upworthy

instagram

abigaellanai/Instagram

This is truly a gamechanger.

Date nights are important for any couple with kids. But they can be hard to come by if you don't have lots of family nearby or have infinite money for, and access to, trustworthy babysitters. Enter the babysitting swap! It's a popular concept where couples with kids will take turns "swapping" babysitting duties with other couples they know so each can enjoy the occasional date night.

My wife and I have done this with friends, and it's great! It's free and it gives your kids a chance to play with their friends. But it does come with a few logistical challenges. Like the fact that two sets of children from different families will have different bedtime routines and needs. It can also be a lot of work for the babysitting couple to take care of twice the number of children, and then to have to navigate the different nighttime needs of both sets of kids all on their own.

Mom Abigael Lanai thinks she's 'cracked the code' behind the perfect babysitting swap.

As she explains in an Instagram reel, here's how it differs from your usual swap:

First, it starts later. In this version, the babysitting couple shows up for duty after the parents have already put their own kids to bed in their own rooms. So it means date night has a delayed start, but the kids get their own bedtime with their own parents which (hopefully) goes off without a hitch. And the babysitting couple just has to act as "warm bodies" in case of emergency—so, in most cases, they won't have to do much work.

You might be thinking, it only takes one person to be a warm body! And where are the other kids during all this? Now this is the twist! In Abigael's example, she goes over to her friend's house to "warmbodysit" by herself while her husband stays home and puts their kids to bed. Now, Abigael can relax on her own and watch Netflix or read on the couch, while her husband can enjoy a night to himself at home playing video games or whatever husbands like to do. And all the while, the other couple is out on a date.

“He’s getting a night to himself to play video games ... they’re on a date ... I am chilling on their couch, I’m going to watch their Netflix, I get a night off from doing my kid’s bedtime routine and watch whatever trash reality TV that I want," Abigael says. "It’s a win for everybody.”

Actually this is pretty much what Michael Scott would call a win-win-win.


gif of Michael Scott air-drummingthe office drum GIFGiphy

You can watch Abigael's full explanation here:

People had a lot of opinions on Abigael's secret recipe for more date nights and nights off. Most loved the idea.

Abigael's video went viral on Instagram to the tune of over 100,000 Likes and 2.5 million views. Her advice was a huge hit with moms who are desperate for more relaxing time in their lives.

"This is the 'village' I wish I had," one user wrote.

"As a mom who doesn’t really do well with other people’s kids, this would be a great option for me. I like the idea of not actually having to babysit, but just being the responsible adult in case of emergencies. I can do that," another said.

Commenters also had a few misconceptions about the method. The first being "This isn't a night off if you're taking care of other people's kids." But remember, the idea of warmbodysitting is that you won't have to do anything unless there's an emergency or the kids wake up! They're already asleep when you show up and, most of the time, moms like Abigael who warmbodysit for friends just hang out and watch TV. Sounds like a night off to me.

The second misconception was that the dads are getting off too easy in this arrangement. "He just gets to play video games while you do all the work?!" Don't forget that if dad stays back at home, he's putting his own kids down and doing bedtime at the house solo. So he's putting in plenty of work before he gets to relax.

gif of babysitter telling child, "By the way, you're actually my favorite kid I babysit for." Kid Babysitter GIF by HalloweenGiphy

Others brought up a more-than-fair point: Communities of friends and families helping to care for each other's kids shouldn't be unusual or even interesting. It should be the norm, and in some communities, it already is.

"This truly shows how little community at large is valued in mainstream (read: white) culture because this is a pretty reasonable and normal thing I have always seen done in my various communities. It’s sad that it’s ‘revolutionary’," a user wrote.

Now, this approach won't work for everyone. If your kids are in a phase where they're waking up a lot, it could be a problem. But luckily there are lots of different set ups you can explore to see what might work for you, your kids, and your lifestyle.

Here are some other popular versions of babysitting swaps that can also be lifesavers — and marriage savers.

The daytime swap. In this version, Couple A goes out on a date while Couple B watches the kids, but just for a few hours during the day. Couple B just has to supervise a big play date, no stressful bedtime stuff necessary. Some people love being the babysitting couple in this scenario because, with the kids so pre-occupied playing with each other, mom and dad can get a ton of stuff done around the house.

The multi-family swap. If you can involve three or four different families, you'll have more kids in the mix but also more capable adults to help watch them. A four-family setup works well, with two couples going out and two couples watching all the kiddos. Plus, it's way more fun for the babysitting couple if they have friends there to socialize with while they're supervising.

The moms- or dads-only swap. Date nights don't have to be just for couples! A great way to get extra social time with your friends who are parents is for the dads to stay home with the kids while the moms go out together, or vice versa. It works great when all four people in the couples are great individual friends as well.

