Parenting tips and tricks

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
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Congratulations **TastesLikeBurning **(is that a Ralph Wiggum quote?). Don’t worry, you’ll get to sleep again in a couple years!

Speaking of - swaddling blankets. Buy them, use them, love them.

And for later: I cadged a great trick from Elizabeth Pantley. When our daughter was 3-ish and waking up several times a night, we finally gave her a ticket - one side had a picture of a kid in bed calling for Mom, the other side said “PRIZE!” with stars and stuff on it. It was up to her - she could “cash in” her ticket for a visit from us during the night, or she could hold on to it and get a (Dollar Tree) toy in the morning. After a week or so, the morning prize changed to a star on a chart that worked toward a toy. Worked AWESOME. The combination of bribery and putting the power in the child’s hands was like magic.

I adore all the tips you all have shared! Keep 'em coming!

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Related: If a small child latches onto something, buy three. Rotate them so they are all equal wear. This will keep the lost or shredded blankie from becoming a major issue.

On the same note, the crap reproduces. No one knows how you go from having no toys in the house to looking like the McDonalds Happy Meal Toy factory exploded in your family room - even if you never go to McDonalds, they seem to show up. Or Legos. Or Barbies. Or six zillion books. Or stuffed animals. I don’t tend to buy my kids toys, and yet I have to wade through them (I blame the Grandmas)… if the untreasured ones hit the trash when your kids aren’t looking, they will likely never miss them.

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Oh, that’s a good one!

On a related note–I told my son that upon the birth of a child, the parents are provided with the email addresses and telephone numbers of Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, etc. I can’t tell you how often this has come in handy. “I forgot to put XYZ on my Christmas list!” “No problem. I’ll just send him an email.” “Okay, thanks.”

Get an ice pack that you can keep in the freezer. Teach them to brush it off if they bump themselves or whatever, but if they can’t and it’s a minor thing, giving them an ice pack will make them feel that something is being done to make them feel better and will calm them right down. (An ice pack is also handy for real injuries that should be iced, of course.)

Rotate toys. This works well when they’re too young to remember what all they’re supposed to have. Hide away some of their toys for a month or so, then bring them out and hide away others. This will keep them from getting bored, and also give everybody less stuff to keep neat!

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First, the obligatory - there is a podcast put out by Parenting Magazine with tips for parents. It’s pretty good.

Now then, when you have a young child and they are fussy and you are out to eat, here’s a trick to keep them busy: Put an ice cube in front of them. They will be fascinated, they will try to eat it (don’t let them), and you can get some peace during your meal.

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Corollary: Keep them even when they don’t remember.

When driving, my wife tends to promise the juice box “when we are almost there,” but then if it is forgotten, she doesn’t give it. This shortly resulted in whining and crying for the first 30 minutes of any car ride (we drive a lot). Now that I insisted that she get the juice even if she forgot, my daughter trusts that she’ll get it and stops asking until she thinks we are reasonably close.

Fantastic idea on the tickets & stars.

These are the three keys, IMO:
[ul]
[li]Follow through on all threats and promises, but avoid threats.[/li][li]Give kids decision-making power. Lots of techniques for this.[/li][li]Consistent, frequent and specific positive reenforcement of good behavior[/li][/ul]

Other important tidbits, tricks, & tips…

Always have time for playing & reading. Drop what you are doing and participate.

Get cups that don’t leak and are easy to clean. I like these (price seems wrong & it’s not an endorsement of the amazon reseller). I had to literally cut the crappy ones in half so that my wife would stop using them. Tossing them in the trash without cutting them only resulted in a fight and me having to wash the crappy cups. Having 4 new good cups handy and slicing up the bad ones silenced the argument. Note: this is a good tip for your kids, but not one for a marriage.

Let your child help. Let them stir the batter. Let them push the vacuum. Let them add the detergent. Let them turn the screwdriver. Let them open the batteries. I tend to do a significant amount of home repair & renovation. I guess I’m just a DIY at heart (or maybe a little lower, near my back pocket). But when my wife has her hands full and my kid comes over to ask if she can help, I find a safe & meaningful way for her to help… even if it means the shed doesn’t get built today.

Get bedtime under control.

If your kid is a heavy (juice & milk) drinker, prep a cup and put it in the fridge on a shelf she can reach. When they wake you up at 6am and say “I’m thirsty,” you can direct them downstairs while you get showered.

