UnchartedParent.com

We’ve all heard it. At this point in the summer, it’s hot, we’re in a recession and the kids have been out of school for at least a month. (And if you’re in New England, there’s the added wrinkle that it’s probably raining. It doesn’t matter when you’re reading this; chances are it’s raining or it just rained or it’s about to rain or it’s actually stopped raining but the humidity is at 300 percent so it still feels like it’s raining.)

What’s a parent to do?

Here are 10 suggestions for activities to help keep the kids busy and yourself sane over the rest of the summer without breaking the bank:

• Send them out to play in the rain. Kids don’t melt, and they’ll think you’re such a cool mom or dad for instructing them to do the opposite of the usual stay-indoors-when-it-rains rule.

• Turn the hose on them. For some reason, the very same kids who scream “Ick!” at the first touch of raindrops dissolve into fits of laughter upon being sprayed with ice-cold water from a hose. Not exciting enough? Attach a spray nozzle to the end of the hose and surprise them with your aim. Still not fun enough? Let them wear their clothes.

• Picnic! This is four-year-old “Emmie’s” favorite activity in the summer. Any food will do; the menu isn’t the point. As long as we spread out our blanket on the deck, in the yard, in a park or anywhere outdoors, it’s a great experience. Foiled again by that rain? My kids think that eating lunch on the picnic blanket in the living room is almost as fun.

• Breakfast-for-dinner, lunch-for-breakfast, dinner-for-lunch. Dessert before the meal. Snacks at mealtime, meals at snack time. The kids help choose the menu and put it together. The more obviously inappropriate the foods for the given time of day, the better. Anything mixed up amuses.

• Conduct a cooking class (or a class in painting, drawing, knitting, birdhouse-building–whatever you enjoy and do with confidence). I used to take my children to a local kids’ cooking school, and they loved it. Then economic reality hit and we had to drop the classes. To cushion the blow, I offered to reconstruct the experience at home. Now I announce the class in advance and let the kids help me select one or two items to cook up from scratch. I set up ingredients and necessary tools, tie aprons around them and instruct them in the creation of chocolate chip cookies, pasta, bread or whatever it is we’re making. The most difficult part for me is letting them do the work, make mistakes and create a giant mess, but I remind myself continually that this is their experience. They’re proud of their creations, they’re learning a useful, fun skill and it occupies them for an entire afternoon.

• Camp out in the backyard. A classic for a reason.

• Movie night. In sleeping bags. On the floor. Then the kids get to sleep there. If you’re feeling daring, let them invite a friend or two.

• Library and bookstore story times. Lots of public libraries and bookstores hold readings for young kids in the summer, often with accompanying activities afterwards. These are usually free. (The bookstores are hoping you’ll buy something while you’re there, but that’s up to you.) Check with the libraries and bookstores in your area to see what’s available.

• Go to the movies. There’s a movie theater about twenty minutes away from me that offers free movies for families on Tuesday mornings and afternoons in the summer. It’s noisy, and popcorn and leaking sippy cups are everywhere, but it’s a place to take the kids without having to fork over big bucks for tickets. Check with the movie theaters near you to see if they offer anything, and be prepared to venture a little further from home than you usually might to see a movie.

• Go “hiking,” whether in the city or the country. In a city, you can explore streets and neighborhoods you don’t know well or at all, or maybe follow a historic trail like the Liberty Trail in Boston; in the country, you can find marked trails that won’t be too taxing for little ones and you can check out the flora along the way (as well whatever fauna isn’t spooked by rambunctious children). In both cases, know where you’re going in advance and make sure the area is safe, wear comfortable footwear, sunscreen and (if necessary) bug spray and bring a cell phone and water.

Be creative. As you can see, often the key to entertaining your kids isn’t spending money. Sure, that helps, but simply taking them out of their routine is often sufficient, and if you’re actually breaking one of your own rules in the process, well, so much the better! (Just be sure they know that the rule returns after this special occasion and that it’s never okay to break rules about safety.)

Finally, if you’ve ticked off each of these strategies and you’re still plagued by whines of boredom, it’s time to take the gloves off:

• Teach your kids how to accomplish a new chore. They can clean the house, weed the garden, empty the dishwasher, do laundry; as you are well aware, the list is endless. No, this one isn’t going to earn you accolades from your children, nor will it entertain them, but it will occupy them for a brief period of time and should discourage them from complaining to you about boredom for a while.

• When all else fails, tell them to play with something from that huge collection of toys they just couldn’t live without. When the kids complain that the toys are boring, agree that it’s no fun to play with old, dull toys, so you’ll be going through all of them and pulling out anything that hasn’t been touched in a week (or day or month; you pick how you want to play this), then donating the boring items to kids who don’t have so many toys. You’ll be amazed how interesting some of those forgotten playthings will suddenly become.

