Tidying up after a day of playing together is probably not on the top of your child’s list of things they’d like to do. If you don’t want to spend your time stepping on Lego blocks, your child will need to clean up after themselves. 

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An important part of a young person’s development is learning how to clean up a mess that they have made themselves. This helps children to develop their sense of responsibility. It might be easier for you to just tidy up yourself if you’re organizing a child’s closet or picking up their toys, but this is a short-term solution. If a child learns to clean up after themselves now, this will set the stage for how they complete the task as they grow up. If you’re always picking up after them now, they won’t learn to do it for themselves. 

Tidying up isn’t always fun, but it doesn’t have to be a miserable chore. Here’s how you can make the task go more smoothly. 

Choose your words carefully

Don’t just tell your child to clean up. It’s easy for a young child to feel overwhelmed by a large mess because they don’t know where to start. Instead, start by giving them instructions like, ‘put away your books first, and then put the toys in the toybox’. Break the job down into smaller tasks to make a big job seem much more manageable. 

Remember that your child is new to tidying up. Cleaning up their toys won’t be something that they inherently know how to do. You will need to teach them. 7

Explain why cleaning up is needed

To you, it’s obvious that things need tidying up. To your toddler, cleaning up just means putting away the fun, so why would they want to do it? Explain that if the toys aren’t put away properly, then someone could fall over them and hurt themselves, or toys and pieces could get lost, which would make playing with the toy less fun next time. With very young children, you need to make a connection that they can understand. 

Create child-friendly storage for toys

Put labels on drawers or storage bins with pictures of the things that go in them, to help your kids learn where everything should go when it’s put away. Your child could draw the pictures themselves, or you could cut them out of magazines. Under each picture, neatly write the name of the item, which is great practice for the recognition of words for pre-readers. When everything has a proper home, it makes it much easier to put everything away, even for young children. 

Make it a game

Keep tidying fun by making a game of it. Try games like ‘beat the clock’ to see if your children can tidy their room before time runs out, or compete to see who can put the blocks back in the box the fastest. By making it a game, you can make tidying more fun. 

Are you thinking about going on a road trip with your kids? This can be a great way to spend the weekend or potentially instead of a vacation that you were going to take this summer. While COVID is stopping many people from going abroad, you can still visit places around your own country. So, how do you plan a road trip with kids the right way?

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Don’t Forget The Sun 

If you’re heading out on a road trip in the middle of summer, then it’s important that you don’t forget about the danger of the sun’s rays. Indeed, the sun can be a threat to the health of both you and your children. You should consider investing in window screens. This will protect your children from the most harmful UV rays. Remember, rays will be magnified by the glass of the car’s windows so they can be even more dangerous. Sunscreen is also going to help a great deal. 

Entertainment 

Every parent has grimaced at the words ‘are we there yet’ while in the car with kids or the dreaded ‘how long until we get there?’ Luckily, there is a solution to this issue. You just need to make sure that you are adding some form of entertainment to your car. There are lots of options here including a fun soundtrack for the journey. Alternatively, depending on the age of your children, you can load up some tablets with films and TV shows for them to watch. If they’re distracted by something like this, you’ll find that a car journey can be an absolute breeze. 

You can even buy holders for the car that will allow them to fit the tablet to the back of your seat. This saves them from needing to hold onto the device for the entire journey which can be quite tiring and keep them awake. 

Snacks 

Kids get hungry on the road and you’ll find that a long road trip will take away a lot of their energy. That’s why it is worth loading up your car with some treats. Make sure that you also have a cool bag, especially if the treats are likely to melt in hot weather. Even a good aircon system isn’t going to save you from this problem. 

Safety First

Finally, before you travel, you do need to make sure that your kids are safe for the road. There are numerous checks that you can complete to guarantee that this is the case. For instance, you can think about checking the tyre pressure. If you speak to a personal injury lawyer, you’ll find that a lot of accidents on the road occur because the tyre pressure was low in a vehicle leading to less grip on the road. 

As you can see, there are numerous things to consider when you are planning a road trip with kids. It’s a little different to going on a road trip with your friends or planning an adult-only vacation. But if you take the right steps, you can ensure that kids are safe and that everyone has a fantastic time. 

