Everyday Genius

Nothing, aside from getting a baby to sleep through the night and toilet-training a toddler, is more difficult than teaching a child to tie her own shoes. DreamTeamShannonR

I subscribe to Disney Family's e-newsletter, The Dream Team Daily - Ordinary parents saving the day, and I LOVE it! Finally, thanks to the internet, we moms can share our brilliant ideas with each other and help make life with kids a little easier. Today's article was about teaching kids to tie their shoes - something I've only touched on with Mason. I've considered using Velcro until one of his friends in middle school teaches him to tie laces, but that seems a bit cruel. Shannon R. offered a simple, yet fabulous, piece of advice about shoe lace-training. Use two different colored laces so that your directions are more clear. "Bring the red lace around the blue lace," is much more clear than, "No, not that lace, the other one, on the other side, in your other hand." Of course, these laces should probably be practice laces on cardboard or something - unless different colored laces on shoes happens to be "in" at your child's school. Anyway, we'll be trying out this new technique soon!