School is just around the corner, so enjoy the rest of summer while it’s here!

(Click here for About.com’s blog carnival and more ideas for “Cheap Fun” for summer.)

I write often about race and the challenges of being a white parent to an Asian child. For example, initial questions from other people about four-year-old “Emmie’s” country of origin make me sigh because they frequently sound like this: “Is she from China?”

I understand why people ask that question. Far more people in the U.S. seem to be familiar with the concept of little girls adopted from China than that of kids adopted from Korea; I personally know many children from China in the area where I live, but only a handful of kids from Korea. So China is generally people’s frame of reference for white parents with an Asian child, and naturally, China is what people imagine when they see Emmie and me.

Though I don’t exactly resent the assumption, I wish I didn’t hear it so often and I do get tired of making the clarification. But I believe it’s part of my job as Emmie’s mother to nurture her development of a positive sense of racial and ethnic identity. So I correct the other people’s assumptions that Emmie is from China and I talk often with her about where she’s really from.

But now the questions about China are coming from a new source: Emmie.

Suddenly, Emmie seems to be noticing race. She’s commenting on people she sees with very dark skin as well as people she notices whose eyes that look like hers. And when she sees someone in the latter category, lately, she tells me: “Oh, that person is Chinese!”

Emmie seems to be developing a deep interest in all things Chinese. She talks frequently about Chinese adopted children we know, she professes love for Chinese food and she tells me she wants to visit China. She now describes children in her school whom she once knew to be from Korea as Chinese. Chopsticks are “for Chinese food,” dolls with dark hair and eyes are “Chinese babies.” Once or twice, she has even referred to herself as being Chinese.

I’ve got nothing against China, but where did this come from? Is Emmie confused, or is she fantasizing? Yes, there are lots more adopted Chinese kids in our area than Korean children. And she does overhear that question about being from China a lot; she has seen on the globe that China is a much bigger country than South Korea. Has she picked up on subtle signals and formed a subconscious opinion that it’s somehow more acceptable to be Chinese than Korean? Is she already developing an ethnic insecurity that begins now with desiring to be a different Asian ethnicity and will culminate in her teenage years in her wanting to have increasingly popular surgery to alter the shape of her eyelids? Have I already failed in my presentation to her of information about her race and ethnicity in ways that will result in a positive identity?

Or am I paranoid? Maybe she’s just four. Given that she’s Emmie and that her mind often reveals bite-sized views of the world that are tough to comprehend, maybe this is just her way of working out the differences she sees in a manner a four-year-old can understand. Maybe it’s no more significant that last year’s phase of citing Cinderella as her birthmother, an assertion I heard steadily for a few months but which then faded away.

I have two kids: I ought to know by now that what my preschooler thinks doesn’t necessarily mean anything about what she will think or believe when she is older. Maybe Emmie’s efforts to work out these questions on her level actually means that I’m doing a good job of presenting issues of racial and ethnic identity to her now, and some of the basic work in that area will already have been accomplished by the time she reaches those crucial adolescent years.

Who knows? Maybe, like with everything else about parenting, I haven’t a clue what this means for Emmie’s identity down the road. I’ve just got to roll with Emmie’s thoughts and answer her questions as best as I can. Emmie’s the only one who really knows what she’s thinking, and as her mother, I’m just going to have to wait for her to show me where she’s headed.

In the meantime, I’ll just keep telling her, “Yes, I like China, too. But let’s talk about Korea . . .”

I’m not in the habit of writing posts that come off like advertising copy. But every now and then, a mom stumbles across a product so awesome that she wants to share it with as many parents as possible.

So it is with me and a Wild Planet game called Hyper Dash, to which I and seven-year-old “Jack” were introduced last week.

Let me tell you to whom this game will appeal: first, you need to have young children. Second, your children need to enjoy running around. Third, the degree to which you will appreciate this game will rise in direct proportion to the amount of time your kids spend cooped up indoors. (And in northern New England this summer, there are an awful lot of kids bursting with too much energy. Rain twenty-three out of the last 31 days—give us a break already!)

The game works simply enough: you or your kids spread five plastic targets around a room or series of rooms. Your child then picks up the handheld electronic “tagger,” presses the button and then follows the tagger’s spoken directions to run to different targets and “tag” them as fast as possible. There are multiple skill levels and variations, kids can work to improve their times and accuracy and they can play alone, against friends or siblings or in teams.

