A reader recently sent the following e-mail:

"I was hoping that some of your contributors (on the Parents' Council) could help me out. We have upgraded our carseats and now don't know what to do with the old ones. Is there some place that takes donations of car seats or any way to recycle them? Any input would be greatly appreciated."

When I was on maternity leave the first time and preparing to go back to work after six months, one of the most agonizing decisions I had to make was finding someone to take care of my baby.

I visited plenty of childcare providers in Spokane. I did some background checks. I talked to my friends. I wasn’t really sure what I was doing. At that time, there wasn’t really a checklist or a book that I could use to make sure I was on the right track. Truthfully, I made my decision based on instinct and on what I could afford.

This month, the Washington state Department of Early Learning issued a new guide to help parents find the right child care for their families.

"You Have a Choice! A Guide to Finding Quality Child Care" includes:
• Tips for starting the child care search;
• A checklist for parents to use when visiting child care sites; and
• Information about getting help paying for child care.

How did you find the right child care or preschool for your child? If you work outside the home, what was it like for you to go back to work after maternity leave? Any advice to ease that transition?

While working on a story about local mompreneurs, I spoke with Debra Cashman, a Nine Mile Falls mother of two and the owner of a Web site called SpokaneMama.com.

One of her goals, she said, is to help other mompreneurs with the “Support Your Local Mama” campaign on her Web site.

"I've met a lot of creative mamas," said Cashman, 44. "As a mom in business, I have grown to appreciate the other mamas who are trying to do this, too… If I can find something that's made locally by someone else like me – someone who's trying to make her own way in the world – I'm much more willing to buy from them than from the mall."

Manda Warner and Jaclyn Clarry, two moms from Coeur d’Alene who started Monkey on the Moon said they, too, found inspiration from other mompreneurs. In many ways, Margaret Hildahl, owner of Mother’s Haven in Coeur d’Alene, became their mentor, Manda told me.

Do you have a favorite mother-owned business?

Also, please tell us how you’ve been inspired by other mothers to try something – start a business, enter a triathlon or race, pick up a new hobby – that you’ve never done before.

Sleep is “food for the brain,” according to the National Sleep Foundation. Many of us, however, don’t get enough of it.

That's certainly the case at my house. Part of that is our own fault – we haven’t been very consistent this summer with bedtime routines. Another is our sleeping arrangement. We continue to share our bed with our 2-year-old and I’m not convinced that the immediate benefits of co-sleeping with a baby outweigh the drawbacks when they get older. (It’s really hard to teach them how to sleep on their own if they’re used to sleeping with you… At least, that’s been my experience.)I also drink way too much coffee...

Anyway, here’s a list from the National Sleep Foundation on the recommended number of hours children should sleep:

0-2 months = 10 ½ to 18 hours
2-12 months = 14 to 15 hours
1-3 years = 12 to 14 hours
3-5 years = 11 to 13 hours
5 to 12 years = 10 to 11 hours
Teens = 9 ¼ hours

How many hours do you and your children sleep at night? What kind of bedtime rituals do you recommend to make it easier for your child to fall asleep and sleep through the night?

The Spokane County Child Passenger Safety Team will be available to check car seats and children to ensure people are safely transporting their loved ones.
Location: K-Mart, 6606 N. Division, Spokane
Time: Saturday, July 19th, from 10:00am-2:00pm.

“If you and your spouse seem to be speeding through life on parallel tracks that never meet, you're not alone,” writes Sue Shellenbarger, the Work & Family columnist for the Wall Street Journal. “Couples seem to be doing almost everything apart these days -- from dining and hobbies to friendships and having fun.”

In a recent column, Shellenbarger wrote about the findings of a long-term marriage study presented at a conference sponsored by the Coalition for Marriage, Family and Couples Education. The researchers found that the likelihood of couples doing things together -- recreational activities, home projects or even just eating at the same table -- decreased by 28 percent.

Apparently, leading separate lives isn’t a huge problem for some couples. Some married people actually vacation separately and have different hobbies and friends.

