Being a parent is not easy. Every day brings new challenges, forcing mothers and fathers to be extremely creative. But thanks to the Internet, thousands of parents are now sharing their experiences to help one another, like how to give bad-tasting medicine to a child, how to put away toys in seconds flat and how to inflate little balloons that even grown men can’t manage to do!
At Smalljoys, we’ve tried all kinds of tricks to help make parents’ and kids’ lives easier. Now it’s your turn to try them!
1.
If your child often rolls and falls off the bed, take foam rubber rolls and put them under the sheet. You can use a yoga mat instead of rolls if you’d like. In this case, the sides will be bigger.
2.
In order not to spend copious amounts of time collecting toys every day, suggest to your child to turn an old box into a playground. Draw a city inside of it with streets and houses for their dolls. When the game is over, it takes just a few seconds to hide the box under the bed.
By the way, you can easily take this box with you if you’re going out of town or for a picnic.
3.
Use coffee filters or small cupcake liners to protect glasses full of sugary drinks from bugs and mosquitoes. And in order to make a glass spill-proof, put plastic wrap on the top and pierce it with a straw.
4.
Make a glass for a child that they can easily take with them when they feel thirsty. You will need glue and several magnets. Glue the magnets to your child’s plastic glass and attach it to the fridge’s door.
5.
Glue a piece of paper to a medicine bottle and mark a schedule on it with the number of doses that are left. You can teach your children to drink the necessary amount of water every day using the same trick: stick a piece of paper to a bottle so that children can mark the amount of water they drink.
6.
This is a great trick when you need to inflate a lot of small balloons. Take a balloon, put some baking soda inside it and put it on top of some vinegar. The soda will mix with the vinegar and the balloon will start to inflate with gas.
7.
It’s difficult for children to remove extra water from brushes or to mix the colors inside the pots without ruining the original color. A regular pack of eggs can solve this problem: your child can mix the colors in the empty egg carton — it will quickly absorb the extra water from the brush.
8.
This is a great trick when you need to protect clothes when your child is experimenting with art or cooking. Put some transparent plastic wrap on a T-shirt and iron it from the inside. The wrap will stick to the T-shirt and protect it from dirt or paint. After the child finishes the activity, easily peel off the wrap.
9.
Put a bag of marshmallows in the freezer to use them instead of regular ice cubes: if a child gets injured, take the cool and soft marshmallows and put them on the injured area. They won’t cause any discomfort like regular ice will but can still relieve the pain.
10.
Teaching a child to hold a pen correctly is not an easy task. Take a pencil and a simple rubber band. Put the band around the wrist as the photo above shows and let the child practice writing. Don’t substitute the pencil with a pen before the child develops the right skills.
11.
Manufacturers are convinced that it’s impossible to get burned by a sparkler. But children don’t like the sensation of the tiny sparks falling on their skin. In order to avoid the unpleasant sensation, take a paper glass and put a sparkler inside it as the photo above shows.
12.
What can you do if a child refuses to take their medicine? Take a lollipop, pour the medication into a small glass and soak the lollipop in it. It’s much more pleasant to lick medicine from a lollipop. If it’s bitter, mix it with strawberry syrup to make it tastier. All pills are easier to take with a glass of water and a spoon of syrup.
13.
In order not to lose socks while washing them, put them in a bag. You can make one yourself, but some people use the bags that come in shoe boxes. You can wash the bag of socks together with the rest of your clothes. This will make it harder to lose them.
14.
It’s quite hard to find disposable paper glasses with certain cartoon characters. And even if you manage to find them, they usually cost way more than regular glasses. Instead, take paper glasses and put stickers with the characters on them that you can find at any store. Using the stickers, make your own designs on the glasses and suggest your children do it together.