UnchartedParent.com

(Photo credit: Sean Dreilinger via Flickr.com)

Every now and then, I hear a story or read an article that makes me think, Damn, I’m turning my kids into slackers.

A parent I know tells me about her kids who make their own breakfasts, pack their own lunches and all but drive themselves to school. An article notes that ten-year-olds are perfectly capable of cleaning the bathroom. Someone else mentions that his kid shoveled the driveway after the latest snowstorm–actually removed the snow, as opposed to digging a fort out of it.

My children do not do these things.

To be clear, my kids do have responsibilities around the house. Actually, that’s what we tend to call them: “responsibilities around the house”–just like my husband and I have, only far fewer. But often, I wonder if they have enough of those responsibilities.

Let’s face it: from a parenting perspective, chores are tough. There’s the complaining, the whining, the arguing. There’s the undeniable fact that with young kids or even older kids learning to do something new, it can take more time to teach them to accomplish something than it takes for you to do it yourself. There’s the reality that today’s kids are busy, families are over-scheduled, and if you’re desperately searching that Google calendar looking for a place to pencil in some family time, do you really want to spend it trying to convince the kids to do chores?

But then there’s the flip side: it’s important to teach kids responsibility and the daily life skills that come from accomplishing chores. Plus, there’s a lot to do around the house, and shouldn’t the younger people who live there contribute?

So how do you make it happen?

I suspect there are as many thoughts about chores as there are parents, but here are few strategies to consider for getting school-aged kids to participate in chores. (more…)

(Not a ‘Before’ picture of my desk. But it may as well have been. Actual credit for this photo goes to camknows via Flickr.com.*)

It’s no news to anyone that I’m not the world’s best housekeeper.

As I’ve mentioned here before, it’s not that I object to things being clean.  In fact, I rather like a clean office, a clean house.  It’s just that aside from going to the dentist, I’d rather do almost anything than engage in the process of cleaning.

Take this past summer.  I hunted on the internet and in local stores, and eventually bought a small, mosaic tile table for my sunporch.  For the rest of the summer, I wrote on that clean, uncluttered surface, with a lovely view of the nature in my backyard and the forest just beyond it.  Also, the purchase of that table allowed me to put off cleaning up the mountainous piles on my desk for several more months than would otherwise have been possible.

Now, I’m a writer who works, for the most part, at home.  This generally functions like any other job, except that I spend much of my day talking to imaginary people and much of my pay takes the form of aspirational, imaginary dollars.  (I’m talking about the novel here.)  Another difference between writing and my previous, office-based jobs is that I don’t have to keep up office appearances for the sake of colleagues, because no one will stop by with a question or for a consultation.  (The UPS guy doesn’t care how messy my office is.)  But people do enter our home through our office, and when I found that I could no longer stand to work for any length of time at my own desk, I finally had to admit it was time to take on The Mess.

So for three days last week and this week, I set my writing aside and cleaned the office.  (Yes, it took three days.)  I spent two of those days focused on my desk.  I cleared debris and sorted through articles, scribbled research notes, miscellaneous papers, semi-fossilized sticky squares, dust…

It’s amazing what one finds on a desk when one hasn’t gone through the piles in a while.  Here’s a select list of what I uncovered:

• Numerous names and phone numbers of people I swear I’ve never heard of;
• Several phone numbers with no names or other identifying information attached;
• A large percentage of the pens I’ve lost–and accused my kids of taking–over the past few months; (more…)

(Photo credit: usedtobelost via Flickr.com)

Never mind the fireworks.  Last weekend, my family participated in one of the truly great American traditions: the yard sale.  This event was precipitated by a concentration of crap–er, I mean high-quality personal belongings we no longer needed–in our basement so great that we could no longer move about freely.  Various financial obligations being what they are, we decided to see what we could get for some of it, and the sale was on.

The kids were beyond excited, especially when we promised them a percentage of the profits in proportion to their work contributions.  They really did work hard–if you’ve ever put one of these sales on, you know what slogs they are–and earned their money.

They also received a bit of an education.  Because while of course it was nice that we made a bit of money from the sale of items we no longer needed, to me the most interesting aspect of the day, by far, was the opportunity for human study the yard sale brought to our driveway.

Here are a few of my observations from a yard sale:

• The vast majority of people will not pay more than $5.  “For what?” you ask.  For anything.  A brand new toy in the box, a suit, a good-condition sweater that retailed at $60, a you-name-it from Pottery Barn in mint condition, heck, even some furniture.  Possibly a car.  If it’s more than $5, ninety-nine times out of one hundred, people will not consider it.  The two exceptions to this rule appear to be a fully functional play kitchen–with accoutrements–and some decent furniture.

• Certain people arrived with clear, specific missions in mind. (more…)

It’s that time of the year: tax time.  (What?  You’re not excited?)