Our friends’ six-year-old son brought this game with him to our lake vacation last week, and he and Jack brought it out more times than I can count. It’s not possible to overstate how much Jack loved it. For a child whom I have literally caught bouncing off the walls and running in laps around the house several times in the last few weeks, this game provided the perfect outlet. (If you have a seven-year-old boy who hasn’t been able to get outside as much as he needs to lately, you’ll understand what I’m talking about.) I combed every local toy store until I found it almost as soon as we returned home.

You can play the game outside, but I’d have to recommend saving it for those dreary, stale, indoor days when the weather is gray and wet and your child whines for the umpteenth time (prior to climbing furniture that was never meant to be treated as gymnastics apparatus), “What do I do nooowww?”

I’ve included below an Amazon link to the game so you don’t even have to search for it. It’s worth the investment. Hyper Dash may be one of the best inventions for kids since macaroni-and-cheese.

We just got back from a short vacation in New Hampshire’s Lakes Region, an annual sojourn that allows us to enjoy sun, sand and the company of friends whom we don’t get to see as often as we’d like.

As with any vacation that includes kids (or perhaps, any endeavor at all that includes kids), our vacation had its ups and downs:

The Good: Sun! In New Hampshire! Finally! After approximately a month-and-a-half of cold, rainy weather better suited to April than to June and July, the sun came out and permitted us to play in lake water so clear I could see fish swimming in it from the third floor of the house in which we were staying. Never mind that our eyes were so unaccustomed to the bright light that we feared our retinas were burning or that our skin was paler than the sand. We saw and felt the sun!

The Bad: Feeling the need to utter repeatedly, “I’m sorry for ‘Emmie’s’ behavior.” Four-year-old Emmie usually reserves her Mt. Everest-sized, contrarian tantrums for her family, and no one quite believes us when we talk about them. For some reason, she decided to make an exception for the friends who hosted us for this vacation, and they were treated to several small tantrums and one that lasted for an entire afternoon. The Big One began after I reprimanded her following the rudest tone of voice I’d ever heard from either of my kids as Emmie yelled at my friend not to talk to her. (Sadly, Emmie employed the same, offensive tone in the context of her apology, winning her another reprimand and setting off the screaming all over again.) The tantrum escalated to the point that I’m sure people heard it for long distances around the circumference of the lake. It was the first time I felt that people probably didn’t like one of my children and I could completely understand why.

The Best: Getting to spend several days with old friends I only see once a year, and watching my seven-year-old son cavort both in the water and out at full speed with my friend’s six-year-old son. These kids only see each other for a few days each year, but it takes them approximately ten seconds to pick up where they left off the previous summer, and watching them dedicate themselves to pulling as much fun as possible from every minute of every day until they could barely stand up was probably the best part of the trip for everyone. There’s something nostalgic about observing the uninhibited friendship between two little boys reborn and played out to its fullest every year that can remind us of why we chose our own friends long ago and how valuable are the moments that we can spend with them now.

“This kid is unbelievable,” a friend recently said to me over the phone. She was speaking about her two-year-old son, the second of her two children. “A___ is such a good child. He’s sweet, he’s kind, you know what he’s thinking. You can trust him. But E___? He’ll whack you over the head with a pot with a smile on his face.”

I laughed.

“No, I mean that literally,” my friend insisted, convinced I didn’t fully appreciate what she was telling me. “Yesterday I was kneeling in the kitchen and he walked up to me, smiling, kept smiling and then took a pot and hit me on the top of my head with it. And he was still smiling.”

I laughed again—not because I didn’t believe her, but because I really could appreciate what she was telling me.

I’ve got a child like that. Four-year-old “Emmie” (and I write this with love) is a manipulator and a drama queen. She’s cute as a six-week-old beagle puppy and she knows it. She throws screaming, hour-long temper-tantrums when she doesn’t get her way and then cocks her head to one side, smiles and tells me in a maple-sugar voice, “Mommy, I love you.” Her best behavior comes out at preschool, where her teachers regularly rely on her to keep the other kids in line and help their classroom run smoothly, and when she’s been told that something really great is about to happen, like a vacation. (Her teachers, by the way, listen to my anecdotes of her behavior at home and are convinced I ingest hallucinogenic substances on a regular basis. To be fair, I’ve sometimes wondered the same thing about them.) Otherwise, I’ve learned to be wary of polite, well-mannered Emmie. The appearance of that child means that plotting is at hand, and I need to be ready for what’s next.

When I tell these stories to friends and acquaintances who are also parents, a surprising number of them nod, sigh and offer the same analysis: “She’s a second child.”

