ALL expecting parents start out with good intentions, which rapidly fall apart once the kid arrives. Say goodbye to these plans:
They’ll only eat healthy food
You have fantasies of not giving your child any sweets or processed foods once they’re weaned and raising them on a diet of organic vegetables and quinoa. Five minutes into your first supermarket trip with a screaming toddler however, and you’ll be handing over bags of donuts just to shut her up.
We won’t give them phones
You once read an article about brain development in the Guardian and now act all snooty when you see haggard looking parents letting their toddlers chew on their iPhones. You’ll change your tune pretty quick and happily hand over your phone as long as it stops them throwing more yoghurt on the dog.
Only an hour of television a day
In your head, your child will grow up frolicking in the outdoors, engaging their imagination while they play in rolling fields. In reality, you live in a third-floor flat in Walthamstow, so there’s only so long you can force them to play on the balcony before giving in and letting them watch five hours of Paw Patrol.
Get them to learn an instrument young
Some deluded part of you thinks that if you give them a keyboard as a toddler they’ll become the next Mozart and you’ll become a multimillionaire by the time they’re eight. However after a couple of days of your talentless child hitting the keyboard with a spoon, you’ll give it to a charity shop.
Never swear in front of them
Conscious that you don’t want to pollute their impressionable young mind with foul language, you’ll train yourself to use idiotic phrases like ‘fiddlesticks’. However, the first time you accidentally stand barefoot on a plastic dinosaur you’ll start swearing like a docker. The next thing you know your child’s going to school sounding like a miniature Danny Dyer.
