This is the first in a new series of posts where every Wednesday, Iāll break down a list of five things on any topic either directly, indirectly or even vaguely related to parenting and raising kids. Weāre kicking off by looking at some helpful bits of tech that have helped me while raising my two kids.
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God knows how people parented before electricity, hot water and Disney+. Seriously, technology has made our lives as parents a hell of a lot easier, especially in the past 20 years or so. Parenting tech can give us peace of mind through things like video baby monitors, and it can help with the most repetitive of parenting tasks with products like bottle sterilisers and formula prep machines.
But the greatest role that tech has played in my parenting journey? Without a doubt, itās been to keep me āØSANE āØ
So without further ado, Hereās Five pieces of tech that really stepped up and solved seemingly insolvable issues for me during parenthood:
Toniebox
My three-year-old is one of those kids that has made mealtimes a rather arduous endeavour. Thereāll be once in a blue moon where sheāll eat most of whatās on her plate without encouragement or commentāwhich is what weāre meant to do, I know. Most of the time though, we have to resort to tactics like making up games with the food, delivering sweet treats after particularly controversial vegetables, andāin the most desperate of timesāthe iPad.
Being so heavily involved in her eating process is obviously unsustainableābut sheās just one of those kids that seems to want that kind of stimulation when eating. But we donāt want to stick her in front of a screen while she eats.
Enter the Toniebox.
Itās like a cube with a speaker in one side (and itās padded as well to protect against drops) thatās got a magnetic pad on top. On there, you place little characters that are sold separately. When you do, the box chirps into life and it either plays songs or tells stories based on the character. For example, we have a Moana figure that sings songs from the movie, then an abridged narration of the film.
Itās a really good alternative to screen-time, especially when they have figures for almost all of kids favourite shows, films and booksālike Paw Patrol, Disney princesses, the Gruffalo andāshuddersāPeppa Pig.
The existence of that last one will be a secret I take to my cold, cold grave.
Wireless earbuds
Iāve written a bit before about my struggles with the night-shifts with a newborn. Our second has actually been quite good in the night, settling into a regular rhythm of wakes and feeds at quite consistent times. Plus, once you go through the newborn night-time experience once, youāre a light sleeper for life.
The first time around, I hadnāt realised the incredible lulling power of the yoga ball, and so I was walking around the bedroom in the dead of night, rocking and swaying our baby to sleep for half an hour to an hour at a time. Not only was this murder for my knees and lower back, but god almighty was it boring. I toyed with using my wired headphones to listen to an audiobook or a podcast while I did it, but that meant having to hold my phone awkwardly in one hand or in my pocket (which, depending on your preferred pyjama configuration, you might not even have), and it meant draping a wire over the baby, which would inevitably get tangled in their arms when you did come to put them down to sleep. It wasnāt worth the fuss, but I really needed something to quell the boredom and monotony.
My awesome wife got me some AirPods Pro for my 30th birthday, when our daughter was around nine months old. In hindsight, I canāt believe I lasted a whole nine months without these things, because they truly do make those long night-shifts go so much quicker.
They donāt have to be fancy Apple ones, either. My wife picked up this set for herself for labour, and the sound quality on them is very good for the price.
Donāt make the same mistake I did by going nine months without theseāif youāre the one waking up with the baby every night, these are a godsend.
A quick note to say that the links in this article are Amazon affiliate linksāif you happened to buy a product through any of these, it helps support my writing without costing you anything anything extra.
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