Five Tips to Help You Stay Sane with a Toddler at Home

[Note: This post was originally posted July 29, 2020 on a previous blog of mine]

When Charlie was a little newborn, pretty much everyone told us that when he became a toddler, it would rock our world. And even though their insightful comments were perhaps well-meant pleasantries, the comments still irked me.

Maybe this is my too-confident-to-listen millennialism rearing its head, or perhaps it’s the fact that I don’t welcome discouragement into my life. Maybe it’s both. But one thing that’s sure is that unsolicited parental advice—as wholesome as the giver’s intentions may be—seems to usually be a discouraging perspective on parenthood that the givers mask as being “a realistic expectation of what parenthood is like.”

So, was there truth in their comments about toddlers? Of course.

If anything could define my goal perspective to have in life, it would have to be the idea of balance. I love this word. Balance implies structure, but also flexibility when that structure falls apart. It suggests learning self-control, but also forgiveness when you lose control. And when it comes to this new life of parenthood for us, finding a balance with everything has been a key goal of ours.

This means that when someone would say something like, “Oh, you just wait till he’s a toddler!” we still sought truth in that statement, despite our annoyance. And with that statement in particular, we knew that even though our attitude and perspective on parenthood would play a huge part in the outcome, there was no denying that managing a toddler would be work.

My son has been a toddler for almost four months now, and obviously there has been a learning curve to the art of staying sane at home with him. One of the positives I’ve been able to take from this global pandemic (which has my husband and me working from home) is that we have been able to be home with Charlie as he has transitioned into a toddler.

And while I’ve truly always admired parents who work from home, I have an even deeper respect for them right now.

While some parents claim to love working from home, and while others claim to hate it, I feel like most parents in our situation right now fall into the middle category of “I’m-just-trying-to-make-the-most-of-it.” These are the same people who, despite being happy about the extra family time, also struggle finding things to do with them all day that don’t include Disney + or iPad time. These are the people who are just trying to make this new life the new normal. Over the last few months, this has been me and I’ve learned much about being with a toddler all day while still working from home, keeping up the house, and also making the most of my time with said toddler. I think these can be applied to those of you with several children as well, but obviously I’m coming from the perspective of a mom with a brand spankin’ new toddler. Here are my top five most important tips for staying sane with a toddler at home:

1. The most obvious—have some kind of schedule!

I’ve been pretty vocal here about my views on schedules. I thrive on them, and believe babes do, too. But especially if you’re thinking of working from home, a schedule is probably the first thing you’ll want to think of in regards to your toddler.

When we first began working from home, one of the first things we did was figure out when we were going to get our work done. We were used to spending anywhere from six to nine hours away from home every day before COVID-19, with the help of daycare watching our baby nugget and our college’s cafeteria preparing our lunches everyday. We had nailed down our daily routine already—managing to get all of our work done during our weekdays, freeing up our nights and weekend so that we could spend them together. So when quarantine hit, we knew working from home was not going to be easy, especially for my husband, who had twice as much work as I did, being a student himself on top of all the rest.

But like everyone else, we played around with our schedules, tried different ones, took turns watching Charlie, and finally figured out that while we could get house chores done when he was awake, we got the most class work done when Charlie was asleep. So, we planned to do our grading and such during his naps or after his bedtime.

Having a schedule or routine like this enables you to plan for blocks of time where you are purposefully engaging with your child, too. So, while you’re planning for time to get work done, you can feel no shame in also planning time to simply focus on your child. For us, we’ve spent a solid hour almost every morning for the last few months playing with our son. After that, he takes a long morning nap during which we get work done.

2. Make a safe play zone

There are so many ways you can do this. It could be an entire room with a door, or it could be a gated-off area of your house. But either way, it needs to be a large space where there can be toys, books, flashcards, and whatever else your toddler likes. These items should be easily accessible to your child. This safe play zone also needs to be a safe place, meaning bookshelves should be mounted to the wall, wall outlets should be covered, and nothing dangerous should be able to fall on your child. Finally, this zone also needs to have a place for you to comfortably sit. The safe play zone should not be the place you drop off your child so you can go off and do other things (that comes later!); this is the place where you can go with your child to simply be with him and not worry about him hurting himself or breaking something.

