10 Genius (and Hilarious) Toddler Hacks
Issue #9: A collection of tips to get your toddler to do just about anything
Hi friends! How we doing? Things are good over here in the Beiser home — my husband is on an outpatient rotation (praise the lord!) so he’s been around in the evenings and on weekends. Is this what other people’s family dynamics are like? It’s been LOVELY. And in the kids department: L, my 5 month old, started army crawling 😱 (evidently, she didn’t get the memo that she wasn’t allowed to grow up), and K, my 3 year old is saying hysterical things like “Oh my God Mommy” and “Mommy be careful of the other cars!” when I’m driving perfectly safely. Oldest daughter vibes indeed.
On the topic of this little teenage, let me be clear: despite the confident title, I have not cracked the code on toddler parenting. Far from it. BUT I have been experimenting lately with different techniques to diffuse tantrums and avoid power struggles, and since I strive to provide tangible value in my newsletter, I wanted to share them with you. I’m no expert, just a creative toddler mom trying to keep our home fun, loving, and (mostly) low-drama. And all that said, we still have our fair share of tantrums and three-year old shenanigans around here. Parenting this age group is far from simple! We’re all just doing the best we can, and if this list of ideas lightens your parenting load even a little, I’ll consider that a win. ☺️
[These tips can be attributed to Big Little Feelings (highly recommend their toddler course!), Michaeleen Doucleff (Hunt, Gather, Parent), and my own brain, which probably has been influenced by various Instagram reels.]
Here’s the list:
Make the actual transition fun. When we need to walk from point A to point B, I ask her what animal we should be (this could be from the car up to our apartment, or even from the living room to the bathroom). We’ve been lions, penguins, frogs, you name it! She even made up a mythical animal called a “calamuga” and it has a very particular walk which we all get a kick out of. [If you are a neighbor and have seen us silly-walking upstairs from the car, this is why!]
Countdown to a silly reveal. Ok this one works SO well. When we need to transition between activities, sometimes I’ll say silly things like “I’m going to count to 5, and when I open my eyes I want to see a girl who’s jumping on one foot and sticking out her tongue” — this tactic carves out little opportunities for games and fun, but the real kicker is that the silly instructions interest the toddler enough to distract them from an impending power struggle, and make completing the transition so much easier.
Use a timer for everything! Our most used toddler item is our visual timer — we use it multiple times a day, for every single transition. I’ll say “in 5 minutes we’re going to start getting ready for the bath” and then make sure she hears me and can repeat back how many minutes we said. This diffuses many power struggles around transitions because the timer is like a neutral, third party — and very often, what the timer says, goes.
Rapid fire questions: When I want to distract her to avoid a tantrum or power struggle, I’ll fire off some rapid fire questions (the more obscure the better!). I’ve done this a few times when buckling her into her car seat. Some examples questions: “If you could be any type of fruit, what would you be?!” “What do you like better, chocolate or vanilla?!” Etc.
Bring novelty into everything. Literally anything new is exciting and can be used as a motivator or a distraction. One day I got her excited about taking a bath just by offering her a plastic cup and spoon to play with while in there. Another example: she’s been potty trained for a few months now but has recently been having a bunch of accidents. My theory is that the novelty of wearing underwear/using the toilet has worn off, and it hasn’t yet clicked to her that peeing on the toilet is now something she will to do for the rest of her life. Someone gave me the idea to bring back our small potty and give her the choice to use the small or big potty. This has been working pretty well! The punchline is to make mundane things new — it works like a charm!
Give a whole lot of choices. Toddlers love autonomy! Another bath hack — if I can tell she’s not so interested in bath time, I’ll offer her to choose between taking a crayon bath (coloring on the tub walls with bath crayons [1]), a bubble bath, or a double bubble bath (which means a bubble bath while also getting a mini bubble wand to blow bubbles).
Just add sprinkles. I learned this phrase from Big Little Feelings course, but I was already employing some of these tactics with literal sprinkles. The idea here is to make “boring” things more exciting by sprucing it up! I add sprinkles to my toddler’s yogurt every morning and it makes her way more excited about breakfast. I’ve also heard of the idea to put a character sticker that they like on things they don’t like to incentivize them — e.g. put a Daniel Tiger sticker on hand soap if you have a kid (like mine) who struggles with hand washing!
Get a little creative to reach the same outcome. On the topic of hand washing — while I don’t love to admit this, sometimes my toddler just does not want to wash her hands and the fight is exhausting. We have this package of hand sanitizer wipes from Honest, so here and there I’ll offer her to clean her hands with a hand sanitizer wipe. It’s not ideal but the result is similar enough (clean hands) that to avoid a power struggle, I’ll do it.
Really evaluating if I need to say no or not. When K has an idea to do something, I try really hard not to say no. Even if it is a no, I look for ways to turn it into a yes. For example: If we only have 20 minutes before needing to leave the house and she asks me if she can paint, I may suggest that she colors with crayons instead since it’s less messy and takes less time. I’ll follow that up with an idea of another time soon when we can paint. Of course this doesn’t always work — like when she asks if we can paint 2 minutes before we need to leave — but I find that at the very least, if I validate that the idea sounds fun, offer to do it at a time not too far in the future, and then divert with a choice (“do you want to put on your sneakers or your rainboots?”) we usually avoid the meltdown.
When she wants to help, always saying yes. Toddlers are wired to want to be helpful. As adults, we constantly optimize a task for speed, which very often means that a toddler’s involvement will just slow us down. I’m trying hard to rewire my own thinking here, since when K wants to help, it’s an opportunity for bonding, and ultimately, collective mood boosting. So, whenever she asks to help, I always make sure that what comes out of my mouth is a “yes, and” instead of an outright “no”. If I’m cooking and it’s not physically safe for her to help, I will redirect her offer into something safer. For example, she can help me crack the eggs into a cup before we make scrambled eggs, even if she can’t help me actually scramble them on the stovetop.
And there you have it! I’m knee-deep in prepping for an upcoming trip, so I will leave this issue here. Passover is coming up and we are embarking on our first international trip as a family of four. Talk about the mental load of traveling… that topic can be a whole series just by itself!
I’d love to know if you found my list of toddler parenting hacks to be entertaining, inspiring, or helpful. And if you have your own ideas to share, please drop them below in the comments! I’d love to hear about what’s working for you.
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🩵 Rachel
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ICYMI: Recent issues of The Motherload
Footnotes:
In a previous issue I linked other bath crayons, but I got a reader rec that these were better and we’ve been LOVING them so far! (Thanks Amalia H!)
Thanks for sharing these tips! It’s always so fun to see what works for different kids, in some ways all our children are different and in other ways there’s universal things that just work! To never ask a question when they don’t actually have a choice to say no is a big shift that we made when we first had toddlers and it has been so helpful for all my kids. Don’t say “do you want to go to bed” or “are you ready for bed” if they don’t actually have the autonomy to say no. Instead, “which pajamas do you want to wear- frogs or flowers?” And “do you want to go to bed after you finish building this tower or do you want to save it for tomorrow”. I see you mention choices in your article and honestly it’s the best!
Such a great piece! My recent Substack was about a trip out which involved a MASSIVE toddler meltdown so this would have been handy. I once heard ‘is it a no because it’s dangerous’. Makes me think through why I say no sometimes!