Sanity savers: On the road, with the kids

We took a road trip to Washington, D.C., and I came back feeling like our time there was too short but the drive was waaaaay too long. And that's even with the kids being relatively good in the back seats. At The 36-Hour Day and at Child Caring, I'm asking parents to weigh in with their best car-trip tricks. Of course, I wouldn't ask if I wasn't also willing to give! Here are some of mine:

1.) Plenty of room. Smaller cars are more fuel efficient, but I’m willing to give up a few gallons of gas in order to have a more peaceful ride (also: you can't fit five kids and two adults in a Prius). We drove my husband’s gigantic Suburban. I balked, for a moment, until I realized that the price of diesel is about the same as the price of regular gas right now, and the truck’s diesel engine gets more miles per the gallon than does my Honda minivan. Pre-Suburban, we’ve actually rented a larger vehicle to let the kids have enough room to ride comfortably.

2.) Plenty of snacks. Pack individual lunchboxes for each child (a full meal plus a snack or two and an extra drink). It seems like a lot of extra work, but the moment one of your kids says she's hungry and then gets herself a snack without disturbing you or anyone else, it'll be worthwhile. Don’t forget the ice pack, and keep some treats (lollipops and fake fruit gummy things, in my case) hidden for doling out as bribes or rewards. (I know, there's plenty of options on the road, but I'm one of those who is reluctant to stray from the route and, with kids and food allergies to consider, I'm not a fan of fast food.)

3.) Some cool apps for your iPhone or iPod Touch. My husband is a NPR junkie, and the minute we cross the border from Massachusetts into Connecticut and he loses his favorite station, he starts twiddling with the radio, looking for his fix as the stations fade in and out. This trip, we hit the dead radio zone and I pulled up a great little live-streaming public radio app on my iPhone. Best of all: It was free. On the way back, I downloaded a few cool (also free) games to keep my 4- and 2-year-olds whine-free; you can check out my great slideshow of free iPhone/iPod Touch apps at Work It, Mom!

4.) A portable DVD player and a bunch of DVDs. Not everyone will agree with me on this, and my parents certainly didn't hook up the Videodisc player in the car when we drove from New Jersey to Canada, but I let my kids watch videos on long car trips. I got my dual-screen DVD player at Target; the screens strap to the backs of the front seats, and they’re connected to each other so that two kids can watch the same movie. Important detail: Each screen has its own headphone jack, allowing my preschoolers to watch “The Wiggles” while my nearly 16-year-old listens to her iPod behind them without going crazy from the yummy yumminess.

5.) A power inverter. This handy contraption plugs into your car’s power source (formerly known as the cigarette lighter) and allows you to plug anything else into it using a regular plug. (Like my techno-speak?) The big reason for bringing one of these along is that you can recharge your cell phone or laptop or iPhone or whatever you don’t have a car adapter for.

6.) Non-electronic entertainment. Even with a power inverter, there’s only so much battery-powered entertainment you want to deal with. Stash a few new (or new-to-you) age-appropriate books for your kids in the car, and pull them out when the whining starts. Also bring blank notebooks and pencils – they’ll come in handy for anything from writing a short, silly story (each person in the car contributes a sentence, one person reads it out loud) to a game of I Spy where the players have to write down (or draw pictures of) what they see. Other excellent car-ride choices include Water Wow books (paint with water, let dry, do it again), finger puppets, and magnet boards.

Share your tips in the comments, please!

Sarah Palin, working moms, and perception

As much as I hate to admit it, how you're perceived plays a key part in your career. Working moms have plenty of stereotypes to contend with, but the perception that we're somehow less dedicated to our jobs than non-parents -- or less capable of doing them -- lingers, no matter what we achieve.

So last week's announcement by Alaska Governor Sarah Palin triggered an immediate response from me: She's just proved her detractors right. After championing working moms and campaigning on her working-mom chops, she's bowing out by offering a jumble of reasons, all of which leave many people with the perception that she just couldn't cut it. I write about how and why at The 36-Hour Day:

The speculation has been rampant since Sarah Palin announced Friday that she will be stepping down as governor of Alaska.

After her time in the national spotlight with Senator John McCain, she didn't seem nterested in running a state, The Asssociated Press suggested. Being governor during a recession -- and when there are 15 ethics charges and budgeting squabbles hanging over your head -- is a chore, Slate.com quipped. She says she doesn't want to "embrace Lame Duck status," even though the next election is 16 months away, Ed Morrissey points out at Hot Air.

But it's probably best to consider what Palin herself said about her decision: "Life is too short to compromise time and resources. It may be tempting and more comfortable to just keep your head down, plod along... but that's the worthless, easy path; that's a quitter's way out."