What do you think? How important is it for a couple and their children to have common interests and recreational activities?

Here’s a question that Shellenbarger posed for her readers: What are the markers of a true marital bond for you?

While putting together a story about “Free Range Kids” and finding that balance between safety and independence, I was reminded of an interview I had last year with a local pastor. We talked about the growing awareness surrounding child abuse and how churches and other organizations are doing a better job to make sure kids are safe.

At the same time, we also discussed the “chilling effect” created by these changes. It’s no longer acceptable for adults to initiate contact with kids, he told me. Children, from an early age, are taught to be wary of people they don't know. Sometimes, this affects our own willingness to help others and be compassionate.

The pastor recalled being in his car on a winter day and seeing a boy shivering in the cold while walking down the street. He thought about pulling over and offering the boy a ride home. "But I drove on by," he said.

I couldn’t blame him. The child probably would have never accepted a ride from a stranger. His parents probably told him to never to do such a thing.

This is our reality now, but I guess I can’t help but feel a little sad about the inevitable erosion of trust. "It's an unraveling of the community contract," the pastor told me. And that contract, he says, once held all of us responsible for the safety of children and other vulnerable people in our community.

There's great excitement in our house as our oldest prepares to move out. Most of that excitement is being generated by our 13-year-old and our 8-year-old who currently share a room.
Finally, they will each get their own room. I'm curious. How many of you shared a room with a sibling? Was it cruel and unusual punishment? Did you learn lessons that you used later in life?
And do you have children who share a room?

There's been plenty of discussion about the Coeur d’Alene mom who got a ticket for injury to a child during last week’s Fourth of July parade.

Witnesses said Melissa Farrell was "smacking" her daughter, according to Thursday's story in The Spokesman-Review, but the mother of three said she “simply swatted her 22-month-old daughter, Laila, on her bottom after struggling to keep the child from running out” into the street during the parade.

My focus in this blog entry isn’t on the mom or whether or not she was abusive; I just want to start a conversation about spanking – on whether or not it’s an appropriate form of discipline.

Nancy Shute of U.S. News and World Report recently wrote about this topic. In “A Good Parent’s Dilemma: Is Spanking Bad?” she noted that many parents think it’s OK to occasionally swat your child on the bottom.

But corporal punishment is actually considered illegal in many countries -- including Sweden, Spain and Germany.

What do you think?

Barry Long, a wedding planner for more than three decades, was recently interviewed by the BBC for a story, “Should children be banned from weddings?” He said children are no longer allowed at many weddings.

"It's definitely become more prevalent. We do more than 200 weddings a year and the last seven were all saying 'no children,'” he told the BBC. “I think it's because children are more disruptive than they used to be and brides are worried they will ruin their day."

I recently brought my toddler to a wedding and now I wonder if I should have. (I did take her out of the sanctuary when the couple exchanged vows – just in case she had the urge to yell or something like that. She didn't, however. And there were other kids at the church.)

What’s the policy at the weddings you’ve attended lately? Kids? No kids? Only kids of a certain age? Did you allow children at your own wedding?

While working on a story about doulas, I looked up some statistics on Cesarean delivery rates. (According to doulas and their advocates, having a trained doula at birth can decrease the chances of having a C-section.)

Nationwide, the Cesarean delivery rate rose to more than 30 percent of all births in 2005, according to the Centers for Disease Control's 2007 National Vital Statistics Report. That percentage set a new U.S. record and reflected a 4 percent increase from the 2004 figure. According to the CDC, the C-section rate fell sharply between 1989 and 1996 but has since risen by 46 percent. The 2007 report also noted that the rate of labor induction rose 5 percent in 2005 to 22.3 percent – a level that has more than doubled since 1990.

The increase in C-sections, however, is due to several factors.

