4 Dad Hacks for Making Parenting Easier

Every time I have my hubby Eddie come guest blog, y’all love it. Are you secretly trying to tell me something? Anyways, I’ve asked him to come back and flex his Dad #skillz. He’s sharing his Dad hacks aka a few tips and tricks on how we parent our twins that makes it both enjoyable and ‘easier’. PS You are going to want to share these with a current or future Dad, so pass it along 🙂

Here’s Eddie:

When I became a Dad, I was scared sh*tless. It wasn’t the whole ‘being a Dad’ part that scared me, but more about what would happen/how would I react when my boys fell down and hurt themselves? How would I handle a myriad of situations that life throws your way? With twins you have to learn double as fast time, so again I have to restate I’m not a professional, but I wanted to share my 4 hacks for other Dads that will hopefully help you out.

4 Dad Hacks for Making Parenting Easier

Skip Out On Screen Time

I know what you are thinking, but we’ve gone 20 months with no screens aka no ipads, videos, TVs, nada and it hasn’t been impossible or sucky. Don’t get me wrong, we love a Netflix and chill night, but when they are awake, it’s all off and believe it or not, it’s not missed. It’s caused us to fill that time with activities {if you follow P on the gram, you see we are everywhere all the time}.

So why do this, right? I won’t go into a dissertation on how addicted we are to our phones and screens – myself included – but the bigger thing is once we start looking at screens, we can’t stop – we can only limit the time. P and I aren’t ready to break that seal and we’ve noticed that our time with the kids makes them more engaged back with us and family/friends. In lieu of the TV, we spend time dancing, reading, running, and moving and in return they’ve remained explorative and interact with others with ease. We’ve found that quality time is exactly that, quality.

You Can Develop Mutual Trust Even at 1 Years Old

Have you ever walked into a house that didn’t have child gates at every set of stairs? If you haven’t then we are inviting you to come to our casa. We do have child gates closing off specific areas of the house {because we’ve got sh*t to do},but there are multiple staircases that are completely wide open.

Before you freak out and start Amazon-priming us some, you should understand our reason. We’ve explained to them over and over that they must hold our hands to go up and down the stairs. Not all lessons stick immediately, but this one has even at their early age. I share this with you, because kids understand more than we give them credit for and we talk to the boys like little humans – more on that here. Many times we are both in the kitchen without hovering over the twins and know that though they may try to climb on the table, they won’t attempt the stairs because there’s an established, mutual trust.

Let Kids Explore and Feel All the Feels

We spent last weekend exploring our city of DC with the twins and the boys found the metal ramp at the National Gallery of Art Sculpture Garden UBER interesting to run up and down. While running full-speed down the ramp, Roman tripped right in front of me. No tears were shed nor did he call out for me or his Mama, I just helped him up, dusted him off and told him to watch where he’s running. I caught a few concerned looks from a bunch of mother on-lookers who watched me with confusion. I share this anecdote with you, to tell you this. In the early days, I stood right behind them ready to catch them if they fell. While parenting can be scary AF, your kids learn from every situation regardless of what happens. You’ll live and learn AND they will too.

It’s true, no parent wants their kid to struggle or hurt. It’s an innate feeling to want to jump in, help and protect, but I’m imploring you to let your kids really explore. We did baby-led weaning, so the boys are adamant about wanting to feed themselves. Instinctually we don’t want them to drop the food on the ground or shakily use a fork, but it’s a must. It builds their confidence when they succeed. They get proud every time we tell them ‘way to go!’. Let them try things, let them fail, show them over and over again how to succeed. I’ve found that there’s nothing like seeing pride in a kid’s face when s/he figures something out on their own.

Routine and Repetition Then Rinse and Repeat

We love our daycare {if you are in Northern Virginia ask P and she’ll recommend it to you!}, because they are an academic daycare with an actual learning curriculum. Even at such a young age, they teach the kids important skills which they work on every day and that we mirror and reinforce at home. In the daily pics that they send to us, we noticed that our sons were always being carried {hellllo they can walk} by their favorite teachers and felt strongly we needed to nip that in the bud.

We decided from that day forward, the boys would walk. At first, they resisted {man did they resistttt}, but we refused to carry them. Instead, we would grab their hand and continued to communicate why it was important for them keep at it. Even just a few short days later, we saw a huge difference and they adapted. Same thing with sleep training of 12 hours throughout the night at 10 weeks, learning can be done – even at the earliest of ages – through constant repetition.

So I’ll leave you with this – as parents remember, the things that you teach them now while their young will be habits, mannerisms and routines that will continue to shape them as they grow. It’s okay for them to stumble just as we do trying to figure out this whole parenting thing.

Have any hacks for us? Share them below!

Till next time,

Persephone and Eddie

xx