When did you teach your children about the dangers of “strangers”? We started earlier this year and have approached the topic in a measured fashion, trying not to freak her out but also hoping to instill caution.

This is on my mind this morning thanks to my colleague Janie Rosman’s article about a seminar on “stranger danger” held in Scarsdale. It’s well worth a read. I particularly liked the advice about helping children find “safe” strangers if they get lost. Telling your child to go up to a mom with children and ask for help is a great idea.

The Scarsdale mom who organized the workshop was inspired by a scare in a store when she lost track of her 5-year-old for a moment.

I’ve always kept pretty close tabs on the Pumpkin while we shop — which won’t surprise any of my friends and family who know my protective parenting style. But I have to admit that I used to relax some of my vigilance when we shopped in kids’ stores like Baby Gap and Gymboree, letting her wander around a bit while I browsed.

An experience I had in December put an end to that casual attitude.

I was shopping for Christmas gifts at Danbury mall with my daughter one evening just a few days before the holiday. It was a special trip just to buy her daddy’s presents. We first went to Lord & Taylor and spent about 45 minutes at the men’s fragrance counter with a very patient saleswoman who helped us pick out a shower gel and deodorant. Pumpkin must have smelled a dozen scents. Then we stopped at Pottery Barn to pick up two more place settings of our flatware to have enough for an upcoming party. Then we went to Jos. A. Bank to pick out a tie. Because my husband is tall, we asked where the long ties were displayed in the back of the store. I put down my Pottery Barn bag, which had the Lord & Taylor bag tucked inside, and both Pumpkin and I talked with the salesman. They were having a “buy one, get one” promotion, so we picked out two ties. Then we found out there was the same deal for dress shirts, so we picked out two of those as well, moving perhaps a total of eight feet from where the ties were displayed.

So, I go to the register to pay, and I realize I don’t have my bag. I head to the back where I left it, and it’s nowhere to be found. Now, this is a very small store that’s long and narrow. Even just days before Christmas, it had less than a half dozen customers in the store the whole time I was there. I proceeded to hunt for my bag, but it was nowhere to be found. I made the manager call mall security to report the theft. It took them 45 minutes to show up and they didn’t even write anything down. They were completely uninterested. I thought to myself that it was amazing that my bag could disappear in the few minutes that we were picking out ties and dress shirts. Maybe it was a customer who I hadn’t noticed in the very back of the store. But it seems hard to believe that the one or two customers in the vicinity just happened to be a thief. I’ll leave the reader of the blog to come to the other obvious conclusion about who else was in the vicinity, as my husband did when I told him the story.

After I left the store, and after I went back to Lord & Taylor to re-buy the bath stuff (we skipped a return trip to Pottery Barn, too depressing), I realized how lucky I was: Someone stole a bag with maybe $140 in merchandise inside. But holding my hand was my most precious person. If a bag can be stolen in a few minutes, so can a child.

I felt fortunate this year that my son’s holiday season was a happy one. In fact, he made out like a bandit. In my book, that’s as it should be. As we do every year, we also bought gifts for needy children, something he has come to appreciate and we enjoy doing as a family.

His happiness was particularly important to me this year. That’s because he suffered his first significant loss with the death of his grandmother just before Thanksgiving, and two days before his birthday. This was his mother’s mom, with whom he was particularly close. Although she had been ill for some time, it was a very difficult process for him to go through, and one that he — and I — were a little unprepared for. It was, after all, his biggest loss since his mom and I split up, something I’m still learning to navigate in one form or another, albeit on a less frequent basis.

It was helpful for him to mourn with his mother, and the two of them shared their grief in significant and helpful ways. My initial concern was that he tried very hard to be a “big kid” about it, and did not want to be overly sad about it. He appeared more concerned about his mother’s wellbeing than his own. I credit him for that, but tried to assure him that he needed to mourn also. During the memorial service he started to break down, and was visibly overwhelmed by all the mourners who kept assuring him that his grandmother loved him dearly. I took him out of the room and we took a long walk together before coming back to the room.

I eventually realized that I needed him to mourn in his own way, and that perhaps I was projecting my expectation that he should be more broken up. He was, but in his own way, and it would happen slowly over time. The break-down moment for me came a couple of weeks before Christmas, when he was assigned a tribute poem for school. Of course, he wrote it about his grandma. It was therapy for him, and it was the outpouring of emotion that I feared he was bottling up inside. I felt it healed him to a large degree.

