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I have to teach them what?

Does it ever amaze you, as a parent, the things you have to teach your kids?  There are some things that I just assumed were innate or an auto-learn feature of childhood.  I was wrong.  So far, here's the list of things I never knew I had to teach my children:

  1. How to nurse...it's not as innate as many lactation specialists would like you to think.
  2. How to sleep.
  3. When to sleep.
  4. How long to sleep.
  5. How to sleep in their own beds.
  6. When to wake up.
  7. How to dress themselves.
  8. How not to dress themselves.
  9. How to wipe their own bottoms.
  10. What to put in the potty.
  11. What not to put in the potty.
  12. Not to touch bottoms other than their own.
  13. When not to touch their own bottom.
  14. When it's appropriate to talk about bottoms.
  15. How to eat.
  16. What to eat.
  17. How to tilt a sippy cup up so that the drink comes out.
  18. To not tilt a straw cup up.
  19. How to drink out of a regular cup/glass with no lid.
  20. How to dial a phone.
  21. How to make an emergency phone call.
  22. What is an emergency.
  23. When the emergency necessitates an emergency phone call.
  24.  What a smoke detector sounds like.
  25. What to do when you hear a smoke detector.
And the list goes on.

Amazingly, there are things that I've NEVER had to teach my children, but they automatically now.
  1.  How to escape their baby-gated room at 4am.
  2. How to wake up everyone in the house at 4am after flooding the kitchen.
  3. How to burn a toy in a waffle iron.
  4. How to draw on the most expensive piece of furniture in the house with Sharpie.
  5.  How to start a car.
  6. How to get through every baby/toddler safety/security feature ever bought.
  7. How to break the lock on my mobile phone.
  8. How to pick a lock when there's food on the other side of the door.
  9. How to build your own staircase out of laundry baskets.
  10. How to unlock doors and deadbolts.
  11. What Caillou is.
  12. How to climb a tree.
  13. How to make anything into a step ladder.
  14. How to find every piece of chocolate in the house.
  15. To want bubble gum even though they've never had it.
  16. How to stop the drains in every sink.
  17. How to flush a toilet...over and over and over again.
  18. Where the dog water bowl is.
  19. How to throw a temper tantrum.
  20. Phrases to tell Mom and/or Dad they're angry.
 

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Comments

  1. UnknownMarch 24, 2015 at 2:44 AM

    OK this is hilarious!! Not sure if your blog makes me want to have kids more or less :).

    ReplyDelete

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