It’s normal and common for children to be fussy eaters. Fussy eaters dislike the taste, shape, color, or texture of new foods. It’s also completely normal for children to like something one day and refuse to eat it the next. This happens because fussy eating is part of the development of children. It’s a way of exploring their environment and testing their independence. Knowing this doesn’t make it any less frustrating trying to feed a fussy eater though. 

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Give fussy eaters independence with food

It can be a good idea to support your child’s need for independence with their food. Provide healthy options but let them decide which of those options and how much they’ll eat. Limit the options to two or three things, so your child doesn’t get confused or overwhelmed. 

Another useful trick is getting the kids involved in meal preparation. Ask your child to help with tasks like:

• Meal planning

• Picking a recipe

• Getting food out of the fridge

• Washing fruits and veggies

• Tossing a salad

• Planting and picking herbs at home

The child will feel proud about helping and be more likely to eat something that they have helped to make. 

Introducing new foods to fussy eaters

If you have a fussy eater who is wary of trying new foods, try some of these tips:

• Keep offering new foods at different times. Your child will eventually try them and like, but they need to see that dish of Spanish chicken and rice a few times before they’ll try.

• Put a small amount of new food on the plate with a food your child is familiar with and already likes. 

• Make food attractive. Offer a variety of colors, shapes, and sizes. 

• Serve the children the same meal as the rest of the family, but in a portion size that your child can manage. If they won’t eat it, gently encourage them to try. If they still won’t, stay calm, and tell them you’ll try again when they’re hungry. 

• Offer different foods from healthy food groups. For example, if your child won’t eat cheese, try offering them yogurt. 

• Look for opportunities for your child to share snacks or meals with other kids. They might be more willing something new if they can see another child tucking in happily. 

Punishments and bribes for fussy eaters

Don’t punish your child for refusing to try new foods, as this can turn new foods into something negative. If your child won’t eat, take the plate away and offer it again another time. 

It can be tempting to keep offering treats so your child has actually eaten something, for example, bribing them with dessert if they’ll eat their vegetables. This can make the child more interested in treat foods than healthier choices and sends the messages that healthy food is a chore. Try not to do this. When they’re hungry, they will eat. 

Remember that children’s appetites change with their growth cycles, so they can be more or less hungry on different days. 

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It goes without saying that your kids are the most important thing in the world to you. As soon as the news arrived that you were expecting, your life changed and everything you wanted for yourself was put on hold. For the foreseeable future, your kids take precedence. There’s nothing you wouldn’t do for them, and you want them to be content with whatever they do. 

With that said, however, you’re not a robot and you can’t be expected to do absolutely everything for them at all times. If we were able to do so, then we’d all have heaps of offspring and there would be a lot more than eight billion humans currently on the planet! We need to have a little break from the constant noise and neediness from time to time. We need that respite in order to feel better so that we can continue to be the best possible parents. If we aren’t afforded that break, we can go a little crazy and it can hinder the way our children are raised. 

Everyone is different, so what you might like won’t exactly have the same effect on someone else. There are many things that the majority of people can get behind, though. So, for now, here are a few ways a parent can relax when they finally get a break from their kids:

Turn That Alarm Clock Off! 

If you’re spending a few days away from them because your parents (or any other kind of childminders) are taking care of them, then it’s only fair that you allow as much rest as possible – without going too far, of course. Turn the alarm off and really allow yourself to feel what it was like before those responsibilities hit you every single day. That respite is absolutely priceless. 

Date Night! 

If you’re together with your partner, then it’s only right that you two get to enjoy a little time together – just the pair of you. It’s not often you two get to enjoy your own company these days, so you should cherish these moments. Likewise, if you’re single, then there’s nothing wrong with going out for a lovely dinner (or similar) with someone you think is nice. You deserve to spend some time with the right company every now and again, don’t you?

Meditate 

When you have half an hour or so to chill out, it’s only fair that you should get to maximize it all. Meditation is a great way of stopping stress from hitting your mind and body. You could use certain CBD oils or CBD gummies to really relax your mind and body during the practices. Many apps are available, too, if you feel as though you need to follow along with certain instructions. 

Do Whatever You Wish! 

When it comes to self-care, you need to do what you love. You shouldn’t be caged into a certain lifestyle – you should do whatever you want (within reason, of course). When you have time away from the kids, you should spend some time engaging in your hobbies and passions. You may not get that time back.