But the entire experience left me doubting myself, and how I dealt with it. Horrible as it sounds to say, he will suffer the loss of those close to him in the years to come, and I wonder how I would handle it differently if that comes to pass. I consulted several online resources for advice, and “found this at kidshealth.org”:http://kidshealth.org/parent/emotions/feelings/death.html and also “this at hospicenet.org”:http://www.hospicenet.org/html/talking.html for suggestions. Still, one learns from experience, and I think the best lesson for me was to let him be while reassuring him that it’s okay to be sad and it’s okay to express yourself when you’re ready.

It’s not something you want to plan for, but you do need to be ready. That was my biggest lesson.

In early December, we put up a holiday poll asking the Parents’ Place community about our favorite holiday traditions. Here are the answers:

Decorating the Christmas tree, 6 votes, 43%
Making cookies, 4 votes, 29%
Watching “Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer,” 2 votes, 14%
Wrapping gifts, 1 vote, 7%
Celebrating Kwanzaa with friends, 1 vote, 7%

Check back soon for our next poll — and if you have a suggested question, let us know!

I know some of you, and maybe even the majority, will think I’m nuts. But here goes anyway: I feel a little bit guilty about teaching Pumpkin about Santa Claus. The thing is, Santa is a myth. But we don’t really represent him as a myth, do we? No, we do the whole story as if he is a real person. I found myself doing it this year. The night before Christmas, we picked out home-baked cookies and put them on a plate with a carrot (for Rudolph), poured a big glass of milk and explained all about the chimney, the flying reindeer, etc. Now, Pumpkin is just 2 and doesn’t have the greatest comprehension yet, but she understood this all pretty well. Well enough, in fact, that when it came time to pick out cookies for Santa, she choose to give him the ones that weren’t her favorites. She believed she was picking them out for a real person that wasn’t her — and wasn’t mama or dada. In the morning, she had a look of pretty gullible amazement on her face when we pointed out the empty milk glass, the missing and munched on cookies and the partially chomped carrot. (On the plus side, she is mixing up Santa with Elmo, who is one of the most important individuals in her life. When I asked her who her presents were from, she said, “Elmo.�)

Here is why I am uncomfortable: I am lying to her when I tell her about Santa. And my policy is honesty all the time. I don’t say we are out of cookies when I don’t want her to have any more — and I don’t let other caregivers do it, either. I just say, “No more.� I don’t make up stories about why we are or are not doing something, I show her respect and tell her the truth — in a way that’s appropriate for a toddler, of course. I just don’t believe in lying. I want to demonstrate in my words and actions that I respect her as an intelligent human being. I hope that will lead to a mutual feeling of trust that will last our whole lives together. I can’t help but wonder if the Santa myth presented as fact is a betrayal of that trust. After all, I am one of her most important sources of information about how the world works. Isn’t it wrong to abuse that power by pretending that Santa is real?

The other day, this issue of honesty came up in relation to a comment my mom made. Pumpkin had received a magnetic doodle pad for Christmas and was playing with it. My mom said something like, “How does this work? It’s magic.� I immediately protested from the next room where I was on the computer. I told my mom that I don’t want Pumpkin to think that everyday objects in her life are controlled by magic. I said to my mom, “We wouldn’t tell her the refrigerator keeps the food cold by magic, why is this any different?�

And in the same way, I feel ambivalent about perpetuating the Santa myth. What do the rest of you moms and dads think? If you have young children, do you feel at all guilty when you talk about Santa? Has anyone decided not to do the Santa deal? And if you have older kids: How did they react when they learned he isn’t real?

The holidays were a success at my place, with tons of food, lots of smiles and two spoiled kids. In fact, the boys each got more presents than I probably got my entire childhood. As I’m sure is the case with most single parent homes, my son had a stack of presents at our place, and another stack waiting at his mom’s house, where he went at the end of the day on Christmas Day so he could open some presents with is stepbrother.

The value to all this, of course, is that both our boys were able to have a happy and fulfilling Christmas despite having non-traditional homes. Our Christmas morning brunch included both my ex and my girlfriend’s ex, with the added treat for her boy that his grandparents were in from out of town and shared the day with us.

And despite all our efforts and all the feelers we put out there, my son continues to tease us and keep us guessing about his understanding — or lack of — the Santa myth. He proclaimed, tongue in cheek, that Christmas is “60 percent excellent presents from Santa, 39 percent lousy gifts from your parents, and 1 percent egg nog.”

So I think he might be playing us, the little wise guy. Who cares in the end.

Anyway, I hope all had a great time over the holidays, regardless of what it is you celebrate. And I hope most of all that the children enjoyed their inclusion in it. I would love to hear some recaps.

