Mementos

Keywords: mementos, travel

By Stacy DeBroff

• Help your child build his own scrap book picture journal with postcards, photographs, drawings, or even treasures collected on outings, such as a leaf or a shell. Have your child glue the items into a journal and then add entries.

• Give your child a Ziploc bag for mementos, from ticket stubs to unusual acorns or anything else that catches his imagination. If he’s younger, help him make a picture collage to remember his favorite activities.

• Give you child a basic point-and-shoot camera for the trip, or buy disposable cameras.

• Let him photograph anything he likes, or suggest a particular theme for each day.

• When you get home, you can put the photos into an album. Or better yet, have the photographs developed while on vacation and give your child a scrapbook to paste them into during the journey home.

• Have your child mail a postcard to himself that will be waiting when you arrive home.

Stacy, heralded as a “parenting guru” by the Wall Street Journal, authored four best-selling parenting books (Simon & Schuster) and launched Mom Central, Inc. (www.MomCentral.com), a company devoted to providing savvy advice to simplify and enrich the lives of busy Moms and their families. Stacy appears as a regular parenting expert on national TV show, including NBC’s Today Show, CNN, The View, Tyra Banks Show, CBS’ Early Show, The Daily Buzz, Mike And Juliet, Fox & Friends, and the Rachael Ray Show. Stacy also serves as a corporate spokesperson, trendspotting for the media on behalf of over 30 national brands.

In the 1990’s, Stacy founded and ran as an attorney the Public Interest Office at Harvard Law School. Stacy lives with her husband, Ron, and happily engages in imperfect parenting of their two teens, Kyle and Brooks, in Boston, Massachusetts.