#8. Restaurants=torture. Imagine you're on vacation in the hotel restaraunt (as far as you dare to venture) and your hyperactive 18-month-old son has no interest in sitting still. You haven't even ordered yet and he's frighteningly close to meltdown. The only way to survive this situation is to turn his napkin into a bird, pour the sugar packets into a heap on his plate, invite him to drive his Matchbox car (sprung conveniently from your purse) to make tracks in the "sand", and then -- when he quickly tires of that -- hand the toddler your wallet and allow him to remove, throw, and replace your credit cards as he pleases. Your neighbors stare in horror, but you know it's either that or your son will bang his spoon on the table and scream like a jungle bird for the next twenty minutes. No matter what, you'll work up a good sweat as you struggle to come up with your next form of entertainment. You probably won't sweat enough to lose that extra baby weight, but you will sweat enough to swear off restaurants forever.
#9. Children are meant to be ignored. I'm not saying you should ignore them all the time, but you don't have to pay them attention every second of the day. Maybe this is obvious to most people, but I had the idea that I needed to mother my child nonstop. As it turns out, this will quickly lead to burnout and a child with no sense of independence. So start them young. Let them cry if you're in the middle of making dinner or if you're getting dressed. Ask them to observe a "moment of silence" if their constant chatter in the backseat of the car is tempting you to veer into a telephone pole. Think of all the times that your parent ignored you as a child and be proud to carry on this important parenting tradition.
#10. Put a TV in every room. This goes along with #9, actually. Yes, we've all read the studies about TV stunting your kid's brain development and ruining their lives forever. All that aside, you will probably not survive with your sanity unless you consider the television mommy's little helper. This rule, by the way, does not pertain to those rare (freak of nature) children who will play for hours with a stick or a building block. Those children are rare, like unicorns and attractive bus drivers. I'm talking about the kid who doesn't sit down for anything. The one who fidgets nonstop at dinner, who runs in circles around the house when he's home sick, and who follows you wherever you go (toilet included). I know parents who use the television-induced coma to their advantage and slip some healthy foods in their kid's mouth when his defenses are down. Before you judge, consider this: the brain cells they are losing watching TV will surely be rebuilt by all the key vitamins and minerals they may mindlessly ingest. The other secret is this: no mom admits to how much TV their kid watches. That's because there's this snobby attitude that the more TV you let your kid watch, the trashier a mom you are. Therefore if someone tells you they allow their kid to watch 1 hour of TV a day, a good rule of thumb is to add 3 hours to get the real amount of TV their kid watches.
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