Many parents who have a 2 years old child face a struggle when they take their kid to the playground or the Spielplatz. When it’s time to go home the kid doesn’t want to listen and a series of tantrums and shouting starts.

Parents start to get nervous and anxious as people start starring at them. At the same time it’s really time to go home. So what to do about this situation?

Here are some tips & tricks to help in this situation based on our own personal experiences with our kid:

(Most Effective Long-Term) You Train Your Kid With Timers

• You set a phone timer and tell your kid that “we will be leaving when the timer goes off”. . Repeat this several times to them before setting the timer.
• You can ask your child how much time you should set in the timer to give them a feeling of control. Of course you will probably never gonna get an answer because they probably won’t understand, so you will end up putting something like 15 minutes yourself.
• Then set the timer and once it goes off attempt to take your kid. Your kid will protest, show empathy to the kid by saying “i understand that you would like to stay more but it’s time to go home now”.
• Your kid probably won’t listen to you and will keep protesting, so you have to deal with tantrums for couple visits, but if you repeat this method several times when you go to the playground, your child will understand the boundary and they will run to the stroller when the timer goes off automatically. I personally swear by this method as I have a very active child and it worked wonders. Also try to do it by visiting the playground very regularly in the same week so the training is more effective.

This is the timer that I personally use and it works great. I bought it from Amazon and here is the link to it.

(Most Effective Short-Term) Bribe Your Kid

These ideas are pretty cheap and don’t really last long, because the kids will just remember them and know that you are trying to cheat on them. So often will just ignore them.

• You can bribe your child with a snack.
• You can bribe your child with a toy that is either new or they haven’t seen in a very long time.

Creative Ideas

These are ideas that might work or not depending on your child:

• Hold your kid in your arms and tell him some distracting words, like “goodbye playground, goodbye sandbag, good slide … etc” and then walk out the playground and go away. After the playground is out of sight, then attempt to put your child in the stroller.
• Give them some motivations for why you are returning home “we want to go home to have a bath with toys … or bake pizza together … etc”.

If you have more creative ideas, then do share them with us in the comments below!