Laura Magruder What happened to the lazy days of summer?

Summer evokes images of long afternoons, lounging in a hammock or splashing at the pool. The reality is often less idyllic, especially for working parents — even for those who, like me, work from home.

With school out of session, children’s schedules are theoretically free — but mine are preteens, not quite old enough to spend all day unsupervised. If a friend is available to play, they’ll usually keep themselves occupied for a few of hours. But there’s no guarantee they won’t get in some sort of scrape while I’m doing a telephone interview (“No, I don’t hear a child screaming…do you?”)

That means arranging for child care — or in my case, a series of day camps — so I can work without having my attention constantly diverted. The trick is to pay for enough activities so that I can keep working, but not so much that I’m spending all of my earnings on camps. I want them to keep busy, but not to feel burdened.

This takes some maneuvering since, now that they’re older, my children have developed different interests. One child is an equestrian, so she spent a week at riding camp, as well as a soccer camp. Her sister is a basketball fanatic, so she’ll be working out at a hoops clinic, and is also going to her first weeklong overnight summer camp. There will probably be some swimming lessons, too, since they didn’t spend much time in the water over the winter and need to brush up on their strokes. Most other days, they go to a drop-in camp offered at their school — or stay home, with a promise to stay out of my hair when I’m on the phone.

So far it’s working out, for the most part. I can focus on my work, in between ferrying them to their various activities (car-pooling helps). They get to have fun and improve a skill during the week, and loll about, unscheduled, in the late afternoons and on the weekends. And I manage to get my work done — although not always during normal working hours.

The cost of some camps qualify for a tax credit (specifically, the Child and Dependent Care Credit), if your children are under 13 years of age and the camps allow you to work. (Sleep away camp doesn’t qualify; ditto for the swimming lessons). The credit can be up to 35 percent of your expenses, depending on your income. (The maximum credit is $3,000 if you have one child, and $6,000 if you have two or more).

Still, when I add up the hundreds of dollars paid for these activities each month, I sometimes wonder what my own parents would say about this annual summer scramble.

I recall summers in which we were pretty much left to our own devices, aside from the occasional arts-and-crafts class for me, and perhaps a Little League baseball game for my brothers. My mother worked part-time in the evenings, so she was home during the day, in case an emergency arose. The neighborhood was full of kids, and we were shooed outside to play, often with orders not to return until dinner time. There were periodic mishaps–once a friend sat on a bee’s nest in the woods, and suffered multiple stings–but somehow we all survived to adulthood.

I’m not entirely sure which situation is better for children in the long run. But I suspect the old way was less expensive.

How do you handle the cost and scheduling of summer child care?

A version of this article appeared in print on 06/29/2013, on page B4 of the NewYork edition with the headline: Tax Help for Surviving Summer.

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/25/managing-the-summer-child-care-scramble/?partner=rss&emc=rss