Are you looking for answers to the most common parenting questions? Where can you find parenting advice that you can trust?
Parenting doesn’t come with a manual. Plus, there is so much misinformation and biased advice floating on the web. It can be hard to wade through it all to find reliable, science-backed answers to your parenting questions.
To save you the trouble, we’ve compiled a list of the best parenting resources, including blogs, podcasts, and apps, to make your parenthood journey a little easier.
The Journey of Parenthood
Becoming a parent is one of the most exciting yet challenging experiences of your life. Luckily for you, there are plenty of tools and resources to help you navigate the journey of parenthood.
Here are Shortform’s picks for the best parenting resources, including blogs, podcasts, and apps to help you level up your parenting skills, so you can be the best parent you can be.
Best Parenting Blogs
Parenting is a rewarding yet bumpy road. No wonder they say “it takes a community to raise a child”—a community of fellow parents who’ve traveled this road and have some valuable advice on how to smooth out the common parenting bumps.
Where do you find such a community? Blogs are a great resources for parents and offer a built-in community. Here is a list of the best parenting blogs to follow in 2022.
Parents.com is your complete guide to all things parenthood. It would be hard to name a parenthood topic they don’t cover. You’ll find informative advice on childhood milestones, behavior management tips, and common challenges for parenting at any age. To ensure credibility, they draw from scientific sources and feature specialist advice from child psychologists, pediatricians, and other experts.
Scary Mommy started as a private one-person blog and grew into one of the largest and most popular parenting resources on the web. This blog is more of a light-hearted entertainment rather than expert advice, featuring stories and moms’ musings on parenting and beyond.
Baby Center is a leading online parenting resource, helping millions of expectant and new parents navigate all the trials and tribulations of the parenthood journey through blog articles, apps, and “birth clubs.” The content is reviewed by their advisory board of professionals, so you can rest assured the information is accurate and up-to-date.
Rookie Moms is a one-person blog by Amber, a mum who has been through it all when it comes to motherhood (adoption, risky pregnancy, raising a child with special needs). She blogs about activities to do with kids, shares ultimate guides for feeding, sleeping, and playing, recommends gear, and more.
Modern Day Moguls is the single-person blog from Michelle Robinson, a career momma of two. Michelle started Modern Day Moguls to write about her career. It was like an outlet for her to not lose her professional identity to parenthood. Paradoxically, it is now one of the most popular parenting blogs on the web.
The creator of Moments a Day, Chelsea Lee Smith is an author and a certified parent educator. She created Moments a Day to help parents be more intentional about their parenting by incorporating meaningful personal growth moments into their children’s everyday routines.To that end, she recommends activities, resources, and workshops for positive parenting and character building.
Peds Doc Talk by Dr. Mona, a board-certified pediatrician, is your complete guide to the first year of parenting. Here, you’ll find answers to all the questions you can think of (and even some you never would have thought of) when it comes to navigating the most sensitive period of your child’s life. When should you introduce solid foods? What should you do if your baby is gassy? How do you know if your baby is hungry or full? Dr. Mona provides reliable and trustworthy answers.
Last but not least, we also have a parenting section on our website. Discover valuable parenting lessons from the best non-fiction books written by psychologists, childhood experts, and parenting coaches. We cover a wide range of topics from learning and brain development to no-drama discipline.
Best Parenting Podcasts
The beauty of podcasts is that you can entertain and educate yourself on the go or while you are doing activities that don’t require much brainpower. And you can get things done while learning something useful. Here is a roundup of the best parenting podcasts to tune into in 2022.
Ask Lisa: The Psychology of Parenting
In Ask Lisa: The Psychology of Parenting, Lisa Damour, a PhD, and her co-host Reena Nina answer your timeless parenting questions, with a focus on parenting teens. They address a lot of particularly challenging topics such as helping children cope with rejection, teaching justice and tolerance, building confidence, discussing consent, and more.