I don’t know if Emmie’s birth order in our family explains everything, but I’ve thought about this enough to conclude that there might at least be something to it. In many of the families I know (at least the ones with two children), this dynamic seems to be in effect. The first kid is the rule-follower, the one who you can send outside to play on his own, tell him not to stray from the boundaries of your yard and be confident that he will listen. The second, on the other hand, you’d chain to a tree like a dog if you didn’t think Child Protective Services would take her away because you know that the first chance she gets, she’ll be gone. The first whines and complains like any child, but you can tell him that you’ve had enough and he’ll grudgingly obey. The second will hide your car keys when you’re rushing to get out of the house for a doctor’s appointment or make paper airplanes out of that report he knows you’ve been laboring over for work just to see what your reaction will be.

I could go on, but you get the idea.

I’m not saying that this second-child concept is universally true; I know of several exceptions to the premise myself. But I hear a lot of people talking about it, and I know of an awful lot of families who fit the description. Of course, even if it is true, it doesn’t help anyone figure out how to deal with their kids.

And who knows? Maybe these second children are the ones who will grow into trailblazing adults, people who refuse to bend to the will of others and thus break barriers and find creative solutions to problems society has been grappling with for decades or longer. Maybe we should hail this behavior and recognize these second-children’s independent thinking as a necessary ingredient for success. (Maybe they’ll even be the ones who get rich and support us in our retirement later in life.)

Maybe. I hope so. In the meantime, though, I’d love it if someone could tell me how to convince spirited Emmie to clean up her messes in the playroom without screaming loudly enough to damage my hearing.

What about you? What do you think of “second-child syndrome”? Is it real? Do you know families whose kids fit this mold? And what do you do about it?

If you’re an adoptive parent—especially if your child’s race differs from your own, thereby announcing the fact of your child’s adoption to everyone who sees your family—you’ve heard comments. You’ve been asked questions. Some people’s words are well-intended and thoughtful, but others can leave a parent wondering what in God’s name the speaker was thinking, or if he or she was thinking at all.

It’s been my experience that more often than not, people will ask intrusive questions or make uncomfortable comments right in front of my kids (and any other children that happen to be in hearing range). This is when words that might cause me simply to shake my head and walk away if I were alone sting more sharply and leave me worrying about the adequacy of my own response for hours or days after we’ve left the speaker behind. Why is it that adults think kids aren’t listening when they talk, or is it that these adults just don’t care?

I know I don’t have the power to make people think before they speak, but I’ll give it a shot anyway. Below is a list of nine things I wish people would think about before they speak in front of my seven-year-old biological son and my four-year-old adopted daughter:

1. My daughter can hear you. That child you’re talking about? The one standing right in front of you? She understands English and she hears what you’re saying. So do all of the other kids around you. Please think about that before you ask me questions about her.

2. My son can hear you. See that blond-haired, blue-eyed boy over there? The one right next to the four-year-old Asian girl you’re cooing over? Yeah, that’s the one. He’s my kid, too. He’s pretty cute, too. And he hears you.

3. Both of my kids are “my own.” Yes, I know what you mean. My answer is still that they are both “my own.”

4. Yes, my daughter knows she’s adopted. Not only do we talk about it regularly, but she’s a different race from the rest of the family and she knows how to look in the mirror.

5. Very few parents who choose international adoption do so because they a) don’t like American kids; b) don’t like “dark” kids; or c) want an “exotic” child. The systems of international and domestic adoption differ in fundamental ways, and most parents who choose to adopt educate themselves thoroughly and then pick the program that is best for them.

6. Birthmothers are not “bad,” immoral people. Very few, if any, birthmothers who relinquish their children do so lightly. For most, it is a searing, heartbreaking decision that will haunt them forever. When you say things about my child’s birthmother, you are commenting about the woman who gave my daughter life and whose genes remain an inseparable part of her—forever.

7. Yes, my adopted child is lucky, just like her brother who was born to me—just like any kid blessed with a good family. Moreover, my husband and I are lucky to have her as a daughter. My daughter is not lucky, however, by virtue of having been adopted or because she’s been adopted by an American family. Her life story will always be one that begins with wrenching loss of family, of country, of language, culture and all things related to the place and people from whence she came. She will have to figure out how to incorporate all of this into her identity at some point, no matter how much we love her.

8. On a related note, my Korean child was not “rescued” from an impoverished rice paddy next to the village brothel. South Korea is a modern, prosperous democracy with a flourishing economy. It’s got problems, just like our country does, but it is not the country you see when you watch reruns of M*A*S*H.