For the adoptive parent, adoption may be all about love and building a family, but there’s no question that it’s an expensive proposition in many, if not most cases.  The good news for adoptive parents is that the federal adoption tax credit offers some financial relief.  The bad (but not shocking) news is that the adoption tax credit is, well, let’s be blunt: it’s taxes.  So it’s complicated.

Please join me today in welcoming writer and tax professional Linda Lawrence to Uncharted Parent.  She’s going to untangle the adoption tax credit for you so that you can determine if the credit applies in your case, and, if it does, how you can claim it.*

Claiming the Federal Adoption Tax Credit for 2011

If you have adopted a child or were in the process of adopting a child during 2011, you may be eligible for a tax credit.  Depending on the total amount of your adoption expenses–as well as the circumstances of the adoption–you may be able to claim a portion or even the full amount of out-of-pocket expenses that you paid for the adoption when you file your 2011 year-end income tax return.

How Does the Adoption Tax Credit Work?

As previously stated, if you adopted a child or were in the process of adopting during the 2011 tax year, you may qualify for the adoption tax credit.  According to the IRS, the credit that you receive will lower your tax bill dollar-for-dollar.  Furthermore, if your adoption was finalized during the 2011 tax year, you may be able to receive a credit for additional expenses that you paid in past years.  Adoption expenses made in 2011 are considered to be refundable, which means that you may be entitled to a refund even if you owe no taxes.  (Note that unless Congress acts to change the law, the adoption tax credit will not be refundable for 2012.)

Children Who Are Considered Eligible

In order to be eligible for the tax credit, the child that you adopted must meet either of the following criteria:

• The child must be age 17 or under.
• The child can be any age if physically or mentally unable to care for himself and is either a US citizen or resident alien.

What Expenses Qualify for the Adoption Tax Credit? (more…)

I am now a parody of a stereotype of a cliché.

Some of you will remember a few summers ago, when my 2001 Volvo Cross Country wagon bravely chugged its way up the Mt. Washington Auto Road, chanting, “I think I can.  I think I can.”

But it couldn’t.

That day, my beloved Volvo left its transmission (metaphorically speaking) 1000 feet from the summit of the highest mountain in the northeastern United States.  Despite receiving a brand new transmission, the car as a whole never quite recovered.  (And in case you’re wondering: yes, it is very expensive to have a car towed from the top of Mt. Washington, and no, AAA will not come up there to rescue you.)  It’s been, ahem, an uphill climb with the car ever since.

On Friday, the Volvo finally died.

My husband and I had been expecting the car’s demise.  So we said farewell to our “Babymobile,”—the car we’d purchased back in the summer of 2001 when I was pregnant with our first child—and faced the next, inevitable stage of driving-while-parenting: The Minivan. (more…)

After my post Monday regarding Saturday’s tragic events in Arizona, I wanted to post something today that would lighten the mood a bit.  I had a couple of ideas, but I hadn’t settled on anything when a new Xtranormal video came through my Twitter stream.

Apparently, writer Dee Garretson has been listening in on conversations between me and my kids.  When I watched this short vlog she posted today on the writers’ blog, STET!, I couldn’t stop laughing.  Want to know how life goes down at my house and at the houses of a lot of other writing parents?  This is pretty much it:

(Photo credit: Zach Klein via Flickr.com)

Have you got a nightly routine at home with your kids?  Here’s one of my mine, and I’m not sure I can take much more of it.  (Necessary background here: Five-year-old “Emmie” does not like to be told what to do.  Ever.  Even if it’s something she likes.  It is amazing that this child doesn’t share my biology, because wow, in this respect she is so much like me.)

Each evening, at some point I observe the state of simmering pots and pans around me and determine that I’m approximately ten or fifteen minutes from presenting dinner to my family.  Thus I know it’s time to set the table, which is one of Emmie’s few chores.  (The actual clock time for this event varies, depending on our schedule for the day, what I’m cooking, etc.) 

Me: “Emmie, it’s time to set the table.”

Emmie: Rolls on the ground while emitting high-pitched, wave-like, whale tones, similar to the language spoken by Dory in Finding Nemo.  “Don’t tell me ‘It’s time to set the table.’  I already know!” 

I wait and take deep, preparatory breaths, because I know what’s coming next. (more…)

Uncharted Parent intended to offer you a thoughtful, substantive post today before signing off for the long weekend.  But you know how it is.  The kids are thrilled to be finished with school and are fighting already (when did kids start getting the Wednesday before Thanksgiving off, by the way?), the annual grocery-store battles took way too long, and I’ve got hours of cooking to go before tomorrow. 

So much for substance.  I’m off to the kitchen.  Wherever the next few days find you, I wish you a wonderful Thanksgiving full of fun, laughter and a cornucopica of savory and sweet delicacies.  We’ll meet again next week, ready to talk parenting and light the Hanukkah candles.  (Oh yes, really.  Don’t stop to take a breath; Hanukkah begins a week from tonight!)

