11 Step Kids Program

[Gob]

Lesson 1

1. Go to the grocery store.
2. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
3. Go home.
4. Pick up the paper.
5. Read it for the last time.

Lesson 2

Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their...
1. Methods of discipline.
2. Lack of patience.
3. Appallingly low tolerance levels.
4. Allowing their children to run wild.
5. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child's breastfeeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior.
Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.

Lesson 3

A really good way to discover how the nights might feel...
1. Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)
2. At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
3. Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
4. Set the alarm for 3AM.
5. As you can't get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.
6. Go to bed at 2:45AM.
7. Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
8. Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
9. Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for work and go to work (work hard and be productive)

Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? T o find out...
1. Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
2. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3. Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
4. Then rub them on the clean walls.
5. Take your favorite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
6. Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?

Lesson 5

Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.
1. Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.

Time allowed for this - all morning.

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don't think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment.
Leave it there.
2. Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
3. Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.

Lesson 7

Go to the local grocery store. Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice).
If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat.
Buy your week's groceries without letting the goats out of your sight.
Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Lesson 8

1. Hollow out a melon.
2. Make a small hole in the side.
3. Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerio’s and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
5. Continue until half the Cheerio’s are gone.
6. Tip half into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.

You are now ready to feed a nine- month-old baby.

Lesson 9

Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokémon. Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you're thinking What's 'Noggin'?) Exactly the point.

Lesson 10

Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying 'mommy' repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each 'mommy'; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required).
Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next four years.
You are now ready to take a long trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

Start talking to an adult of your choice. H
ave someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow while playing the 'mommy' tape made from Lesson 10 above.
You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.

[@meric@nwom@n]

Yes, it was because of the stickiness that I chose to do without kids. They are sticky for at least the first 7 years or so.

[Joe Guy]

Yes, it was because of the stickiness that I chose to do without kids. They are sticky for at least the first 7 years or so.

You are a very perceptive person.

Kids are overrated.

[loCAtek]

I love kids, but I could never eat a whole one in one sitting.

[oldr_n_wsr]

Wish someone would have posted this some 25 years ago.

[BoSoxGal]

I just moved in with my boyfriend, who has a 4 year old and a 7 year old, 50% custody (but we have them every school morning to accommodate their mother's work schedule).


I am already fantasizing about moving out.

[dales]

Yes, it was because of the stickiness that I chose to do without kids. They are sticky for at least the first 7 years or so.

You are a very perceptive person.

Kids are overrated.

I wouldn't trade my two daughters (thankfully now adults) for the world.

Although when they were adolescents, I wanted to sell them to the Gypsies.

[The Hen]

I just moved in with my boyfriend, who has a 4 year old and a 7 year old, 50% custody (but we have them every school morning to accommodate their mother's work schedule).


I am already fantasizing about moving out.

Tough ages for you.

Chin up. They do grow older and improve (usually) with age.

[Guinevere]

A little bit overstated, but some of them are true -- in particular number 11. But I wouldn't trade the kisses and the hugs and the snuggles (which they *do* grow out of too) for all the new sofas or CD players in the world.

[oldr_n_wsr]

But I wouldn't trade the kisses and the hugs and the snuggles (which they *do* grow out of too)

I grew out of that with my parents, but after my mom died in 1998, I started hugging and kissing my dad everytime we saw each other and again when we parted. My kids saw that and now I get hugs and kisses from both my kids (21yo girl and 24yo boy). New family tradition. And we've extended it to brother, sister, and of course nieces and nephews.

Now this may not be a big deal with Italians, the French and Greeks, but in the cold logical firmware of us Germans, I consider it ground breaking.

[loCAtek]

Well, as a Latino, it's an affectionate gesture if you smack someone upside the head, but you can gimme a peck, if it makes you feel better.

[Jarlaxle]

I despise children...I hate them with a passion. Just being in the same room with my nephew (age 6) raises my blood pressure. The last time, he ran up to hug me and managed to head-but me right in the balls. On Christmas Eve.

(I do not think my brother was happy about the new word I taught him that day.)