10 hacks for common parenting struggles

Get your kids to eat their greens or limit their screen time with some tried-and-tested tips from parents

- Venessa Lee Senior Correspondent

To help their three children manage their screen time, Mr Muhammad Fakhrur Radzi Mohd Noor and Ms Siti Fatimah Surani (both seated on couch) use a timer that sounds an alarm when the time is up. ST PHOTO: ARIFFIN JAMAR

(ARIFFIN JAMAR)

Parents, are you fed up with your bright-eyed toddler demanding his 12th reading of The Gruffalo with voices, please at llpm? Are you resigned to your preschooler never knowingly eating anything with a leaf or your tween preferring to bond with her phone rather than her family?

Chin up, there is light at the end of the tunnel. Here are 10 creative hacks for common struggles that worked for some parents interviewed by The Straits Times.

Church worker Jerrold Hong and his wife, teacher Rachel Lim, both 36, have two children Zechariah, seven, and Esther, four.

Mr Hong says: “Sometimes when we have to be somewhere at a certain time, and the children are dragging their feet, I’ll say, ‘let’s race to the car’. Injecting some competition can make things a bit more joyful and get them moving faster from the lift to the carpark.

“We routinely play board games as a family. So, when I coax the kids through play, it’s already based on the playful bond we have cultivated with them regularly.”

Mr Hong says: “When they were younger and couldn't get to sleep, I thought about what makes me relax and massage came to mind.

“From the time they were babies around eight months old, I would gently stroke the bridge of their nose or eyelids. I would move on to lightly tapping their thumbs and near their ears, and eventually massaging their calves and softly pressing the tips of their fingers and their palm.

“When I was a child, soft tapping sounds were soothing for me. A core memory of mine was hearing my dad tapping an old-school Casio calculator. I was in my room and I remember feeling very relaxed.