Tis the season for the least crafty among us to fire up the glue gun and get out the pinking shears. Here’s a link to some ideas from Martha Stewart. My favorite is the make-your-own snow globe. We have saved a couple of big boxes worth of Pumpkin’s baby food jars, and they would be ideal for the project. The jars were so cute and well shaped, it seemed a shame to throw them out. I figured they would come in handy one day. It seems that day has come. If I actually get around to making a snow globe, I’ll post a picture here. Please everyone, share your own tips for fun holiday crafts — and if you send me photos at jalterio@lohud.com, I’ll post them!

As a reporter, I get to meet a lot of interesting people. Often their perspectives can get me thinking about my own views and habits. That happened this month when I talked to local folks about the ways they are making sure their holiday celebrations aren’t an environmental burden on the Earth.

I talked to people who are buying outdoor lights powered by the Sun, people who are making their own wrapping paper, even people who are giving away renewable energy credits as gifts. Here is a link to the main story on making your holiday “Green.” Here is a link to a sidebar full of tips. (My favorite: Save this year’s holiday cards to make tags for next year’s presents.) And here is a link to a story on the lead risks of plastic holiday decor, such as lights, and the popularity of real Christmas trees among the environmentally savvy.

Doing this package made me think a little guiltily about my own environmental footprint during the holidays. I get a lot of catalogs. A LOT. I tend to burn my Christmas tree lights all day long when I’m home. Worst of all: I am a glutton when it comes to giving presents and wrapping them in fancy paper. This photo from last year’s Christmas kind of tells the whole story of my environmentally un-friendly habits:

And yet, if you asked me about other ways I try and do my part, I’d point to my (mostly) diligent recycling, my effort to turn off lights when I’m not in the room, my habit of combining errands in one trip, etc. I think the holidays can make us all go nuts in the consumption department. Last year was Pumpkin’s second Christmas — and the first she really was able to participate in by unwrapping her own gifts, eating cookies, etc. So, I went crazy. So crazy, in fact, that we were still unwrapping after dinner. That’s how long it took to get through the presents!

I was inspired this year to change some of my ways by the stories I heard from local parents. We bought some Philips outdoor lights with light-emitting diodes, or LEDs. They use just a tiny fraction of the electricity of incandescent bulbs. I bought some environmentally friendly gifts. I shopped locally when I could. Next year, with more time to plan, we’ll do more. I love the Pratt family’s wrapping solution. Randy Pratt, who runs the Wilkens Fruit & Fir Farm in Yorktown Heights, told me the family shops after the holiday for discount Christmas fabric and makes their own long-lasting gift bags. What a great idea!

I was also inspired by Laura Barkat of Ossining. Here, at right, is some really cute homemade holiday paper created last year by her girls, who are now 10 and 8. Laura gives the girls just three gifts between the two of them, one shared and one each. Last year, the eldest mended her younger sister’s favorite pajamas as a holiday gift. “She saw that her sister was about to lose her favorite pajamas. They were unwearable. She put patches on the knees and mended them and there they were Christmas morning,” Laura told me. When I asked Laura to sum up her feelings on the topic, she sent me an e-mail. Here is what she wrote:

“First, I wanted to say that being green is sometimes framed as a list of do’s and don’ts. But in our family it’s more about restoring our lives and the life of our community and world. By ‘restoring,’ I mean ‘refilling’ or ‘restocking.’ So, being green is about what we add to our lives that makes them more precious and less full of negative impact. On this note, being green is also about ‘re-storying’ our lives. Picking a different life narrative than the Climb to Success, finding a different identity or character than Consumer. We choose, instead, to weave a narrative of Love, to discover and encourage our ingenuity and intense potential for human creativity. On a practical level, this means we focus on meaningful ritual, tradition, sharing, and memory-making, rather than on ‘stuff’ (the consuming of stuff, the provision of stuff by others, and the pursuit of stuff as a ‘right’ to the exclusion of the health of family, community and environment). This is a year-round goal, to change our focus from buying stuff to ritual, but at Christmas it takes a particular shape.”

Like Laura, I feel it’s important for my holiday habits to reflect our own values. And I’ll admit my habits need a bit of a makeover. But I plan to do it because I want Pumpkin to share in the awe and wonder of the holiday’s true message rather than the message I might inadvertently send by spoiling her with too many presents and not eliminating my own wasteful ways. What do the rest of you parents think? Are you feeling the urge to go “Green” this holiday? What lessons do you try and teach your kids about the environment through your habits — in December and all year long?

I’ve been fortunate in that I was able to establish a friendly relationship with my son’s mom. She’s remarried, and I’ve moved on as well. None of it has prevented us from co-parenting, and my son benefits as a result. I’m always particularly aware of it this time of year, since it allows my son to enjoy the Holiday season without tension between his parents.

