These Parents Ditched Expert Advice and Created Their Own Rules

Like many other kids, when Mike Morrison’s children wake up, they turn on the TV. But unlike other families, they’re promoted through their morning routine by pre-recorded messages he sets up in their Google Home. Upstairs, the kids hear their Dad’s voice telling them to turn the TV off and get breakfast. Downstairs, their Dad is triaging his work emails, getting ready for the day or, sometimes, sleeping.

A short time after that, another message tells the kids to get dressed, which the nine-year-old does by himself and the five-year-old does with his older sibling’s help. A slightly more stern message follows, reminding them to brush their teeth, pee, and put their lunches in their bags.

“If all goes well, I can walk up the stairs, and they’re ready to go,” says Morrison. “Most days, I don’t interact with them for more than a minute until we walk out the door.”

When he set it up, Morrison was tired of arguing in the mornings. He guessed his kids wouldn’t mind listening to the Google Home, as he’s been using it as a PA system to give them directions—like not opening the door when the doorbell rang and he was on a work call. He was right. He said it’s removed the fighting, and he suspects his oldest appreciated the autonomy. Ninety-five percent of the time, he says, it works.

Think beyond parenting books

Heather Bell, a mother of two in Toronto, also found a way to use technology to her advantage. She knew it was important for her kids to know her phone number, but attempts to have them memorize it by telling them and having them repeat it back failed. So she made it the password to the family's iPad. It worked almost immediately.

Outsourcing morning nagging to a robot or using your phone number as the key to screen time isn’t an idea you’re likely to hear in the parenting advice we’re all inundated with through social media, books and well-meaning family and friends.

But that might be why it’s more likely to work—because, unlike the one-size-fits-millions tips, it came with the personal insights that come from a parent who knows their kid well.

Dayna Abraham, parenting expert and author of Calm The Chaos, says that today’s parents are “lost in the shoulds,” suffering from unrealistic expectations set by watching social media. She teaches them to ground themselves in their own values and realistic expectations and then try things that might work.

Stephen Camarata, author of The Intuitive Parent and a child development specialist at Vanderbilt University says, “It’s good to get information and make informed decisions, but the thing that I really would hope parents would do is just step back and say, 'Given my experience, I know my child, does this make sense?'”

Don't be afraid to get creative

A podcast called One Bad Mother has been celebrating this parent-driven brilliance for a decade in its "Genius" segment, where listeners call in with their “genius moments”. They range from the slightly disturbing—like the mother who, not wanting to wake her sleeping children in the car, pulled over and peed into a diaper—to the inspired.

“We’ve had people call in with great geniuses on getting out the door, like ‘we’re going to make it a timed race,’” host Biz Ellis says. “I do this with my kids all the time, where I’m like, ‘I can’t, I’m too slow, there’s no way I can get my shoes on.’” And of course, the kids win the race but Ellis is the real winner.

Some parents have said that when their toddlers wouldn’t eat, they cut up the food, put it on toothpicks and pretended to have a fancy cocktail party; others that they figured out that the answer to the stress of finger painting with young kids was to do it in the bath.

Ellis says her Dad used small bribes when she was growing up, which she uses now when parenting her kids. “I once bet my kid 25 cents that he didn’t have to pee, and then he was like,' Oh yeah, well watch this,'” she says, laughing. “Bribery always works, especially when kids are too young to really understand money.”

Trust your instincts

Camarata says that often what parents do instinctively, like reading books to their kids and talking with them about what’s happening in the story, is better for their children’s development than what’s sold to them, like early phonics programs.

Parents who are attuned to their children—being aware of their child’s needs and being able to respond to them—get essential information from that connection that goes far beyond parenting hacks, he says. “Parents need to really attune themselves to their child because their child is actually going to emit signals about what they need in that moment.”

“Parent and child are coupled,” he says, “And if the parents step back, their child is going to guide them through the process.”

Ellis applies her do-what-works ethos to bigger decisions, too. When swimming lessons weren’t working for her neurodivergent 10-year-old, she started teaching him herself.

She echoes Camarata’s thoughts about parents trusting themselves. “Experts can be helpful, but everybody’s house is very different; everybody’s child is very different,” she says. “Our culture isn’t wired to support you trusting your own instincts, but you actually know your kid best.”