Before adopting kids - 15 quick training sessions - Part 1

On our last assessment visit, our social worker left us with 15 quick training sessions to undertake....

I share the first of the sessions here with you...

Session 1
Go to the supermarket. Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
Go home.
Pick up a newspaper.
Read it for the last time.

Session 2
Before you adopt your children, find a couple who already are parents and advise them how to improve:
1. their methods of discipline
2. their lack of patience
3. their appalling low tolerance levels
4 their practice of allowing their children to run wild
5. their child's sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners and overall behaviour
Enjoy it.
It will be the last time in your life that you will have all the answers.

Session 3
To discover how nights will feel...
1. Walk around the living room from 5pm to 10pm carrying a wet bag of old lentil soup weighing 6kg, with a radio tuned to static playing loudly
2. At 10pm, put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep
3. Get up at midnight and walk the bag of lentil soup round 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. Sing songs in the dark until 4am.
8. Get up. Make breakfast.
Keep this up for 5 years. Look cheerful.

Session 4
Dressing small children is not as easy as it seems.
1. Buy a live octopus and a small bag made of loose mesh.
2 Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out.
Time allowed for this - all morning.

Session 5
Forget the BMW and buy a practical 5-door saloon or people carrier. And don't think you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don't look like that.
1. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
2. Get a coin. Insert it in the CD player.
3. Take a family-sized packet of chocolate biscuits and mash them into the back seat.
4. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car. There. Perfect!

Session 6
Get ready to go out.
1. Wait outside the bathroom for half an hour
2. Go out the front door
3. Come in again
4. Go out
5. Come back in
6. Go out again
7. Walk down the front driveway
8. Walk back up it
9. Walk down it again
10. Walk very slowly down the road for 5 minutes
11. Stop, inspect minutely, and ask at least 6 questions about, every piece of used chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way
12. Retrace your steps
13. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbours come out and stare at you
14. Give up and go back into the house
You are just about ready to try taking a small child for a walk.

Session 7
Repeat everything at least 100 times.