Entertainment
10 Surprising Parenting Tips
Whenever I meet a fellow mom, I feel like I’ve struck gold, since I know that during 20 minutes of chatting, they’ll probably end up dropping a legit helpful parenting hack. On that note, I asked a few parents their tried-and-true tips, and here’s what they said…
Something I’ve learned myself:
1. Always keep small trash bags on hand — in your car, in the stroller, in your bag. Diaper blow-outs happen when you least expect it, and having a having a bag to throw it in when there are no trash cans available lowers stress levels by 1000%.
From Angela:
2. When our children are within earshot, my husband and I will let them overhear us talking about them in a good way. I’ll call out something like ‘Did you notice how Alo tried hard to put on his shoes this morning?’ or ‘Did you notice that Talula created an art piece today?’ Kids love hearing you brag about them!
From Miranda:
3. Bibliotherapy is great for young children, of course — like prepping a preschooler for moving houses with picture books — but there are wonderful chapter books out there, too. If your nine-year-old is struggling with a dyslexia diagnosis (Fish In a Tree), or your 10-year-old has a chronic illness (Not Quite a Ghost), or your 12-year-old is grieving a family member (Show Me A Sign), books can open up conversations about hard things and help your kid feel less alone.
4. My partner and I say ‘thank you’ to each other for making dinner, and now our children do, too. It goes a long way towards making me feel warm and fuzzy, and also helps them to understand the care and labor that goes into putting food on the table every night.
From Destini:
5. As parents, we try to stay calm, but you don’t need to be perfectly regulated when parenting. Narrating your emotions out loud — like saying, ‘I’m feeling frustrated, so I’m taking a deep breath before I speak’ — helps your child learn what to do with big feelings. Kids can see how regulation works in real life and realize that emotions aren’t scary or something to suppress; they’re just signals to slow down and make a choice.
From Mo:
6. Give your child a responsibility that helps the whole family. If they’re older, that could be running to the corner store to get a pint of ice cream for dessert. For younger ones, that could be watering the garden. Every time I do this with my kids, they crush it and remind me how capable they are. It’s also important for kids to feel like they’re contributing to the success of the whole family.
7. If you have a larger family, keep things as simple as possible. Our four kids have assigned seats at the table so there’s no squabbling over who sits where, and the tooth fairy leaves $1 for every tooth (even though she really wanted to add sparkles and a note!).
From Laurel:
8. My kids (four and six) and I discovered the Magic Woods podcast last year, and it’s beautiful, funny and weird. There are a zillion episodes, all with the same characters, telling one super long story. The creator’s voice is soothing, and he does different voices for all the animals.
From Youngna:
9. I recently took my nine-year-old to a store to find an outfit for a recital. Between hand-me-downs and COVID, she’d never been clothes shopping in person, so trying on clothes in a dressing room felt thrilling. It reminded me that everything can be novel to a kid; it doesn’t have to be some big adventure.
From Ruth:
10. When I feel like I’ve been spending an eternity with my kid and I’m counting the minutes until her nap time so I can go do the laundry/finish the email/go pee, I physically get down to her level and watch her. I look at her eyelashes as she’s searching for a banana car on the page of a book. I watch her mouth make funny shapes as she figures out how to get a sticker off a table. I see her toes curl and uncurl as she reaches for something. Or I’ll realize how much her nose looks just like mine. Being in those moments helps me remember that — sure, there’s a lot to do, and this is just another day out of thousands — but seeing my kid engaging with the world (and me!) in all these little ways is a pretty incredible thing.
Thank you so much, parents. What would you add?
P.S. More surprising parenting tips and trying out slow parenting.
(Top photo by Diane Durongpisitkul/Stocksy. Bottom photo by Jannelle Sanchez.)
Entertainment
Save on gas (and everything else) with a $15 BJ’s membership
TL;DR: Score a one-year BJ’s membership for $15 (reg. $60) and save up to 20¢/gal. on gas through April 30 — just in time for spring shopping and road trips.
Credit: BJ’s Wholesale Club
The warmer weather tends to sneak up fast, and so do those grocery bills and gas receipts. A one-year membership to BJ’s Wholesale Club is one of those simple upgrades that can make everyday shopping feel a little more manageable.
You can currently grab a Club Card Membership with BJ’s Easy Renewal for just $15 (reg. $60) through April 30, which opens the door to savings across groceries, household essentials, and even your weekend cookout prep.
Mashable Deals
Let’s start with the obvious, though. Gas prices. Members already get everyday savings at BJ’s Gas, but during this promo window, you’ll get an extra 15¢ off per gallon stacked on top of the usual 5¢ discount — bringing your total to 20¢ off per gallon through April 30.
Inside the club, it’s all about stretching your dollar further. BJ’s is known for offering competitive pricing on national brands, plus a wide selection of fresh produce, meats, bakery items, and deli favorites. Whether you’re planning a backyard BBQ, stocking up for a party, or just trying to cut down on weekly grocery runs, buying in bulk can help simplify things.
Mashable Trend Report
There’s also something to be said for convenience. Fewer trips to the store, more options in one place, and access to seasonal items that make spring and summer feel extra special.
Get a one-year Club Card Membership with BJ’s Easy Renewal® for just $15 (reg. $60) and enjoy an extra 15¢ off per gallon at any of the 199 BJ’s gas stations through April 30.
Grabbing this deal? Build your cart to $100+ and score a lifetime license to Microsoft Office 2021 free with code GWP4MAC (for Mac) or GWP4WIND (for Windows) through April 19.
Gift with $100+ purchase promo ends April 19, 2026. Exclusions apply. Only one promo code applicable per order. Prices subject to change.
StackSocial prices subject to change.
Entertainment
This $43 bundle quietly upgrades your entire PC experience
TL;DR: This rare Microsoft bundle deal gives you a lifetime license to Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows and Windows 11 Pro for only $42.97 (reg. $418.99) through May 17.
$42.97
$418.99
Save $376.02
Looking for an affordable way to make your old PC feel new again? If you don’t have the funds to buy a brand new computer, don’t worry. The Ultimate Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows lifetime license and Windows 11 Pro Bundle is the next best thing, offering your computer a total upgrade for only $42.97 through May 17.
Don’t count out your dusty old PC. This Microsoft bundle is here to give it a total facelift for less than $50. It kicks off with a lifetime license to some of the brand’s most popular tools — Microsoft Office, which you’ll pay for once and enjoy without any subscription fees.
Mashable Deals
You’ll get permanent access to a suite of eight helpful apps with Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows. It includes staples that have been around for decades, like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook. You’ll also get newer favorites like Teams, OneNote, Access, and Publisher.
Once you’ve loaded the apps onto your device, you can upgrade your OS to Windows 11 Pro. It’s an operating system made for modern professionals, with tools that support your workflow. Enjoy a more powerful search experience, improved voice typing, a seamless interface, snap layouts, and much more.
You can rest easy knowing Windows 11 Pro takes your cybersecurity seriously. You’ll have biometric logins, encrypted authentication, and advanced antivirus defenses to keep your data secure.
Mashable Deals
Show your PC some love with the Microsoft Office Professional 2021 for Windows and Windows 11 Pro bundle for only $42.97 (reg. $418.99) now until May 17.
StackSocial prices subject to change.
Entertainment
Star Trek’s First Broadcast Episode Was Very Carefully Chosen, Because It Was Boring
By Chris Snellgrove
| Published
These days, Star Trek is a bona fide pop culture phenomenon. But during the development of The Original Series, there was anxiety that the general public wouldn’t really understand Gene Roddenberry’s mashing up Western tropes with a sci-fi setting. Making matters worse was that the original pilot, “The Cage,” had been rejected by NBC for being too brainy. Fortunately, Roddenberry got a chance to shoot another pilot, one which impressed the network enough to order an entire season worth of episodes.
Several episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series had already been shot when the time came for this new show to make its broadcast premiere. The first episode that the general public saw was “The Man Trap,” which featured a shapeshifting monster that was revealed to be an alien salt vampire. This good-but-not-great episode was an odd choice, and it was one that the cast and crew hated. As it turns out, though, this episode was very carefully selected by executives because it served as an inoffensive, relatively straightforward encapsulation of everything Star Trek had to offer.
It’s A Trap!
Most of the information we have about why “The Man Trap” was selected as Star Trek’s first episode comes from the book Inside Star Trek: The Real Story. Within this impressive reference tome, Robert H. Justman and Herbert F. Solow revealed something surprising: NBC had several other episodes to choose from for the premiere, including “The Corbomite Maneuver,” “Charlie X,” “Mudd’s Women,” “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” and “The Naked Time.” All of them had already been shot and were mostly finished, so it was just a matter of figuring out which episode would serve as the best introduction to Star Trek, a heretofore unknown sci-fi series.
“The Man Trap” won out, mostly because the powers that be worried that other episodes would be off-putting to general audiences in some very specific ways. For example, they worried that audiences would find “Charlie X” a story that was “too gentle” because it focused on an adolescent with special powers. This was probably the right call, in retrospect: when Variety gave a negative review of “The Man Trap” (an episode chosen, in part, because of its relative maturity), they declared that Star Trek: The Original Series was “better suited to the Saturday morning kidvid bloc” (ouch!).
A Monster Hit Of An Episode
“The Corbomite Maneuver” was a great potential choice, but this episode’s impressive special effects were still in post-production, and almost all of its action took place on the ship. “Where No Man Has Gone Before” really outlined the premise of the new show, but it was deemed “expository” for general audiences expecting more action and danger. Justman thought “The Naked Time” was a killer introduction to the crew’s personalities, but the network passed, presumably because of how over-the-top (half-naked, swashbuckling Sulu? Oh, my!) that episode gets. “Mudd’s Women,” meanwhile, was deemed too offensive because the plot involved literally selling women to miners.
Through this process of elimination, executives decided that “The Man Trap” was the best intro to Star Trek. It had cool scenes on both the Enterprise and a distant outpost (a strange new world) and featured a straightforward action plot you didn’t have to be a sci-fi aficionado to understand. Finally, it was all about finding and defeating a creepy monster, which offered thrills to audiences of all ages. The network’s choice paid off, and Star Trek: The Original Series became the most popular sci-fi show in television history, even though the cast (including William Shatner and Leonard Nimoy) thought “The Man Trap” was the worst possible episode they could have chosen.
All of this is a keen reminder of how much thought and work went into putting Star Trek’s best foot forward. It might be a reminder that Paramount’s current upper leadership needs, as Starfleet Academy hit the ground running with the worst episodes of Season 1. The show got better after that, but it didn’t matter because the prospective audience had already been driven away. As it turns out, today’s execs need to learn something that the network execs of the ‘60s had learned very well: series succeed when you give the audience what they want to see and not what you want to show!
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