Chelsey's Parenting Toolkit
I had an appointment with my counselor recently where we spent most of the hour talking about parenting, at my request. I don’t know if was the intensity of the end of the school year or the current ages of our kids or the age gaps between our kids. Maybe it’s just that we have four kids and four is not a small number of people to be responsible for, but parenting has been hard lately. I have been wondering if I have been making parenting harder than it has to be.
Her answer was yes and no. Yes, because I have some things I’ve been doing that are not helping my kids or me. No, because parenting is just not easy. One conclusion we reached is that I have been focusing really unhelpfully on all the ways that I perceive that I am failing as a mom. As we talked, she pointed out things that we’ve done with our kids that have been really good, and she encouraged me to think about some of those things in order to rebuild some of my confidence in my parenting.
What follows is an extremely random list of not just what we’ve done that has been helpful in 15+ years of parenting but also resources that I’ve found helpful as a parent. You may not have the exact same parenting style as we do, and as I have just shared, my parenting is imperfect. One cannot guarantee any kind of outcome, but maybe something here will help you through a parenting struggle you’re having—or at least let you know you’re not alone.
And this is not me fishing for compliments on my parenting—we’ve done some things well and other things not so well, like most parents who have ever lived.
Resources
The following are some of my favorite books and podcasts about parenting.
Podcasts
Christian Parenting Books
Parenting: 14 Gospel Principles That Can Radically Change Your Family by Paul David Tripp
Parenting Essentials: Equipping Your Children for Life by Andreas and Margaret Kostenberger
Treasuring Christ When Your Hands Are Full: Gospel Meditations for Busy Moms
Books about Parenting Different Ages
Safeguards: Shielding Our Homes and Equipping Our Kids by Julie Lowe
Age of Opportunity: A Biblical Guide to Parenting Teens by Paul David Tripp
Miscellaneous
Simplicity Parenting: Using the Extraordinary Power of Less to Raise Calmer, Happier, and More Secure Kids by Kim John Payne
The Worry-Free Parent: Living in Confidence so Your Kids Can, Too by Sissy Goff
Introverted Mom: Your Guide to More Calm, Less Guilt, and Quiet Joy by Jamie C. Martin
Items
There are plenty of lists of “things you need for a newborn” or “best outdoor toys for toddlers” and I won’t waste time replicating them here. Busy Toddler has great lists for almost any topic! And also, there are obviously a lot more things that you need for kids that I’m not listing here. These are just things I’ve often recommended to other people over the last 15 years.
I’m going to talk about sleep more later, but this is the thing I recommend to anyone with kids old enough to understand the clock. It uses colors to denote if it’s time to get up. You can use it for a nap timer as well. Right now, our younger two have an older version of this clock, and for the summer, they can leave their room when the clock turns green at 7:30. (The five year old is not yet able to tell time.) When our big boys were toddlers more than a decade ago, we set it for 7:30 am. They were allowed to play in their room if they woke up early but they couldn’t leave their room. Knowing I had until 7:30 am every morning to read my Bible, exercise, etc. did more for my mental health than anything else in those years.
Open ended toys
This includes Duplo, LEGO, magnetic tiles (no need to get the name brand), Calico Critters, Playmobil, and Lincoln Logs.
After 15 years of buying and being given toys for kids, these are the ones that have held up. Everything else has either broken or the kids have eventually lost interest. If I were doing it all over again, I would focus exclusively on toys like this and never buy anything else. If your kids are really creative, you can even combine these different toys—one time my kids made a multi-story rainbow prison for the Calico Critters out of magnetic tiles.
Games that don’t suck
If you think you don’t enjoy playing games with your kids and you’ve only played Candy Land, Mouse Trap, Chutes & Ladders, Cooties, and/or Operation, let me try to convince you that it’s possible to play games with your kids and enjoy it.
We have loved all the games by Peaceable Kingdom that we have tried. They are cooperative games, so you work together to beat “the game.” This is great for younger kids, especially kids who haven’t yet learned how to lose gracefully. We also enjoy classic card games like Uno, Old Maid, Go Fish, and Memory.
Some other favorite kid games that don’t require reading:
For a game that’s great fun if everyone can read, our favorite family game is Dungeon Mayhem. We own all 12 decks. That said, Noah has been playing this with us from age 4 on, if we remind him what the different cards do.
We didn’t use balance bikes until our daughter was a toddler, and man—I wish we’d tried them when our older boys were younger. Now there are so many options and there is no need to buy the most expensive ones. We’ve gone through three different bikes, and I’ve had great success with the ones that have lots of good reviews on Amazon.
Shoes they can put on themselves
Leaving the house with kids is something you do a lot, and anything to make that easier changes the game. It is no small thing to say, “Kids, get your shoes on!” while you throw some snacks in a bag and make some water bottles. Recently we passed another milestone where everyone can buckle themselves into the car by themselves, and now getting out the door is 85% easier than it has ever been.
