Skip to main content

Considering parenthood? Read this first.

Ten things all wannabe parents should consider before taking the plunge:


1. Babies scream, children shout and teenagers refuse to talk at all. All of these stages will make you grit your teeth and long for a lengthy refuge in a dark room.

2. All mealtimes will resemble the Battle of the Somme: messy, lengthy, often futile and generally chaotic. Success will only ever be achieved via the application of careful strategy, detailed planning, exhaustive bombardment and dogged determination.


3. Even the simplest task, such as leaving the house, will take a minimum of twenty minutes (on a good day) when a small child is involved.


4. Give up on being houseproud if you want to stay sane. The following are unavoidable: grimy handprints on the sofa and crumbs under the cushions, felt-tip scribbles on the walls, a trail of toys wherever the child chooses to roam, DVDs posted in the trash and stickers stuck on every available surface (including your bum).

5. Embrace insomnia - it's the only way to survive the early years. Take confort in the fact that as soon as the teenage hormones kick in you won't be able to get them out from under the duvet for love nor money.


6. What seems strange to you is seen as jolly good fun by a small child. You may not consider a pair of Spiderman pyjamas or a neon pink tutu to be proper attire for a trip to the supermarket but your child will. Choose your battles wisely and stop caring what other people think


7. Children are inherently lazy and don't see the point of tidying up - that mess on their bedroom floor is actually a complex game you have no hope of understanding. Prepare to shout, cajole and wheedle for the next ten to twenty years. Bribery is a useful tool when all else fails.


8. Children have no respect for the fact that you on the loo, in the shower, asleep, ill, hungover or speaking to your boss on the phone. In their opinion, if they want something you have no choice but to comply - immediately, without hesitation and preferably with a smile on your face. Or else.

9. Every single hellish moment you experience with your child is payback for what you put your own parents through


10. Finally, it is a strange fact of life that however contrary, badly behaved, loud, messy, rude, grumpy, snotty-nosed and plain bad-tempered your child is, you will love them wholeheartedly and without reservation. You will be blind to all their faults and think they are far nicer, sweeter and more brilliant than anyone else's child. All this is entirely untrue but essential to ensure the continued survival of the human race

Still tempted?

Comments

Anonymous said…
I've considered kids, its a no. Now i just need to persuade the girlfriend to agree.
One last point: Grandparents take unbridled joy -- and will offer little or no sympathy -- as they watch you endure the same indignities you put them through. In other words, they WILL laugh, and not with you.

Thanks for stopping by "Mommy Monsters"!

Popular posts from this blog

Apologies for being incommunicado this week and hope none of you out there are too distraught not to be receiving the usual almost-daily MotV missives. The reason for the silence is that I'm up to my neck, metaphorically-speaking, in research papers for my first grad course assessment. This experience has made me realise how rigorously un-academic I am in my thinking. It has also illuminated how reliant I am on red wine in order to get through endless evenings typing furiously on my laptop, not to mention the fueling of increasingly colorful curses that I feel obliged to aim at the University's online library system which consistently refuses to spit out any of the journals I'm desperate for (I refuse to believe this is 100% due to my technical incompetence...) Oh well, if this is the price one has to pay in order to realize a long-cherished dream then it's not all that bad... No one ever said a mid-life career change would be easy. Wish me luck!

Environment

Being an expat, a favorite topic of conversation is 'where I/you want to go next?' or 'When do you plan to go home?' It's a good question. I'm not sure I want to stay in Dubai for ever, but I'm also not sure about how long I want to be here for or where else I would like to live. For almost the first time ever, I have no fixed plans apart from keeping my eyes and mind open to interesting opportunities. And as to going 'home', I have no idea where that is. Constantly moving around as a child left me with the feeling that 'home' is wherever I am right now, so in effect 'home' could be anywhere. The longest I've ever lived in one fixed place was 18 years in London, on and off, but that doesn't feel like 'home' either - I love going back to see family and friends, and it's a great place to shop, but that's about it. I have a great love for California, which is where my extended family is from (and where most of the