School for Parent
1.Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems. First buy an octopus and a string bag. Attempt to put the octopus in the bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this: all morning.
2.Get ready to go out. Wait outside the toilet for half an hour. Go out of the front door. Come in again. Go out. Come back in. Go out again and walk down the front path. Walk back up. Walk down again. Then walk very slowly along the road for five minutes. Stop to inspect minutely every cigarette end, piece of chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way. Retrace your steps. Scream that you’ve had about as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you. You are now ready to try taking a small child for a walk.
3.Women: to prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front. Leave it for nine months. After nine months, take out ten per cent of the beans.
Men: to prepare for paternity, go to the chemist, open your wallet at the counter and tell the assistant to help himself. Then go to the supermarket and arrange to have your salary paid directly to its head office.
4.To find out how the nights will feel, walk around the living room from 5 p.m. to 10 p.m. carrying a wet bag weighing four to five kilos. At 10 p.m. put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to bed. Get up at 12 a.m. and walk around the living room with the bag till 1 a.m. Set the alarm for 3 a.m. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2 a.m. and make a drink. Go to bed at 2.45. Get up when the alarm goes off at 3 a.m. Sing songs in the dark until 4 a.m. Set the alarm for 5 a.m. Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for five years. Look cheerful.
5.Hollow out a melon and make a hole in the side roughly the size of a golf ball. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy cereal and attempt to spoon it into the swaying melon by pretending to be an aeroplane. Continue until half the cereal is gone. Tip the rest into your lap. You are now ready to feed a 12-month-old baby. To prepare for toddlers, smear peanut butter on the sofa and jam on the curtains. Hide a fish finger behind the stereo and leave for a few months.
6.Forget the sports car and buy a Volvo. And don’t think you can leave it out on the driveway, spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that. Buy a chocolate ice cream and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there. Jam a coin into the cassette player. Mash a family-sized pack of chocolate biscuits down the back seats. Run a rake along both sides of the car. There, perfect.
7.Learn the names of every character from Teletubbies or Power Rangers. When you find yourself singing tunes from Sesame Street in the bath, you qualify as a parent.
8.Go to the supermarket, taking with you the nearest thing you can find to a preschool child — a fully grown goat is ideal. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Do your week’s shopping without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goats eat or destroy.
9.Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience and how they allow their children to run riot. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s sleeping habits, potty-training, manners and behaviour. Enjoy it - it’ ll be the last time in your life you have all the answers.
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Feb 10th 2008 at 2:47 am
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