Five Ways to Cope When Your Child Returns to the Nest

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Alex Blackwell, who writes about creating success and happiness for the rest of your life at The Next 45 Years.

Final exams at Kansas University are only a few weeks away. My daughter, Caitlin, has been working very hard and will successfully complete her freshmen year in very good academic standing. Caitlin has learned a lot about being on her own and other important life skills, too.

However, she has already informed her mother and me her car will be packed and she will be ready to pull out of Lawrence, Kansas and head back home as soon as she completes her last exam.

While Mary Beth and I are looking forward to spending the summer with our daughter, we just hope her return to the nest will be equally successful.

The Seven Deadly Sins of a Relationship

“Remember, we all stumble, every one of us. That’s why it’s a comfort to go hand in hand.” - Emily Kimbrough

While I can’t claim to be the world’s foremost expert on relationships, I do know that my wife and I have a very strong marriage, and have never been more in love.

I’ve failed at marriage before, but that’s helped me become better at it. I’ve learned the deadly sins of relationships, and how to recognize them and avoid them.

25 Ways to Simplify Your Life with Kids

“Babies are always more trouble than you thought - and more wonderful.” - Charles Osgood

Anyone who has kids knows that any life with kids is going to be complicated, at least to some degree. From extra laundry to bathing and cooking and shopping and driving and school and chores and crises and sports and dance and toys and tantrums, there is no shortage of complications.

You won’t get to ultra-simple if your life includes children … but you can find ways to simplify, no matter how many kids you have.

20 Money Hacks: Tips and Tricks to Improve Your Finances

“Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons.” - Woody Allen

We had the Parent Hacks earlier this week, and I was thinking it would be fun to do the same with finances — ways to trick yourself, to get around obstacles, to boost your accounts, without it hurting.

Improving your finances improves your happiness, in general, so I thought it would be important to share stuff that’s worked for me.

Top 20 Parent Hacks: Tips for Organization, Kid Optimization, and Happiness

“Never raise your hand to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.” - Red Buttons

Editor’s note: This is a guest post from Asha Dornfest of Parent Hacks, one of my favorite blogs.

Parenting is equal parts skill and art. The skills — diaper changing, nightmare soothing, gentle encouragement, the “Look” (what I call that piercing glance that stops misbehaving children in their tracks) — can be learned well enough. But the art…now there’s the tricky part. We all have to find our own way with our children, and there are times when only another parent’s “I’ve been there” advice can point us in the right direction.

At Parent Hacks, we swap parenting tips we’ve stumbled on through experience (and sometimes dumb luck), often with a twist of the unconventional or the surprising solution. Parent Hacks is collecting all those hard-earned nuggets of wisdom in the hopes of building the ultimate “back fence” where parents can get real-world advice on the stuff that rarely makes it into the books and mags.