Welcome to the Parenting Roundabout podcast for the week of June twenty six, twenty twenty three. I'm Catherine Aleko and I'm here with Nicole Ridicts, Hello and Terry Morrow. Hello. Every week we chat about what parents are talking, complaining, and obsessing about right now. This week we're complaining about people asking for money, and we're obsessing about family obligations. We also take a couple
of breaks for an entertainment discussion and a recommendation roundup. Today we're talking about entertaining an energetic toddler, something that we haven't done in a while. Oh, I was very glad we don't have to do that anymore. Please glab your aunts. Yeah. So, our favorite listener, our most loyal listener, Mike asked us for some advice for a friend. He says, I have an online friend with a two year old who seems to have boundless energy.
Needless to say, my friend doesn't have that any advice on how to either calm her otherly adorable child down or keep her own energy up. Oh, this is hard. It makes me tired just hearing that. Man. I remember when my daughter was a baby, like younger than two, but so like but probably walking. So like between one and two. She used to get up so early, and like there was nothing we could do to you know, you try putting them to bed earlier, you try putting them
to bed later, you try changing the nap, but nothing worked. She would always get up at like five, and we, you know, we didn't need to be up, so we sort of created a safe place in the living room, like where we we gave using like furniture and gates and whatever, we enabled a play space and then one of us adults would like
doze on the couch. Yeah, she was just like trundling around in this in this space, and and yes, we would have the TV on to whatever was showing on on BBS kids, you know, and we'd be like, well, I don't remember seeing Bear in the Big Blue House, so I must have been asleep for that half hour. Like that's how we would like keep track of time. So that that was one thing that worked for a specific like situation, you know, Yeah, that's a good idea.
And I also think like any anytime you can get a kid outdoors, uh huh usually helps, right, you know, yeah, Like and you got to watch him twice as hard though, well, this is true, but hopefully they'll use up twice the energy. My son ran around our backyard and ran right in front of where his sister was swinging and got a foot in
the face. So cool. You can't have to spit that or you you just you see it happening, and it's like, no, too late, yea, honey, stop gravity so that you don't swing down when your brother's passing in front, will you? Oh man, you just can't do anything but watch that happen. Yeah. Right. And as much as I as much as I did not like swimming lessons, you knew the kids were going to sleep well, oh, or going back to day, going to the Yeah, but is it worth it? I don't know. Not the beach,
maybe the pool, not the beach, yeah, sand everywhere. We would just use videos back in the day or coloring or but does that that doesn't work? And the kid is like bouncing off the wall. That's like any physical Yeah, you know a little trampoline can yeah, land trampoline, taking them to like an indoor place base, like a children's museum or you know the mall. Yeah, I mean arm all had one of those like
things with like that weirdly like soft like climbing structures. What they mean, they have like a big clear of like boone on them and just don't think too much about how many other people have touched it and just just scrub their hands after. Like the ball pit at the McDonald's play space. Yes, I think I've mentioned here before that I used to go to places with ball pits and just sit there for a few hours of the book and a single soda and let my son pla and the ballpit. Ye, and Chuck E
Cheese was another place. You have chucky cheese everywhere? Do you guys have chuck e Cheese? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, So we would go there and I would I don't know if I would even have lunch or if I would just buy a cup of coffee and let my son just play in the pits and stuff. If you go off times, I don't think they care, just because that was the way he could burn a lot of stuff. And we did finally have a ball pit at home for a while, so
that was that was good. But yeah, you don't want to think, even if you'd only have one kid using it, if it's a kid of diapers, you don't want to think too hard about it. No, don't, definitely don't think about it. Yeah, but you know we did. We would have we had the ballpit in a space that had a couch in a TV and we would do as you did. He could play in the
ballpit and I would watch something or catch a nap. Yeah, but you do definitely have to have some containment, yeah, yeah, as any way to like whether it's a single room or a part of a room or a part of outdoors or whatever where you can kind of let them have some freedom, right so that, you know, if they're a climber, like, can you have a little kid size climbing structure or whatever so that so that they can do the thing that their body needs to do right, but just
provide like a safe place for them to do it, um where you don't have to be on top of it at all times. Yeah, yeah, that's it's easy. I kind of just though too to also, um, like what kinds of activities would like, say, if you were exhausted yourself and your child, you know, bouncing off the walls, what kind of calming down right like I you know, yeah, running around and playing would definitely do that, but right, like kind of immediate strategy, could you
use to kind of right the horizontal parenting strategy? Drugging them would be bad, right, Yes, on a regular basis, once in a while we can bring out the benadryl, but screens often do that though. The hypnotic
effect of screens. We spent a lot of time when my kids were a little on our bed in my husband's and eye bedroom, my bedroom and just watching videos and holding onto them to various degrees that they would allow themselves to behold while we all just sort of lulled into a semiconscious state right in front of Barney um. And I'm probably supposed to be judging myself for that, but I do not. We needed it, Yeah, we needed the bonding, and we needed the downtime. And if I had to hypnotize them with
