10 Cleaver Tips & Tricks For Parents | Smart Parenting Life

Inside: 10 simple yet effective tips and tricks that you can follow as a mom to make your parenting journey easier.

With every new day into parenting, parents become smarter and cleverer as they learn a lot from their experiences with the little ones. These experiences teach us hacks that make our life with the kid simple and smooth.

Here in this article, I am sharing with you 10 brilliant hacks that can help you sail smoothly in the parenthood ocean. Not only these are practical but are mindful too as it only aims to protect and nurture kids.

10 Clever Tips And Tricks For Parents

Following are the 10 simple hacks that are going to help in difficult parenthood situations.

Parking Pal Magnet

It’s quite difficult for some kids to stay still and safe near a car while waiting in the parking lot for parents to get everything together, be it stuff, or other kids.

But it’s very important for kids to not run away while waiting in the parking lot. The best way is to ask the kids to keep one hand on the car, till everyone is ready to leave. While some kids will listen and keep their hand on the car patiently, a lot of the kids would either run away, or around, or some in the way.

Parking Pal magnet would work great for the kids to help focus on keeping their hands on the car and waiting patiently. It provides a necessary visual cue to kids, and also makes it fun to wait. Great way to train kids to follow road safety tips.

Shoe- Sticker Training Tip

While developing independence in toddlers is something we all aspire to do, we hate having to do the work they just spent 5 mins doing independently. Not only does increase parents’ work, but it also upsets the child or sometimes reduces their morale. 

One such tedious task is putting shoes on, some kids just always put them on the wrong foot.

An amazing and time-saving hack to solve the shoe on wrong foot issue is — Cut any sticker in half and put it on both the shoes respectively, to help kids understand the right and left sides of the shoes by matching the sticker correctly. It also makes wearing shoes quicker, saving a ton of “out the door” time. 

Make a Medicine Tracker on the medicine bottle

When kids are sick, moms lose patience very quickly. Because they become 3-4 times more demanding. It’s not just an emotional burden on parents but also a mental and physical burden. 

Between all this, it’s very very important to keep kids on track with their medications, especially antibiotics, etc. Make a tracker on the medicine bottle itself with initials of days and empty boxes for the number of times the medicine needs to be given to the child. When you stay calm, your child is going to recover fast too.

It’s not only a sanity saver, it makes sure the most important thing in those sick days does not get missed or mixed up. Plus it saves us from keeping the mental track.

Toddles and Babies love washing machines/dryers

Let’s face it having a baby in front of the washing machine is so much better than having them sit in front of the TV screen.

Seriously, it’s odd and hard to believe BUT, an absolutely amazing parenting tip that works.

Have your baby or toddler sit in front of the dryer, while you sort other sets of laundry. By the time toddler discovered it himself, and even when he could crawl to spend 5-10 mins in front of the dryer, you can fold 1 load of laundry or put away cloth diapers laundry.

Water Color + Spray Bottle + Snow

Goodness gracious, this is an amazing combination that is sure to keep any aged kid busy in winter for at least 30 mins, which is the maximum time you would want to spend in winters outside in a go.

Staying indoors in winters is such a boring thing, and just a little time outdoors seems so much fun, but with everything covered in snow, this isn’t what many kids can do.

But, put some watercolor and water in a spray bottle give it to your child to go out and play. You’ll be soo happy to see that wide smile on their face with this simple winter game.

Car Diaper Kit

While some moms rock at always keeping their diaper bags up-to-date, and always remembering to take them with them, some like me aren’t really good at keeping a check at it often.

What worked better for me was having a diaper changing kit in the car. I had 2 kids under 2 with a husband always at work. When I ran my errands, I often forgot my diaper essentials and sometimes didn’t prefer to carry them with me. So I always had some diapers and wipes and a diaper changing pad in my car. Makes life easier. 

Crib Sheets For Car-Seat Covers

Cover the car seat with crib sheets, this is the most useful Car Parenting Hack someone can ever share with you. 

When I travel with my kids at car, they used to turn the backseat completely messy by spilling food, water or milk there. If it’s not wiped right away, it’s gonna leave a huge stain which will be hard to clear off later.

That’s when I came up with this effective trick online and followed it right away.

Best thing is, it doesn’t get dislocated or disturb you while sitting as you are going to tuck in the ends.

Work Towards Making School Mornings Less Chaotic

One thing that stresses any mother out is getting their kids ready to go to school. I have faced so many bad mornings in the past for not planning the day ahead.

That’s when I came up with a plan to do morning routines in auto pilot mode. Try the following to avoid chaos at the very start of the day.

Get their clothes ready the night before, or better have them take out 5 pairs of clothes on weekends. Get a part of their lunch boxes ready for school the next day. You can wash their boxes, fill it with ready-to-go snacks, cut fruits, nuts or cookies.

After they are done with their homework, check their classes for the nextday and organize their school bag accordingly.

Stress-free mornings are necessary to have a sane, peaceful day throughout.

Get Kids To Eat Healthy With A Healthy Snack Platter Hack

If you feel like your kid does not eat healthy food or snacks, try platter dinners with a variety of food items. You can portion them this way. Healthy snacks like 2/3 of fruits, 1/3 of nuts, a healthy dip like hummus/yogurt dip, 2/3 kid-friendly salad items like cucumbers, carrot stick, or tomatoes. 1/3 small portion of lesser healthy snack like crackers or corn chips or bagel halves or puffs etc.

The reason this healthy platter hack works is that it is like a mini buffet. Just like when we go to a buffet, we often get pretty full just by tasting the things, in the same way, since there is a variety of things in here the kids often just try a few and their tummy gets filled.

You can check out more on smack platter dinners on my Instagram post here.

Also, Jen from Mama Papa Bubba makes amazing snack platters if you’re looking for ideas on how to make some. Here is one of her snack platters on her Instagram page. 

Quickest Way To Clean Their Toys

If we don’t clean their toys on time, children will get sick often. It’s necessary to clean it once in a week. But we don’t find time to do this and our kids don’t allow us to do it too. But with this simple cleaning hack, you can clean them within few hours.

Fill your sink with mild hot water and pour some disinfectant and baby shampoo (the less the better). Add their wooden and plastic toys (remove batteries if needed). Soak for half an hour and wash them thoroughly in running water.

Finally sun dry them for another half an hour and that’s it. Make sure you clean the storage boxes/racks too before you keep the clean toys there.

Cloth and fluffy toys can be cleaned in washing machine.

To conclude,

These are tried and tested hacks that many mommies recommend to fellow mothers to make their life easier.

Try them and if it works for you, share it with your mom tribe and become popular among them.

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