Just change the diaper. You’ve already got it open. Don’t fret if it is or isn’t a little bit wet. Just change it. At most, it’s 25-cents.

Get a warehouse club membership. Get your essentials there. Milk & apple juice are significantly cheaper there than at the grocer.

Incorporate a clean-up phase into the bedtime routine.

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Whosoever doth hate Barney the Purple Dinosaur, verily I say unto thee, that that person hath not seen the Barney’s Clean-Up Song work its eerie effect on yea these tiniest of people.

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I used to say this a lot:

“Ask me again in a way that makes me WANT to do it.”

Now, I rarely have to say it at all. :smiley:

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Toy buckets for toddlers!

Home Depot/Lowe’s sells these groovy little cube-shaped cloth-sided boxes. I bought enough to contain all the kids toys, divided up into groups of stuff that “play well together”.

Example:
Box 1 - Legos
Box 2 - Crayons/Coloring books
Box 3 - Train Set
Box 4 - Toy cars/racetrack
Box 5 - Stuffed animals
Box 6 - Dolls / tea set
Box 7 - Toy computer/calculator/cell phone
Box 8 - Animals/Barnyard set
Box 9 - Puzzles

Daily routine - after breakfast, the kid that finishes putting away his breakfast things and getting dressed [dropping off PJs in the washer] gets to select which Box comes out to play with first. The Boxes are contained [behind the baby gate] in a pantry, to avoid 9 boxes dumped at once.

When they are bored, they pack up the Box and swap it for something else. Since the boxes hold [at most] 1 cubic foot of toys, it’s never too much to handle.

We’ve been doing this box toy system for a year or so now and I gotta say, it’s made my life so much easier. And the kids get to play with what they want when they want. [While teaching them to pick up after themselves!]

My kids are 4 months, 2, and 3. The toddlers are horribly picky eaters. I get so frustrated with them. Last night I made FIVE things for dinner [meatloaf, mashed potatoes, peas, oranges, and mac&cheese] Both of them have eaten most of these items at one time or another. Last night? Nada. Both of them went to bed with no dinner rather than deign to eat one offensive morsel. I gave no reaction, just cleared their plates after 20 minutes and sent them on their way.

Intellectually I know a toddler won’t starve if he’s offered food three times a day. But it’s SO IRRITATING!

29

Cool names and fun presentation can help in getting kids to eat something. Not too surprising- restaurants know that these factors influence what adults will eat.

Kids are more likely to eat something if they’ve helped cook it. And cooking is an important skill that they will need when they are grown up.

This works well for older kids, too. I have fond memories of getting a small present every few hours on long car trips.

30

For diaper rash in extremely sensitive skin: Use the Target brand zinc oxide (says “Compare to Desitin Original” on the box.) Desitin original is something like 40% zinc oxide, most others are 11% at most. The Target brand is also 40%, but unscented, while the Desitin is strongly scented.

To prevent diaper rash in between attacks: Proshield Plus it is what they use on the neo–nate ward. Much easier to wipe off than zinc oxide, does a great job of protecting the skin, and doesn’t contain petrolatum.

If you never hit your kids, you’ll never have to. If you never raise your voice, you’ll never have to. If you treat your children respectfully, they will return the favor.

Pay attention to the expression on your face. If you are grimacing and grunting at the poo, an infant doesn’t know it’s not them you are grimacing at.

These ooks are wonderful: Touch the Art Series , The Grapes of Math , The Brave Little Monster , How does a Dinosaur . . . series

Pray for calm. You can get through anything if you can just remain calm. (This advice came to me from a friend who was an Auschwitz survivor, and has served me well in a wide variety of situations, but especially parenthood.)

31

When my wife was pregnant, I used to tell her all the time that what I looked forward to the most was lying to the child all the time.

It is SO much fun. Not being malicious, of course, just throwing out the wackiest thing you can to see if you can get the kid to believe it. A few months back, the little Torqueling started to notice motorcycles. Loved 'em. “Oooo, motorcycle!” “Yep.” The motorcycle drives away. “Where motorcycle go?” “Um. To the motorcycle park. To play with the other motorcycles.” “Oh…” She still believes in the motorcycle park. She’s asked to go there, but “we can’t, because we don’t have a motorcycle.”

