Warning Labels on Parenting.

Funniest label ever?

With everything having a label these days –  including plastic bags that state you’re not supposed to put them over your head – I’m surprised there isn’t a warning label for parents. On the kids.

You know the type of label… may cause anal leakage, diarrhea, blindness, irritability, dizziness, nausea and erectile dysfunction.

Ok, all of those could be on a child label, but here are a few more.

• May cause tiredness. They will wake you in the middle of the night because they’re sick or have had a bad dream or are muttering things in their dreams like Mommy, an alien is eating my butt!
• May cause hair loss or premature greyness. This is from worrying. Worrying when they’re sick or when there’s a breakaway and your youngest is in net, or when they walk to school by themselves for the first time or…. Well, that list is long and HUGE.
• May cause dismay due to a complete lack of respect for what you do. Hell, ask them and they think all you do is watch TV, play video games or sit in a fetal position, muttering, why, oh why, oh why. Apparently, according to the boys, parenting is easy. It’s tough being a kid.
• May cause hugs to become a form of barter. Like, “Mommy, I’ll give you a hug if you give me a cookie.” Damn the free market system!
• May cause partial deafness. Maybe from me yelling, but also because, (and here’s a big secret), you  learn to tune them out sometimes. I was in the car yesterday and the Youngest was talking about something and I couldn’t tell you a word he said. It was all background noise. Like the hum of the furnace. Or the bleat of the news.
• May cause an increase in wrinkles. I think this is mostly from worrying, lack of sleep, grade 7 math, or the heavy drinking, but these bad boys come in deep and come in hard. I have a permanent scowl line on my forehead now. It looks like one of the little toy farm tractors ploughed a rut there.
• May cause time dilation. Nothing will ever get done quickly. Get your shoes on, wait, where are your socks, how could you forget socks, ok, where’s your coat now, no not that one, that has ketchup all over it, that one, right there, no right there, now stop petting the dog, and find your school bag, wait, what are you doing staring into the fridge, for the love of God, we have to get to going!
• May destroy a quiet dining experience. If you’re lucky, you’ll not be asked to leave and never come back.
• May cause mental anguish. You’ll realize how stupid you really are when asked to help out with grade 7 math. Grade 7. Math. You think you know it, but then comes all the factions and integers and thingeamagiggees and polar-rectangular conversion formulas….
• May require an insane amount of cleanup. You’ll be doing the dishwasher every day. Sometimes twice a day. Same with laundry. How a single parent does all this and holds down a job, I have no idea. There must be a math formula for this. Something like the number of jobs is exponentially bigger with each child/dog/cat, with some sort of growth factor for when they hit teenagerness.
• 

  Was that the right call?

  May experience confusion and disorientation. You’ll doubt yourself, your abilities and your sanity on a daily basis. Like Pete Carroll after that last Superbowl.

Yet here’s the funny thing.

The label should also say it’ll be the most amazing time of your life. I wouldn’t trade it for the world.