Lori Schneider, director of women's and children's services at Kootenai Medical Center, passed along an article on this subject that was published last year in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“Critics decry the cesarean numbers and argue that obstetricians have been too quick to abandon possible vaginal deliveries for reasons related to profit or their own convenience,” wrote the authors, both obstetricians at Massachussetts General Hospital in Boston and professors of obstetrics, gynecology and reproductive biology at Harvard Medical School. “A more dispassionate analysis, however, reveals that the trend is widespread, crossing state and national boundaries, and suggests that multiple, convergent factors are responsible, including changes in patients and their pregnancies, in options and recommendations for delivery, and in patients' and providers' expectations and evaluation of risk.”

The article points out several changes in the last few years that have been associated with an increased risk of cesarean delivery:
• Mothers, generally, weigh more now than they did in previous decades;
• They’re also older (since 1990, births to women 35 to 39 years of age and 40 to 44 years of age have increased by 43 percent and 62 percent, respectively);
• The number of premature and low birth-weight babies also has increased, “in part as a function of the increasing number of multiple gestations, many of which have resulted, in turn, from the use of assisted reproductive technology” wrote the authors.

The focus of my story was the work of doulas, so I didn’t really get a chance to explore how this issue played out in our region.
Local journalist Rocky Wilson, however, wrote about this in detail in a 2006 Journal of Business story: “C-section deliveries on rise: Reasons include perceived lower risk to baby, desire to set own date, avoid pain.”

I realize that birth has become a rather politicized and touchy subject for some women. But I think it’s always worth talking about – especially as we learn from each other’s experiences. And regardless of how we give birth – whether at home or in the hospital, with a doctor or midwife, with drugs or without – having the support of other women including doulas can make a big difference.

I’ve always enjoyed going on camping trips with other families. Having other kids around makes it easier to entertain my own children. It's also nice to be in the company of other adults.

But maybe we’ve just been lucky. I recently read about some of the problems that families endure when they go on vacation with other families.

“Go away with good friends (and their children) at your peril; there’s so much that could go wrong,” warns the author of “How to survive a holiday with friends and their children.”

“’Never again’ is the clarion call of some who have experienced another family at close quarters. For within the four walls of a holiday house there's nowhere to hide. Those cheeky but endearing children become proverbial pains in the neck. Your friend goes from soulmate to kitchen tyrant. Laid-back dad becomes lazy slob. Or try as you might, you can't disguise your own children's brattish behaviour/faddish eating/slothfulness as a temporary blip when it lasts the whole week.”

Have you ever gone on a trip with another family? Any tips on how to make it work?

In a special feature this week titled “Global Literacy 2008: The Stories We Tell Ourselves,” the editors at Newsweek pose the following question: True or False: Having Kids Make You Happy

The answer might come as a surprise.

Does this reflect your reality?

While working on a story about families and Vacation Bible School, it occurred to me that non-Christians in the region – particularly atheists and agnostics -- just don’t have as many resources available when it comes to raising kids.

In addition to VBS, Christian families in the Inland Northwest have many summer camps to choose from – Camp Lutherhaven, Camp Spalding and Camp Gifford, just to name a few.

But what about the freethinkers among us? Where can they send their kids to camp?

Camp Quest, the country’s first residential summer camp for children of atheists, humanists and freethinkers, has programs in Ohio, Kentucky, Minnesota, California, Michigan and Ontario, Canada. But as far as I know, there’s nothing available here in our region.

Since I was focusing on Vacation Bible Schools, I didn’t spend as much time looking up programs for atheist children, but here are some resources I found online for secular parenting:

* A blog "for freethinking parents to share the joys and frustrations of raising a child without religion."

* Agnostic mom

* Humanist parenting from the Institute for Humanist Studies

* The Humanist Focus Group of the Inland Northwest

I don't know if this is helpful to anyone, but I thought I'd just put it out there.

To piggyback on Cindy’s last post about the recent study on how husbands make more work for their wives, here’s a New York Times article that discusses how some parents try to divide the responsibilities 50-50.

In “When Mom and Dad Share It All,” reporter Lisa Belkin writes how some couples aspire to be “parenting partners" by working equal hours, spending equal time with their children and taking equal responsibility for their home.