For us, as much as we wanted our living room to be that, it isn’t. Our living room has breakable plant pots, a PS4 with wires hanging out, and a hundred other things that could hurt him or break. Thus, we use Charlie’s room as our safe play zone. This is where we spend about an hour each morning with him after breakfast. I can’t tell you how relaxing and enjoyable it is to watch him in there as compared to watching him in the living room!

Not having it in the living room also helps us not watch so much TV.

The best part about the safe play zone, though, is that I think it’s helped us strike a balance between teaching Charlie how to play independently and yet still showing him that he can come to us for things. Most mornings, after Charlie has breakfast, my husband and I will bring our coffee mugs into his room and just sit with him in there as he plays. We chat about what we’re going to do that day, what’s for dinner, what’s on the news. We also often FaceTime with family there, too. And yeah, it’s great having a place where we don’t have to hover over him the entire time.

3. Implement a "quiet time"

I can’t say this was my idea. My sister-in-law did this with her eldest son when he was a toddler, and the idea has always stuck with me.

I define quiet time as basically that second nap babies drop off by the time they become toddlers, minus the sleeping. When toddlers transition from two naps down to one, it’s often messy. What we’ve done is we’ve kept both naptimes, but that second nap is basically just a quiet time right now: we put Charlie down, throw one or two stuffed animals into his crib, turn off the lights, and close his door. And 90% of the time, he doesn’t fall asleep during the 1-2 hours he is in there. Instead, he talks to himself, sings fragments of songs, and plays with his stuffed animals. 10% of the time he does actually fall asleep.

The benefits of implementing this quiet time is 1) that he gets to decide if he needs the rest or not, and 2) that we get some quiet time in the house to do other things we need to do.

I can’t say this will work for everyone, obviously, but I think it works so well for us because he’s used to being in his room by himself when he sleeps. So there was no transition period for us, where we had to train him to be okay staying there for a couple hours. I can confidently say that we will be doing this again whenever we have another kid.

4. Invest in a big playpen

While having a good schedule and safe play zone are super helpful when it comes to managing your toddler, sometimes you might find yourself with more work to do than your usual schedule allows—work that can’t be done in the safe play zone. Having a big playpen can really help with this.

Some parents use Pack-n-Plays (these seem a little small, but I have a friend who swore by hers!), and some moms just gate off part of their living area. That can work super well if you’re confident that area is safe for your little one to roam around without your hovering. If not, a large portable playpen might be your next best bet. This is the one we bought.

We looked around for a large one that we could bring outside and that had a removable canopy. We don’t always bring it outside so it stays in most days. We have had it set up since Charlie was about seven months old and have somewhat trained him to spend time in there without too much trouble. When he was really little, we just laid him in there with his baby gym. When he could sit up, we started putting toys in there. When he began crawling, we began using it a bit more often, and sometimes if he would cry, we would wait it out for a couple minutes to see if he would calm down before taking him out. Often, he would become distracted with one of the toys in there and forget he was upset about being put in.

The length of how long your playpen time should be will vary, of course, but it isn’t a bad idea to implement a playpen time directly into your schedule. Having the routine of playpen time every day will undoubtedly make it a quicker adjustment for everyone. For us, we typically only use the playpen for the times we are both doing something, and try our best not to use it as “punishment” since we don’t want him associating that with the playpen.

Another tip for using the playpen is to rotate the toys in there often. This can really help your toddler stay in there for longer periods. And though I wouldn’t recommend this practice per se, we have sometimes handed Charlie a cracker or two before putting him in the playpen, kind of as bait to get him in there.

For us, it was really important that we didn’t use the playpen excessively or for very long periods of time. Our reasons for that was 1) we didn’t want to become lazy which we both tend to be and 2) we didn’t want Charlie to become bored of it.

5) A super simple one—keeping doors closed.

Okay, okay, I know this might not apply to those of you with taller toddlers or even with lever handles for doorknobs! But a key to keeping sane for us has been shutting ALL doors to the rooms Charles shouldn’t go into. Before I put Charlie down to play in the living room, I make sure all the doors except the one to his room are closed. This way, he can’t get into too much trouble if he wanders off without my knowledge!

And there you have it. Just five little things that have helped me these past four months. I hope they help you too!

Grace