Lesson 1

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

Lesson 2

1. Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their
2. Methods of discipline
3. Pack of patience
4. Appallingly low tolerance levels
5. Allowing their children to run wild
6. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s breastfeeding, toilet training, table manners and overall behavior

Enjoy if because it will be the last time in your life that 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 5-10pm carrying a wet bag weighing ~8-12 lbs, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) plyaing loudly. Eat cold food for dinner with one hand.
2. At 10pm, put the bag down gently, 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. Set 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, for several months if not years. Look cheerful and together

Lesson 4

Can you stand the mess children make? To 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 of out loose mesh
2. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out

Time allowed- all morning, if necessary

Lesson 6

Forget the BMW and buy a minivan. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shiny. 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 set. 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 on having 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. How get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane
5. Continue until half the Cheerios are gone
6. Tip half of the remaining Cheerios into your lap, the remaining 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 Pokemon. Watch nothing else on TV except 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, and an occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required. Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for the next 3 years. You are now ready to take a long road trip with a toddler.

Lesson 11

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

Congratulations, you’re now ready to have a child!