While we believe children are a gift from God and a tremendous blessing, we also thought you might enjoy this light-hearted attempt at a little pre-parenthood training.

1. WOMEN: to prepare for maternity, put on a dressing gown and stick a pillowcase filled with beans down the front. Leave it there for nine months. After nine months remove ten percent of the beans. MEN: go to the local grocery store and arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office. Go home. Pick up the paper and read it for the last time.
2. Before you finally go ahead and have children find a couple who are already parents and berate them for their methods of discipline, lack of patience, appallingly low tolerance levels, and how they allow their children to run wild. Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s sleeping habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior. Enjoy it. It will be the last time in your life you will have all of the answers.
3. To discover how the nights will feel, walk around the living room from 5:00 p.m. to 10:00 pm carrying a wet bag weighing about 12 pounds carrying a radio playing loud static. At 10:00 p.m. put the bag down, set the alarm for midnight and go to sleep. Get up at midnight and walk around the living room again with the bag until 1:00 a.m. Put the alarm on for 3:00 a.m. As you can’t get to sleep get up at 2:00 a.m and fix something to eat. Go to bed at 2:45 am and get up again at 3:00 am when the alarm goes off. Sing songs in the dark until 4 a.m. Set the alarm for 5:00 a.m. Get up. Make breakfast. Keep this up for four years and look cheerful.
4. Can you tolerate the mess children make? To find out, first smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains. Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it all summer. Stick your fingers in the flower beds and rub them on the clean walls. Cover the stains with crayons.   
5. Dressing a small child is not as easy as it seems. First Buy an octopus and bag made out of loose mesh. Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this: all morning.
6. Forget the BMW and buy a station wagon or mini van. Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there. Get a dime and jam it into the tape player. Mash a package of chocolate cookies into the back seat. Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.
7. Get ready to go out. Wait outside the bathroom for half an hour. Go out the front door and come in again. Walk down the front path and then walk back up. Walk down it again. Walk very slowly down the road for five minutes. Stop to closely inspect every cigarette butt, piece of chewing gum, dirty tissue and dead insect along the way. Retrace your steps. Scream that you have had as much as you can stand until the neighbors come out and stare at you. Go back into the house. You are now ready to take a small child for a walk.
8. Always repeat everything you say at least five times.
9. Go to your local supermarket. Bring a full sized goat with you (one for every child you intend on having). Buy a week’s worth of groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goats eat or destroy. 
10. Hollow out a melon and cut a small hole in the side. Suspend it from the ceiling with a rope and swing it from side to side. Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane. Continue until half of the Cheerios are gone. Tip the rest into your lap, making sure much of it falls on the floor. You are now ready to feed a twelve month old baby.