audio visual um items, I was going to do that. Yeah, right, So don't be ashamed. If you need the screen, use the screen. Yeah, not twenty four seven, but as needed for mom to be able to keep going right. And also, I speaking of places you can take the kids, your library. You know, it's way more than books. There's tons of you know, most libraries, most children's departments have lots and lots of toys, and they do have like audio books and videos that
you can take out. They have like play kits where it's toys that kind of go with the book. Like I saw one yesterday that was so cute. It was a children's book about popsicles, and it came with three different sets of like learning toys that went with it. Like there was popsicle matching cards. There were, um, you know how you have those those popsicles
that are like you break them in half and there's two sticks. So they had those plastic like you know, plastic ones where it had the capital letter on one half and the lowercase letter on the other half, so you could match them and match, you know, and the colors match too, so you were, you know, you didn't have to know the kid didn't have
to know the letter to figure it out. And then there was numbers one where you had like a popsicle and then it had like a like a coating, like a sleeve kind of that went on top of it, like picture like a dipped popsicle, right, And so then you had to match the numbers. So the inside piece had a number one, and then there was one outside that had a number one and anyway, a long story show. This is available at my local library. So check that out, just in
terms of a place to go with your kid. Plus you can check that stuff out and bring it home and then it's new and exciting for your child. Yeah, definitely hit up that library. And also then they have like you know, sing alongs and all that kind of stuff where the kid can be doing that while you're sitting in a chair taking a little break. I had this one friend and she was so against taking her kid to the library
because she didn't like them touching all the germs on the books. And I just put such a damper on Like after she told me that, I was I didn't stop going, but I was, why did you have to tell me that, because you know it just was like yeah, yeah, like you knew it, but you hadn't stopped to really think about it to put it in your brain. Yeah yeah, I was like, oh man, right, I took my kids there a lot there. Yeah, yeah, I mean, other than keeping your kid at home, how do you keep
them from going out and touching Germany things? And really even in my home probably the library is less Germany. So you know this is what makes gets strong, right, This is what helps them build up good immunity, exposure to a lot of different coins of Jerts. Go on, honey, go put that book in your mouth. It'll be fine. Yeah, it was strange finding a young person if there are no siblings. If there's like a teenager or something who wants some money and does have closer to boundless energy,
that's a great idea. Yeah, that's sometimes a good way to just you know, pay them whatever they want. Run your child into exhaustion, or a play group so that yes, kids can play and the moms can commiserate and her the parents. It doesn't have to be a mom. One of the towns I lived in at one point they had a big waiting pool, so the child didn't you know, you didn't actually have to get in with your kids like a splash Yeah, it was, well, it was it
was more than a splash pad. It was actually okay, yeah, it was probably like a foot deep and then um and then I mean we would take the kids up there and we would just all the mums of meat up there and that was guaranteed. That was a guaranteed like three hour nap day had events I think if I had had an iPad back then, things, Yeah, as we have discussed and in this place, any long taking project
or hobby that your child enjoys. I mean two years old is maybe too young, but legos or beads or I mean my son lined up cars a lot, which means something completely different, but still that it was an active little guy. But he could lay down in his room on his rug and line up cars for quite some time. So you know, look around for things that your kid likes to do and see if you can find a way
to allow them to do it in a contained space. And you know, they may be happy doing the same thing for a long period of time if it's something they're sort of into. What I've seen a lot lately on just you know, online social media, our mums making like these sensory boards or sensory bags. Have you seen those, Yeah, where they like, you'll get a pegboard and they'll put all kinds of well that's cool there for the child to like bang and yeah, turn key like locks and um, those
are idea, it's a very cool idea. I would have told you could easily make one, yeah, and a bin you know, yeah, Well the bin. When I in my day, the thing to do was a rice bin and you make a big bin or rice and you parry things in it and the kid will dig down to get the things, and you know what you end up afterwards is over the floor epen rice and you can never get It's like beach sand. Yeah, it just gets into everything. So I tried that one, and I thought, this is a really bad idea.
This is the other one. This is going straight in the trash. Zip blocked backs and you make like a I don't know, you put some kind of liquid in it. I'm not sure what it is. Oh boy, you better be sure your kid doesn't know how to open a zip blocked back because it blocked back with some duct table. I know what I was
thinking. Yes, okay, so there's that. But the other one I recently thought, which I thought was so which I thought was genius, was that the mom put some of the kid's favorite little toys in a bowl of water. Week. Yeah, yeah, we talked about this, did you. That's what we talked about last week? You heard about it from me? Yeah, But then I saw the videos somewhere, Yeah, because I posted it on our chat. Oh my god. Okay, well, it
is a good idea to our past episode. That is a very good idea for occupying a child for a long time, and the only nest will be water yea, So we'll put them on the pit away from something. Yeah, gosh, I cannot believe I totally forgot about that. There you go, folks. Well maybe we all need to go take a nap like that, poor mall, I think I need to. So let's say. That's
in for today's Round one. Tune in tomorrow for our entertainment themed Round two and later in the week to find out what we're complaining about, obsessing about, and recommending right now. We're always interested in what you have to say, so drop us a comment on our website, our Facebook page, or Twitter, where you'll find us at roundabout Chat.