“Told My Son That I Was Allergic To Whining”: 40 Parents Reveal Their Best Parenting Hacks

If you threaten a consequence, follow through 100% of the time. Kids will test boundaries at every age, you just have to make it appropriate for their age group.

“If you throw sand again we are leaving the beach “ - you must leave the beach

“If you don’t clean your room no screen time tomorrow” - no screen time.

The key is to make the consequences not impact you to the point that you don’t want to follow through since it will ruin your day too. A hard line to toe, but boy do boundaries and trust work.

Edit: explained further below

Kids will always test boundaries 100%. But that doesn’t mean you go full force consequence every time. This is different than giving a consequence every time- you can explain why you don’t want them to throw the sand first. Talk to them about why they threw it. Take them in the water for a bit. But if you threaten to leave the beach once all of those things fail, you have to follow through.

A teen breaking curfew once is not a “take away your phone and computer and you’re grounded for 3 months” consequence. But maybe the 12th time is.

If they are cranky, put them in water.

I have teenagers, this is still the method that I use. Even having them wash their hands or face does wonders.

To be fair, I do it with my husband too. So really, I guess it's just works for humans.

When my kids were little my wife worked at a health club and I would take the kids swimming in the evening. We'd always pack their PJs for their clothes they'd change into after swimming. That way, they got out of the pool, showered, and changed in to pajamas. They didn't always go to bed right when we got home, but they were always ready for bed when we got home.

It was my wife's idea.

If you have a hard time getting them to eat their vegetables give them before the dinner because thats when they are hungry and will eat almost anything, give them some carrots and cucumbers in a glass which is a great snack.

We are trying to get our kids to understand money by explaining how much stuff costs relative to something they find valuable. "Your new glasses are worth 3 bikes, so be very careful with them." "Why didn't we go to Disneyland for vacation? Because it would cost 10 trampolines... And we had to build a new fence which also cost 10 trampolines... And mom and dad don't have enough for 20 trampolines."

I also play a game at the grocery store with my kids where I let them guess how much the groceries are going to cost. They would guess what they thought was a high number like $75 and then it would ring through at $250 and their mouths would just hang open. "That's why I get mad when you waste food! I could have bought almost 3 bikes with that money!"

Learn to say thank you and I’m sorry to them. It makes you closer and helps your relationship with them no matter what age.

Experiences are better than things.

Waking up before them makes the day a lot easier.

Find a way to see them when you’re driving.

I told my son that I was allergic to whining. Any time he started whining I did a bunch of fake sneezing and he would apologize immediately and stop being whiney! It worked for most of elementary school!

Teach them how to express their feelings and validate them when they do.

One day out of desperation I made my daughters do Rock, Paper, Scissors 3 times and winner gets their choice of whatever they were fighting about (usually what TV show to watch 1st), then loser gets a turn. They started doing this automatically and stopped coming to me to solve the issue. What a win!!

To get a newborn to burp:

Sit them on your knee, holding them under their armpits, and move their upper bodies in a circle several times. Like a reverse hula move I guess.

I learned it from a neonatal nurse, and it's almost infallible. So much faster and more reliable than regular burping.

So the children won't ask me, repeatedly, to buy a new toy on any given shopping trip - I allow them to choose a "store toy" to keep them company for the duration of the visit. They care for it, typically while sitting in a shopping cart, and then bid it farewell in a goodbye ritual at checkout ("bye store toy! See you next time!"). They are sated after that and there is never drama.

No a parent, but when I was a child my mom would hide her 4 glass birds (little sculptures she had) around the house. My sister and I had to look for them. We had to be very careful while looking so we didnt break them. If we broke one, we lost. If we left drawers/door/cabinets open, we lost.
You would think that we could tie and each find two birds, but it never happened. We would go to mom when we gave up, and she would hide them all over again.

It wasnt until I was an adult did I realize that she never hid a fourth bird. But boy did we spend a *looong* time looking

Whenever we go to the grocery store instead of listening to my son(4 years old) cry about all of the stuff he can't have I just tell him he can have one thing and one thing only. So he grabs cookies. Then when we get to the ice cream isle he decides he wants ice cream, then changes to Captain crunch. But every time we go back and put up the last thing he chose. It teaches him to decide what he really wants instead of wanting everything and whining the whole time.

Put sunscreen on at home, before you get to the beach/pool/park. They know we're not going anywhere till it's on. Saves me from the scramble at the destination because they're always too excited to hold still and I'm in a rush, so it's not a thorough job. Sunscreen takes 20 minutes to kick in anyway.

1. Any food they didn't like was labeled turkey. They are 12 and 8 and only just realized fish isn't turkey. They would always wonder why turkey has so many different flavors and how they like some but not others. 😂

2. Starting as soon as they can walk, ask for help for just about everything. And they will help and enjoy being needed. And when they do tasks and ask for help, help them. They will always help if you teach them to do it as a family instead of an individual task. Clean house...yes, please!

3. Biggest one of all - listen to them. Everything they say to you is really important to them, no matter how stupid it is. And learn what they like, even if it's boring. This comes in handy when they're older.

My daughter would run away from me at the grocery store when I had my infant son in the cart. So I put tap shoes on her when we went shopping.

I make kid traps. It works for all ages. I have an early riser, an enthusiastic 5am early riser for many years. Things are better now. During those tough years, my invention came to fruition and age of child is a factor as well as placement of the traps. With little ones. you need traps all over the house and the key spot is right outside the door, placed after the child goes to bed.

This is what all those shoes boxes you have are best recycled for. Inside the box you will place a number of surprises. That can entertain the child. really, it can be anything that will not harm them. it could be several rolls of cardboard toilet paper. blocks, a couple of figurines, weird stuff. Again nothing that can harm them.

With smaller kids that get into everything, you need these all over the house so that when they open a drawer or cupboard, it's the first thing they find and instead of ripping the tape out of your classic VHS tapes or ripping your comic collection to shreds, they go through all the all the things in the kid trap. You do need to replace items in the boxes frequently.

As the child gets older more art supplies should be included, drawing materials, crafty things, pieces of clothing, books, games, stickies. It really works. don't give them stickers. I hate stickers.

until they learn to forage. That's code for feed themselves.

good luck

Routines are great just generally.

Also in the early days making sure the child knows the difference between day and night is really useful in teaching them that night time is quiet time. The amount of friends who get their newborn baby up when it cries in the night and then play with it baffles me.

Whenever either of my toddlers was crying or whining in the car, I would point to something invisible out the window and say "hey! do you see that over there?!" By the time they realized they couldn't figure out what I was pointing at, they'd forgotten the reason they were whining. Amazing how many times that worked.

During the years their bedtime is 8pm or earlier, put away your laptop and phone and just say 'yes' to anything they want to play. Much easier for everyone.