"I Don’t Know How You Do It"
The mechanics behind parents who look like they have it together
My mom always told me not to compare my insides to someone else’s outsides. There is no version of family life where it always goes smoothly, but there are a hundred small mechanical tricks that make the day go a little less wrong.
These tips below come from the parents who, on the outside, appear to have it dialed – the ones who arrive at school pickup on time, with the right snack, in a shirt that doesn’t have yogurt on it. Pressed for the secret, they pointed to small mechanics:
Let Alexa be the bad guy. Set the smart speaker to say “good morning, time to get ready” at 7:00, weather report at 7:15, “shoes on” at 7:30. The kids argue with you, but they don’t (usually) argue with Alexa.
Make grocery pick up “you” time. The trick isn’t grocery pickup. It’s the 45 minutes between when you place the order and when you have to be at the curb. Drive halfway. Park somewhere nobody can see you. Coffee, podcast, sit. You converted an errand into 30 minutes of solo time without moving anything else on your calendar.
Use IKEA’s free hour of childcare. Småland is free, 60 minutes, ages four and up at most U.S. locations. Drop the kid, sit in the lobby (couches, outlets, $1 cinnamon bun), and get more done than you have all week. There is one near you. The fact that they let you do this is the most under-appreciated piece of consumer infrastructure in the country.
AirTag the lovey. Buy a backup. The stuffed animal they cannot sleep without will eventually get left at a friend’s house, in a hotel, or in the seat pocket of an airplane. AirTag the original. Buy the same one again on eBay – same color, same year if you can find it – and rotate them every few months, so when the day comes, the backup doesn’t look suspiciously cleaner than the original.
Have a gift drawer. This is by no means novel, but buy six generic kid birthday presents in January. $15–25 each. LEGO sets, art kits, slime, a good bath bomb. That cabinet has saved me too many times to count.
Kids walk through TSA PreCheck for free. If you have PreCheck, kids under 13 piggyback on your boarding pass through the same line. They don’t need their own and they don’t pay anything.
Schedule a standing well-visit week. Pick one week of the year. For me it’s the first week of August. That’s when the kids get their physicals, the dog gets a shot, and the car gets serviced. I set it as a recurring calendar invite and book the next one while I’m in the office.
None of these are gonna change your life, but they might save you seven minutes on a day that you really needed those seven minutes. What are your tricks?!