Make tagging along easier

If you have two kids within four years of age, it’s likely that you’ll find yourself strolling the younger one while the older one walks. May we recommend a little trick?

Attach something to the stroller for your older child to hold onto, so that she feels included and so that you know exactly where she is, without rolling over her little feet. Make a Big Brother/Sister Handle out of something you’ve already got in the house.

Here are three DIY ideas:

Cut three lengths of fabric and braid them together, tying one end in a loop for holding.
Use some of those baby linking rings to attach a bobble for holding.
MacGyver yourself something with ribbons and a carabiner or other “grown-up” accoutrements

My kids are two years and eight months apart. One possible way for me to take the two of them out together in the early days was to wear the baby in a carrier on my chest and push my nearly-three-year old in the stroller. But sometimes we were just walking from our car to a playground, about half a block or less, and the baby had no intention of “playing” when we got there. My preferred method of transport in this case was to keep the baby in her carseat/stroller combo and let my son walk. I trusted him to follow along, but crossing the street meant that I had to push the stroller with one hand, while offering the other hand to my son.

Even now, with my daughter being two and my son being five, there are occasions when he walks alongside the stroller. He likes to hold on to the side of the stroller to be connected with us, but that sort of interferes with my walking. Know what I mean?

Not a do-it-yourself-er? A product called walkalong can serve this stroller “tag” function for you.

A rubber handle that hooks easily onto your stroller, your big kid can hold onto the handle, as shown in the picture above. Stephanie, the mom who invented this item, and ultimately sold it to skip*hop sent me one to try, and my kids were SO excited about using it (my daughter had not gone willingly into her stroller for months, but she really wanted to have her brother hold onto that neon yellow rubber handle).

I attached it to the stroller in about 30 seconds, and we set out for a favorite shopping district where both kids promptly had a total meltdown and I had to work really really hard not to use any 4-letter words. Not my favorite day ever, but definitely no fault of our new stroller handle.

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Whitney

RookieMoms.com co-founder Whitney lives with her husband, son, and daughter in the San Francisco Bay Area where she writes about parenting, crafts, and activities that moms can do with babies in tow. She and Heather also publish 510Families.com, a site for East Bay parents.