Parents need quality time with their kids, spouse, and friends—plus time spent alone to enjoy whatever they like doing. There simply aren't enough hours in the day to get them all! We need to be so much better at leaning on, and supporting, our community of parents so that we can at least attempt to fill our cups with the social, romantic, and alone time we need. Abigael's version is just one of many that give us a fighting chance.

Parenting

Mom brilliantly teaches empathy and kindness in viral morning hair videos with daughter

It's hard to make more time for your kids, but you can make the most of the time you get.

Carmen Veal/Instagram

The lives of parents with young kids are busy, busy, busy. You have a lot of grand notions of what you'd like to teach your kids, the wisdom you'd like to pass down.

But in reality you spend most of your time trying to figure out what they'll eat for dinner, doing dishes, and folding laundry. When are you supposed to find the time to actually, you know, parent?


One mom has been turning morning hair time into quality time, and posting it online for everyone to enjoy and learn from.

Carmen Veal has been posting a series of videos on her Instagram called "Mornings with Maddie."

On the surface, the videos show a mother doing her daughter's hair — brushing, braiding, you name it. There are styling tips for curly hair and lots of celebration of Maddie's biracial-ness.

But the reason people keep flocking to these videos is so much deeper.

The sweet moments feature Carmen doing her daughter's hair for the day while they just... talk! There's so much joy and affection in these moments that you can't help but cheer up just watching the two of them interact.

Carmen sometimes slips in a lesson or two, or a theme to discuss. In one video, Carmen and Maddie talk about the difference between being nice and being kind.

"[Nice] means to be nice by talking about nice things," declares Maddie while 'kind' means... "um to hug people."

Mom gives some more examples, but let's face it, Maddie nailed it.

Carmen Veal/Instagram

In another video, Carmen talks with Maddie about their newfound viral fame — after one of their morning videos racked up a whopping 2 million views.

Maddie's face lights up when her mom tells her how many people admire her.

"Our videos inspire people to be nicer, well, not nicer. Nicer is not as good as kind, you know that, right?" Carmen says. "So it inspires people to be kinder to themselves and other people."

As for how Carmen herself feels about the massive response?

"The response to the videos has been overwhelming in the best way possible," Carmen says. "People from all over the world have reached out to express how they’ve found joy, comfort, and inspiration in our morning moments. It’s been humbling to see how something so personal has had such a wide-reaching impact.

"At the heart of Mornings with Maddie is a desire to show that parenting with kindness and intentionality can create deep connections. I hope viewers take away a sense of peace and inspiration, knowing that small, consistent acts of love and care can make a world of difference."

"Mornings with Maddie" makes me think of how special the seemingly-mundane day to day moments with our kids really are.

The regular "Instagram highlights" of Disney World vacations and pumpkin patches and other special experiences are memorable, but it's the smaller stuff that's even more meaningful.

Specifically, positive rituals and routines (like the morning hair-do) help kids develop self-regulation skills, a strong sense of self, and better mental health in the long term. It's the repetition that drives that positive change over time.

"The joy that families experience inside of rituals together can leave an 'emotional residue' that children keep with them to cope during stressful times," writes Dr. Erika Bocknek of Zero to Thrive. "When times are uncertain, and children experience worry or sadness, rituals provide the internal sense that they are not alone and have a balance in their lives of positive and negative experiences."

The Instagram views and media coverage will taper off, but Maddie will undoubtedly remember these moments with her mom forever. And millions of people will have been inspired to make the most of the short time we do get with our kids.

A mother is shicked that her vodka keeps disappearing.

A mother of 3 named Stacey (@StaceyCKs1 on X) realized that a bottle of Grey Goose vodka she had was slowly being emptied, but she hadn’t taken a sip. So she thought it must be one of her children, ages 14, 17 and 23, taking some sneaky sips of her stash.

The funny thing is that anyone who has been a teenager knows that after you take some of the vodka from your parents’ bottle, you replace the amount with water so no one notices you drank some. Until, of course, your parents take a sip and immediately realize it’s been watered down. But whoever was pouring shots from Stacy’s bottle didn’t even worry about getting caught.

Stacey approached her 3 kids to find out which one had been drinking her vodka. The response she got was unexpected, to say the least. It was her 14-year-old daughter, but she wasn’t using the vodka to get drunk.


“Noticed that my vodka supply was dwindling,” she wrote on Twitter. “Confronted 23 and 17, who pointed the finger at 14, who guiltily confessed to making penne allá vodka ‘several times’ over the last month. Didn’t believe her, watched her execute it flawlessly. I guess it’s a TikTok thing?”

The teenager didn’t even try to hide the fact that she was cooking with the vodka. She didn’t “guilty confess”; she “answered the question,” Stackey remarked in the tweet thread. “She wasn’t trying to hide what she was doing. These kids are different than we were.”



To verify that the teen wasn’t lying, Stacey asked her to make some penne allá vodka and the teen “crushed it.” Some people in the comments wondered why she didn’t notice her daughter making elaborate meals in the kitchen. Stacey said the cooking happened while she was working or on the phone and that she doesn’t like pasta. Her daughter also made the meals in the morning to take to school for lunch.

