10 Ways To Improve Family Life

This post is supported by Hiya Health, a 100% made-for-kids vitamin brand developed with pediatricians and nutritionists. Save 50% on your first order at hiyahealth.com and get a FREE sunscreen with the code SUMMERSUN.1. A family calendarA few months ago, I was sent a Hearth Display family calendar*, with the promise that this was about to transform all of our lives. (The 2026 starter pack must be an ADHD diagnosis and a digital calendar, but I digress.) Transform our lives, it did not – at least, not really – but it did make a massive difference in terms of having the children do their chores without being asked, begged, cajoled, multiple times. There’s something in taking out the us of it all; sadly, I do suspect they’re more likely to do things when instructed by a piece of tech than when instructed by a parental figure. Still, who cares?! They’re actually doing the chores we used to have to beg them to do (even then, with a 50/50 success rate), as we assigned each one a points value within the calendar, points they can then “cash in” for things they want (we set up the rewards shelf to include things like Robux, McDonald’s, a trip to their favourite sushi restaurant, $20 to spend at the bookshop etc…), and aside from the fact that I truly dread the day they try to cash all of their points in, it’s been a great success.Anchor Baby is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.2. White noise at nightI used to be a bit of a white noise skeptic, thinking it just another crutch to prevent one’s children from sleeping independently, but now that I have four of them, each of whom goes to bed at a different time and, crucially, is constitutionally unable (or unwilling?!) to be quiet when their younger sibling is abed, I have found our white noise machines absolutely invaluable. The two littlest children have Hatch sound machines in their rooms; Atlas’ is the new Hatch Baby*, which has sleep stories (narrated by the moon, or a cat, his two favourites) while Roman has the rest of us drowned out by the Hatch Rest*, both of which have light as well as sound features. As for the rest of us, the Calm app is my new obsession (having had a lifetime membership for about five years now, I’ve just started using it). I like to listen to rain on a window at night time, or thunderstorm sounds, although I’m currently staying with my sister, and the thunder effect had the unfortunate result of rousing her from her bed in the middle of the night to look out at the lightning which was, obviously, nowhere to be seen. So you can infer: it’s very realistic.3. Sowing seeds in the minds of the older childrenThere’s nothing more relaxing – for me, you understand – than when some (or all) of my children have been plucked from my loving arms and taken out of the house, so that I may watch my shows or listen to my music or otherwise enjoy my house without being asked to make food or wash clothes or find dinosaurs, missing among the 300 other dinosaurs in the dinosaur bin. This past week, I suggested to our older boys that they might want to go to see the new Spider-Man movie. “I’m sure your Dad would love to take you,” said I, cunningly, knowing that, once a seed has been sown, it will take root and flourish, never to be forgotten or neglected, at least not until the task has been completed. And so, off to the cinema they went (without me). I’m already thinking of next week’s seed. 4. Bedtime vitaminsFor a while there, we’d gone down the melatonin gummy route with the kids in an attempt to get them to bed at bedtime, rather than 90 minutes past bedtime, when each and every avenue of distraction had been exhausted. But the jury is most firmly out on the long-term safety of giving melatonin to children, so when Hiya Health sent us their Bedtime Essentials* I was only delighted to make the switch. I’m not sure if it’s a placebo effect – I firmly believe children to be disgustingly impressionable, not unlike myself – or if the combination of magnesium and chamomile is really sending them off to sleep, but I’ve learned not to question it when things work, and this works.I’ve also managed to get two of our kids, including Atlas, whose diet is basically cheese, meaning he’s the one who most needs greens, to take daily “chocolate shakes” in the form of the Daily Greens + Superfoods* powder, which is alleviating a lot of my guilt over his diet.5. Forcing the children to choose their clothes the night beforeIn the moment of forcing them to do this – “go on, get your clothes out, no, not in the morning, right now please, yes, right now” – this is no fun, and has caused more than one argument. But we’re finally getting to a place of acceptance, and the way the morning is far less stressful now… This is probably, actually, my top tip to improve family life and reduce stress in the mornings, already a stressful time trying to get everyone out the door on time and with everything they