I know I’ve written about this before, but I’m still stumped: How do you handle school vacations when your child is too old for “vacation camps” but too young to stay home alone all day?

A colleague proposed this solution: Kid co-ops. It works like this: A group of parents – preferably those whose children are friends – gathers together and divides school vacation days so that each parent takes the same amount of time off from work and watches a group of kids for the day. The key is making sure that everyone who takes on the kids for a day or two receives that same amount of childcare in return. The benefit? Your child is cared for and you don’t have to use several vacation days to cover every school vacation.

This sounds like a good idea and perhaps it’s something that I’ll keep in mind for the future. For more information about how to begin, check out this “site.”:http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/85865/organize_a_child_care_coop.html It’s full of guidelines and tips to help get your childcare/babysitting co-op off the ground.

Do you participate in a childcare or babysitting co-op? How is it working out for you and your family?

Not very long ago, I was sitting in the bleachers at my son’s community center-league basketball game for sixth-graders. It was an important game and the seats were packed.

Sitting next to me, my husband, my 77-year-old father and my 7-year-old son were a group of young teenage girls. They chatted loudly among themselves, trading gossip about friends, naming the cutest boys, that kind of thing. And then, one girl, out of nowhere, began talking about someone, using language that most parents never want to hear from their children. My husband and I both froze and looked at each other. Our younger son was so engrossed in his Game Boy that he didn’t even notice the words. My father, thank goodness, was caught up in the game; he’s a strong disciplinarian who doesn’t take kindly to potty mouths.

I considered confronted the girl by saying something along the lines of “Nice young ladies who want to be respected don’t use language like that,” but I had a feeling that would be met with more vulgarity. Instead, my husband took charge, saying to the girl, “Can you watch your mouth? We don’t like our son to hear talk like that.” To my surprise, she apologized and her friends chided her for having been spoken to.

I really detest foul language. I think it makes people who use it sound less than intelligent and in most cases, it’s so unnecessary. But adults can say what they want. When it comes to the children in our midst though, I think we need to watch how we’re talking, so that Junior doesn’t think it’s perfectly fine to suddenly curse a blue streak. This is not to say that I haven’t made mistakes: I once cursed at a driver with my baby son in the car, and all the way to the babysitter’s home, he repeated the foul word, singing it like a song. I actually drove around the block several times, telling jokes, singing other songs and basically saying anything to get his mind off the word before dropping him off.

Do you have issues with your child using foul language? And do you watch your mouth around your kids? Or do you feel, like some parents, that it doesn’t really matter?

As in, us single parents. That’s based on an annual report on families just released by “the U.S. Census Bureau”:http://www.census.gov. The bureau says single parent households make up about 9 percent of American households, holding steady since 1994 but up from the 1970s. Maybe we are leveling off.

You can check out yearly tables and detailed analysis “on this page”:http://www.census.gov/population/www/socdemo/hh-fam.html on the Census website. Since it’s a tad cumbersome for some of you who don’t have the patience or time, here’s the way the newswire reported the release of the report. It includes some highlights I hope you’ll find useful.

WASHINGTON, March 27 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — The percentage of households headed by single parents showed little variation from 1994 through 2006, at about 9 percent, up from 5 percent in 1970, according to the latest data on America’s families and households released today by the U.S. Census Bureau.
According to “Families and Living Arrangements: 2006,” there were 12.9 million one-parent families in 2006 — 10.4 million single-mother families and 2.5 million single-father families.
Just over two-thirds (67 percent) of the nation’s 73.7 million children younger than 18 lived with two married parents in 2006. Also in 2006, there were an estimated 5.8 million stay-at-home parents: 5.6 million mothers and 159,000 fathers.
Other highlights:
— Average household size in 2006 was 2.57 people, down from 3.14 in 1970.
— Slightly more than one in four households (26 percent) consisted of a person living alone in 2006, up from 17 percent in 1970.
— About 5.7 million children, or 8 percent of the total, lived in a household that included a grandparent in 2006. The majority of these
children (3.7 million) lived in the grandparent’s home, and of these, about 60 percent had a parent present.
— Among the 13 million children 15 to 17, about 2.3 million were working, and of these, 2.2 million worked part time.
— In 2006, 33 percent of males and 26 percent of females 15 and older had never married, up from 28 and 22 percent in 1970.
— The majority of men and women in 2006 had been married by the time they were 30 to 34 (71 percent), and among men and women 65 and older, 96 percent had been married.
Data are from the 2006 Current Population Survey’s (CPS) Annual Social and Economic Supplement (ASEC), conducted in February, March and April at about 100,000 addresses nationwide.
Statistics from sample surveys are subject to sampling and nonsampling error.

