Parenting Pop Quiz

See if you can survive parenting a toddler (or two) by taking this pop quiz!

1) Your child pees in the potty (which is in the living room because screw social conventions, who can actually be arsed to take them to the bathroom all the live long day?) He picks the potty full of wee up and starts trying to carry it to the loo himself.  Which option do you choose?

a) Let him.  He’s learning to be independent/it means you don’t have to move.

b) Take the potty off him and do it yourself.

c) Engage your hostage negotiator voice (recognising that this is a potential wee-on-carpet situation) and get him to give it to you.

Correct answer: c). This is the option least likely to result in piss everywhere.  I mean, there is still a chance because you’ve got a maverick toddler holding a pot full of piss, but this option lessens the likelihood of said piss being thrown all over the place.  a) will likely end up in him sloshing pee everywhere as he drunkenly wobbles to the toilet, clutching the potty and b) will lead to an undignified scuffle that results in the pee splashing on you, which is obviously even worse than the pee going on the carpet.  I know this because I opted for b).

 

2.  You go to see a friend for the afternoon.  Once you’ve left, your son refuses to get in the car, kicking and screaming, because he wants to go back and say bye for the 47^th time. Which option do you choose?

a) Tell him no, and put him in the car seat.

b) Tell him no, attempt to put him in the car seat while he twats you around the face and proves that, despite the fact he is 34 years younger than you and a quarter the size of you, he is still stronger than you, get to a point where you think that you might weep, then jubilantly remember you put some Haribo in the bag before you left and tell him he can have a bag if he gets in the seat.

c) Let him go back – your hosts will think it’s charmingly cute that he wants to come back to say goodbye again.

Correct answer: b), although it doesn’t have to be Haribo – any horribly unhealthy, sugar filled bribe will do.  If you answered a) I’m pretty sure you can’t actually have toddlers (or if you do they are significantly better behaved/less violent than mine) and c) only temporarily delays the problem – this is twattish toddler behaviour: they will not do what you ask them to just because you’ve conceded and let them do what they wanted to.  That is not how this works.  You are their hostage and you need to do everything you can to overpower them.

3. You arrive back from your friend’s house.  There is only one parking space near your house and it’s going to require a reverse park (and you live on a massive fucking hill and you have to park half on the pavement, half off it).  Your bellend of a neighbour is on the pavement, ready to judge you if you fail the reverse park, some knob in a white van is behind you revving his engine and World War 3 is going on in the back of the car, despite you bellowing ‘WILL YOU STOP FIGHTING? MUMMY CANNOT PARK WHEN YOU ARE SCREAMING LIKE THIS.  IT IS VERY DANGEROUS. IF MUMMY HITS A CAR AGAIN BECAUSE SHE CAN’T CONCENTRATE WHEN YOU ARE FIGHTING THEN MUMMY WILL BE VERY CROSS.’ Which option do you choose?

a) Fuck this shit. Park miles away and drag your warring children down the street, kicking and screaming, making sure one of them catches the bellend neighbour on the shins as you go past.

b) Make a nervous, half assed attempt at reverse parking, cave in to the pressure of those watching you and assuming you will fail, give up, feel like crying, park miles away, wait five minutes in the car in the hope that the bellend neighbour will have gone in by the time you have to walk past.

c) Reverse park the fucking car.  Let the naysayers hear you ROAR: you are a lone wolf*, you are raising children all by yourself on approximately three hours sleep a night and no-one is going to make you believe you can’t do difficult shit because you do difficult shit all day long, every waking hour (and man there are so many waking hours – so many) and if there is one thing that raising children all by yourself has taught you, it is that you can do absolutely anything.  Anything. Reverse park the fucking car, get the kids out of the car, walk past the judgey neighbour and give him your best withering, smell-the-shit look.

Correct answer: c)  Always c). Prove the fuckers wrong, believe in yourself, you’ve got this.  (NB – but don’t beat yourself up if it turns into b).  Reverse parking is really difficult at the best of times, never mind trying to do it at the same time as trying to stop your children from killing each other on the back seat.)

4.  At tea time, your daughter wants to bring a fucking torch to the table with her and says she won’t sit up unless you let her have the torch.  Do you:

a) Acknowledge that it’s the end of the day: you are tired, you have no energy with which to fight her and let her bring the effing torch to the table, accepting that you will now eat your dinner with a torch being shone directly into your eyes.

b) Tell her she can’t bring the torch to the table, wrestle her to get it off her and watch the five act toddler tantrum that ensues when you’re finally victorious. 

c) Throw the torch in the bin.  You are not allowing a fucking torch at the dinner table.

Correct answer: a). You’ve got to pick your battles. In an ideal world, you’d get to eat your dinner without a two year old tyrant shining a torch in your eyes and bellowing “CAN YOU SEE MUMMY? CAN YOU SEE WHEN I DO THIS?’  but this is not an ideal world. This is a world in which people piss, shit and vomit on you regularly and yet you still love them. b) is just not worth it at this stage of the game – you’re so nearly at the finishing line: let some things go.  c) is what I wanted to do but I managed to stop myself.  Just.

5.  You’ve made it to bed time.  Everyone is still alive.  You’ve sat through 82 episodes of Peppa Pig (plus one last one, three times), you’ve read/shouted your way through some stories and you’ve managed to wrestle the little bastards into bed. You’ve kissed them goodnight and told them you love them millions and millions, so much, more than they will ever know, forever and ever, now go to sleep and do not get out of bed because mummy will get very cross.  You’ve closed the door, walked downstairs and heard nothing for five minutes.  Which option do you choose?

a) Go to bed yourself.  Sleep is precious and you need to get it where you can.

b) Tidy up – your house looks like someone has come in and maliciously trashed it and you just cannot cope with the mess.

c) Pour a glass of wine.  Everything seems much easier when you are mildly pissed.  Proceed to then watch several hours of shit TV, culminating in ‘staying up late’ (to 10.30) so you can watch TOWIE and imagine what it must be like to be young and free, and to go out to restaurants and bars and clubs without a care in a world, because although you know you did used to be and do these things, having children is not dissimilar to being lobotomised and your memories of such fun are hazy and incomplete. 

Correct answer: c) obviously. Always c). If you didn’t answer c) I’m not sure we can be friends.

*This still works even if you’re not a lone wolf because having a toddler, regardless of how many adults are around, is hard fucking work.  You can just call yourself a wolf.  We are all part of the same pack and we are in this together.