21 Real Life Parenting Tricks and Tips

I used to like doing posts where I shared some of the parenting tricks I've learned from raising my kids.  But somehow every time I sat down to write one I ended up saying things to my kids like, "go away, I'm trying to write about how to be a good parent."  That seemed a little hypocritical so I haven't written an "advise" post in a year.  But I've still been cataloging my tips and tricks in my head.  All those tips are taking up valuable mental space so I figured its time to finally write this post. (And yes, kids have been ignored while I wrote this.)

If you ever have wondered how I survive life with four kids under the age of four and a husband on the other side of the world - this post is for you.  Here are some of my real life parenting tricks and tips.

Things don't have to be perfect.  Case in point: I wanted to do this post with lots of pictures and stuff, but well that's just not going to happen. I don't have time right now.  So here is a whole bunch of text that hopefully will keep you entertained.  I also didn't want to take the time to put these things in categories so this is going to be really random.

Take a Hybrid approach to things.  Before I had kids I saw a lot of things as black and white. You were either a formula mom or a nursing mom, you used either cloth or disposable diapers, you either co-slept or kept the baby in the crib all the time, etc.

But since I've become a mom I've found these things to be more fluid.  By the time Veronica came around I started calling it the "hybrid approach."  I nursed her, but had no problem letting someone else feed her a bottle of formula if I couldn't feed her at the moment.  She had her own room and crib, but I'd bring her into bed with me if I was too tired to keep getting up with her.  I used cloth diapers for the older kids on week days, and used disposable diapers on the weekends and all the time for Veronica.

Stuff a blanket between your baby's crib and the wall to catch things that get thrown out of the crib.  Figuring this trick out was probably one of my biggest genius moments as a parent.  I can't tell you how many time I had to lay on the floor and try to fish something out from under the twins' cribs.  Then one day I noticed that we had like a million blankets that weren't being used.  I stuffed a few of them in the space between the wall and the cribs.  After that the twins could easily reach anything that they dropped.

Put dark curtains up in your kids' bedroom. Natural light is great looking and all, but it is the sworn enemy of sleep.  If you want your kids to sleep later in the morning, or nap better in the afternoon you should put up heavy dark curtains in their rooms.

It's always easier to pee at home.  Sometimes I'm rushing to get the kids out the door and I realize I need to go to the bathroom.  I'm tempted to just wait and maybe see if I can go to the bathroom when we get to where ever we are going.  But then I realize that that scenario would be a disaster.  So even if the kids are screaming because they just want to go get in the car I always take the time to go to the bathroom.

Wear pants with pockets to the store.  I love my yoga pants, but I never wear them to the store.  It's not because I have high minded fashion rules.  It's because I need somewhere to put my keys.  I don't want to run the risk of locking them in the car or misplacing them on the roof.

Incentives work.  The number of rewards my kids get is almost laughable.  They have car seat treats, bed time treats, pee treats, poopin' treats, treats for getting in underwear, etc. We have so many treats because THEY WORK!  I wrote a lot about this subject in this post last year.

Buy a box of cookies/Graham crackers/some sort of food for your kids to eat when you are done grocery shopping.  I'm at the point now where grocery shopping with my kids is pretty easy.  The hardest part is when we come home and everyone is hungry.  Unloading a bunch of perishable food while trying to keep hungry kids happy is a recipe for madness.  One day we were shopping and Lydia wanted to get some Vanilla Waffers.  I bought them thinking we could have them as a snack later in the week.  When we got home and I started unloading the kids and the groceries I saw that cookies in one of the bags.  I had all the kids sit at the table and I let them eat as many cookies as they wanted while I put away all the food.  Sure it wasn't the most nutritious meal ever, but everyone was calm.

Sometimes simplicity is best.  Around the time Brandon went to Korea, I started giving the kids what we called, "Big Helper Stickers."  The stickers were just the little colored circle stickers that you can buy on the office supplies aisle at the store.  My original thought was that the girls could earn the stickers for helping me. I imagined creating some sort of sticker chart where they could put the stickers.  Once they reached a certain amount I would give them a prize.  Well, I asked the girls if they thought that sounded fun and the answer surprised me.  One of them said, "I just want to wear it."  So instead of some elaborate reward system, I just give my kids a sticker every time they help me.  They proudly put the "Big Helper Stickers" on their shirts and go back to whatever they were doing.

Don't Mess with the Status Quo. This doesn't mean you shouldn't try to improve things.  What it means is that if everything is going well then don't try to change things.  For example, all the kids will be playing quietly throughout the house.  I'll think something like, "oh we should start doing _____." I could gather everyone around and start doing _____, or I could just let them do their own thing and enjoy it.  Chances are, within a few minutes someone will get hurt/start a fight/get bored/etc and it will be the perfect time to start doing _____.  But until then I don't need to mess with what's going on.

