17 Terrific Parenting Hacks
This past month on Clubhouse I have been moderating the topic “Parenting Hacks for Working Parents.” I’ve loved hearing some of the ideas parents have come up with and thought I would share them with you. (Are you on Clubhouse yet? Let me know, and follow me, too!)
Hacks for Babies and Little Kids
•Layer your baby’s mattress with mattress protector/sheet/mattress protector/sheet/mattress protector/sheet. That way when Baby throws up or has a blow out diaper in the night, you don’t have to remake the bed: Just remove the top sheet and mattress protector and underneath is a new mattress protector/sheet combo ready to go.
•Use a fitted sheet over Baby’s pack and play to keep out the bugs, and on the beach anchor a fitted sheet with something heavy in each corner to create a sand-free, portable play area.
•Bring your kids’ pajamas into the bathroom with you, so there is no streaking around nude after the bath. (Bolt the door up high if you have an escape artist.) Better yet, put kids directly into their Next Day Clothes to save getting-dressed battles in the morning. (If you need pajamas to signal bed time, at least leave your Next Day Clothes in the bathroom overnight so that when kids pull down their pajamas and pull ups to go potty, they can immediately pull on their underwear and new clothes for the day.
•Put a sticker inside every right-foot shoe and put a temporary tattoo on your child’s right foot to train her to which shoe to put on which foot.
•Give your toddler the chore of refreshing the air with a water bottle set on the finest mist. Tell them they have to keep moving they spray (That keeps any one thing from getting wet). Add an essential oil, and they really will be refreshing the room. (You can also add Monster Away to the bottle to do double duty.)
Hacks for Elementary School Kids
•Set your kids up for success. Have a command station as they come in the door with bins and hooks at heights they can reach themselves so that right away they put their shoes away and hang up their coats. Otherwise things get littered between the front door and their bedrooms, and either you end up picking stuff up yourself or yelling at them to do it. Have them put or hang their backpacks by the front door after homework, so they are ready to go in the morning.
•Establish a Twilight Time routine before dinner. You might also call it a Quieting Down Time (Probably better not to call it The Bewitching Hour, which is what I always think of it as!). Establish this as time for a calm activity—quietly reading or even sitting and chatting about the day. This will help kids feel reconnected after a busy day out in the world. It will give you a moment to pause before you have to spring into making dinner.
•Consider having your kids do bath and pajamas before dinner. Just be sure you have a good bib (an oversized t-shirt works well) to keep their pajamas clean. This helps them calm down and “wash the day away” so that they can be more present at dinner.
•Teach your kids to dust by hiding a number of coins in places that they wouldn’t think to dust like behind things on the shelf, resting on a the blinds or in the detail of the leg of a table. As they get better at dusting put a number of undisclosed quarters for them to find—and keep.
•As kids transition from wanting to be read to wanting to read themselves, keep the tradition of reading together and snuggling before bed by bringing your own book into their bed and reading along side them. If you read the books they are finished reading, you can then discuss the books with them the next day. Books my daughter was reading generated a lot of discussions about relationships, about right and wrong, about the consequences of making poor choices, etc.
Hacks for Older Kids
•Certainly by middle school, kids can be responsible for their own laundry. If necessary, assign days they can count on the washing machine being free for them. Have them set an alarm for when the washer is going to be done, so they remember to go back and put their clothes in the dryer, and another alarm for when it is time to bring the dry clothes to their rooms. (If remembering to empty the dryer is a problem, start by leaving their dry laundry on top of the dryer, then on the floor, and if it is a problem after that, start holding their most desired clothing hostage until the rest of the laundry is put away.)
•Brainstorm menus for the month and make your best guesses as to when activities might mean a picnic by the baseball field rather than the whole family home in time for a cheese soufflé. Have a spreadsheet with ingredients needed for each recipe. Each time the same ingredient comes up in a subsequent recipe, update the amount in the spread sheet. For example, 2 cans of kidney beans get added to the spreadsheet for the chili. That gets updated to 3 cans when you go through your Three Bean Salad recipe. For perishable foods list the food multiple times and label by weeks (ie, Carrots Week I, Carrots Week II, etc,). Do a big shop for staples at the beginning of the month and smaller shops for perishables week by week.
•Sort the shopping list by aisle/section in the store. Print the list out (or share the doc on your kids’ phones) and give each kid a section of the list to be responsible for. Stick to the rule of “If it’s not on the list, we don’t buy it.”
•Have a Food Prep Party on a consistent time/day of the week after food comes into the house. Have kids chop things like onions and garlic to be ready to go for cooking. Kids can make salad for the week (you might want to only cut tomatoes for a few days) that is kept in Tupperware in the fridge. Only dress what you need for one day—or better yet, let each individual dress salad on their own plate. The uneaten salad can go back into the Tupperware for the next day.
•Have a Lunch Prep Party on a consistent day/time of the week. Items like crackers or nuts can be packed into individual bags and containers to throw into a lunch box. That way you can buy in bulk but still have the convenience of “individually packaged.” This also works for snacks for practices or rehearsals.
•ORDER FOOD ONLINE. (This has the advantage of prompting you based on your previous order.)
•Create a list of paid chores. Publish the list and the pay for doing the chores. List as many different kinds of chores as you can think of. The more you have, the more the effective this will be. Require your kids to earn a certain amount each week, but give them complete freedom in choosing which chores they want to do. First come first serve, so the car can only be washed once a week. If someone else washed it, you have to choose from what’s left on the list. The kid putting things off too much, might find they are doing dog poop pick up every week. (On the other hand, surely you pay more for dog poop pick up than you do for some less noxious job.) Set a time by which the weekly chores have to be done (I suggest Saturday night). A child who has not earned their full allowance by then can spend time on Sunday doing extra chores with you.
Parenting hacks are the systems and routines that make day-to-day life easier. That frees up time for enjoying each other as a family!
What are some of your favorite parenting hacks? Respond to this email and let me know.
Happy Parenting!
Elisabeth