Turns out this year marks the golden anniversary for “Parents Without Partners”:http://www.parentswithoutpartners.org, one of the most active and largest single parent groups in the country and the region. I guess this means they might be one of the oldest as well, if they’ve been around for a full 50 years.

I’m not a member, but I do have friends who are or were. And I’ll be the first to support any group that offers networking and resources for single parents, which they most certainly do. I have used some of their research in past blogs — giving credit, of course — and continually find their website a good place to scroll through.

Anyway, their annual convention is in early July. All the info is on the link above for those interested.

OK, so we’re all a little nuts when it comes to our kids. And this spills over into the pediatrician’s office from time to time. When I researched this story on how patients drive doctors crazy, I talked to a pediatrician who told me that parents are usually well-meaning, at least. I did the story as part of a special report on the “Cost of Health.â€?

Dr. Glenn J. Belkin of Croton-on-Hudson said what irks him the most are parents with two children who make an appointment for just one — but then expect the other to be seen. (Don’t let this be you!) He also has to explain the practice’s antibiotics policy fairly often. (None for colds!) Another gripe? Parents who shirk their responsibility to help their child get over a challenging problem. For example, he’s treated children with bed-wetting disorders who need to be awakened by their parents in the night if the moisture alarm in the mattress is triggered. “The parents always claim the kids are heavy sleepers and are hard to wake up,” Belkin told me.

I don’t think I’ve tested the patience of Pumpkin’s pediatrician yet. (But who knows what she would say!) How about you other moms and dads? It’s time to ’fess up and tell us all about how your just might not be a pediatrician’s dream parent.

You know the old adage, “Don’t pout. Your face will freeze that way!” Wasn’t this something grandmas were supposed to warn kids about? Well, Pumpkin’s Grandma is bucking tradition and actually encourages her granddaughter to make this face. (Yes, that one, in the photo at right.)

Now, every time I reach for my camera and say, “Smile,” Pumpkin thinks I am asking her to make this particular scrunched-up face. I have more than a dozen pictures taken in the past couple of weeks that feature variations of this pose:

Although I know kids can be funny about taking photos, I don’t think that’s why Pumpkin is making this face. I think she actually believes I want to see it.

How about other parents? Any picture-taking foibles to share? Do you have a child who just has to stick his tongue out at the last minute? Or who crosses her eyes just when the shutter clicks?

If you have some funny photos of your kids, send them to me with the story behind them and I’ll post them on the blog!

Today, after we had a checkup at the pediatrician’s, Pumpkin and I went shopping at the Mrs. Green’s next door. When I was checking out, while I wiped some overflowing ginger snap cookie from Pumpkin’s face, murmuring, “Honey, that’s gross” for the benefit of the man behind me in line, I thought to myself: He probably thinks I’m a stay-at-home mom. Out and about during the day, doing leisurely errands, I felt a bit like I was masquerading as the SAHM I wish I could be.

It got me thinking about how every mom probably feels a bit like they are pretending to be some mom ideal from time to time. I remembered the scene in “I Don’t Know How She Does It” by Allison Pearson when the protagonist re-decorates a store-bought cake to look more homemade in an effort to appear like a “real mom who bakes” to the other parents at school.

I not infrequently imagine myself as a better parent — more patient, more playful, more creative, more willing to watch “Baby Einstein” videos — and think it’s not necessarily a bad exercise, as long as you don’t beat yourself up too much.

I can only imagine these feelings pop up in different contexts as your child grows up. After all, who doesn’t want to be a popular mom at the PTA? Who doesn’t want their child to hear from her friends, “Your mom is nice/pretty/cool/etc.”

What about other parents? Have you ever imagined yourself as a different sort of parent? (I’m sure there’s probably a “dad” equivalent, right Jorge and Steve C.?)

Actually, this is one of those good news/bad news situations.

