These Parents Ditch Expert Advice and Make Their Own Rules

Bribes, Bets, and Smart Speaker Announcements: Unconventional Strategies That Work for These Families

Like many other kids, Mike Morrison’s children turn on the TV after waking up. But unlike other families, they follow a morning routine set up through pre-recorded messages in his Google Home. Upstairs, the kids hear their dad’s voice telling them to turn off the TV and come downstairs for breakfast. Meanwhile, dad is downstairs organizing work emails and preparing for the day, sometimes even still in bed.

Soon after, another message reminds the kids to get dressed. The nine-year-old handles it on his own, while the five-year-old gets help from older siblings. Then comes a slightly stricter message reminding them to brush their teeth, use the bathroom, and pack their lunch.

“If everything goes well, I can walk upstairs and they’re ready,” Morrison says. “Most of the time, my interaction with them takes less than a minute until we walk out the door.”

After setting up Google Home, Morrison grew tired of the daily morning struggles. He figured his kids wouldn’t mind hearing Google Home give them instructions, especially since he had been using it as a broadcasting system to give them directions — like telling them not to answer the door when the doorbell rings while he’s on a work call. He was right. He says it eliminates arguments, and he suspects his oldest child enjoys the autonomy. He says it works about 95% of the time.

Going Beyond Parenting Books

Heather Bell, a mother of two from Toronto, also found a way to leverage technology for her benefit. She knew it was important for her kids to remember her phone number, but after trying to get them to repeat it and failing, she set the number as the password for the family’s iPad. This method worked almost instantly.

Outsourcing the morning nagging to a robot or using your phone number as a screen time key isn’t the kind of advice you’ll hear in parenting books, from social media, or from well-meaning family and friends. But that might be exactly why it works: it comes from parents who deeply understand their kids and are using personal insights.

Parenting expert and author of Calm the Chaos Dayna Abraham says today’s parents are “lost in the shoulds” and often have unrealistic expectations of their kids because of social media. She teaches parents to ground themselves in their own values and realistic expectations and then try out what might work.

Stephen Camarata, author of Intuitive Parenting and a child development expert at Vanderbilt University, says, “Gathering information and making informed decisions is great, but what I really want parents to do is take a step back and think, ‘Based on my experience, I know my child, does this make sense?’”

Don’t Be Afraid to Get Creative

For the past ten years, a podcast called Bad Moms has been celebrating these kinds of parenting “genius” moments, where listeners call in to share their creative parenting hacks. Some moments are unsettling — like the mom who parked her car on the side of the road to avoid waking her sleeping child and ended up urinating in a diaper — while others are uplifting.

“We’ve gotten some brilliant calls, like, ‘We’re going to have a race!’” says host Biz Ellis. “I often do that with my kids and think, ‘I can’t do this, I’m too slow, I can’t even put my shoes on.’” Of course, the kids won the race, but Ellis was the real winner.

Some parents say when their kids refuse to eat, they cut the food into tiny pieces and skewer them on toothpicks, pretending to host a fancy cocktail party. Others find that allowing small children to finger-paint while in the bath helps relieve stress.

Ellis says that when she was a child, her father would bribe her with small tricks. Now, she does the same with her own kids. “One time, I bet my child 25 cents that he wouldn’t need to use the bathroom, and he said, ‘Okay, fine, look at this,’” she laughs. “Bribery always works, especially when the kid is too young to understand money.”

Trust Your Intuition

Camarata says parents who instinctively read to their children or discuss story plots often do more for their kids’ development than early phonics programs pushed by schools.

He explains that parents who stay closely connected with their children — understanding their needs and responding — gain valuable insights far beyond any parenting tips. “Parents need to stay truly connected to their kids, because the kids will send signals about what they need at that moment,” he says.

“Parents and kids are closely connected,” he continues. “If parents take a step back, their kids will guide them through the whole process.”

Ellis also applies this “doing what works” philosophy to bigger decisions. When swimming lessons didn’t work for her 10-year-old with neurodivergence, she began teaching him herself.

She agrees with Camarata on the importance of trusting one’s own instincts. “Experts can help, but every family is different, every child is different,” she says. “Our culture doesn’t support you trusting your own intuition, but you actually know your child best.”