need.6. Childcare!!!Okay, this might be obvious, but taking a break from having childcare – we moved house in December and I decided to just see how we did if I was the full-time stay-at-home parent alongside having a pretty much full-time job and guess what?! WE DIDN’T DO GREAT – showed me just how important it is for me to be able to leave the house without my children every now and then. From this week on, with Atlas starting back at school, we’ll have full-time childcare, but for the last few weeks, we enlisted the help of our older boys’ Mum to mind the boys three days a week, and we also got their granddad to come over one morning a week and when I tell you I felt like I could finally breathe again, I’m ot exaggerating. If you can at all, please, enlist a friend or family member to help you out, even if all they can manage is an hour a week. Because we all deserve to have that time to breathe or shower or stare at our phones without having to answer endless questions or listen to a (tiny, adorable, adored) voice asking “Mom? Mammy? Mam? Mum?” over and over again. 7. Physical activity (for the children okay; leave me alone!!!)A few months before we moved house, our trampoline fell afoul of a heavy gust of wind, collided with our fence and ended up in our neighborhood pond. It was eventually retrieved with the help of a neighbour, some ratchet straps and Brandin’s truck, but one of the legs was bent, meaning it took us a while after we moved to order the new leg and reassemble it. And when I tell you I’m now raging at us for the delay, I’m not over-egging it. I know people are very divided about trampolines, and concerned about the injury risk – and while that is a very real concern (although apparently we did choose the world’s safest trampoline), I feel like, if we ran a cost-benefit analysis, we’d still come out on the pro side. Our kids will honestly spend hours jumping around outside on the trampoline – the older boys practice flips and WWE moves (questionable), while the littles run around and practice landing on their bums and balancing on one leg (also questionable) and it’s all so cute and wholesome! Not a screen in sight! 8. Making friends with the neighboursAnother wholesome activity – and, granted, not one that’s available to everyone (my childhood was spent bemoaning my parents’ decision to buy a house in the middle of nowhere, when all I wanted was to live in an estate where I could bazz around with my mates) – befriending our next door neighbours is one of the best things we’ve done. Along with the trampoline, seeing the neighbour’s son outside is the number one best way to get Atlas up off the couch and outside in the fresh air, and seeing them play in the sandpit or at the water table or with the myriad outdoor toys in ours or our neighbours’ garages is just the cutest thing. 9. Bulk buying snacksIf there’s one phrase guaranteed to send me into a fit of rage, it is “there’s nothing to eeeeeat”, said, almost always, by a child who is standing, at that second, in front of an array of things they could, in fact, be eating. It’s almost as irritating to me as “I’m bored”, the ultimate non-problem (oh, to be bored! what a luxury!).Anyway, the only way I’ve managed to solve this – and of course I’ll still hear that dreaded phrase every once in a while – is by bulk buying snacks in Costco and telling them that they can have one snack of their choice between each meal. (Otherwise, they can have fruit, cheese or yogurt, because snacks are expensive and we’re not made of money.)Current favourites include Nutella snack packs (although, annoyingly, two of our children like the breadsticks and the other will only eat the pretzels, while Roman can’t see anyone eating a Nutella snack pack or he loses his mind entirely and we can’t just give him one because he ends up with Nutella everywhere), apple sauce packets and veggie straws (ranch flavoured, so gross).10. Searching “Nuuly” on AnthropologieOkay, this is only stress-relieving for me, but as the household manager (unwilling) and most important member of the household (clearly), being able to buy otherwise expensive clothes at a mega discount relieves some of my own stress, okay?! Anyway, I recently discovered, thanks to my friend L, that if you search “Nuuly” on Anthropologie.com*, you find previously-rented items at a major discount (e.g. Citizens of Humanity jeans reduced from $260 to $60). I can’t guarantee how great the condition of the pieces will be (they’re esentially pre-owned / pre-worn), but at that hefty a discount*, can you really complain?!Thanks for reading Anchor Baby! This post is public so feel free to share it.This post is supported by Hiya Health, a 100% made-for-kids vitamin brand developed with pediatricians and nutritionists. Save 50% on your first order at hiyahealth.com and get a FREE sunscreen with the code SUMMERSUN.*These are affiliate links. 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