As a working mom who compromises her time and resources daily, I beg to differ.

As Rob Schlesinger at US News & World Report points out, "Political success is about hard work and working hard. And progress is made through compromise. But in Friday's speech Palin dismissed hard work and compromise as … the quitter's way out."

Working hard, compromising, sacrificing in order to juggle career and family... is for quitters?

If she's eying a run for the White House in 2012, I don't see how that will play well with her with her working mom base. Or with anyone else, for that matter -- by insisting "It's about country" (Hmmm... her new slogan?) and then explaining, on her Facebook page, that she's putting her family first and implying that she ought to be commended for her bravery in doing so, she's throwing herself, and all working mothers, under the bus. Every one of her detractors who wondered if she'd be able to handle the demands of a high-profile government position while also being a hands-on mom just got their answer, and directly from her: She's choosing not to.

I'm not saying that women who choose to opt out of the workforce are doing something wrong. Not at all. And I agree with Palin that it's a difficult, personal decision. But campaigning on your working mom chops, reaching out to working mothers, insisting that you understand what we deal with and vowing to champion us, and then opting out makes it look like you -- and, by extension, the rest of us -- can't handle the pressure.

It doesn't help matters that her announcement came on the eve of Independence Day and right on the heels of a scathing profile in Vanity Fair. Her decision doesn't show that she can, indeed, govern effectively during a crisis. And playing the "poor little me" card on Facebook isn't much of a maverick thing to do: “And though it’s honorable for countless others to leave their positions for a higher calling and without finishing a term, of course we know by now, for some reason a different standard applies for the decisions I make. But every American understands what it takes to make a decision because it’s right for all, including your family.”

It is difficult to decide to opt out. And we don't know for sure what Palin plans to do next. Whatever it is, I hope she doesn't have to compromise time and resources, since that, apparently, is anathema to her. But I think she'll have a difficult time finding a "higher calling" that doesn't require her to do so.

Organizing kids' toys: What are my options?

I've written about my tendency to clutter and my husband's tendency to go on cleaning tantrums, so it should come as no surprise when I tell you that, once again, we've reached a clutter crisis at home. This time, my stuff isn't causing (as much of) the problem; this time, we're full up on kids' toys.

Tiny plastic cars and farm animals that my youngest kids still play with nearly daily are competing for space with my big kids' (and husband's) XBox paraphernalia -- not to mention all of the books and puzzles and ride-ons that seem to multiply with each passing birthday.

Over at The 36-Hour Day, I'm asking readers for advice, and I'd love to hear yours, too. How do you keep the kids' toys under control?

Moving? Make sure you evaluate your new school district

A Child Caring reader wrote to me recently, asking for some information. "One topic I would really love to see covered is how to evaluate a school district," she wrote. "Although I have some idea of how to research this on my own, I feel that I am at a disadvantage since I didn't grow up here."

I didn't grow up in the Boston area, either, and remember feeling more than a bit bewildered as my husband and I were trying to decide where to move. My tiny condo in Brookline was much too small for all of us (my husband came with three kids), and we couldn't afford a larger home there, but were loathe to leave the town's excellent schools.

When it comes to evaluating school districts, you first have to evaluate your family's needs. If full-day kindergarten is not available, what will you do for before- or after-school care? Are you willing to pay more for extracurricular activities? Do you have a child with special educational needs? Is your teenager looking for college-prep or vo-tech?

Once you've figured out your own requirements, here are a few things to consider when evaluating different school districts:

1.) Check out the school’s report card. The Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education does not make district report cards available to the public -- districts are supposed to provide the information to parents -- but you should be able to find the information on the school district's website (if not, call the superintendent to request it). You can get also find standardized testing results, student-to-teacher ratios, economic and ethnic data, and articles about why the numbers are (or aren’t) important at websites like GreatSchools.net and SchoolDataDirect.org.

2.) Take it to the state level. It's hard to tell what those standardized test results really mean unless you compare the district's results to the state as a whole. The No Child Left Behind Act report card for Massachusetts is a good place to start.

3.) Delve into the details. The Massachusetts Department of Education website has a wealth of information about the state's teachers, graduation rates, per-student spending, and more. But you should also dig as deeply as you can into the districts themselves. Have any of the schools been identified for improvement, corrective action, or restructuring?

4.) Find out about the finances. How much are parents expected to shell out in additional fees (for sports, arts, transportation, lunches, etc.)? Which programs in the district receive the most funding? Does the town rely on private foundations or grants to support the school, or is it entirely funded by state money? Any major projects recently completed or in the works (or have recently been put on hold)?

5.) Visit the school. If you have an idea about which school your child might attend, it’s a good idea to take the time to visit the school -- with and without your child -- while it is in session, if possible. Talk to the teachers and staff, find out if they can connect you with other parents who might be willing to talk about their experiences.

