“Latest hack you figured out”

As a new parent, there have been countless little hacks shared with me that really helped my life. The first one: “sometimes babies just need to cry it out” (within reason). Helped me drop the parent guilt of hearing your baby cry and not being able to fix it right away.

Latest one: if you are excited, they will likely be as well. (Experiences of potty training)

My situation has changed over the months, and the stint in which my partner was home while I was working was short, so this is based a bit on that and a bit on the following re-calibrations.

We try to divide tasks according to what we like doing. My husband likes doing the bath, while I like going out of the house with the kid. This means that those times are win-win: one parent is doing a fun task and the other is having some chill me-time. So we try to get as many of those tasks in as we can manage.

When he was home, I’d take my work commute to decompress and as soon as I was home I was in charge for at least an hour. Often, I’d be setting up a bath for the little one and my husband to enjoy. After the little one’s bath, my husband would take his own bath to chill. He would usually be responsible for dinner, but because he likes cooking and I could spend some time with the kid. After the kid was in bed, it was date time for an hour or so.

He’d have the late nights wake ups because I needed my sleep. I’d have the early morning wake ups, that were more rare.

It took a lot of communication to figure out a good balance that worked for everyone and that made us feel fulfilled. The second part became soon very important, we didn’t want to feel like all we did was changing diapers and cleaning up puke, so we needed to find things we could look forward to. Now that the kid is a bit older, it’s just fun to play with him.

Seems like the marshmallow problem. Even if she knows there is reward, she gets sidetracked.

Can you try doing your own “homework” while she has to? Like sitting down and reading a book next to her, to drop potential distractions. Maybe more actively redirecting her towards her homework?

All the best! Since you have a winner in the house, you might be able to decript what your wife does ;)

How old is she?

Kids mimic: has she seen you postponing your own “homework” until the last minute? Cooking, cleaning up and so on? In particular since you said that’s your genes at work.

Do you offer her a good moment to do her homework? Like a quiet time as soon as you both get home during which nothing exciting happens or can happen?

These are just suggestions from my own childhood, so feel free to discard everything, but I hope they can be useful to start some brainstorming!

New parent here. I used to think that if your kid was crying you were doing something wrong. I discovered that babies just cry. That’s the only way they can communicate, so it happens all the time. And there are different types of cry and not all of them are fixable. So now my baby at times cries in public.