Years ago, before I had children, I read a chain email someone sent around at work. It was titled “Things I’ve Learned from my Children (honest and no kidding)”. What followed contained many fun facts, such as how long it takes the Austin, Texas fire department to respond and how a piece of Lego will pass through a child’s digestive tract in one piece. At the time, as a child-free adult, I could laugh without also crying just a little.
Like most parents, I’ve learned a few things since having children. While my own lessons are not as hilarious / terrifying as that chain email, they’re nonetheless extremely hard-fought. Today, as a public service, I am sharing them with you so that you won’t have to learn them for yourself. Although you probably will anyway, because kids just love providing us with these lessons.
My little teachers – it’s a good thing they’re so adorable
Things I’ve Learned from my own Children
- In an attempt to “fix” your printer, a four-year-old will completely destroy it. Your protests that it was not broken in the first place will not change anything. A printer that makes that sound is never printing properly again.
- Printer ink stains.
- It is possible to find peanut butter in a small child’s hair when that child has not been anywhere near peanut butter in a week, and they’ve had several baths since.
- Kids can always reach just a little bit higher than you think they can. And their ability to climb is uncanny.
- The fact that they opened the closed bathroom door, uninvited, intruding on what you were hoping was a rare private moment, will not stop your children from complaining about the fact that it ‘smells bad in here’.
- Always, always bring a pair of emergency pants for each child when you leave the house. Because if you don’t, that will be the occasion when you really need them.
- Store employees may say they don’t have a public bathroom, but when faced with a 3-year-old doing the pee-pee dance, one will magically appear.
- Children prefer to conduct all cooking experiments with your most expensive supplies – good vanilla, free trade chocolate, herbs and spices that you can only find at the gourmet shop.
- Lego isn’t the only thing that passes through a child’s digestive system intact. So do corn, peas, and crayon pieces.
- 9-1-1 operators will really put you through your paces when your two-year-old accidentally calls them up. “No, there is no emergency here. Yes, everyone is safe. No, we do not need an officer to come by to check on us. Yes, I will delete you from my speed dial and move the phone out of reach.”
- When cheap jewellery gets shoved into a power outlet, it makes some really impressive black marks.
- The genitals that you spend the most time discussing, often loudly and in public when you’d really rather not, belong to a toddler.
Now it’s your turn. What have you learned from your children – whether you wanted to or not?
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It is possible to push all the buttons on a telephone handset and destroy the entire phone system. It is.
magpie’s last post … Wordless Wednesday: Down to Here, Down to There
Common rocks and pine cones are treasures to be cherished and amassed into house collection. Or even better, into pillowcase collection. The fact that rocks are common (i.e. found everywhere all around us) just makes collection grow intimidatingly large in short time, it does not diminish exclusiveness or preciousness of collection itself.
White furniture of any kind – well that is just asking for it!
40 year old adult can be brought to learn to map out all the washrooms in every place ever visited, together with cleanliness/toilet paper status/soap availability grades of last 5 visits each.
Younger siblings make delightful art canvases.
Engineers have an old adage that amount of knowledge gathered is directly proportional to number of destroyed lab equipment pieces. Well, there is corollary to that: amount of time spent on heavy-scrubbing your toddler in the bath is directly proportional to how expensive your make up WAS.
Twitter: AmberStrocel
says:
On the common rocks and pine cones, in kindergarten my daughter’s class studied crows. I ended up with hundreds of photos of crows on my phone. Because, of course, we needed to photograph each one.
Twitter: bluebirdmama
says:
I’ll have to think a little to come up with some of mine, but to add to the digestive track one: those puffy stickers also pass through unharmed, and miraculously, raisins rehydrate and become grapes in a diaper. Who knew?
Alison @ BluebirdMama’s last post … Home Again
Twitter: AmberStrocel
says:
Ah, yes, I have witnessed the raisins-to-grapes phenomena as well. So fun!
The very first subway car, with a window in front, is the best one. The last subway car is good, too.
Twitter: mothersofchange
says:
Although crayola claims its felts washable, when applied to white surfaces, they are not entirely so.
Melissa Vose’s last post … More Summer Joy
Twitter: bluebirdmama
says:
Every baby on the planet will have one of two reactions to having their face washed:
1) scream as if being murdered and thrash around
2) madly try to suck on the washcloth
Alison @ Bluebirdmama’s last post … How We Do It
Twitter: AmberStrocel
says:
Ooh, and when they’re get a little bigger they’ll stick out their whole tongues in an effort to suck/lick the washcloth, which will prevent you from actually washing their chins.