Preparation For Parenthood
Why do grandparents and grandchildren get along so well?
Because they have a common enemy of course.Preparation for parenthood is more than reading books and decorating a nursery. Here are a few simple (but mandantory) exercises for expectant parents.
- Women: to prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag-chair down the front. Leave it there for 9 months. After 9 months, take out 10% of the beans.
Men: to prepare for paternity, go to the local pharmacy, tip the contents of your wallet on the counter, and tell the pharmacist to help himself. Then go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the paper. Read it for the last time.- Before you finally have children, find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels, and how they have allowed their children to run amok. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behavior. Enjoy it -- it'll be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.
- To discover how the nights will feel, walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 lbs. At 10pm put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, till 1 AM. Go to sleep get up at 2am and make a drink. Go to bed at 2:45 AM. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off. Sing songs in the dark until 4 AM. Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.
- Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains. Hide a fish finger behind the stereo and leave it there all summer. Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds then rub them on the clean walls. Cover the stains with crayons. This is the only interior decoration you will be allowed for the next 18 years.
- To learn how to dress a small child, first buy an octopus and a string bag. Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this task? All morning.
- Take an egg carton. Using a pair of scissors and a pot of paint turn it into an alligator. Now take a toilet tube. Using only scotch tape and a piece of foil, turn it into a Christmas cracker. Last, take a milk container, a ping pong ball, and an empty packet of Coco Pops and make an exact replica of the Eiffel Tower. Congratulations. You have just qualified for a place on the playgroup committee.
- Forget the Miata and buy the Taurus station wagon. And don't think you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that. Buy a chocolate ice cream bar and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there. Get a quarter. Stick it in the cassette player. Take a family size packet of chocolate cookies and mash them down the back seats. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. There. Perfect.
- Get ready to go out. Wait outside the toilet for half an hour. Go out the front door. Come in again. Go out. Come back in. Go out again. Walk down the front path. Walk back up it. Walk down it again. Walk very slowly down the road for 5 minutes. Stop to inspect minutely every cigarette end, piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way. Retrace your steps. Scream until the neighbors come out and stare at you. Give up and go back into the house. You are now ready to take a small child for a walk.
- Repeat everything you say a minimum of five times.
- Go to your local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child... a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat. Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goats eat or destroy. Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.
- Hollow out a melon. Make a small hole in the side. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy Cornflakes and attempt to spoon it into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane. Continue until half the cornflakes is gone. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure that a lot of it falls on the floor. You are now ready to feed a 12-month old baby.
- Go to the bank on a very windy day. Withdraw all of your savings in one dollar bills. Throw it in the air. What you can catch in 30 seconds is what you get to keep to spend on yourself. Practice is imperative cause this will be the last money you will be allowed to spend on yourself until after the child is out of college and married.
- Ask your worst enemy to tell you their opinion of you at least 10 times in one day. Smile as they tell you. Each time they finish, tell them that they dont really hate you, they hate what you are doing.
- Women: Do not talk to another adult for one full day. Also (in the same day): Go to the doctor's office. Wait one 1 hours and 45 minutes. Then go to the drug store. Spend $87 on a single medication. Go to the dentist office. Wait 1 hour and 15 minutes. Go back to the drug store and spend $60. Go to a soccer field. Wait 1 hour. Scoop mud from the parking lot into your car. Smear it into the carpet until it is embedded deeply into the carpet. Go to the neighborhood piano teacher's house. Wait in the car for 40 minutes. Go to the dance school. Wait in the car for another 40 minutes. Go to the local YMCA. Wait inside in the smell and humidity of the indoor swimming pool for 1 hour. Go home and cook dinner. Go to the church for the children's choir practice. Wait in the car for 1 hour and 15 minutes. Come back and clean the kitchen. Bathe your neighbor's dog (dogs if you plan on having more than one child).
Men: Come home from work and wonder what your wife has been doing all day. Laugh at her explanation. Pick the spaghetti out of your hair strand by strand while apologizing. Clean up the splatter on the far wall while promising her dinner out. Promise her a day of shopping while you babysit. Promise her a night out at the movies. Promise her a weekend getaway trip. Realize that there is nothing you can promise her that will get you out of the doghouse. Pretend you dont hear her when she mentions divorce.- Talk to the wall. Wait for a response from the wall. This is the ideal practice for dealing with teenagers.
- Go to the roughest part of town. Find a group of mean looking hoodlums gathered on a corner. Leave your family car parked nearby with the doors unlocked and the keys in the ignition. This is the only exercise that can possibly prepare you for what your car will look like the morning after your kid steals it at 2 in the morning.
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