Stacey shared a screenshot of her daughter’s delicious dish.



The mother also shared the recipe for the curious:

A shallot and some garlic sweated in olive oil and a tablespoon of butter, a can of tomato paste, some Calibri chilies, maybe 10 ounces of sand Marzano tomatoes, 2 cups of heavy cream, a cup of fresh parm, 2 tablespoons of vodka.

One person on Twitter had a problem with the teenager using supplies in the house without asking permission. They also had an issue with kids learning how to cook on TikTok. But Stacey wasn’t dealing with any parenting criticism.



It’s believed that Gen Z's recent fascination with penne allá vodka started when Gigi Hadid shared her spicy version of the recipe on Instagram in 2020. Since then, the dish has been called a TikTok “obsession.”

The dish's ubiquity was lampooned on “Saturday Night Live” earlier this year in a sketch, where a “big a**” aluminum platter can be found at just about any significant gathering, whether it's a wedding, bridal shower, or retirement party.

"A big a** aluminum tray of penne alla vodka [is] loved by none, but tolerated by all," Andrew Dismukes says in the sketch accompanied by his bride, Chloe Fineman, who adds, "Because it's not that good, but it's not that bad either."

"It may not stay hot, but it never gets all the way cold,” Keenaan Thompson says, playing a man at his retirement party.

- YouTubeyoutu.be

The story of Stacey and her pasta-loving daughter is a perfect example of a recent significant change in American culture: Young people drink much less than they used to. Stacey, who appears to be an older Millenial or younger Gen X, comes from an era when the majority of teens drank alcohol. However, things have changed.

A report in The Conversation has found that the proportion of 16 to 24-year-olds who drank alcohol “in the last week” fell from 67% in 2002 to 37% in 2021. The change is part of a generational trend where younger people are more risk-averse than older generations. Gen Zers are also less likely to smoke and have sex than previous generations.

If you’re a parent of a teenager in 2204 and your vodka starts going missing, maybe it’s time to check and see if your stash of penne is on the decline as well because your kid is probably more likely to be a secret chef than a drinker.

It's not every day you see an emotional support cicada.

There are few things in this world more delightful than a child's imagination. Once in a while, we get a clear glimpse into that world when a kid does something that makes us scratch our heads and smile ear to ear in equal measure.

For instance, when a toddler finds a dead cicada and adopts it as a beloved companion.

Mom Izzy Wherry has been sharing her 2-year-old daughter's adventures and escapades with a cicada corpse that are hilariously endearing. The little one found a dead cicada in the family's yard, and for an entire month has been bringing him along with her everywhere she goes. He gets baths, he gets swung on the swing, he has his own remote office outside where he types on his little computer keyboard, and more.

He goes to the park, he's gone on a camping trip, and he even went to the dentist, where he lay next to Wherry's daughter on the dentist's chair as if he were an actual emotional support pet.

People are celebrating the girl's creative and compassionate care for her formerly-living friend as well as the cicada getting to live his best afterlife.

"He's lived a full life since he died 😂"

"Would you still love me if I was a dead cicada?"

"It's going to be the ring bearer on her wedding day."

"If he only knew how loved he is. 😂"

Many people expressed how beautiful it is to see a child just being a quintessential child. Some parents would never let their child carry a bug carcass around like this, but it's clear that this lone, dead cicada means something to this kiddo. Cicadas are loud (when they're alive), large and tough (the fact that he hasn't fallen apart yet is a testament to that), but it's notable that she's so careful and gentle in the way she handles him. Wherry confirmed that her daughter knows that the cicada is actually dead, but she still uses her imagination to bring him to life, which is both hilarious and sweet.

"I absolutely love her imagination and creativity!!!🩷😍😇"

"This so sweet and so innocent. Almost a shame they have to grow up."

"This is sooooo precious i love when parents let their kids be unapologetically kids ❤️"

"My daughter littered our home with rollie pollies and named them all MR. She collected rocks as well in all of her pockets. Wash day was a bit crazy 😂"

"My daughter found a dead ladybug and she made her a jacuzzi from a walnut shell...with saliva..."

"iPad kid playing with corpsesmaybe there is hope for the new generation."

in a world where parents are constantly battling television and tablets and other screen-based technologies, it's lovely to see a child engaging natural play inspired by the outdoors. Carrying around a dead cicada may not have been what her parents had in mind when they took their kiddo outside, but that's the beauty of children engaging with the natural world—you just never know what they're going to discover, create, collect or become attached to. Seeing a child's imagination in action is a fleeting privilege, and to capture and share it with others is a wonderful gift. Thanks to this family and the dead cicada for letting us into a little one's world for a while.

You can follow Izzy Wherry and her daughter's cicada adventures on Instagram.