1. Keep your parents on their toes in the morning
Some days when you awake from your refreshing toddler sleep, which actually has the magical ability to erase the darkness under your eyes and provide you with uncaffinated energy, find the chirping birds out of your window delightful. In a sweet whisper, marvel at the robins! and the sounds! of the airplane up there! Shower the nearest available parent with fifty kisses and stroke their cheeks with small hands. Gentle, gentle!
Other mornings, whine and fuss yourself awake with the fury of an unmedicated psychiatric patient. Indignantly kick the nearest parent and exclaim All done! All done! with all of this sleep nonsense! Then use your head as a battering ram to the nearest parental jaw. Also, pinch your mother’s very sore breasts for fun and stick your fingers in her eyes.
2. Be helpful
Demand to help! help! whenever possible. When your father goes outside to get the paper, insist on following him, regardless of the temperature, the condition of the pavement, and whether or not your feet are bare. If you spill coffee grounds on the floor while dumping the tiny red tablespoon bucket in the filter, so be it. When your mother tells you she needs to use the bathroom, run to her aid: hold her hand, guide her to the nearest facility (right here! right here!), open the toilet lid for her convienence, and attempt to climb into the bathtub to busy yourself while she does her thing. Voice your concern as loudly as possible HELP HELP HAAAALP! when your mother is cutting vegetables with very sharp knives without your assisstance. If you do so with enough vigor, she may sit you up on the countertop to watch. Whine when she refuses to let you use the knife. Tell her practice makes perfect.
3. Neither desire to bathe, nor desire any encounter with water to end if such an experience has been forced upon you
Refuse baths. They are for filthy animals who enjoy simmering in their own lukewarm detritious. Insist on showers with your parents instead. Insist on showering with them every time they shower. When they do allow you in the stall, dance and prance around in the marvelous spray of water, and use a cup to catch the glorious stuff off of whatever surface is available…even the streams of water that pour off of your parent’s bodies. Then take a sip! Delicious! Pitch a complete meltdown when the shower is over. The more snot pouring from your nose, the better.
4. Make every trip in the car Groundhog Day
Politely request Poppins?, Tuppence? Sugar Down? upon entering any vehicle. If necessary, demand the Mary Poppins soundtrack with increasing volume if your parents don’t take the earlier, sweeter hint. With persistence, glory will be yours. Accurately announce each upcoming roadside attraction, in proper order:
*Playgound!: Fuss considerably if the car does not stop at this location.
*Red barn!. Bye Bye barn. Bye bye.
*Church!
*Flags. Flags flap. Flap. Wave your hands to indicate how the eight thousand American flags displayed at the car dealerships flap in the wind.
Perform this ritual in reverse order on the way home. When appropriate, remind your parents of interesting vehicles alongside your own. A medley of such announcements might include the following: Oh wow! BIG truck! Digger! Moto-cycle has two wheels. Bicycle has two wheels. It’s okay to confuse the number of wheels on a car for two rather than four. Your parents enjoy the game. If you happen to see the very rare, quite unlikely sight of a person walking along an even rarer sidewalk, by all means, alert your parents. WALKING! WALKING!
5. Guilt-trip your Mother
Cling to your mother’s legs and request to be held, or to simply touch! whenever you think she needs reminding that you exist, which, let’s be honest, is often. Kiss her randomly and often, especially after you have upset her by throwing a book at her leg or smashing your brand new sit-or-push fire truck into the furniture for the tenth time. Sorry mommy. Mommy angry.
Distributing enough sweetness when you are with her will ensure that she misses you when you are apart. Keep this in mind on “school” days; attach yourself to her person like a joey trying to climb into its mother’s pouch the moment you step into your daycare room. Cry, sometimes seemingly inconsolably when she puts you in Miss Julie’s arms, and reach for her longingly when she abandons you for a day of what are actually fun and enlighting actitivies with your friends. It mixes her up fantastically and makes her ruminate on how quickly you are growing up and how you used to look like this:
