Though such vacations might not have the initial appeal of a trip to Hawaii or an overseas excursion, they can prove just as fun and possibly even educational as well. The following ideas can help trim travel costs this summer while still showing that fun in the summer sun can be had close to home.

Family and Friends

Families today have become geographically diverse. Rare is the family that does not have at least one member living in a neighboring state or even on the opposite side of the country. If relatives live too far to see regularly but close enough to drive to and visit, plan a trip to see them. Kids will still get to spend a night or two away from home, and parents will get the chance to catch up with siblings, cousins or even friends they have not seen in awhile.

Hunt Down Local History

Nearly every piece of land across the globe can tell a story. History has taken place all over the world, from the ancient Pyramids to the English countryside to possibly even one’s own backyard. Families can learn something about their own town or region by hunting down local history. Do some research at the local library and then take the family out on a historical excursion.

State Parks

Kids typically love going to the park, and most regions boast a host of state or government-operated parks that offer a wide range of activities at little or no cost. Affordable campgrounds are often family favorites and many even provide similar amenities to those a perons is used to at home, such as indoor plumbing and even areas to barbecue. Parents can pack along some food the whole family will like, including hot dogs, hamburgers and the camping staple s’mores, that will cost them a fraction of what a restaurant meal will run them.

When looking for a state park, seek ones that present more than just hiking and camping. Some offer swimming, fishing, kayaking, and a host of other family-friendly activities.

Amusement Park

Few destinations will make kids happier than the local amusement park. Most areas feature an amusement park within driving distance, and parents who plan ahead might even find discounted tickets or can plan to go on days when admission is reduced to entice more customers. Just be sure when planning a visit to the local amusement park that kids are old enough to ride the rides and then buckle in for a fun day.

Then it arrives.  The kids are home, and before the end of the first month…. it BEGINS!!  The “summer boredom blues”.  And with that comes a whole host of other behaviors I didn’t even know existed. UGH!!

When I think back to when I was a kid (which wasn’t TOO long ago!), I remember being outside, playing, hanging out with friends, being at the pool all day long, going places, and staying busy ALL DAY LONG!! And, that was without prodding or begging from my parents!!  I loved summer time.  It went by too fast, and I don’t ever remember being bored.

So, I’m having a hard time grasping this new way.   How do you “get bored” if you have nothing to do except what YOU would like to do??   I mean, come on… pick something!  Do something! What’s the problem??

Summer Camps are great – but the Money Tree in my backyard just hasn’t been producing as much lately, and those darn camps get expensive!   Carting kids from one place to another so they “have something to do” gets tiresome quickly too. Playing the “at-home camp counselor” seems to be my destiny.  The problem I have with all this is, I believe children need to learn to occupy themselves (without direction) like the good ole’ days.  They need to learn to BE bored- and be OKAY with it.  It’s in those “down” moments when the most genius ideas and thoughts float to the top.  It’s where brilliance is born!

Let’s not even talk about co-existing with siblings during summer time.  Now you have more than two of these boredom-stricken “things” under the same roof, at the same time.  That just wreaks of fussing and fighting and bickering and teasing and non-stop interventions.  Okay, I’m exhausted just thinking about it.

The good news is – it really HASN’T been that bad for me.  I’m pretty lucky to have two really great kiddos (both boys), and no tolerance for the aforementioned.  That’s not to suggest they don’t “try” it – but they learn real quickly from Sgt. Mom – “Not in MY house… Not on my time”!   To nip it in the bud sometimes it feels very much like a regression in parenting – - back to the days of time outs, going to your room, loss of privileges, etc.  – but, thankfully they usually come right be around.  Still not easy though.  Kids soooo need routine and structure be feel “safe” and comfortable.  All that goes away in the summer, and your left with a blank slate.  That’s kinda hard for ANYone to face.  Top it off with immaturity and/or low coping skills, and it’s just more than some can handle.

So, we count the days till school begins.  Make the best of the down-times, enjoy the fun times and activities we have planned together, and let the chips lay where they fall.  All in all, I’m grateful.  Grateful for my kids.  Grateful to have opportunities and choices.  Grateful to live in a wonderful place.  Grateful for summer time.  And also (in all honesty) I’ll be grateful when school starts again

1)   Starting at the Knickerbocker Bike Bridge (near I-5), head west through Alton Baker Park’s Whilamut Natural Area. Believe it or not, the prairie to your right was once a gravel pit, then the Lane County Landfill until the mid 1970s! Just after the old dump, take a left at a wide turnoff toward the river. Walk down to a sandy beach for some rock plopping! Watch for ospreys in the air and cormorants in the dead tree on the opposite bank.

2)  Downstream a bit further, after a corridor of cottonwoods, you will pedal into a winding, rolling, tree-tunnel of green. Notice the two Kalapuya Talking Stones on the right side of the path, one before the Autzen Footbridge, and one soon after. Each stone is engraved with a Kalapuya word and its English translation. For more information about the Kalapuya, our area’s native people, check out the kiosk near the Autzen Footbridge. Take your time in this special area, and share the path with other park users.

3)   Soon after the second Talking Stone, take a right at an unmarked gravel turn off. This path leads to the Park Host Residence…Nearby Nature’s home base in Alton Baker Park! Take a peek at our Learnscape Gardens between the yurt and the host residence (call if you want to have a tour) and check out the developing Waterwise Garden in our front yard (a collaborative City of Eugene/Nearby Nature/EWEB project). Across from our facilities, take a wander in the Walama Restoration Butterfly Meadow. Check out the lovely native wildflowers, butterflies, and birds that hang out here.

4)   Back on the bike path, you will soon see a left turn off for a boat ramp. There is a paved circle here that is fun to race around on bikes. Watch for cars! West Alton Baker Park is next up on your tour, with its grassy lawns and duck ponds. Kids love to climb on the rock sculptures near the shelters. Observe, but please don’t feed the ducks and geese. They do best when they find their own food. After a break here, cross the DeFazio Bike Bridge, and head further downstream on the opposite bank.

5)   Shady pedaling will cool you as you approach Skinner Butte’s River Play Playground, a favorite break spot for kids of all ages. Bathrooms and water fountains are available here. A visit to the basalt columns on Skinner Butte’s west side makes a nice side trip for older kids. It’s not easy to get there by bike, however, so you may want to lock up your bikes and walk carefully, single file, up Skinner Butte Loop to get to the columns.

6)   After River Play, wander further down the path to check out the rainbow of roses and the 160+ year old cherry tree in the Rose Gardens. Bathrooms and water are available here.

7)  Along the next stretch of path, you will find the River House’s Composting Demonstration Garden, a bird and wading beach, a cool viewing platform (follow the rock wall across from the River House toward the river), and two more small playgrounds (one next to the path and one off to the left). If you’ve brought your wading shoes, the beach near the River House is a good place to wet your feet!

8)   When you see the Greenway Bike Bridge heading toward Valley River Center, you may want to take a side trip to the Delta Ponds, a wonderful place to observe aquatic wildlife. Go across the bridge and head left, toward Goodpasture Island Road. This path will lead you to an 800-foot-long causeway where you can watch for herons, ducks, and dragonflies and to look for signs of beaver. After your stop here, you can go back on the VRC side of the river to Alton Baker Park, you can re-cross the Greenway Bike Bridge and go back the way you came, or you can head out further!

9)   If you choose to pedal further, the two-mile stretch from Stults to Howard Avenue is one of the path’s nicest. Heading north from Stults, you pass through cool deciduous forests, then emerge into an open grassland at the Hilliard Street rapids. Shallow pools near shore are teaming with water bugs and snails. Look for paths leading to the river. Bring a container to catch critters, but remember to put them back once you’ve checked them out.

10) Continuing north toward Howard Avenue, you will arrive at a bridge spanning a small river inlet. Resident ducks and geese are usually paddling around here and osprey often fish the river nearby. For a loop ride, follow the path further north and cross the Owosso Bike Bridge. Once inaccessible by bike, the east side of the river in this area now has a bike path that extends all the way back to the VRC. Enjoy great views of the river as you ride along this section.

Happy pedaling!

– Beth Stein is the Program Director for Nearby Nature, a non-profit education group dedicated to fostering appreciation of nature nearby and providing tools for ecological living. The group hosts nature walks, school programs, and summer daycamps in local natural areas. For more information, call 541-687-9699 or see the group’s web page at www.nearbynature.org.

How did this captain know, from fifty feet away, what the father couldn’t recognize from just ten? Drowning is not the violent, splashing, call for help that most people expect. The captain was trained to recognize drowning by experts and years of experience. The father, on the other hand, had learned what drowning looks like by watching television. If you spend time on or near the water (hint: that’s all of us) then you should make sure that you and your crew knows what to look for whenever people enter the water. Until she cried a tearful, “Daddy,” she hadn’t made a sound. As a former Coast Guard rescue swimmer, I wasn’t surprised at all by this story. Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life.

The Instinctive Drowning Response – so named by Francesco A. Pia, Ph.D., is what people do to avoid actual or perceived suffocation in the water. And it does not look like most people expect. There is very little splashing, no waving, and no yelling or calls for help of any kind. To get an idea of just how quiet and undramatic from the surface drowning can be, consider this: It is the number two cause of accidental death in children, age 15 and under (just behind vehicle accidents) – of the approximately 750 children who will drown next year, about 375 of them will do so within 25 yards of a parent or other adult. In ten percent of those drownings, the adult will actually watch them do it, having no idea it is happening (source: CDC). Drowning does not look like drowning – Dr. Pia, in an article in the Coast Guard’s On Scene Magazine, described the instinctive drowning response like this:

1.  Except in rare circumstances, drowning people are physiologically unable to call out for help. Th e respiratory system was designed for breathing. Speech is the secondary or overlaid function. Breathing must be fulfilled, before speech occurs.
2.  Drowning people’s mouths alternately sink below and reappear above the surface of the water. The mouths of drowning people are not above the surface of the water long enough for them to exhale, inhale, and call out for help. When the drowning people’s mouths are above the surface, they exhale and inhale quickly as their mouths start to sink below the surface of the water.
3.  Drowning people cannot wave for help. Nature instinctively forces them to extend their arms laterally and press down on the water’s surface. Pressing down on the surface of the water, permits drowning people to leverage their bodies so they can lift their mouths out of the water to breathe.
4.  Throughout the Instinctive Drowning Response, drowning people cannot voluntarily control their arm movements. Physiologically, drowning people who are struggling on the surface of the water cannot stop drowning and perform voluntary movements such as waving for help, moving toward a rescuer, or reaching out for a piece of rescue equipment.
5.  From beginning to end of the Instinctive Drowning Response people’s bodies remain upright in the water, with no evidence of a supporting kick. Unless rescued by a trained lifeguard, these drowning people can only struggle on the surface of the water from 20 to 60 seconds before submersion occurs.

(Source: On Scene Magazine: Fall 2006)

This doesn’t mean that a person that is yelling for help and thrashing isn’t in real trouble – they are experience aquatic distress. Not always present before the instinctive drowning response, aquatic distress doesn’t last long – but unlike true drowning, these victims can still assist in there own rescue. They can grab lifelines, throw rings, etc.

Look for these other signs of drowning when persons are n the water:

• Head low in the water, mouth at water level
• Head tilted back with mouth open
• Eyes glassy and empty, unable to focus
• Eyes closed
• Hair over forehead or eyes
• Not using legs – Vertical
• Hyperventilating or gasping
• Trying to swim in a particular direction but not making headway
• Trying to roll over on the back
• Ladder climb, rarely out of the water

So if a crew member falls overboard and every looks O.K. – don’t be too sure. Sometimes the most common indication that someone is drowning is that they don’t look like they’re drowning. They may just look like they are treading water and looking up at the deck. One way to be sure? Ask them: “Are you alright?” If they can answer at all – they probably are. If they return a blank stare – you may have less than 30 seconds to get to them. And parents: children playing in the water make noise. When they get quiet, you get to them and find out why.

If you have any questions at all – please post them in the gCaptain forums under “maritime safety”

disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the author are not necessarily those of the Department of Homeland Security or the U.S. Coast Guard.

For more water survival tips be sure to visit USCG rescue Swimmer Mario Vittone’s gCaptain Page. Or follow Mario on Facebook.

It’s true that plastic milk bags—not the cartons or jugs we are used to here in the U.S.—are de rigueur in many parts of Europe, Latin America and India and are catching on fast in Canada, South Africa, China and elsewhere. They typically hold a liter of milk and are sold in three-packs. Most people snip off a corner of the milk bag and keep it upright in a pitcher in the fridge. When the last drop has been used up, the bags, which are made out of easily recycled high-density polyethylene, can be rinsed out and tossed in with other recycling. Best of all, they use 75 percent less plastic than similar capacity plastic milk jugs.

The fact that milk bags are easy to recycle and use much less plastic (and as such are inexpensive) may be a big part of the reason for their popularity all over the world. They are more popular than ever in Great Britain today amid concerns that plastic milk jugs there are not being recycled at adequate levels. At least two of the UK’s largest grocery chains have switched over to milk bags in the last two years.

Of course, detractors point out that milk bags are not as sturdy as plastic jugs—they can puncture or burst if too much pressure is applied. Also, they do not stand upright like harder containers and cannot be sealed once snipped open—and are thus more prone to spilling. Perhaps for these reasons, milk bags are losing market share in many regions of the former Soviet bloc, where they were for years the most common packaging for milk. Some analysts cite the so-called “lower shelf appeal” of milk bags as the reason, which might have something to do with why U.S. supermarkets haven’t yet been eager to embrace them.

Of course, paper/cardboard (half-gallon) milk containers are also relatively friendly to the environment, especially if the empty boxes are worked into compost either at the residential or municipal level, or rinsed well and recycled. They tend to be more expensive than plastic jugs, though, as they cost more to make. Several companies are working on ways to employ recycled paper and cardboard into larger milk jugs while keeping costs comparable to inexpensive plastic jugs. And while most of us no longer employ milk delivery services to our homes, the glass bottles that they use (yes they still exist!)—and take back for reuse—may be the ultimate in eco-friendly milk storage, although driving the milk around and washing all the glass bottles are not the most eco-friendly activities.

Perhaps the modern-day version of the milkman is the herd share, whereby regular folks contribute annually or monthly to a local dairy farm in exchange for a gallon of milk fresh from the cow every week. Many of the herd shares offered these days feature organic milk from grass-fed cows, giving eco-conscious consumers a way to help keep small farmers alive while enjoying milk they know is safe and healthy. To find a herd share to join in your area, check out the Local Chapters website page of the Weston A. Price Foundation, a charity that works to disseminate the research of whole foods nutrition pioneer Dr. Weston Price.

CONTACTS: Weston A. Price Foundation, www.westonaprice.org; Farm-to-Consumer Legal Defense Fund, www.ftcldf.org.

SEND YOUR ENVIRONMENTAL QUESTIONS TO: EarthTalk®, c/o E – The Environmental Magazine, P.O. Box 5098, Westport, CT 06881; earthtalk@emagazine.com. E is a nonprofit publication. Subscribe: www.emagazine.com/subscribe; Request a Free Trial Issue: www.emagazine.com/trial.

What? You don’t relish the thought of spending the summer hunkered over the washing machine? Reducing the amount of laundry you do will not only save time and energy—it will also save the planet. If you have a 40 gallon top-loading machine and wash a load a day, you’re using over 14,000 gallons of water to wash your clothes every year! Tumble drying all those clothes could release as much as 1,825 pounds of carbon into the atmosphere in a year’s time.

So how can you cut down on laundry? Here are three ideas:

1. Don’t be so obsessive about cleanliness. Re-wear clothes and re-use towels until they’re actually dirty. It’s okay to change sheets no more than once a year. (Just kidding on that last one.)
2. Wash full loads. A load is full when it’s filled to the top with clothes without stuffing them in.
3. Don’t sort clothes. If you have trouble making full loads all in one color/fabric type, try combining them. (Make sure to wash in cold water so your whites don’t turn pink.) So get out those dryer racks or set up a clothesline. Hanging even one load a week will make a difference.

Want to take those energy savings even further? With the sun shining and temperatures soaring, there’s really no reason to use the dryer. Sure, it can be somewhat of a hassle to work hanging your wet clothes on the line into your schedule, but think about the advantages:

• You’ll save about $.50 a load when you let the sun and air do the work instead of your dryer. If you wash a load every day (about average for a family of four), you’ll save $182.00 a year.

• Every load you toss in the dryer emits one to five pounds of carbon into the atmosphere. Hanging dry, on the other hand, doesn’t harm the planet a bit.

• In super-hot weather, clothes will dry faster on the line than in the dryer.

This summer you can enjoy the fresh air while your towels soak up the sunshine. Kick back with a cool drink, relax—and resolve to do less laundry. It’s for the planet, you know.

Contributed by Joy Hatch, Simply Green

Sally was excited. In fact, we both were, envisioning summer canoe trips as something special we could do together every year. But as July neared, she grew apprehensive. “I’m afraid we’ll run out of food and starve to death,” she said. “I mean, there are no stores right along the river, are there?”

It made sense. In our disorganized household, around dinnertime my wife Betsy or I will go to the supermarket and buy something for supper with no more forethought than a dog knocking over a garbage can. Sally couldn’t picture another way.

“Not a problem,” I told her. “We’ll make a list of what we want for two breakfasts, three lunches and two dinners, and buy what we need before we go.”

In my younger days, I’d been on many canoe trips – all poorly planned. The most memorable was a four-day trip on which a pal and I set out with only two cases of beer, a big box of apples from my back yard, and a vague notion that we would somehow “live off the land.” Privation ensued.

When the big day came, Sally and I tied the boat onto the roof of the car, and my wife drove us about 60 miles upstream. About to shove off, we discovered that the cooler containing half our food, had been left at home. Oops. “What’ll we do?!” Sally asked, her worst fears suddenly justified.

“We’ll make peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch and open a can of beef stew for supper,” I said. “We’ll stop at a town along the way and buy more food for tomorrow night’s dinner. I’ve got $15.” She hugged her mother as though for the last time and clambered reluctantly into The Titanic.

But we had a great day. When we drifted, I read to Sally from “Huckleberry Finn.” When we paddled, we played at being Tom and Huck. Everyone we passed was either a pirate or an Indian. We ignored the jet-skis.

That night we camped on a wooded island. It’d been years since I’d pitched our tent and I’d forgotten how. I mistook its floor for its roof, so I invested the first 45 minutes unwisely. Sally has always been a stern (but fair) judge of parental competence and my hour-long, trial-and-error way of putting up the tent worried her. And the saggy result offered no reassurance. That night as we lay in our sleeping bags, the night bugs and various rustlings and scamperings scared Sally. But all she said was, “Gee Daddy, it’s hard to go to sleep with so many interesting noises.” I showed her my Bowie knife in case something REALLY interesting came along.

The next morning we breakfasted on toast and then paddled along to a riverside town to buy groceries. The fact that we’d spent right down to 11 cents frightened Sally. Trying to calm her anxiety, I said, “We can eat like pigs at every meal, and still not finish all this food. We don’t need any more money. Let’s shove off.” I tossed the coins into the water. Sally stared after them.

We had another companionable day of fun. But at 6 p.m., just as I was looking for a camping place, Sally said, “My tummy hurts, and I feel like I’m going to throw up. I want to go home. I want Mommy,” and tears streamed as from a ruptured hull. It was homesickness, sudden as a heart attack. It would’ve been nice if my wife could drive up and rescue us, but I knew she’d gone out-of-state and wouldn’t be home until much later. Sally gripped her stomach and wailed, “I WISH THIS WAS JUST A BAD DREAM!”

Subduing my anger to mere unhappiness, I said, “OK, we’ll keep going, and I’ll get you home sometime tonight.”

Sally almost smiled. She picked up her paddle and got busy. At dusk she put on her life jacket and we paddled on. A bat came out of the gloom and flapped around us. Totally creeped-out, I wanted to scream.

“Is that a bat?” Sally asked.
“Yep,” I said forcing myself to sound casual. “Just one of nature’s creatures out shopping for bugs to eat. Just checking us out.”
“Oh,” she said, taking my fake calmness for the real thing. She settled down in the bow of the boat and went to sleep as I paddled on and on. The water was ink, the shoreline a shadow. Around midnight I saw the lights of our house. I beached the boat and helped Sally stagger up the riverbank and into her own bed.

Even though my bungling had a lot to do with it, the fact that Sally could get homesick during what I’d seen as 24-karat Quality Time hurt my feelings. Unloading the canoe in the darkness, I picked up the little “Sally” paddle. My angry Inner Brat told me to throw it into the black river.  Instead I took it indoors, wiped it off, and hung it back up on Sally’s wall. The paddle wasn’t a trophy, but it was a souvenir of an adventure shared, and that’s something. Maybe we’ll try it again in a few years.

Figuring out what to do with one child for the summer (sleepaway camp or day camp? Tutoring or no? How to afford extra childcare?) can increase a parent’s stress level. Multiply that times two (or three, or four) for some parents, and you’ve got a major crisis on your hands. For parents who are fortunate to have flexible employment or one parent who stays at home, there are other challenges—such as “what am I going to do with all of these kids all day?” Either way, once that final school bell rings, siblings who are normally in different classrooms or at different after-school activities suddenly come together, which can change the family dynamic, intensifying sibling relationships for better or for worse.

“Our family dynamic does seem to change in the summer,” says Claire, mom to Ben (8) and Jordan (5). “With the boys getting more time together, there is more laughter—and also more tears. [They] play pretty well together, and I’d say that their friendship and love/hate relationship definitely intensifies when they spend [more time together].”

“The children definitely play more together in the summer—but not exactly by choice,” says Jane, mom to five girls, ages 3 to 17. “The stress levels decrease for awhile in the beginning of the summer when all of the school craziness is over. They enjoy sleeping in for a while and going to the pool. Then the togetherness starts to get to them. I will say for sure that by the second week in August, they are all ready to go back to school.”

That’s not the case for all families, however. Hillary, a teacher in Ketchikan, Alaska, says she is more relaxed during the summer—and that transforms her family dynamic for the better, even while spending long hours in the car together on their annual car trip from Alaska to Oregon. “During the school year, I find that I don’t have a lot of patience with those who I love at home because that is the ONLY place I feel I am allowed to let my hair down without being judged as a teacher,” she says. On the trip, “we are all very happy, and excited as we discover new places and things…I have realized that the teasing incidents between my 3 and 5 year old are greatly decreased and meltdowns are at a minimum. It could be that I am more relaxed and they are adjusting themselves as well. I find that my husband and I are kinder and laugh more with each other. We all seem to work together more and are up for a new adventure everyday. Makes me wish we could always be on summer vacation.”

Heidi, who has three girls, ages 9, 7 and 5, agrees. “It’s the best time of year for our girls in terms of us getting along.”

To ensure that summer is memorable—for good reasons—there are certain things that parents should remember, says Heidi Peterson. Peterson, a childcare site director for the Eugene YMCA as well as an assistant camp director at Camp Arrowhead in Stevenson, Washington, acknowledges that, while the specific issues differ family-by-family, sibling dynamics can present a challenge during those lazy, hazy days. But it doesn’t have to be that way, she says.

Considering each child’s needs—as well as the parents’ needs—is key.

“One thing I’ve seen really successful parents do where camps or activities are concerned is to decide on a few options that work for them (the parents) and then give the kids the choice.” Summer camps that offer a variety of activities—from sports to art to horseback riding—are a good fit for many parents who have multiple children. “The kids have different choices – for the parents, it’s still one drop-off and one pickup.” With siblings who are close in age, “sometimes parents assume their children’s interests are the same—or different,” says Peterson. “Yes, of course you know your child, but nine times out of ten they’ll surprise you.”

Plan adventures that everyone will enjoy
A day trip to OMSI, or even a trip to the local pool or the library, can be fun for everyone in the whole family. Ask your children what they would like to do. Keep a list. Brainstorm ways that the entire family can participate. This is true on vacations as well—rotate restaurant and pit-stop choices so that everyone feels they’ve had a say in the planning.

Call in reinforcements. Family friends can work together to coordinate age-appropriate activities (or even simply play dates), so that the kids are not “stuck together” all summer. This can also help solve the childcare question for working families, with working parents trading days. And, on family vacations, when possible, Peterson suggests having each child bring a friend close in age along for the ride—“so that the kids have someone their own age to bounce off of and not get on each other’s nerves.”

Not all families can afford several weeks of camp for multiple children, plus a family vacation—in fact, some budgets are so limited that sibling tension just increases already existing stress. Calling on friends to brainstorm solutions (e.g., a stay at home parent can provide childcare, while a working parent can, in exchange, kick in the funds for a pizza or a day out) can help.

Mix it up: Although she mostly stays home with her boys, Claire says she tries to schedule a couple weeks of camp part-way through the summer to give her sons a chance to have more structured time with kids their own age. “They don’t do camps together, largely because of the age difference, but also because of separate interests. This summer, Ben will do a two-week performing arts camp and Jordan will do a couple weeks of Sports-O-Rama.”

Find ways to foster sibling relationships—and teachable moments.
For a nine year old girl, for example, there’s a big difference between being told to entertain her five year-old brother and being given the grown-up responsibility of showing the younger one a skill she has mastered, such as tying shoes or riding a scooter. Challenge your children to choose one skill they’d like to pass on to a younger sibling this summer. Or brainstorm projects the whole family can do together while working at respective skill levels—e.g., painting a mural on one wall of the garage or learning to bake bread. Ask older siblings to take the younger ones on a field trip to a favorite park (but tread lightly here—see below). Finding new ways to interact that take advantage of summer’s slower pace might open doors to lifelong connections among siblings.

The Childcare Question

Most teens and tweens naturally expect the summer to be “their time.” And rightly so. “A lot of parents encourage—or even direct—older siblings to watch the younger ones,” Peterson says. “I have seen a lot of disastrous choices where a parent looks to an older sibling for childcare.”

It’s not a disaster until it becomes a habit or an unspoken expectation, Peterson says. If relying on older siblings for childcare, parents should be very clear about the parameters—including payment, if any—and be sure to provide time for them to do their own thing. Otherwise, resentment and additional conflict can grow. Hiring an outside sitter or even friends of older siblings frees the older ones to choose. An adult babysitter can watch everyone (without the older siblings realizing they are being watched).

When conflicts do arise (during summertime or anytime), it’s important to let everyone be heard, Peterson says. “Never decide anything until all sides of the story have been told,” she says. “This is always important, but especially in summertime, when everyone’s been on top of each other and tensions are high.”

And remember that summer (like childhood), is all too brief. Says Claire: “Though I usually both look forward to and dread summer, I am always surprised by how quickly it goes by.”

Contributed by Zanne Miller

Congratulations! You don’t say whether you are a mom or a dad, but the recommendations will be the same.
As a responsible parent, the bottom line rule of thumb is always,”What’s in my kids’ best interest?” When it comes to your emotions and the excitement of a new person in your life, the boundaries can easily become blurred. Dating is about sharing a variety of experiences with a variety of people. You may decide to continue dating several people, or just one. You may decide to enter into a committed relationship with this person, or not.

Your personal life is ‘personal’ because it is your private adult business. Too often we are so excited about positive changes that we have a need to tell everybody and anybody everything, right away…including our kids. Slow down, enjoy the positive feelings and keep your personal life separate from your family life until you are sure they should be integrated. This is much simpler if you are not single parenting full-time, but it can be worked out through child care, and spending time together when the children are in school or with friends. If this person is meant to be in your life, you could have the rest of your lives together, so what’s the rush?

Most kids are very sensitive to energetic changes in the family, even if they don’t have specific information about what is going on. They will pick up on the fact that you relate differently to this “aunt” or “uncle” than you do to their biological relatives. Think about all the things you “knew” about your family growing up, without being told (who had the drinking problem, who was having an affair, etc.). Kids always have their radar out and absorb information (verbal and non-verbal) like sponges. Plan to keep all your communications private, which means when the children are not around (in school, at friends’, etc.), not when they are in their rooms with the door closed or in bed and you think they are asleep. Why? Because kids have feelings. Too much information (that they have no control over) too soon, can result in anxious kids, which makes it harder for them to manage their behaviors; which can make them harder to parent. What may be a glorious yearned for opportunity for you may be a dreaded, resented change for them. You may be focused on having a peer to share adult interests with, while they may be focused on not wanting to have to share you with someone new. Kids become attached to people in their lives, which hopefully will include this person.

However, if the relationship doesn’t work out not only are you dealing with your grief and loss issues, but those of your child’s as well. When children experience repeated relationship losses they lose their ability to trust, and to develop healthy relationships as they grow and mature. They also grow up learning what they live: that adults have what is often referred to as “serial monogamy”: one relationship after another, but nothing long term. They grow up thinking this is normal.

“But I don’t want to keep secrets from my children” is something I often hear. Having appropriate boundaries and keeping secrets are two different things. Adult information (financial, employment, housing, health, and relationship concerns) is for adults. Keeping it to your self and only sharing it with other adults is maintaining healthy boundaries, not keeping secrets. If your child asks, of course answer honestly, but only offer as much as they need to know. It is also important to not give personal adult information to your older children (because they can “handle it”), or ask them not to tell their younger siblings or other family members. That is asking them to keep a secret, which may make them feel special, but it also adds extra pressure and is not fair to them.

There are many more things to consider, too much for one column, but some things to ponder include:

• How well do we really know each other? Have we had a wide range of shared experiences?

• We may be madly attracted to each other, but are we “relationship material” with each other? Is our “appropriate” relationship platonic, sexual, casual, committed, or…?

• What is their relationship history? What is mine? How will our histories impact the present?

• What are the ‘red flags’? Which ones am I denying, minimizing or ignoring?

• What are my friends and family saying (there is usually some truth in their perceptions)?

• How affectionate can we be in front of my children (this will depend on the developmental stages of your children, as well as your comfort level)?

• What will my children call him/her (also depends on their developmental level, and may change over time)?

• How much input do I want him/her to have in parenting my children?

• How do we integrate him/her into my family, especially if they have their own children?

The list goes on, but this is a start. That said, enjoy this new addition to your life, and all that it brings. Remember that change, even when positive, is often experienced as a loss. You may feel sad, as well as excited, energized, and elated. And that your children are not only their own people (different from each other and you), but are experiencing these changes from a child’s point of view, which is different from an adult perspective.

Nanny Connection is contributed by Leigh Files, a family therapist in the Eugene area.

I would’ve liked to answer: “Don’t you know? THIS is where money comes from. Whenever grownups run low on money, they just drive to this bridge, put out a hand and one of those people fills it with money. Is this a wonderful world or what?”

My real answer was factual. I am too much my father’s son to be silly about money. His credo was work hard, spend wisely, and save the rest. Buy a lottery ticket? He would just as soon try to steal a suitcase full of cocaine from Colombian drug lords.

As Father’s Day approaches, I’d like to propose a toast to the man who taught me the value of a dollar and, inadvertently, the value of words. His financial training was fairly simple: Whenever I’d been extravagant, he’d say: “It must be nice to have a rich father.” His remark contained the whole Ted Epstein saga. If he had stated it directly, it would’ve gone like this:
My parents were poor immigrants. We sweated blood every day in our luncheonette and lived in a tiny apartment. I never had money to squander the way you are squandering mine. I worked hard and concentrated on my studies. I served eight years in the Army and almost as many in college, and I’ve been busting my hump at a demanding job ever since. All to produce the disappointing result we see here – spoiled sons who take the fruit of that struggle and throw it away on tacky plastic streamers to attach to their handlebars. I only WISH I had that kind of economic setup, except that I would’ve had the strength of character to save that money for college rather than fritter it away on ephemera (short-lived stuff) and frippery (cheap finery). (These are the kind of words that Dad used all the time.)

Of course Dad didn’t SAY all this; it was just THERE, rolled up inside the “rich father” remark, like tape inside an old videocassette. One minute I’d be standing in the driveway jazzing-up my bike, doing my own small bit to make the world a more beautiful place, and the next I’d be clobbered with Dad’s version of “Godfather II,” prolonged sepia-toned flashbacks and all, condensed into that one ironic sentence.

Then Dad would go read his newspaper (and maybe garner additional cool words), and I’d continue attaching the streamers, aware that I’d made a foolish purchase.

But on another level I would be thinking: “Y’know, it IS nice to have a rich father.” We had a big house, steak for dinner, ample allowances, and had been promised a free ticket to whichever college we could squeak into. But my brothers and I wished we had an even-richer father so we could have servants, horses, vacations on the French Riviera, and silver-fox tails for our bikes.

My big brother Steve, like many firstborns, felt deep down that he was royalty who had been temporarily hidden among commoners. For Steve, mere riches would not suffice; he wanted a throne, a crown and groveling subjects. Whenever his arrogance showed, Dad would accuse him of being “born to the Purple.” So while Prince Steven waited for his real parents to send for him, little brother Jim and I waited for Dad to show a little more ambition and boost us into the upper crust.

But Dad was looking downward instead of upward. “Come here,” he said one day, inviting me into a bathroom. “See that?” he asked, pointing to the sink where a thin stream of water flowed from the faucet. “That’s MONEY going down the drain.” Dad was best with irony, but he was no slouch with metaphor.

Electricity was another sore point. Every evening, Dad would quietly patrol the house turning off lights in unoccupied rooms. But when he was off-duty, away at a meeting or a viewing, he’d come home to find, as he put it, “every light in the house BLAZING!” I got the point, of course, but I liked the exciting verb; it made me feel like we were in a palace that was brilliantly illuminated with candles and torches, ready for Steve’s coronation or something.

Although Dad’s frugality eventually soaked in, I also developed an appreciation of the off-beat expressiveness of his speech and also a general love of language. Working for a newspaper, I make my living with words and, although I don’t make nearly as much money as my dad used to, we’re doing OK.

Now I have three kids of my own who spend my money like sailors in port and who loll about like guests of honor at The Festival of Running Water and Eternal Light. And I say the same corrective things to them that my dad used to say to me in hopes that they’ll absorb the concepts in time to instruct my grandchildren. But I have held one thing back:
I never tell them how nice it was to have a rich father.

Rick can be reached at rickepstein@yahoo.com