So you think you are ready for children?

Try this test to find out.

Test 1: Preparation
Women: To prepare for pregnancy:
1.Put on a dressing gown and stick a beanbag down the front.
2.Leave it there.
... 3.After nine months, remove 5 per cent of the beans.
Men: To prepare for children:
1.Go to a local chemist. Tip the contents of your wallet on to the counter and tell the pharmacist to help himself.
2.Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to its head office.
3.Go home. Pick up the newspaper and read it for the last time.

Test 2: Knowledge
Find a couple who are already parents and berate them about their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels and how they have allowed their children to run wild.
Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour.
Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life when you will have all the answers.

Test 3: Nights
1.Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag weighing 4-6kg, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly.
2.At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep.
3.Get up at 11pm and walk the bag around the living room until 1am.
4. Set the alarm for 3am.
5. As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2am and make a cup of tea.
6.Go to bed at 2.45am.
7. Get up again at 3am when the alarm goes off.
8.Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
9.Put the alarm on for 5am. Get up when it goes off.
10.Make breakfast.
Keep this up for five years — and LOOK CHEERFUL.

Test 4: Dressing small children
1.Buy a real life octopus and string bag with holes in it.
2.Attempt to put the octopus into the string bag so that no tentacles come out of the holes.
Time allowed: five minutes.

Test 5: Cars
1.Forget the BMW. Buy a practical five-door wagon.
2.Buy a chocolate ice-cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
3.Get a coin. Insert it into the CD player.
4.Take a box of chocolate biscuits. Mash them into the back seat.
5.Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.


Test 6: Going for a walk
1.Wait.
2.Go out the front door.
3.Come back in again.
4.Go out.
5.Come back in again.
6.Go out again.
7.Walk down the front path.
8.Walk back up it.
9.Walk down it again.
10.Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes.
11.Stop, inspect minutely and ask at least six questions about every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way.
12.Retrace your steps.
13.Scream that you’ve had as much as you can stand, until the neighbours come out and stare at you.
14.Give up and go back in the house.

Test 7: Conversations with children
Repeat everything you say at least five times.

Test 8: Grocery shopping
1.Go to the local supermarket. Take with you the nearest thing you can find to a pre-school child — a fully grown goat is excellent. If you intend to have more than one child, take more than one goat.
2.Buy your weekly groceries — without letting the goat(s) out of your sight.
3.Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
Until you can easily accomplish this, do not even contemplate having children.

Test 9: Feeding a one-year-old
1.Hollow out a melon.
2.Make a small hole in the side.
3.Suspend the melon from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
4.Get a bowl of soggy cornflakes and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon while pretending to be an aeroplane.
5.Continue until half the cornflakes are gone.
6.Tip the rest into your lap, making sure most of it falls on the floor.

Test 10: TV
1.Learn the names of every character from the In The Night Garden, Barney, Teletubbies and Disney.
2.Watch nothing else on TV for at least five years.

Test 11: Mess
1.Smear peanut butter on to the sofa and jam on to the curtains.
2.Hide a fish behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
3.Stick your fingers in the flowerbeds, then rub them on clean walls. Cover the stains with crayon.
4.Empty every drawer/cupboard/storage box in your house on to the floor, then proceed with Step 5.
5.Drag random items from one room to another and leave them there.

Test 12: Long trips with toddlers
1.Make a recording of someone shouting ‘Mummy’ repeatedly.
Important notes: there must not be more than a four-second delay between each Mummy, and include occasional crescendos to the level of a supersonic jet.
2.Play this tape in your car everywhere you go for four years.

Test 13: Conversations with adults
1.Start talking to an adult of your choice.
2.Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem or shirt sleeve while playing the Mummy tape listed above.

Test 14: Getting ready for work
1.Pick a day on which you have an important meeting.
2.Put on your finest work attire.
3.Take a cup of cream and put one cup of lemon juice in it.
4.Stir.
5.Dump half of it on your nice silk shirt.
6.Saturate a towel with the other half of the mixture.
7.Attempt to clean your shirt with the same saturated towel.
8.Don’t change (you have no time).
9.Go directly to work.
You are now ready to have children. ENJOY!