6.) Talk to the teachers and staff. Do they send their own kids there? Why or why not? What issues are they facing and how might they impact your child?

7.) Talk to parents, if possible. Ask the principal to connect you to parents of current students or, if you can, try to connect with a few on your own while they're waiting in the pickup line before the bell rings. Not comfortable with that? Ask the principal when the next PTO meeting is, and try to attend.

8.) Read up on local news. Check out the coverage of the school district in local newspapers, and be sure to take a look at the letters to the editor for feedback on what the locals are really saying.

9.) Consider your child's current and possible future needs. Does your child need any special services? How established are the ones offered by the school district? Are there new ones being considered, or any that have recently been eliminated? If services for your child are eliminated, will the state help you secure those services in a private or parochial school instead?

10.) Look for red flags. Districts often save money by cutting arts and music programs, or by increasing the fees for participation in sports. If class sizes are increasing while town populations are staying the same, that could signal a problem with school resources.

Want to know more? I've pulled together a check list at Work It, Mom! with 10 questions you should ask when evaulating a new school district.

Are kids capable of making their own medical decisions?

13-year-old Danny Hauser is angry. Though the court-ordered chemotherapy has shrunk his tumor "considerably" after just two rounds, the teen does not want to continue treatment. His parents -- who, in order to avoid chemotherapy, had gone so far as to run away with their teenager when the courts first handed down their ruling -- won't say whether they think chemo is helping, but admit that "something is working."

What struck me in this case is that the parents weren't withholding medical treatment for their teenager, per se -- they were rejecting conventional therapies. They weren't sitting by and letting their son suffer -- they wanted to avoid causing him additional misery. And who wouldn't want "a better treatment plan" for their child? That doesn't sound like neglect to me.

So, I'm wondering: Should authorities take over when a child needs medical intervention and the parents disagree with the methods the doctors recommend? If the child himself doesn't want the treatment, is it still considered neglectful for the parents to avoid it?

Finding childcare that works for your family

It's a predicament that all working parents have to face at some point, whether your kids are tiny and you have to go back to work or your children are older and you're trying to figure out how to handle the hours after school: How do you manage child care?

Not every family can afford to have one parent stay at home, and it's rare that a blended family can get by on one income. In our case, our finances dictated that neither my husband nor I could put our careers on hold and still pay the mortgage. So, for years one of us worked nights, the other worked days, and we traded off with the kids in the middle.

It was tag-team parenting at its finest. And it was a stress fest. My husband and I rarely saw each other. The kids had plenty of time with each of us, but very little time with both of us together. To make matters more difficult, my husband and I only had one day off in common, and that day was filled with each of us trying to "get stuff done."

We had two more kids together and figured we'd manage with our wonky schedule for a few more years, until the littles were old enough for kindergarten, but in 2007 my husband got a job offer with daytime hours that was just too good to pass up. I had just returned from maternity leave and felt like I had already used up any good will I had banked at the office, along with all of my vacation and sick time. Our big kids were older (and much more independent) by then, but I couldn't take time off while we figured out childcare for our youngest two kids. What were we going to do?

Evaluating your childcare options can be difficult even when you have plenty of time to prepare. Can you afford to stay home for a few years? Should Mom stay home, or should Dad? What do you ask the directors of a daycare center? How about when you're interviewing a nanny? Can you share child care with someone in your neighborhood? Is a home-daycare situation the right fit for your child? Should you look for part-time or full-time care? (You can benefit from my research: Here are a few things I wish I'd known when I was looking.)

We combed through our finances and examined our options and ended up choosing a new branch of an established daycare and preschool that had opened up in our town.

Fast-forward nearly two years. The initial guilt I felt about having them in "someone else’s care" was eclipsed only by the shock of the first monthly tuition bill, and both feelings were replaced by relief and amazement when I saw how they were thriving. They're so active and social -- much more so than when I was home with them during maternity leave (that's another blog post). Is it easy to drop them off at care each day? Not always. But it was absolutely the right choice for our family.

What do you do about childcare? How did you decide what worked best for your family?

Too much connectivity? Not anymore

Around Christmas last year, when my husband gave me a Blackberry, I wondered whether connectivity helped or hindered work-life balance. I ended up giving it back during the 30-day trial period and getting an iPhone instead, thinking that the iPhone seemed a little less business-like, a little more fun, a little more likely to stack the odds in favor of life rather than work.

And then, last week, as I was writing a blog post on my iPhone while waiting in an airport parking lot, it hit me: Techonology may be the fulcrum upon which my work and my life are currently balanced.

Read the post at The 36-Hour Day, and tell me: Does technology help you make the most of your time? Or is it making it harder to spend time wisely?