The good news is we have our own day: Single Parents Day. The bad news is that it was yesterday. Now, I must admit that I was not aware of this until my co-blogger Julie forwarded me an email on it. I suppose that means I failed in my blogging duties. So, since I blew this year I’ll have to begin planning for Single Parents Day 2008. Not sure how I might go about the celebration, and I’m open to ideas.

Anyway, there is a little bit more information on the day “here on bloggingbaby.com”:http://www.bloggingbaby.com/2007/03/21/happy-single-parents-day, which was the source of Julie’s email and explains the origins of the day. There’s also “more on it here”:http://fatherhood.about.com/b/a/154123.htm, which includes a few links. There’s even “a proclamation”:http://www.state.co.us/gov_dir/leg_dir/sess1999/sres99/sjr018.htm from the Colorado legislature. The state claims it was the first to officially declare March 21 to be Single Parents Day.

So, what do we do with our own day? I’d seriously like to start thinking about this now, with an eye toward making it a single parent awareness day. It might even make a good date to arrange a gathering of Lower Hudson Valley single parents to talk about issues and resources. We could even work in a “meet the bloggers” kind of meet and greet.

Of course, now we’ll have wait 364 days. Curse my calendar.

Recently, we ran a photo in The Journal News of one of my former professors from Fordham. This professor was never one of my favorites. She knew her stuff, but she wasn’t particularly friendly or encouraging, and it wasn’t all that pleasant being in her class. I got a decent grade, but I really don’t remember much of what I was taught.

That got me to thinking about my own sons. I asked them who their favorite teachers have been so far. I was heartened to hear that they had something nice to say about almost every teacher, which is a testament to teachers in general and to our school district, in particular.

Having an encouraging teacher can really make all the difference, can’t it? I’ve always been a pretty awful math student, but I remember that Mrs. Helen Hebron’s kindness and never-ending encouragement made my 11th-grade trigonometry class bearable. She even gave me more of her time—and her shoulder—when I initially failed the Regents. And even though I’ve never been that interested in European history, there is no better teacher of that subject that Ms. Katherine Corticcio. And I attribute my love of reading and Langston Hughes’ poetry to Mrs. Angela Freeman, who introduced me to his works with a recording done by Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. I found that old album and have shared Hughes’ works with my sons and now my youngest is most fond of “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,”:http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15722 mainly because it includes his name.

And I’m grateful for those educators’ in my sons’ lives who help mold them into the young gentlemen that they are becoming. I recently e-mailed Ms. Melissa Heckler, who was the school librarian when my sons were in kindergarten and first grade to thank her for instilling a love of reading and a respect for words in the minds of so many children, including mine. Her message back to me expressed her genuine love for helping to bring children along their educational journeys.

Tell me about yours – or your child’s – favorite teachers. What makes them so very special?

Now that “ANOTHER mother has been arrested for driving her kids while apparently drunk”:http://www.lohud.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070320/NEWS01/703200363/1018/NEWS02, I’ve been thinking about a serious dilemma: What if you have a friend – your kid’s friend’s parent, perhaps – who might have a drinking problem, but still insists on doing you a favor by picking up your child from a party or from school, when she picks up her own child.

A friend has this very problem: She’s friendly with her child’s friend’s folks. For years, they’ve taken turns taking their kids to dance, to Girl Scouts, wherever. But recently, her daughter came home and said she thought her friend’s father had been drinking before picking them up from the movies. He was lucid, didn’t appear drunk and wasn’t driving erratically, but still my friend’s daughter smelled alcohol, and was rightfully concerned. She told her folks about it when she arrived home and asked that he never pick her up again.

Her parents had no problem with that – in fact they made the same promise to themselves. But now, when the other parents offer to pick up their child – a job that they’ve all shared for years – they make excuses and retrieve their child themselves. They’re debating telling the other parents why they’re shunning the rides and so far, they don’t have the courage to say anything.

I’d love to know what some of you would do in this situation.

I promised Steve C I’d follow up on this. In fact, I’ve gotten a few comments from others as well on what we’ll call LoHudMomsgate. The question was why The Journal News has launched LoHudMoms.com — with its gender-specific title and focus — instead of a more inclusive name like, let’s say, LoHudParents. Dare we be so bold as to suggest LoHudDads.com?

