANSWER: Let’s start by defining “good grandma.” I’d say that taking two little terrors into your house and keeping them entertained for hours on end without getting paid for it — more than once — is a good start.Another important ingredient is the desire to be a regular part of their lives.The foundation you’re laying now will hopefully blossom into a close, nurturing relationship as your grandchildren get older. The trick is to find a way to turn those frustrating and infuriating visits into something more fun — for you and for them. They can definitely feel how tense you are when they’re around and they probably aren’t much happier to be at your house than you are to have them there.One solution is to do your babysitting at your daughter’s house instead of yours. That way, you’ll save a few hours on the childproofing, and any property damage will be covered by your daughter’s homeowner’s policy, not yours. The downside is that children usually like spending time at their grandparents’ house. The rules there are often more lenient than in their own home, and they get to do things they wouldn’t do with mom and dad around. There’s something about sharing that feeling that helps strengthen the grandparent-grandchild bond.You’ll need to establish some simple ground rules. Your grandkids are old enough to understand the difference between appropriate and inappropriate behavior.For example, at grandma’s house, there’s no jumping on furniture or touching things without asking first. Explain to them that you have to repair anything they break or damage, and that’ll cost you time and money.Remember, though, that kids sometimes break things accidentally, so keep anything valuable well out of reach. You can’t reasonably forbid them from touching everything in your house — that’s just not realistic.As a workaround, do you have a room in your house that you could designate as a play space where the kids won’t have to worry about breaking or destroying anything?It doesn’t have to be fancy: a few pieces of child-friendly furniture, a table, some chairs, and a good assortment of age-appropriate toys, coloring books, arts and crafts supplies, blocks and so on.If money’s an issue, you can probably get most of these items used at garage sales or on Craigslist.Before each visit, think about what you’ll do while they’re there. Build in a good mix of indoor and outdoor, active and quiet, group and solo activities.Give them some choices, but don’t forget to include activities you enjoy. For example, my mom loves to draw and paint and she makes doing art a regular part of many of her visits with her grandchildren. My 7-year-old’s maternal grandparents are avid bird watchers and they’ve taken her on many backyard outings. Do this now. It’ll be a lot harder to convince a ‘tween or a teen to go to a museum with you if they’ve never done it before. But if it’s been a regular part of their routine, you may actually be able to get them to stop texting for a few minutes and enjoy the artwork.

Dear Mr. Dad: As a woman who grew up in the 1970s, I’ve always supported feminism, which did a great job of getting people to pay attention to women’s issues. But now, as the mother of three boys, I think we might have gone too far.Girl power is everywhere these days, and it has become perfectly acceptable to make fun of boys and cut them down.I see how this affects my sons and I’m really worried. What is going on here?ANSWER: This may set off a firestorm, but here goes. First, you’re right — what feminism accomplished in improving the quality of life for women and girls has been nothing short of spectacular. And I’d never want to take any of that back.Unfortunately, while females were advancing, boys and men have been losing ground. A lot of ground. Here are just a few examples.n Women live five years longer than men and have lower death rates of nine of the top 10 causes of death. Females 12 and older are twice as likely as men to be diagnosed with depression, but four times more men than women commit suicide.n Seventy-eight percent of the jobs lost in the current recession had been held by men. In our society, where we tend to rate men by their paychecks, the “He-cession” has already led to increases in male depression and suicide.n Boys are bombarded with messages about how bad/dangerous/stupid males are. Girls as young as 4 believe they’re smarter, work harder, behave better than boys, according to a 2010 study. By age 8, boys also believe that girls are superior in these areas. The fault apparently lies with primary school teachers (about 90 percent are female) who demand that boys conform to a more feminine (AKA quieter) style of behavior, and reinforce the idea that boys are academically inferior. Teachers’ positive expectations for girls — and negative ones for boys — become self-fulfilling prophecies, say the researchers. No surprise, then, that in eighth grade, girls are twice as likely as boys to be proficient in writing, and 50 percent more likely to be proficient in reading?Or that throughout school, boys get worse grades, are expelled three times more often, and are more likely to repeat a grade or drop out entirely? Given that, it’s easy to understand why men account for only 43 percent of college students and receive only 40 percent of advanced degrees.There’s a major crisis brewing in this country and we need to do something about it. Now. In 2009, President Obama created the White House Council on Women and Girls. For the past six months, I’ve been part of a group of men and women whose goal has been to create a similar council for men and boys, hoping to achieve for males what the women’s movement so brilliantly did for women. Sadly, the Administration has been reluctant to even look at the proposal.I know that some people will say that it’s only fair that girls are doing better than boys. After all, the logic goes, men have historically done better than women. Whether that has ever been true is debatable — we’ll talk more about this in future columns. But as the father of three girls, I don’t want my daughters growing up seeing themselves as victims anymore than you want your sons to see themselves as victimizers — or hopeless cases. As a country, we can’t allow ourselves to focus so much on past perceived injustices that we ignore what’s happening right in front of our faces.Armin Brott is the author of “The Military Father: A Hands-on Guide for Deployed Dads” and “The Expectant Father: Facts, Tips, and Advice for Dads-to-Be.” Readers may send him e-mail at arminaskmrdad.com, or visit his website at www.mrdad.com.