I wish that were true for all divorced parents. But, in fact, most of the conversations I have with separated or divorced parents are about the tense relationship with their ex. Of late, I’ve had conversations with two moms at my son’s after school program, and they were both dreading the Holidays because they anticipate some disagreement or other over presents, where to spend the Holidays, etc.

Sometimes in those situations one parent is the cause of the difficulty. But most often, both parents contribute, and the children suffer as a result. The irony is that neither parent ever wants the children to suffer. Sometimes it just ends up that way.

There is no shortage of suggestions on coping with the ex. I found a particularly good list on “the single parent link”:http://singleparent.lifetips.com/cat/9246/ex-spouse/index.html on the “lifetips.com”:http://www.lifetips.com website. The suggestions are a good starting point to fashioning a tolerable relationship with the ex. In the early stages of my split, I found it was necessary for me to bite my tongue and swallow my pride quite often. I’m sure my ex felt the same way.

Ultimately, we were able to form enough of a friendship that those issues could be addressed when my son wasn’t around or on the phone. But in most cases, the issues didn’t seem significant any longer, so we moved on and focused on our roles as parents and even friends. And at no time of year am I more thankful for it than the Holidays.

As a single parent, I think I always tried harder to make my son happy at Christmas.

Deep down, I wanted to compensate for the fact that his mom and I weren’t together, and whatever guilty feelings that carries as a parent. So he got extra presents and things like that. I always wanted to make his Christmas as “normal” as possible.

And we’ve always had a shared Christmas. By that I mean that his mom comes over first thing on Christmas morning. Our custody deal stipulates that my son is with me every Christmas. His mom is Jewish and was willing to allow that Christmas would always be celebrated in my home. But she has made it a point to celebrate with us, and is there first thing.

Anyway, Christmas has always been a time of plenty for my son, as it should for any kid. And I don’t necessarily want that to change entirely. But I do want him to appreciate what he has a bit more. That’s why we’re doing a different kind of Santa letter this year.

This year, he’s going to be involved in filling a Santa letter from a needy kid at the local post office, his first experience doing it. Now, we do want to make sure it’s from a child in need, not a kid who simply wants extra toys. If you’re doing this for the first time yourself, check with your post office to ensure they’re weeding out the right ones.

The way I see it, there are kids right down the street who don’t have a proper coat or shoes, let alone a toy or two. If my son has two coats, he should give one up to someone in need. Because my son isn’t the only kid who should have a “normal” a Christmas as possible.

My girlfriend’s 3-year-old burst into tears this morning as I was about to take him to pre-K. When I asked him why he was crying, he said because he wanted Santa Claus to bring him presents. He knows Santa will show up while we’re all sleeping and deliver a bundle of toys for him to pay with. It’s just that, at his age, the notion that Christmas is still several weeks away is hazy, and he thought it would happen this morning and the next. I assured him Santa would come. But it reminded me of how beautiful that is for a child, and it struck me how he and my own son, who turns 10 on Saturday, are at such varying ends of the Santa myth.

I think it’s pretty obvious the cat is out of the hat for my son by now. He seems to be at the point where he knows the scoop on Santa, but figures he’d better not ‘fess up or there’ll be no presents. It’s sad to me, because nothing can ever replace the look on a child’s face on Christmas morning when the presents are “magically” there under the tree.

So I need to have the Santa Claus conversation with my son this weekend. First of all, I want to make sure he doesn’t ruin it for the younger boy. But I also want to bring my son up to speed on the whole Santa myth and its origins. Santa Claus is based on Saint Nicholas of Myra, a benevolent 4th Century man of the cloth who shared his inheritance with the needy through anonymous gifts. Legend has it that after he died locals would put out food for the saint and straw for his donkey, which St. Nick would turn into toys and treats. That’s kinda cool in its own right, and a pretty good tradition.

Corny as it sounds, I like to think that there is still some magic involved, and there’s an inherent beauty in Christmas that, to me, overshadows the ridiculous marketing blitz that has become part of the holiday season. I remain fond of the legendary 1897 column by New York Sun writer Francis Pharcellus Church, famously titled, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus,”:http://www.newseum.org/yesvirginia and expect that the discussion with my son will start with a reading of it. We will talk about the “Dear Santa” letter we’ll be picking up from the post office, and discuss some charity work to aid the less fortunate.

So, the Santa myth will continue for my son, even if the secret is out. Then we can all sit back and marvel at the look of wonderment on the 3-year-old’s face, and the magic he believes in — for now. Let’s hope it lasts.