“It wasn’t about tricking them long-term. It was just navigating a phase,” Amy Wade tells PEOPLE
Amy Wade
NEED TO KNOW
- Amy Wade is a mother of two teenage boys living in Millbrook, Ala.
- While raising children is never easy, she approached parenting with what she describes as a “kind, but firm” mindset
- Now 45, Wade tells PEOPLE about the clever tricks she relied on over the years to get her sons to listen
For one mom, the secret to surviving the toddler years wasn’t louder demands or longer lectures, it was a little creative reframing.
Instead of turning everyday standoffs into power struggles, Amy Wade found fun ways to make her two sons feel like they were in control, even when they weren’t. The result? Fewer meltdowns and a lot more cooperation.
“[My tricks] worked surprisingly well, especially during those strong-willed toddler and early elementary years,” Wade tells PEOPLE exclusively. “A lot of it was just reframing things instead of turning everything into a fight.”
Recently, Wade outlined her top 10 parenting “tricks” in a viral TikTok that quickly garnered more than 7 million views. For her, the video was less about celebrating deception and more about highlighting creativity during one of life’s most exhausting seasons.
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Of all the strategies she listed, one still stands out as her favorite: “You can nap for one hour or sixty minutes.” Delivered with complete confidence, it sounded like a genuine choice, “even though it obviously wasn’t,” Wade laughs.
Offering the illusion of control became a constant theme in her parenting during those early years. “At that age, feeling like they had a say made a big difference,” she explains. “If they thought they were choosing, the pushback usually stopped."
Another “trick” that has been cemented into her family’s history is when she told her children that Lindor truffles were “adult chocolate” because truffles are mushrooms and kids famously dislike mushrooms. “It made perfect sense at the time,” she says, adding that the plan worked so well that she didn’t have to share her prized chocolates for a decade.
Amy Wade
Looking back, the 45-year-old believes these “survival” strategies worked because she stayed calm. “I wasn’t escalating things,” Wade emphasizes. “If I stayed calm, most of the time they did too.”
Especially between the ages of 2 and 8 — when kids are “strong-willed but still very literal” — small reframes could prevent minor disagreements from snowballing. “A lot of parenting at that age is about not turning every small moment into a big battle,” she says.
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Amy Wade
Eventually, of course, the magic fades and Wade still remembers the exact moment her oldest realized that 60 minutes and an hour were identical. “I definitely got a side eye on that one,” she recalls. After all, “What works at four doesn’t work at fourteen.”
Wade, however, is quick to point out that the goal was never long-term deception, but rather about “navigating a phase.” As her children grew older, now 14 and 19, playful persuasion gave way to more direct conversations. But during those early, intense years, a little creativity went a long way.
“Parenting is the most rewarding and most difficult job we’ll ever have, and sometimes it requires creative solutions in the moment,” Wade tells PEOPLE. “Be kind, but firm. Loving, but steady. You’re shaping the only childhood your kids will ever get.”
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