Over the years, I’ve picked up quite a few tricks from ParentHacks.  The post that got me absolutely hooked was the one on the benefits of the humble “kitchen timer“!

After I read that post, I promptly ordered us a kitchen timer, and started using it actively for my preschooler.  Since then, I’ve come to observe how poor a little child’s sense of “time” really is, and how that can be a major cause of stress among parents and their children.

A simple and elegant solution is the ringing of the timer’s alarm, that helps young ones understand just when their “ten minutes” or “half an hour” is really up!  Now, I use the timer for a hundred different reasons, from buying myself a few minutes to complete a phone conversation, to limiting my child’s screen time.

If you’d like to give ParentHacks a spin, I suggest you look no further than the excellent summary by ZenHabits on Top 20 Parent Hacks: Tips for Organization, Kid Optimization and Happiness:

Parenting is equal parts skill and art. The skills can be learned well enough. But the art…now there’s the tricky part. We all have to find our own way with our children, and there are times when only another parent’s “I’ve been there” advice can point us in the right direction.

At Parent Hacks, we swap parenting tips we’ve stumbled on through experience (and sometimes dumb luck), often with a twist of the unconventional or the surprising solution. Parent Hacks is collecting all those hard-earned nuggets of wisdom in the hopes of building the ultimate “back fence” where parents can get real-world advice on the stuff that rarely makes it into the books and mags.

More often than not, the best solution is the simplest one, isn’t it?