Use nightlights.  A long time ago we gave up on getting the kids to stay in their beds after bedtime. Instead the goal changed to trying to keep them in their room after bed time.  A key part to that goals success was putting a nightlight in the kids room and keeping the hallway dark.  The girls would stay in their room and not venture out into the hallway.

Buy plastic dishes.  At least one dish gets dropped in our house each day.  I'm so glad I don't have to worry about the kids breaking dishes. I also like that their dishes are smaller than the regular dishes.  That makes cleaning up just a little bit easier.

Ignore Pinterest. I have a love hate relationship with pinterest.  On the one hand it is great for ideas, but on the other hand it gives me some major guilt.  I hate seeing things with the caption, "Seven things to NEVER say to a child." Or "100 activities for small children."  Honestly, things like that just make me feel like I'm really failing at this parenting thing.  So while I like Pinterest for most things, I try to filter out the parenting advise.

Give your kids lots of complements and praise.  I heard once that you can never give your kids too much praise as long as it is sincere.  That is so true. I think that giving them praise about the things they do right is a lot more effective than giving them lectures about the things they have done wrong. I love to tell my kids things like, "you are such a good sharer." or "you are a great brother."  My kids love hearing those things. They like to come up to me and say things like, "Mom I shared with Veronica!"

Don't expect to have a set routine if you are nursing.  One morning I woke up and thought that maybe it was time to start having a morning routine that didn't involve a movie.  And then Veronica woke up and I needed to nurse her.  The easiest way to keep the other kids out of mischief while I was trapped on the couch was to turn on the TV.  I was like, "never mind on that no movie thing - and never mind on the routine thing too."

Put clean shirts in one draw and clean pants in another. Charlotte and Lydia have been picking out their own clothes for a year.  It's easy for them because they know that they just have to pick something out of one draw and something out of the other.  (Learning how to properly coordinate will come later.)  Oh and I don't bother actually folding their clothes.  I just stuff it all in the drawers.

Use hand-me-down clothes and toys.  Aside from this being a heck of a lot cheaper than buying everything new, it also helps with my peace of mind. I don't have to worry about how rough my kids can be on clothes and toys when I know I didn't pay an arm and a leg for the stuff.

Potty training is a myth. I know that some kids can be fully potty trained in just a few weeks, but that hasn't been my experience.  Instead it has been a very long and slow process.  I like to think of potty training as a spectrum.  On one end you have kids who wear diapers all the time.  On the other end you have kids who wear underwear all the time.  And between them are a whole range of potty training phases.  Right now my girls are what I call "Home Potty Trained."  That means they can wear underwear all the time at home and never have any accidents.  But when we go to places like church or the store I put them in pull ups.  They probably could go in underwear all the time, but I just can't add an emergency dash to the bathroom to the list of things I need to worry about when we are in public.  Night training is another thing we haven't even bothered with.

Be aware of postpartum hormone craziness.  I never had postpartum depression in the sense that I went to my doctor and started taking medicine, but I definitely had some crazy moments.  I referred to it as having "my emotional depth perception out of focus."  All the hormone changes made me really anxious.  About 2 months after Veronica was born I went through three days where I was so anxious my skin felt electric.  I was keyed up about everything.  I'd lie in bed and stress out about things like "what if Charlotte gets leukemia when she is seven?"  Brandon was pretty worried about me.  Luckily, things calmed down after I got some time to myself, but if they hadn't I would have called up my doctor.          

Nursing can make you grumpy.  Veronica is hands down my best nurser.  All my other kids were exclusively bottle drinkers by six months old.  Veronica on the other hand stopped taking a bottle at six months.  So here we are at 9 months and I'm still nursing her.  I like it a lot more this time than I ever did with the other kids. But it still wasn't the easiest thing to get used to.  For the first few months I'd get really grumpy every time I was nursing.  I'd be sitting there hating life.  I'd be like, "what it wrong with me, why do I feel so mad" and then I'd look down and realize I was feeding Veronica and I'd be like, "oh I'm nursing."  Once she was done eating I'd feel better about life again.

Ask for help if you need it. This is something that I plan on writing a whole post about in the future.  But basically, there is nothing wrong with asking for help.  There is no possible way I could take care of my kids completely on my own.  I have an ever expanding network of helpers.  Some of them are neighbors, some are from my church, some are community resources.  All of them are very important.  

Well there you have it, a whole years worth of things that I've wanted to tell you. I admit, my kids were ignored while I wrote this, but I didn't feel like a hypocrite this time around.  So maybe I'll start doing these advise-filled posts more frequently.