Parenting Tactics
Teach them to sleep (or at least stay in their rooms)
If I was looking back at all the practical things I’ve done as a parent, I think the thing that has paid off the most was teaching my kids how to sleep and fall asleep on their own as babies. Regardless of the method you use to do this, it’s my top advice for any new parent. No, it won’t happen right away, but the earlier you start creating sleep rhythms, the easier it is.
We also have some hard and fast rules about where people are going to be sleeping, and the main rule is that everyone sleeps in their own beds. I can count on one hand the number of times our kids have slept in our bed, and it’s always been extremely extenuating circumstances (stomach bug, hurricane, broken arm). I did rock or nurse my babies to sleep up to a point, but before any of them were a year old, they were going into their beds awake, falling asleep on their own, and staying in their beds/room until I came in the next morning and got them (or the clock turned green—see above).
Union breaks and naps
Along the same lines, nap / rest time was an integral part of our days through age 4 or 5. Busy Toddler calls that time a union break. That’s the 2-ish hour time period in the afternoon when mom has a break. Usually that means the kids get some screen time. At younger ages when they were no longer napping, it meant enforced time in their rooms with books and toys or audiobooks or music.
Not folding clothes
Probably one of the other biggest decisions I have made as a mom is to not fold my kids’ clothes. If you have kids who are old enough to get themselves dressed, you know that both dirty and clean clothes get on the floor. I finally decided folding them was a waste of time. Our older boys handle their own laundry, but the younger ones have baskets on a shelf for different categories of clothes. I just put all their clean clothes in one big basket and they sort them into their baskets without folding them. If they ever want to learn how to fold clothes, I can teach them or they can watch a YouTube video.
Teach them how to do stuff
Here’s the thing about teaching kids to do things: it mostly sucks. I still remember the summer we taught our boys to unload the dishwasher. They were maybe 6 and 7. It was awful. They were initially terrible at it. We had to keep reminding them about every single aspect of the task. But by the end of the summer they had figured it out, and for the past 9 years I have almost never unloaded the dishwasher. Same goes for loading the dishwasher and hand washing dishes (both of which Christian has mostly taught them). We are currently working through how to clean a bathroom, and we are making progress.
Declutter frequently
Every few months we do a massive declutter. We donate things that are still usable but the kids don’t play with. We throw away broken toys or actual trash they have hoarded for some unknown reason. We give away clothes that don’t fit and put away clothes that fit but that aren’t in season. The more kids you have, the more important this is. (Note: If your kids are very young you can do this without asking them and the process is much faster.)
Don’t helicopter parent (especially with schoolwork)
Christian and I both excelled at school, but neither of us had parents looking over our shoulders seeing if we’d done our assignments. My policy since the kids have started school is to only help if they ask, and even then, my help may be limited. As the boys have entered middle and high school, I do see some of the reminders from their teachers through my parent account, but I do not ask them about those things other than to say, “Hey, I saw you had a test in history today. How did it go?” Have they failed assignments? Yes. But this is a good time in life to fail, because the consequences are not that great. Better for them to fail now when there is a lot of support.
If you have younger kids, helicopter parenting can look like constant monitoring, both with actual baby monitors or with your presence. Everyone has their own comfort level, but just so you know, we never had baby monitors for any of our kids and all of them survived.
Things for You
Mom friends
Sadly, this isn’t something you can buy on Amazon, but I’d encourage you to seek it out, whether it’s at church or the gym or your neighborhood or a local moms’ group. If you wait for these relationships to occur, they will not. I have had to initiate almost every great relationship I’ve ever had (but in the best of them, the relationships became mutual and reciprocal).
Hobbies
I had been a mom for six or seven years before I realized that I didn’t have a hobby. I used to, before I got married, but pregnancy and raising young kids consumed me. In between our second and third kids, though, I began to see reading as a hobby and eventually added cross stitch. These two activities have grounded me through all the ups and downs of parenting since then. You don’t have to choose these hobbies, of course, but anything that you can do that isn’t related to parenting and that doesn’t put any expectations or obligations on you is a good hobby.
Sleep
I didn’t include this in my Depression Toolkit, but I should have. Denying someone sleep is a common torture method. I’m not saying our kids are torturing us, but I am saying that as much as you have control over your sleep, try to sleep more. Teaching your kids to sleep is part of that, but even when your kids have been sleeping through the night for years, you can still make choices that deprive you of much-needed sleep. My ability to parent gently and kindly is closely related to how much sleep I have gotten.
You think I am joking, but I am not. Whether it’s podcast or music or audiobooks, you can be listening to something good while you’re hanging out with your kids. Not all the time, of course, but I have no idea how many audiobooks I listened to while following toddler Noah around our neighborhood for hours at a time. I also listen to stuff while I’m cooking dinner or doing other tasks when I need to keep one ear open for kid needs but don’t need to be fully focused on them. You are allowed to do this.
I hope you enjoyed this amalgam of all the things that have been helpful to me over the years. I think many of them could be helpful to anyone, regardless of the ages of your kids or your own parenting style. I’d also love to know if there’s anything you have in your own parenting toolkit that I didn’t list here!