Of course, I walked right into this debate, having recently blogged about resources for moms far outnumbering resources for dads. Then this. Well, I asked the powers here about the launch of LoHudMoms.com, and the more pointed questions relating to it.
There are a number of reasons cited. Apparently, IndyStar.com, the online vehicle for The Indianapolis Star newspaper, launched a similar site with great success. That got some interest here as a means to continue to increase our readership on LoHud.com, our online voice. The bosses deemed moms to be a viable market to target in that regard. I was also told that moms are considered a relatively untapped market. This is what I was told.

Today it was also pointed out to me that a lot of the issues and topics on LoHudMoms apply to parents in general, and thus dads as well. And that’s actually true, although some of you who have raised the issue might see it as off the point. Frankly, as a dad you kind of learn to borrow mom resources and force yourself to pick and choose what applies. So, it’s not an atypical suggestion.

Of course, there is still the question of why not LoHudParents, or something more inclusive. I’m told there is actually something in the works for dads down the line, although it did not appear it would be to the extent of LoHudMoms.com. I’m not really sure what shape it would take, but I suspect much of it will depend on reader interest. It was suggested to me that dads be encouraged to log on to the blogs and inquire about a dad site. If there are enough numbers, maybe we can make a stronger case for it.

And until we get something going, there are still the existing parent-like blogs. Steve is right that I am the only man out of the seven bloggers on those four sites. But I’m here. In the meantime, let’s get some feedback and see what kind of noise we can make.

A few weekends ago, my nephews, who live in North Carolina, came over to spend the night with us. It was wonderful to have a block of time with them and our two sons love hanging out with their cousins, especially since they don’t get to see each other very often.

So for about 24 hours, my husband and I were the “parents” of four boys—ages 5, 13 and two 8-year-olds. The first night, we hung out at home and I cooked a pasta dinner. You would think adding two young boys to the mix wouldn’t make much difference, but it did. Plus, I wanted to make a “nice” dinner, so I also baked brownies—which I don’t typically do on Saturday evenings. We got them all to bed, even though they were kind of hyped up (thanks, no doubt, to the brownies.)

The next morning, we pushed them along to get ready for church (Amazingly, the 5-year-old was the only one to get dressed without prodding). After church, we went out to lunch (ordering at the McDonald’s counter for six people is no easy feat), ran a few errands and came home. Then we let them run free in the house, eating snacks, wrestling in the basement, playing videogames, basically doing whatever they wanted, as long as they didn’t kill themselves. By the time my sister- and brother-in-law picked them up in the late afternoon, my husband and I were in need of a nap.

I’ve heard people say that once you have three children, it’s really no more difficult to raise four or more. They claim that in larger families, the older siblings take care of the younger ones, leaving the parents to look closely after the youngest children. If that method works, that would be great. But does it work? What do you think?

Okay, I admit I may not be the best parent on this subject. I’m talking about selecting movies and television shows for my son. I blame part of it on selective memory. There are movies I saw years ago and remember elements I think my 9-year-old would enjoy. Then we rent the thing and, whoops, there’s a scene or two I didn’t quite recall. For example, we rented “Revenge of the Nerds” on pay-per-view last week. He loved the flick, but let’s just say there are a few racy moments I forgot about. On the plus side, he’s savvy enough by now to cover his own eyes. He’s gotten quite good at it.

Over this weekend we rented “Gladiator.” To be honest, I didn’t have as much of a problem with that one. The gore is a tad much in parts, although it’s not exactly “Braveheart.” But it’s a good story and the attention to historical detail gives it educational value in my mind. So that went well, and he thoroughly enjoyed it.

Between his mom and myself, he’s now seen all of the Monty Python movies, a good selection of Mel Brooks pictures, and a few others that may or may not cross the boundaries now and again. My policy on it is that I avoid extensive sexual content, and try to limit violent scenes. For instance, I don’t envision “Braveheart” happening anytime soon. I don’t have a flavor for slasher pics myself, so that’s not a problem. I also avoid ghost flicks unless there’s a comedy bent to them. (We just watched “Beetlejuice” but I would tend to avoid movies like “The Omen” or “The Exorcist” until he’s older).

So, how am I doing? Am I making good choices? Am I being too careful, or not careful enough? Obviously, I know to use the rating system, but only to a point. I’ve seen my share of tame R’s and some PG-13s that crossed a line or two.