9. I can’t tell you how much my child cost because she is not a melon; I did not pick her up at the store. She cost me nothing. I did, however, spend quite a bit on adoption fees to support the process and travel costs, just as I spent quite a bit on medical care, etc., in conjunction with the conception and birth of my biological son. If you truly want to learn more about the financial aspect of either process, I will be happy to discuss that with you. If you’re only interested in knowing in order to pass judgment, it’s none of your business.

If all of this is too much to remember, then I’ll sum it up in two sentences (with apologies to a long-defunct children’s television show): Kids are people, too. They have ears, they’re listening and they will think about what you’re saying long after you’ve moved on to something else.

“What is Mommy saying those words about?” Seven-year-old “Jack” posed this question to his father one night earlier this week.

As a rule, I keep my language more or less wholesome around the kids. Despite the fact that I used to curse with abandon prior to becoming a parent, I cleaned up my act even before my son was born—at least when the kids are around. However, once they are in bed, I often revert to my former, foul-mouthed self, particularly when such expression can be justified by the course of events around me.

Lately, I’d say events have warranted colorful language. For example, as I write this, there’s a toilet in my living room. (Too bad I’m not on Twitter yet; that would make a great tweet. Stay tuned: the Twitter feed is coming soon.)

The toilet is emblematic of how things have been going around here lately. Stuff has been breaking and requiring repair and replacement at a rate I can barely keep up with. The trend began with a car in January, burst through the rotted front door assembly in the spring and has been sweeping through the house, ripping up everything from bathroom floors to computers to coffeemakers. It’s been messy, expensive and time-consuming, and now there’s a toilet in my living room.

So is it any wonder that when my husband went upstairs a few nights ago, Jack called out to him and asked, “What is Mommy saying those words about?”

Most of us do our best to be good parents and role models in as many different ways as we can. But sometimes, life outpaces us. Sometimes we fall short. And if Jack is learning a few words he shouldn’t, well, I’ll just have to deal with the consequences. I know I should do better, but hey: I’m only human. And there’s a toilet in my living room.

As I write this post, I’m wearing a long-sleeved shirt covered by a zipped-up fleece jacket. I am thinking longingly of a warm cup of tea, or maybe hot chocolate. The heat has kicked on in my house, and everything is wet, wet, wet.

There’s really no sign of summer. The weather is lousy, even by northern New England standards. The kids, as everyone for hundreds of miles around is well aware, are collectively bouncing off ceilings and throwing temper-tantrums fueled by boredom and confinement. The local weathermen have all taken one of two approaches to the monsoon: either they slink to work to announce more rain for the foreseeable future, then slink home again, or they don bright faces, predict that the sun will emerge “soon,” and retire each night to undisclosed locations in the manner of a certain former vice-president we all know and keep hearing from.

This week’s April weather in July is a continuation of what we encountered on our vacation in the White Mountains over the past week. After a few early, teasing glimpses of sun, the skies turned slate-colored and never brightened again. Oh, we got most of our activities in, and the kids had fun, but most of the week took place in a context of constant checks of the weather reports and careful planning around daily storms of varying intensity. (Occasionally this worked in our favor, as when we were all caught in the middle of the afternoon in my son’s favorite, indoor, ball-hurling attraction at Storyland for the duration of a hail-producing thunderstorm that took out the entire park’s power for an hour or so. As a result, we were all issued vouchers to return for another full day in the park. I know I’ve said it before, but the way this park treats its visitors is both uncommon and outstanding, and the kids love it. It’s worth every penny of the admission price year after year.)

Desperate for a respite from the sodden out-of-doors, we found one on a particularly drenching day. What was this sanctuary, this, if you’ll permit me, “oasis”?

Naturally, it was an indoor waterpark.

You’d think that after being soaked every day, the last thing we’d want to do inside was get wet. But the brand-new Kahuna Laguna in North Conway, N.H. turned out to be a sanity-saver. As the rain poured down amidst the thunder and lightning, we put on our bathing suits, tubed down waterslides and cavorted in a wave pool and a hot tub. Seven-year-old “Jack” did not stop moving for four-and-a-half hours. Four kids had more fun on a stormy afternoon than anyone expected (the one-year-old in our group was less impressed) and four adults breathed sighs of relief when the exhausted children finally went to bed without a fight. What more could anyone ask?

Now it’s back to reality. Vacation is over, and there are no more waterparks unless I put the kids in wet suits and let them slide down the remnants of our lawn. (Never impressive, the bulk of what was fighting to be green has mostly disintegrated now into mud.) I’m back to the standard time-fillers of videos, craft projects (at which I am consistently abysmal) and teaching my kids to cook until they become more enamored of throwing ingredients on each other than into a mixing bowl. Oh, and I watch the weather reports. I hear the sun will come out for real a week from Saturday. Here’s hoping we haven’t all washed away by then.