Yohini Appa, director of regulatory affairs for Neutrogena Corp., taped herself reading stories for her daughters when they were younger. Now that they are 7 and 10, she helps via long-distance with projects, including her older daughter’s recent winning poetry recitation. She also has her daughters come to the office. “They know my office space, and I talk to them about my work” Appa says. “I think they’re proud of what I do and I think that helps.”
Before Sandra Johnson, single parent and owner of a boutique on Robertson Boulevard in Los Angeles, goes on a business trip, she has her 7-year-old twin daughters come into her shop and select fabrics and ribbons. By the time she returns, each has made “something wonderful,” Johnson says, for their dolls.
Just what clinical psychologist Harriet Braiker would suggest. A traveling mother herself, she advises parents to “focus on the return rather than the separation. That’s not to say you ignore them while you’re gone, but you can start a project with the promise of what we’re going to do when I get back.”
With older children, Braiker notes: “We’re talking compliance issues. Ideally, you don’t want the kid to think there are no rules and anything goes. If the other parent remains, make sure you are in agreement with the way things are handled so the kid doesn’t play one parent against another. And if there is a caretaker, then it’s important these rules are spelled out.”
Some parents play down presents, while others consider them an essential return ritual. Steven Fink, Braiker’s husband, also travels on business and always hides treats in his hand luggage for their 5-year-old daughters to find.
Suzanne Barron, a vice president with Playboy Entertainment Group, says she doesn’t spend “an extreme amount of money” on presents for her 5-year-old daughter. Sometimes the gift is simply a promotional item for a foreign-film festival. But this summer, the child, who already has heard a lot about France, Russia and Japan from her traveling-parent perks. “We’re taking her to France,” Barron says. “I have all these mileage coupons.”