A January reset vs a New Year’s resolution January, a new year, a new start. It also brings pressure on parents to overhaul everything: prepping lunchboxes the night before, clearing out the snack basket, going to bed early, cutting screen time, laying shoes out by the door, starting potty training, giving up the dummy… and…
Wondering how to make bedtime easier for toddlers? If you’re searching for a toddler bedtime routine, you’ll find plenty of advice about consistency and routine charts: turn off screens, keep everything predictable and in the same order, use visual cues for each step of bedtime, dim the lights. Those can help, but they don’t help…
Getting a toddler ready for bed can be full of battles. Not wanting to take a bath, then not wanting to get out of the bath, clamping their mouth shut for the toothbrush, and finally either not getting into bed in the first place, or finding twenty reasons to get out again. But sometimes actually…
I already know exactly what’s coming the second I see her at the school gate: “I’m STARVING.” And yes, I always remember to bring the snack box with me – I don’t want to relive the first day of nursery last year when I said, “It’s at home!” That turned my smiling four-year-old into a…
Bedtime… the events of the whole day determine how this last routine goes. How much sugar have they had? How long – or late – was their nap? What kind of mood are they in? But the fate of bedtime doesn’t just depend on them – it also depends on us as parents. For me,…
Bath time is a two-part struggle. Nine times out of ten, there’s an absolute refusal to get in – and once you’ve finally managed it, there’s an equally determined refusal to get out! So the trick here is to use games to get them in, and then carry that same play through to get them…
Contains affiliate links which means I may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. Potty learning has been my biggest parenting challenge yet – more than bedtime, more than getting dressed. I trained my daughter using the Oh Crap! Potty Training method at around 32 months, and she picked it up within…
Toothbrushing is the one part of the routine I have always dreaded the most. It doesn’t seem to matter how fun the toothbrush is or that you have a sweet strawberry-tasting toothpaste, as soon as it comes out, that mouth is clamped shut – quite often with a hand in front for an extra layer…
We all know breakfast matters. But if you’re anything like me, breakfast is the meal I find hardest to get right – not because I don’t care, but because plain porridge every single day gets boring fast, and I don’t always have the time (or energy) for pancakes or omelettes before 8am, especially when you’re…
I used to think a good morning routine meant getting everything done in the right order. Get dressed.Eat breakfast.Find shoes.Leave the house. It’s a predictable routine, everyone knows what comes next. What could go wrong? As you’re here reading this, I’m sure you are already picking holes in all these tasks. You can have the…
