Parenting

The process of divorce and separation can be very trying and difficult for anybody going through one, particularly if it involves a custody battle for your children. In these difficult times, people can often act and react irrationally due to the high emotions, however, this can be detrimental to your child custody case. Throughout the process, the court and social services will be evaluating your behaviour and any decisions will be made accordingly. Here are some of the most common mistakes that fathers make during child custody battles, which could have an effect on your case. 

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Being sure to get enough water is an important aspect of maintaining good health. As an adult, you likely know just how hard it can be to make sure you drink enough water yourself.

Getting kids to drink water is all the more challenging, but an important habit to build from early on. Luckily, there are a few tricks to help get your kids to pick water over juice every time.

1. Choose the Right Water Bottle

It’s likely your child already has their designated favorites in your kitchen. Be it their favorite plate with a superhero on it or a cup with a cool design, dishes for kids have bright designs for a reason: kids use them more.

Picking out a water bottle for your child with a striking design is an easy way to entice them into using it all the more often.

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Guest content from Lucy Wolfe, leading Sleep Consultant, Founder of Sleep Matters, author of The Baby Sleep Solution and expert at The Baby Show

1. Make a plan 

Approach achieving a better sleep as you would any lifestyle change or adjustment. Understand that it will take time. It can help to write out both your end goal and intermediate goals, but more importantly how you intend to get there.

Your end goal may be to sleep in their cot, in their own room and through the night, if age appropriate. But maybe begin with getting them used to their cot in their own room and reducing the current wakes from 6 to 3. Break your goals down to achievable bite-sized portions.

Also commits to writing your plan. Write in the start date, the feeding and sleeping routine that you intend to follow, and the approach that you will use. Jot down an idea of the bedtime routine process, which night you will start and which parent does what.

It’s important to understand that progress will not be linear, and it may get worse before it gets better, but that it’s all learning. If you continue to journal and write a sleep diary then you will be able to clearly identify the improvements you make week on week. It takes 3-4 weeks plus to establish your sleeping patterns. During this time, be kind and compassionate to yourself and each other.

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If the days are flying by and you never feel like you get enough done, then you might want to make a few adjustments to improve how you use your time. Don’t worry that doesn’t mean that you need to give up the activities you love doing. Instead, it means that you have to be smarter about time-management! If you’re not sure where to start, these ten tips will be a great start for you.

1. Prep the Night Beforehand

If tomorrow has a lot of appointments, then why not save yourself a hurried morning by spending a half-hour tonight preparing for what is to come? For example, you can make the coffee ahead of time.

Another idea is to lay out the kids’ clothes the night before (as well as your own outfit for the office or home). And give them a bath in the evening, so this is one less thing to do in the morning.

Also, make lunches for the children the previous evening. Just don’t forget to grab them from the fridge before heading out the door in the morning!

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Right now, health is at the forefront of all of our minds. We all want to do what we can to keep our homes clean and our children as safe as possible, so Spares2You have asked me for the best tips on disinfecting children’s toys.

Cleaning children’s toys is not always a straight forward matter. There are so many toys, each with different types of materials from wood, to plush teddy bears, fabric toys, bath toys or toys with batteries which can’t be immersed into water… so how do we handle these, and how often do you need to clean your child’s toys in the first place?

Bath toys 

Bath toys are great fun, but if you’re not careful you might start to spot some mould building up in these toys – particularly the squeezy water squirter variety! One way to get around this issue before it even begins, is to seal holes in your bath toys shut using a hot glue gun. Some bath toys are also made specially with no holes nowadays, to help combat this common bath toy cleaning issue.

Regardless of the holes, bath toys are still an area which need extra care due to the possibilities of mould. You may want to check the bath toy storage caddies too, and regularly clean these out. After your baby or child has finished their bath, it’s best to take out all of the toys and dry them, squeezing out any water that has seeped inside any of the toys, before putting them away.

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By: Maryam Ahmed

Being the mother of an overly active 3-year old, I have much to whine about. Starting right with the complaining, I miss the days when I could hide under the covers, completing an entire season of Grey’s Anatomy in 3 days or not being able to put down Lord of the Rings since I just had to find out what mischief Gollum was up to next. Alas… those were the days, the end of an era as marked by September 21st, 2016 or the birth of my boy. 

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Many parents are wondering how they’re going to keep their kids busy at home. Screen time doesn’t have to create conflict at home. Programming is a valuable skill, and some sites make it uniquely easy to learn, say those at Construct.net. Let’s explore some of the unique benefits children experience when they learn to code.

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By Maryam Ahmad

With the schools suspended, indefinitely for many kids, offices adjusted to online operation and the unprecedented panic created around the globe, little do we think about the effect of the situation on the brains of our little ones. 

Being the mother of a three-year-old, I understand how difficult it can be to implement social distancing on a child of his age. While he understands absolutely nothing about what the world is fighting against, the tantrums are heightening, and even the sleeping and eating routines are suffering as a result. So if you’re experiencing the same problems with your toddler or preschooler, know that you’re not alone in this. 

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Igglepiggle, Upsy Daisy and Makka Pakka are an important part of bedtime rituals for many preschoolers across the UK. As the clocks prepare to spring forward on Sunday 29^th March, In the Night Garden is once again teaming up with renowned sleep expert Mandy Gurney from the Millpond Children’s Sleep Clinic to provide valuable tips that will help parents and carers manage the upcoming time change with their little ones.

Together with Mandy, In the Night Garden has created a short quiz to determine a child’s chronotype which describes the time of day they feel most alert and energetic – whether they are a morning lark a night owl, or somewhere between the two. Based on each of these three chronotypes, there will be tailored, easy-to-follow tips for parents and careers to help prepare their children for the clock change and ensure a good night’s sleep all round.

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