(Photo credit: Jeremy Brooks via Flickr.com)

If you’re not freaking out, you’re either not the parent of a girl or you’re not paying attention.

A study released earlier this week in the Journal Pediatrics found that more girls are showing signs of puberty at the ages of seven or eight than ever before.

Seven or eight??

There are plenty of articles out there in which you can read about the study’s findings, which were broken down by race and compared to earlier studies.  (Here are two articles: “Early Puberty is Raising Health Concerns,” USA Today; “First Signs of Puberty Seen in Younger Girls,” The New York Times.)  Two primary factors are cited as causes for the increased early onset of breast development and other signs of puberty: the rise in obesity, because body fat produces estrogen; and the still-debated role of environmental chemicals like BPA, found in products we use every day that might mimic estrogen’s effects. 

As the parent of a five-year-old daughter, the idea that she might reach puberty in two years terrifies me.  I know my daughter’s cognitive and emotional development level, and I watch my eight-year-old son’s female classmates and consider their maturity levels, too.  Nowhere in that mix do I find children ready to cope with the swirling confusion that one generally associates with kids in middle school: trying to understand the changes in your own body while sorting through feelings you’ve never had before; looking at members of the opposite—or your own—sex in ways you hadn’t previously and wondering what that means; managing advances from boys and men who see you in ways they didn’t before; and dealing with anger, sadness, and other emotional highs and lows in spectrums that radiate in multiple dimensions and in rapid, dizzying succession. 

All of this is hard enough to go through at eleven, twelve or thirteen.  I know I wasn’t ready for it then and it kicked my ass.  But at seven?  Right now, my daughter deals with her world by filtering all of life’s events, large and small, through her stuffed unicorn.  “Unicorn had a bad day.  She broke her leg and had to go the hospital,” she told me last night.  “It hurt, and she cried, but the doctor put a band-aid on it and made it better.  Now she’s going to rest and she’ll be better tomorrow.  But don’t make noise because she needs a nap.”  This is how “Emmie” copes with her world at the age of five, and two years just aren’t enough to go from the Unicorn crutch to breasts and periods.  She won’t be ready in two years—and neither will I.

On an individual level, we parents can only do so much.  We can try to keep our daughters healthy and minimize chemical exposure.  Realistically, for most of us, participating in modern life means that some exposure is inevitable.  But maybe we can do one step better than we do now.  Look at your child’s diet and cut back on just one serving of fat or sweets per day.  Check into your household-product consumption until you find one thing that might expose your child to BPA or some other potentially harmful chemical, and get rid of it.  Maybe that will be the item that makes that keeps your kid an actual child for just a little bit longer.

No, not about that excess flow.  I’m not talking about oil.  Trust me, if I knew the solution to that disaster, I wouldn’t be sitting at my desk writing this blog post.

By request, I’m addressing that excess flow of paper, papier-mâché, streamers, loose buttons, converted toilet paper rolls and other materials into your home at the end of the year in the form of your child’s artwork.

Now hold on.  Before you start calling me Scrooge (please reserve that label for preschool-level dance recitals), let’s establish right up front that I love my kids’ artwork.  After all, how could I not adore a robot created by my eight-year-old son out of nothing more than old computer parts combined with plastic and aluminum kitchen debris:

There’s some quality art coming into my house these days, my personal bias notwithstanding.  But the volume is, well, overwhelming.

If you’ve got kids, you know that the backpacks that have served them well all year are no longer adequate.  They work just fine to carry stuff out of your house in the morning, but supplemental grocery bags come home filled with papers and more in the afternoons.  If you pick your child up at school, your own arms are stuffed to the point where you can barely hold your car keys before dropping the load with relief onto the floor of the car.  Then you repeat the same moves the next day.

The difficult part of this is knowing what to say to your kids about all of their work.  I believe in praising my kids’ work, of course, but after the fortieth “Wow, I really like that painting,” in a row, even the youngest child begins to suspect a lack of sincerity.  You can vary your words, find something unique to say about each composition, every masterpiece, but the praise will eventually fall flat. 

And then there’s the question of what to do with it.

I suspect most of you do something along the lines of what I’ve decided to do: I pulled all of the old artwork off the walls and tucked it into a bin to be taken out at some later date when I’m feeling nostalgic and want to embarrass and/or torture my offspring.  Then I culled the new stuff. 

I decorated the mudroom:

The playroom:

I set a life-sized silhouette under heavy objects to flatten so it can later adorn my daughter’s bedroom:

But I still have a bin crammed with artwork and other papers that didn’t make the cut:

And I’m just wondering what to do with it all.

Hey, here’s an idea: maybe we could take all the excess paper and other materials flowing into our houses at this time of the year and send it down to the Gulf to sop up that other excess flow, the one that is devastating lives and our environment.  No?  Well, it was just a thought.  If anybody’s got any better ones, either for the artwork or the Gulf, be sure to let the right people know.  Because I don’t think anybody has the answer to either dilemma.