What is a nugget of parenting advice you’ve found helpful?

Big, small, specific, silly, profound—no matter. What’s been useful, true, game-changing?

Here is a short collection of the best parenting advice I’ve heard over the years:

1. Take a new plastic shower curtain liner to the beach. Dig a shallow hole. Add liner. Fill with water. Instant baby pool.

2. Consistency is key. Like going to the gym to build muscle. You’re forming human characters, don’t expect overnight results.

3. When parents say, of their consistency and love and discipline, “it’s not working!” One author replied: “How can you possibly know yet? Keep going, results take years.”

4. Stop expecting perfection from your kids. Celebrate growth, whatever that means for that specific child.

5. For one kid, a home run is a home run. For another, a single is a home run. Celebrate both accordingly.

6. Create opportunities to make eye contact and smile every day.

7. Kids like choices. Give them two choices when you can. “Do you want to get your PJs on now or in 5 minutes?” Teach them to keep their word.

8. “Listen earnestly to anything your children want to tell you, no matter what. If you don’t listen eagerly to the little stuff when they are little, they won’t tell you the big stuff when they are big, because to them all of it has always been big stuff.”
Catherine M. Wallace

9. Pray fervently and specifically for your kids.

10. Look for their talents and interests. Cultivate them.

11. Most terrible days with babies and toddlers can be reset simply and quickly with a bath.

12. Copy the kindergarten teachers. I used to watch this one teacher who would sing her corrective instructions, it was a tool to keep her from yelling. It works.

13. Your kids don’t need to think you know everything. They need to see that you know the One who does. They are watching where you turn when you fail, are lost, stressed, sad.

14. Our calling isn’t to raise rich and successful kids, it’s to love God, love people, and train our kids to do the same. If that first part happens, cool. But it’s not our main purpose.

15. Go out with your spouse. On regular dates. Without children.

16. Enjoy the moments you can. Give yourself grace and take deep breaths in the moments that make you want to cry into a bowl of Hagen Dazs.

17. Your metric for great parenting is obedience to the one who put you in charge. You cannot gauge your parental success on: age child starts walking, number of words at 15 months, reading level, batting average, etc.

18. Upon arriving at Target, always take your tiny children to the family bathroom before beginning your shopping. Even if they went before leaving the house. Otherwise, they WILL have to go—as soon as you get to that back section by the juice boxes.

19. Parenting chaos + time = comedy. Write down the insanity today. Next year you’ll laugh about it.

20. Never underestimate the power of a scoop of ice cream and one-on-one time with a child.

21. Don’t confuse the urgent with the important. They have to take turns but make sure “important”doesn’t get neglected.

What about you? What’s a parenting tip that’s helped you, kept you sane, or that you’d go back and tell yourself all those years ago? Comment below.

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