WTF - Hidden Chapters of the Parenting Manual

Since I've spent this past year either at baby showers or christenings or play dates, I thought I share all those extra chapters you don't see in the typical parenting books.

11. Giving Information Away To The Enemy - How to navigate all those great helicopter moms. Keeping your mouth shut when a child does something disgusting in front of them to making that Pinterest recipe look like it made it from scratch.

10. Vocal Chord Warm Up Exercises or Get that right pitch for yelling - You will spend a good 18 years yelling about something. Yelling for someone to listen to you, someone to clean up, or over all the noise your family creates.

9.  Basics of Rocket Science - this chapter is helpful in putting the straw into the juice pouch or box without dousing yourself. Putting together the Lego Starship in record time because you have a child standing next to you crying. Putting Dad's radio back together after your child spent the morning taking it apart.

8.  Negotiating 101 - it starts when they are little "I'll give you X if you stop crying" to when they are teenagers "If you don't stop that I'm hiding the Xbox cord." A specific part of the chapter is a difference between a bribe and a negotiation. It starts with, "Yes, you will bribe" and then explains which fights are worth the bribe (insert Ringbearer or teaching your little brother poker)

7. Stretch Tone and Balance - Stretching for running your hand down the inside of toilet for the batman flushed earlier that morning, Tone for chasing the child that did something wrong around the house saying, "When I catch you." Balance for the thirty minutes it takes to buckle a stubborn toddler into their car seat.

6. Chemical Warfare - this chapter explains the difference between your normal science experiment and hazmat. Starting with what you see in a child's diaper to the cluster of dishes under their bed as a teenager to that thing on the floor that doesn't resemble anything.  A few good paragraphs cover the question "Why is this wet?" Whether or not you even want to know.

5. The Sanitized Reputation - this chapter goes through cleaning anything. From the toilet, to the walls to the ceiling of the bathroom. My most useful part of this chapter is how to get out blood. I've used that many times having boys and will keep that in the back of my mind in case I "need" it.

4.  Me Time - how to take that special time for yourself. From ways to hide the cookies from your children, how to go into the bathroom without your children knowing. How to change the mathematical correlation between getting on your phone and your children either crying or fighting in your favor.

3.  Therapy for Dummies - how to manage meltdowns to maintaining that calm face when your teenagers tell you what they did for the weekend. Specifically explaining the Healthful Living class to consoling the first broken toy to broken heart.

2. The Art of the Mom Stare - how to make a child stop in their tracks with a single stare, sorted out by age group. The difference it makes adding the eyebrow raise to the stare making it more ominous.

1.  This too shall pass - from Hygiene to Homework to Household chores to Hormones. This chapter outlines how you really will miss these times when they are gone.

Giving Information Away to the Enemy