I heard recently of a lovely couple who have decided to foster children. They are a couple in their forties who haven’t had children. They will be great but I did have a sleepless night worried they are going into this cold. Oh yes they’ve done all the training and all but when you are faced with a couple of tweenies over the breakfast table each morning you are entering a whole other world of experience.

So to help them catch up I have, with my accumulated 17 years of parenting wisdom, put together a cheat sheet for them.

Eating Out

You know that cool new restaurant that just opened? It got reviewed in the Good Food Guide and all your friends are raving about it. YOU WILL NEVER GO THERE. Instead let me introduce you to the eating establishments of the big yellow M that you’ve seen dotted all over the landscape. I know it’s horrific but you are going to have to go inside. I get you have standards, and eating junk food is bad for kids. Yeah we all thought that, but after six and a half hours trapped in the car with them you need to get them to food FAST. Just so you know the menu is on the wall, table service is non-existent and it’s polite to  throw away your disposable packaging aka do the washing up before you leave.

Trust me you will appreciate ordering from the wall and being HANDED YOUR MEAL IMMEDIATELY when hungry children are clamouring at your side. Patience is not a skill set of a child of any age. You will also learn to love the PLAYGROUND.  With children safely locked inside you may actually get four minutes of uninterrupted time to enjoy a cup of tepid flavourless coffee before someone needs to wee, throws up or breaks a body part. But hey you got FOUR MINUTES TO YOURSELF.

School

I know you think you’ve had careers working within a large bureaucracy but you ain’t seen nothing until you’ve experienced the tsunami of paperwork generated by having two kids in school. Endless forms (usually asking for the same information repeatedly – how many times does one school need to know my Medicare number???),  permission slips, overdue library books reminders, head lice alerts.

Oh yes head lice, you weren’t expecting that were you? I know you keep a pristine house but those little mites don’t care. Go toxic go fast in treatment (yes I know natural is best but these things don’t die until you bring out the bring guns). Then the only way to get rid of them properly is loads and loads of no-name conditioner and a tiny metal comb. Hours of your life will be devoted to combing morning and night – it’s bonding time with your screaming child.

Also on the school front, make friends with the tuckshop convenor, in fact take a day off work and volunteer in the canteen. You are going to need this woman to bill your kids lunch when (a) you forget to make it  (b) they forget to take it (c) they drop it in the dirt getting their lunchbox out. Don’t roll your eyes at me I know you think you would never forget to make the children’s lunch. We’ll talk again after a couple of weeks of manoeuvring two children out of the door each morning on time, with breakfast consumed, in the appropriate uniform (yes sports day requires a different uniform, do you know which day is sports day? See there’s your first problem.), their swimming gear, the signed permission note for swimming, the bus fare for the swimming, and their tuba for those private music lessons in period three.

Holidays

I’m so glad to hear you enjoyed one last spa holiday at tropical resort. Your holidaying choices will now be determined by which Big Four Park has a slide into the pool. That’s aside from the biennial pilgrimage to the family holiday mecca of the Gold Coast. Where you will complete the holy trinity of theme park exploration, spend outrageous money on the worst food you have ever eaten, and abandon your atheist beliefs as you pray for everyone’s safety on the Tower of Terror. You may find one parent undergoes a double heart bypass just so they are no longer allowed on those bloody rides. (Yes Mr Shambles looking at you).

Television

That little nightly ritual you had of sitting down and watching the 7pm news on the ABC – sorry it clashes with Home and Away. Just to get you up to speed – the world is on tenterhooks waiting to find out who died in the bomb blast at season end. Also there is some serious mourning going on because April, Dex, Indi, Romeo, Liam, Gina, Rosie all left the show this year.  But don’t worry most have gone off to try their luck in Hollywood so soon you will heading to the cinema to watch their new releases, oh joy.

By the way ABC3 is the kids channel. Cling to that one for as long as you possibly can. Because the other channels have COMMERCIALS which show kids stuff they then desperately HAVE TO HAVE ’cause you know EVERYONE HAS IT.  So giving up Insiders for Dance Academy is a small price to pay to avoid perpetual advertising-generated nagging.

Then when your ABC3 commitment has flagged you will be inducted into the bizarre world of reality TV. You think you can fight off its addictive qualities but if you succumb to the first episode there is nothing I can do for you. And this is coming from a woman who learned to love the Beauties on Beauty and the Geek and even found herself saying at one point “you know that was a hard question, I’m not sure anyone would have got that one” and “I think this is good for all them, it’s really sweet watching them together”.

Music

One day you will find yourself in this situation.

This is a Dad a Bieber concert. If you head over here you well see a whole montage of Dads at One Direction concerts. The important thing to note here is it is DADS at the concerts – that’s because Mums had very important appointments that accidentally clashed with the concert so Dad had to step up. High five Mums around the world.

There is no advice to offer here except for wishing you masses of endurance.

In conclusion

Instant parenting is a tough gig to take on, all credit to the  foster parents who step up to the challenge. Through all the stress and worry there will be these rare gem of moments when you get a hug or an “I love you” or maybe just a grumpy “thanks” with makes you feel like you are making progress, and they are really cute when they are sleeping because then they are not talking, or singing yet another soppy Taylor Swift song, or asking endless unanswerable questions.