I know I’m not alone in this. A few weeks ago, I saw a family with some little kids in Wal-Mart. The kids were eyeing a display of popsicles. “Daddy, what are those?” The dad replied, “Pickle packs.” There must be some pickle dislike in that house, and Dad is playing on that to keep from buying popsicles. hehe.

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Yes, lying to the children is so fun. We told our son there was Naked Police who would make him get dressed when naked time was over.
Here is a very important safety trick:

Teach toddlers to stop whatever they are doing when you yell “STOP”. This has saved my kids in parking lots or going towards other danger a few times even when they were older. Don’t make it a game or they might decide it’s fun to not stop when it’s most important.

I did this because it always haunted me the way the toddler ran into the road and got killed in Pet Cemetery.

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For kids old enough to fight on long car rides.
After the usual warning of “Keep hands and feet and other objects to yourself” gets ignored, it’s time for kids to sit on their hands and bite their bottom lip.

If that doesn’t work, the have to put their hands on the ceiling of the car. About five or ten minutes of that usually takes care of any problems.

Hey if that doesn’t work my mom kept a belt in the glovebox! She grab it and randomly swing in the back seat vicinity. Ahh good times.

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I love this! I think I’ll try it on my wife and 19 year old daughter.

35

I have a similar one: if my daughter asks for something and I say no, that really does mean NO. If she asks again straight away or very soon, then that means she’s not going to get that something for a week (or a day or a month, depending on what the thing is). In other words, she’s allowed to have sweets sometimes, but if she tries ‘pester power’ to get them, she’s not going to get any at all for a long time. It works on her friends too.

Mum, can I go on the computer please?

I’m afraid not - it’s too close to bedtime.

Awww, pleeease!

OK, that means you’re not going to go on the computer at all tomorrow either. You know the rules.
Of course, you have to follow through and remember not to let them have that item for the set amount of time. :smiley: Following through on your decisions is really very important. I hate it when I see parents threatening consequences that they can never follow through, including many which aren’t even physically possible.

‘You know the rules’ can, of course, only be said when you’re certain the kid does know the rules. This is not always as obvious as you might expect - what an adult understands is not necessarily the same as what a child understands.

We have our house rules written up on a big piece of paper on the wall. My daughter was the one to write them down after we discussed them together, and they include some rules for the adults too (like not being too noisy after her bedtime, and reading her a story when she was younger). Before she could write, the rules were in picture form. They get updated every so often.

It makes life so much simpler, and makes life simpler for babysitters too.

When she was tiny, I also had her write up a ‘morning routine’ (get out of bed, take off clothes, put clothes in washing basket, etc*) because otherwise she’d end up sitting on the floor daydreaming, having forgotten what to do. That’s not necessary for every child - my daughter’s mildly autistic - but man, it reformed our mornings.
*Actually the list was broken down into teeny tiny steps, like ‘take socks off. Take knickers off,’ and so on, but that’s because of the way my daughter’s mind works. I doubt most kids need that level of detail. Still, if general instructions aren’t working, then more detailed ones might be a good idea.

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I said this tonight to my 5 year old. It felt awesome, and worked well, to boot.

We use creative lying for entertainment and skepticism training. When she expressed doubt that the little wounds on Daddy were mosquito bites, we theorized they were microtiger bites. We routinely warn her to watch out for microtigers now. And she yells happily, “There’s no such things as microtigers!”

Oh yeah, the response to “I’m bored,” is always to assign a chore. Took about three times before she stopped saying it. Blessed, blessed peace. Now to work on the whining . . .

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Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.

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At our house the TV was never on in the morning before school. And nobody got breakfast until they were dressed. They needed some incentive to get going.

Two specific choices are enough for any small child. “The red shirt or the blue?” is much better than, “What shirt do you want to wear?”

Don’t ask a child if he wants to do something he has no choice about. “Do you want to take a bath?” tells him he has a choice. “Bathtime” lets him know he doesn’t.

Most kids need some lead time for a change of activity. Let them know about five minutes beforehand.

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I do all that too, at work (teaching) and at home. It’s so much easier to get them to stop playing a game or get out of bed or whatever if you give them a time-dependant warning. TBH, I find it helpful myself too. :smiley:

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Thanks UC. Yes, it is a Ralph Wiggum quote.

BTW, I love your suggestion.