In Parenting for the Future, host Petal Modeste sits down with developmental psychologists, educators, and other child specialists to discuss common parenting issues of the 21st century. From explaining climate change to raising a culturally-sensitive child, this podcast is your guide to woke parenting.
Unruffled with Janet Lansbury is a podcast about baby and toddler parenting. She teaches a gentle, respectful approach to parenting—accepting the child’s emotions, both good and bad, while firmly yet respectfully setting parental limits. She gives very specific and practical tips for instilling discipline and managing difficult behavior.
The Single Mom Podcast with Heather Wells, a single mom of three, is a podcast devoted to empowering and helping single moms navigate the challenges of raising children alone. The show is upbeat and fun to listen to while still tackling the serious (and often unique) issues related to single parenthood.
But Why: A Podcast for Curious Kids
Does your child constantly bombard you with a barrage of questions? Then, this is the podcast for you. Each episode begins with a child asking a question such as “Why do seasons change?” or “Why do pigs oink?” and host Jane Lindholm answers them with the help of an expert.
The host of Good Inside, Dr. Becky is a clinical psychologist and parenting coach. Having grown disappointed with the popular behavior-first, reward-and-punishment model of parent coaching, she developed her own method focusing on “the parent behind the parenting and the child behind the behavior”. From managing difficult behavior to teaching emotional self-regulation, she gives you the tools to raise confident, kind, and competent kids.
The host of Raising Good Humans, Dr. Aliza Pressman wears many hats: a developmental psychologist, parent educator, assisting clinical professor, and the co-founder of Mount Sinai Parenting Center and Seedlings Group. In each episode, Aliza sits down with both experts and parents to discuss the bigger picture of raising good humans, delving into things like cultivating inquiry, having difficult conversations, building confidence, and reducing perfectionism.
Best Parenting Apps
There’s no doubt that parenting can get overwhelming at times. With so many things to think about, it can make your head spin. Technology can take some of the load off your shoulders. Here are Shortform’s recommendations for the best parenting apps to make your parenting journey a little easier.
Growth Book App is designed to help parents track their child’s development from birth through five years of age. When you create an account, you’ll be prompted to add your child’s birth date, based on which the app will plot their developmental trajectory according to the WHO Z score. You can track four categories of developmental milestones: language, cognitive, emotional, and movement.
With the Kiddy app, you can set up a reward system to encourage your child’s good behavior and dissuade bad behavior. This is done by awarding your child with positive or negative points for certain, preset behaviors. You can also create custom challenges your child can complete to earn points which they can then exchange rewards.
If you have been struggling to keep up with all the parenting admin, AppClose has a variety of tools to facilitate co-parenting: You can schedule time with kids, communicate with people in your co-parenting circle, share documents, and even track, manage, and pay reimbursements.
Parent Cue is designed to help parents cultivate their child’s character and strengthen their faith with expertise from family experts, educators, and parents just like you. To that end, the app explains what to watch out for when your child is going through a certain developmental phase, suggests activities you can do together, and provides valuable character-building tips from a team with over 20 years of experience developing character-based curriculum.
Digital devices are essential and ubiquitous, and kids are particularly prone to their addictive potential. With FamiSafe, you can monitor how your child is using their device and individual apps. The app allows you to control screen time, keep track of your child’s whereabouts, and detect inappropriate content with the help of web filters and activity reports.
Greenlight is a banking and investing app designed to help kids and teens cultivate healthy money habits. You can assign your child chores and tie the work to monetary rewards, set weekly, bi-weekly and monthly allowances, receive notifications when the card is used, and more. Your child can also save the money they earn with a competitive 2% interest, helping them develop wise spending habits.
Final Words
Parenting comes with a slew of questions that don’t abate as years go by. Every period has its own unique challenges and obstacles. Whether you are taking care of an infant, teaching your toddler, or raising a teen, there are plenty of resources on the web to answer any question you might have.
If you are looking for trusted answers to your parenting questions, we’ve got you covered with the best parenting resources, including the blogs, apps, and podcasts listed above!
Did we miss your favorite parenting blog, podcast, or app? Let us know in the comments!