Should schools be able to strip-search students?

The recent Supreme Court ruling, that in 2003 an Arizona school violated the rights of one of it's students by strip-searching her while looking for contraband over-the-counter medication, spurred some interesting discussions at Child Caring and at Yahoo's Shine, where I wrote about it for their Parenting section. Here's the lede:

Remember what it was like to be 13? Awkward. Gawky. Embarrassed by your changing body. Worried about social pressure, fitting in, and being bullied by mean girls." Now imagine being strip searched in front of adults who are practically strangers. At school. ... [More]

The school's policy prohibits the use, possession or sale of any drug on school grounds, including prescription and over-the-counter medications. A week before the search, a student became sick after taking pills from a classmate and said certain students were bringing drugs to school. Which makes their reaction toward Redding and the possiblity that she had smuggled in some Advil a bit easier to understand, if not accept.

I understand the need to protect students, to ensure their health and safety, to eliminate the possiblity of drug abuse. But where do you draw the line?

Do allowances really teach kids about money?

Does getting an allowance teach kids to manage money, or does it just condition them to expect a handout? Should you tie the allowance in to chores, or should chores be considered a non-negotiable family responsibility? We looked at the pros and cons of giving out an allowance over at Boston.com's Child Caring blog recently; here are some of the reactions:

Jayne: Allowances seem to be one of many my parenting pitfalls. For a year and a half, I faithfully gave my kids a $3/week allowance and in no time they accumulated more money than I had and were always talking about what they wanted to buy. Both of these made me uncomfortable. I stopped the allowance and haven't gone back. ...

DMa: Absolutely not. I will not pay my children to do things they should be doing anyway. It's called being part of a family...

Ricardo87: I never gave my daughter an allowance. She had chores such as laundry, helping with dishes(no dishwasher), dusting, vacuuming etc. When she needed money for something, I gave it to her...

BMS: We do give our kids a very modest allowance. If they want anything outside of birthday or Christmas gifts, they have to use their money...

Do you give your kids an allowance? Why or why not?

And how much should a 10-year-old get, anyway?

Mean girls: How to help your daughter cope

Bullying is a perennial problem for kids of any age. We hear the word "bully" and tend to think of aggression, physical abuse, and hazing -- and we tend to think "boy." But girls can be bullies, too. They might not resort to fist fights after school, but the psychological warfare "mean girls" wage can have just as devastating an effect, leading to self esteem issues, anxiety, poor grades, drug use, depression, and eating disorders in young girls.

Over at the Silicon Valley Moms Blog, Joanna posted about attending a recent lecture by Rachel Simmons, the author of Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls and Stand Up! What Every Parent Needs to Know About Cyber Bullying (which you can download for free here).

"I remember feeling bullied and left out, and those feelings have a lasting impact on me," Joanna writes in her post. "To this day I feel some hostility when the names of some of those girls come up in conversation."

According to the National Crime Prevention Council, a typical girl who bullies is well-liked by parents and teachers, does well academically, and may even actually be friends with her victim. Instead of physical violence, "she spreads rumors, gossips, excludes others, shares secrets, and teases girls about their hair, weight, intelligence, and athletic ability," a NCPC report on girls and bullying points out. She often persuades other girls to join in the bullying and, because she's usually well-liked by adults and generally popular with other kids, adults tend not to realize that another child is being victimized.

It's tempting to give the bully's parents a piece of your mind or to try to protect your child by reprimanding the bully yourself -- I know I certainly wanted to when one of our older kids was being bullied in school. Parents also tend to tell their kids that the bully is "just jealous," which may be true, but isn't very helpful.

So, what should you do if your daughter is dealing with a bully? I'm not an expert, so I turned to a few people who are.

Simmons suggests that you don't over-emphasize, over-dramatize, or internalize the problem, and don't ask your daughter what she did to provoke the incident.

Michelle New at kidshealth.org suggests teaching kids to avoid the bully, "stand tall and be brave," feel good about themselves, and "get a buddy and be a buddy."

Carly Young at Lifescript.com suggests finding a positive role model, not trying too hard to be part of a group that doesn't accept you, and finding an activity or goal that gives you a bigger sense of purpose.

Former teacher Erin Willer tells Inside the School: “We tend to socialize girls that it’s not OK to be overtly angry with people and we’re supposed to be nice and good girls – sweet and kind. And when we reinforce those behaviors, girls tend to act out their anger in ways that teachers and parents might not see.” She suggests that teachers ask targets: What can I do to help you? Do you want me to get involved? Do you want me to call your parents? How about I walk you down to the counselor’s office?

Have you or your child had to deal with a "mean girl" or with bullying in general? How did you handle the situation?