It’s a pretty lengthy article (I started reading it two weeks ago and finally found the time to finish it this week), but it uses some recent figures from the University of Wisconsin’s National Survey of Families and Households. (Housework, by the way, is defined as things like cooking, cleaning, yardwork and home repairs.)

Here’s how the article summarizes that study:
- The average wife does 31 hours of housework a week while the average husband does 13 (the ratio is slightly more than two to one).
- In households where the wives stay home and husbands are the sole earners, women do 38 hours of housework while men do 12 (a ratio of more than three to one).
- But when husband and wife both have full-time paying jobs, the wife does 28 hours of housework and the husband does 16 (a ratio of slightly less than two to one).
- When the housework ratio is two to one, the wife-to-husband ratio for child care is close to five to one.
- In a family where the mom stays home and dad goes to work, she spends 15 hours caring for kids while he spends 2.
- When both work outside the home, mom’s average goes down to 11 while dad’s goes up to 3.

You get the idea.

One interesting point came at the end. According to several researchers, gay couples find the most balance.

“Heterosexual couples can learn from gay couples about sharing housework and child care,” says Esther D. Rothblum, a professor in the women’s studies department of San Diego State University who completed a comparative study of the relationships of 342 couples — lesbian, gay and heterosexual. “They are good role models.”

What’s the division of labor like at your house? Which chores do you prefer to do? Which tasks do you leave to your partner or the kids?

This just in from the University of Michigan:
"Having a husband creates an extra seven hours a week of housework for women...
A wife saves men from about an hour of housework a week."

Don't think this is true at our house. How about yours?

In this story first published earlier this year in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel, families talk about the effects of skyrocketing food and gas prices on their budgets.

“Living in troubled times is giving teens a hard-knocks lesson in economics. Some kids in middle-income and working-class families are opting out of senior prom, class trips and travel tournaments,” wrote reporter Kathleen Kernicky. “Their parents, battered by rising food and gas prices, home foreclosures or job losses, don't have the disposable dollars this year.”

According to the story, some families have no choice but to limit the number of activities for their children. Even teens who have summer jobs also struggle because their minimum-wage pay barely covers gas money.

How is the economy affecting your family and other families in the region?

Where do you go for the advice you want?

Some people turn to their mothers or other family members. Others seek the counsel of friends. Still, others might pay money and get the feedback of a parent coach.

When you need support as a mom or dad or a recommendation on how to deal with a particular issue, whom do you turn to? Can you recommend a good website or blog? How about your favorite magazine or book? Who do you consider the parenting experts?

I’ve been wondering today…why is it that people seem to wait for an occasion to fix up their home? They are selling their house, so they fix the stuff that is broken. Or they are having company, so the yard is spruced up. Is their no pride in keeping their home company-ready? If it needs to be fixed, why wait for guests? Isn’t your family worth it?

When New York Sun writer Lenore Skenazy wrote a column about how she lets her 9-year-old son take the subway alone, she received a barrage of criticism. The Huffington Post not only labeled her “America’s Worst Mom,” people also wanted to turn her in for child abuse.

“Somehow, a whole lot of parents are just convinced that nothing outside the home is safe,” Skenazy wrote on her blog, titled Free-Range Kids. “At the same time, they’re also convinced that their children are helpless to fend for themselves. While most of these parents walked to school as kids, or hiked the woods — or even took public transportation — they can’t imagine their own offspring doing the same thing. …

“They have lost confidence in everything: Their neighborhood. Their kids. And their own ability to teach their children how to get by in the world. As a result, they batten down the hatches.”

What do you think? Are cities and towns less safe and kids more vulnerable to crimes like child abduction and sexual abuse than in previous generations? Or are some parents just overprotective?

How do you strike a balance between making sure your kids are safe and giving them the freedom to explore and become independent?

I’ve been letting my 4-year-old play with my laptop. Sometimes he just types his name and other random letters. Other times, we might do an activity on pbskids.org. I was a little hesitant at first to let him play on the computer. But I soon relented. After all, I'm the one who's constantly checking e-mail, surfing the web and chatting away on the cell phone.

In this New York Times article, “So Young, and So Gadgeted,” Warren Buckleitner interviewed several parents whose children have been on the Web even before they started walking. “My 6-year-old has an iPod and wants a cellphone, although my husband and I aren’t sure who he’d call,” said one mom.

Other parents, however, weren’t as keen about having all this technology around their children. “I’m not a huge fan of flooding my children’s lives with the latest gadget,” said another mother. “My children go online for schoolwork, but our computer is in my sight, and protected to the teeth.”

What kinds of gadgets do your kids use? How can parents use the latest technology to support child development?

As we try to simplify at home by getting rid of junk and trying to tame the “galloping, greedy gimmies,” it’s become apparent to me how easy it is to accumulate stuff and how hard it is to part with material possessions.

A recent feature in Time Magazine showed the efforts of other families across the country. In “How to Live With Just 100 Things,” writer Lisa McLaughlin explores this grass-roots movement involving people who are pledging to get rid of everything except 100 items.

"It's a very emotional process," Julie Morgenstern, author of “When Organizing Isn't Enough: SHED Your Stuff, Change Your Life,” says in the article. "Often these are things that represent who you once were. But once their purpose is over, they just keep you stagnant." (SHED is an acronym for "separate the treasures, heave the trash, embrace your identity from within and drive yourself forward.")

This could never happen at my house, although I’ll be the first to admit that I spend way too much time moving clutter from one room to another.

Any time-saving tips to simplify life, keep the house clean and take care of kids all at the same time? And, if you were to subscribe to the "100 Things" movement, which items would top your list?

Is this really possible? Teri Crane, a consultant known as the “Potty Pro” and the author of “Potty Train Your Child in Just One Day” believes it can be done.

Has anyone ever tried this? My daughter, who will turn 2 this July, has been asking to sit on the potty. Sometimes it’s works. Sometimes it doesn’t. I don’t want to push it. It took her brother a long time to figure it out – and he was already three.

Should I wait until she’s a little older or should I buy the book and try the one-day boot camp?

We all have them in our lives. People who seem to have endless amounts of parenting advice even though they've never been parents. At first it's kind of funny. You just roll your eyes when they offer instruction about picky eaters or toilet training, but after awhile your tongue gets sore from being bitten and your patience gets frayed. Especially when your kids are older and the issues are more serious than temper tantrums in grocery stores.
So, how do you deal with unsolicited advice--- especially from those with no experience to back up their theories?

When my oldest child was nine months old, we got on a plane and traveled to Mexico. Despite the fact that my husband and I both served in the Peace Corps and consider ourselves fairly seasoned travelers, that vacation with our baby was the roughest trip of our life. Here’s an excerpt from a 2004 story I wrote after coming home:

GUADALAJARA, Mexico - The baby has puked again - on my left shoulder, down my back and all over the white sheets of the hotel bed. It's 3 a.m. and he has a slight fever. He's teething. He's wailing. And we are a long, long way from home.

Here’s the rest of the story.

It should have been obvious, but having a child made us less portable. We learned that the hard way. Still, we've persisted in the last few years. We took our son to Guatemala and Honduras when he was 2. And last year, we traveled with both our kids, ages 3 and 1 at the time, to Nicaragua.

Some people say that taking kids on an overseas trip isn’t worth the trouble. In an Associated Press story published last year, one mom who took her children to Venice when they were 2 and 4 said she wished she had waited until they were a little older. “It was expensive, they were cranky and we said next time we’d go without them,” said Christine Louise Hohlbaum, an American living in Germany.

Even Maureen Wheeler, co-founder of the Lonely Planet guidebook company, recommends waiting until children are at least 3.

Is international travel with kids a complete waste? Is there such a thing as an age-appropriate vacation for a child?

What would be the ideal vacation for your family?