If you’ve never done any of these things are you even a mum?
Becoming a parent brings with it a wide array of new experiences that were never mentioned in any of the parenting books. It’s an exclusive club with many ritual hazings that form a lifelong, never-ending initiation.
Here are 23 things you can ask yourself, in order to determine whether or not you really are a high-ranking member of the parenting club.
Because if you’ve never done any of these things below, are you even a mum?
1. Willingly held out your hand so that someone could regurgitate their chewed up food into it.
2. Spent 20 minutes hunting frantically for one lost shoe before you leave the house … at least once a week.
3. Run out of the house with a screaming naked person tucked under your arm because you’re running late and clothes can be put on in the car.
4. Unflinchingly watched someone bend over and touch their toes so you may gain better access to their post-pooh rectal area.
5. Abandoned a trolley full of groceries in Aisle 12 because someone needed to go to the toilet RIGHT NOW!
6. Asked someone at regular intervals throughout the day: “Do you need to go to the toilet?”
7. Begged someone to stop sitting on top of the heater in the middle of spring.
8. Dropped, rolled and then commando crawled out of someone else’s bedroom in the dark.
9. Been woken in the middle of the night by someone announcing they are about to throw up on you.
10. Intimately gotten to know someone’s “pooh face.”
11. Gone to hand someone a pen from your handbag and handed them a half-chewed rusk by mistake.
12. Locked yourself in the laundry on purpose.
13. Shoved your head into the pantry and eaten a secret stash of mini Mars Bars whilst still maintaining the outer illusion that you are just looking for some tinned tomatoes.
14. Filled out a form or written a note in purple Texta.
15. Argued with someone about why they can’t wear shorts in winter.
16. Argued with someone about the society’s expectations that people wear shoes.
17. Argued with someone about society’s expectations that we don’t wear pyjamas in public.
18. Woken up with someone’s foot in your face.
19. Slept curled up on the lower right hand corner of your own bed because someone half your size was hogging the rest of it.
20. Been made to watch something “really funny” on Youtube, only to find out 23 minutes in that it’s not funny at all.
21. Been happy to sit through a really bad movie that got one star just because it had real people in it and wasn’t another Pixar or Disney cartoon with songs.
22. Bribed someone with a Chupa Chup.
23. Uttered any of the following phrases:
- Put your shoes on!
- Get off him!
- I said, now!
- For god’s sake, it’s bedtime!
- When was the last time you bathed?
- Your hair smells like ham.
- Put some pants on!
- I don’t care who started it!
- Don’t make me come in there!
- If you’re cold, put some socks on.
- Pick up your stuff!
- This room looks like a brothel/crack den/bomb site!
- Whose underpants are those hanging on the Christmas tree?
- Yuck! Dirty! Dirty! Don’t touch!