See, I’m not sure what the rule is on this other than a gut feeling of sorts. There are a few web resources I found with suggestions. Parenting247.org offered a few links to mull over “on this page”:http://www.parenting247.org/article.cfm?ContentID=639&challenge=12&AgeGr. Also found “this site”:http://www.abc.net.au/parents/articles/yma_article.htm from, of all things, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Either might be helpful, at least in providing some issues to think about.

But generally it would appear to me to be largely a personal judgment call. Don’t you think?

What would you do if you couldn’t afford health insurance for your child? What if you didn’t have enough money to buy healthy food at the grocery store? What if you had to say no to an afterschool basketball program because it cost too much? These question aren’t just hypothetical for many parents in the Lower Hudson Valley.

As part of my research for a story on the health gap among the working poor, I met these parents. I met a mom who works full time at Mrs. Green’s in Katonah but can’t dream of buying the organic produce sold there — even with an employee discount. Her grocery budget for herself, her husband and baby is $60 a week.

I met Annette Medina of Yonkers, another mom who works full time but doesn’t get health benefits as part of her job. But in Annette’s case, that fact is a bit of an eye-popper because she is a medical assistant. When she received a $1 an hour raise, she no longer qualified for the state-supported Child Health Plus insurance plan. So now her 11-year-old son is without insurance. Her pain over this is great. She also feels keenly the lack of the healthiest organic food and produce in her home. This is how she put it to me: “I wish I could always eat healthy, especially with my son. He’s a heavyset boy, and I worry so much about what I put into him. I wish I could buy whole grains and the salmon and the blueberries and the good stuff.” Here a link to a video of her talking about this in her own words.

For those of us who are fortunate enough to have health benefits and don’t have to check the prices before we decide whether or not to buy a bag of salad, this might seem remote. But you might be surprised to learn that some of your neighbors and friends are in the same situation.

When I talked to Nyack resident Georganne Chapin, the CEO of Hudson Health Plan, she told me she’s met a lot of people without health insurance — because she asks about it. She had some electrical work done recently, and when she asked the electrician about his health coverage, it turned out he didn’t have any. The reason so many of us don’t know about this is people are too ashamed to talk about it. “There is such fear and stigma attached to not being able to take care of yourself or your family, and people don’t like to admit they don’t have insurance,” Georganne told me.

Georganne wishes people would pay more attention to the nearly 47 million people without health insurance in our country. While there’s a lot of talk about providing help to children, she wants us to remember the parents, too. “We make it easy for children to qualify for subsidized health insurance. It’s a feel-good thing. But maybe we should cover the parents so they can take care of their kids,” she argues.

I’d love to hear from other parents who might be struggling with some of same problems or have insight into this issue. Also check out other stories in our special report on the “Cost of Health.â€?

Just to be clear: Pumpkin does not read yet, and I’m not claiming she does. But for more than a year, she’s been a “reader” of National Geographic magazine and its companion, National Geographic Kids, thanks to a generous gift from her Pop Pop. Both I and her dad have been enjoying the articles and Pumpkin has been loving the photos. Plus, I’m saving the magazines for when she’s old enough to understand the stories and try the activities.

So, as a fan of National Geographic, I was very interested to learn about its new Web site for kids that went online this month. I checked it out today. It’s designed for young children and ’tweens and features games, activities and videos.

While there were some cool ideas under activities — I particularly liked the instructions for making your own terrarium and lava lamp — I was, to be honest, a little bored. There were lots of buttons to click on, but that was actually the problem — everything you wanted to do seemed to involve multiple menus.

And, most of all, I missed my favorite part of National Geographic — the fabulous photos. I was happier when I found a link to the great photo library at National Geographic’s main Web site. If you have kids who love animals — like Pumpkin does — you’re better off heading straight to the photo library, where you can select from a huge variety of animals and view large photos and even download wallpaper. (I love the photo of this baby seal.)

Another disappointment: The video on both sites was very slow to load and was jerky when it did play. (It’s not a bandwidth issue on my end since I have a cable Internet connection and don’t have similar woes at other video sites.)

I’m wondering anyone has a favorite educational Web site you’d like to share with the rest of us. Is there somewhere your child goes that he or she is just in love with — and that you approve of, too?