Crazy land Express

Dinner tonight was  one of those events that serve no purpose in life.  Nothing good came from it.  No lesson to be learned.  You just have to endure it, and swear to get even with those that torture you.  I’m speaking, of course, of my children.  Some people may have kids who are crazy, but most of them have husbands home for dinner, so these women have not hit crazy land as early as I have.   But if anyone wants to know how to get there real quick, I will show you a detour.

First, make sure a child of yours makes no less than 4 major messes in about 2 hours.  We’re talking things like lipstick on walls, flooded bathrooms, dumping on the floor boxes of cake mix, and finger painting with frosting.  You can exchange one of those for playing with the large chunks of a poopy diaper, or slamming the vacuum into a wall leaving a hole AND breaking the vacuum at the same time, if you would like.  Your choice. 

Secondly, be sure all children are overly tired.  They must be good and cranky if this is going to work.  Maybe wake them up 3-4 times the night before, and pee on them just to be sure they are uncomfortable most of the night.

Next, insist that a toddler, or emotional child under the age of 5, have at least 3 knock-em out, screaming crying tantrums that day, usually over having to pick up say, a pair of shoes or close a door.  Make sure these tantrums last a minimum of 10 minutes, and then follow it with at least 20 minutes of soothing the child so that in this time any other odd child you have in your home is free to make mischief such as described above.

Also, have at least one school aged child—two is really better—yell at you that his/her math homework is impossible and cannot be done.  Make sure the child cries, yells, throws things and makes you want to rip out your own vocal cords that give you the kind, patient voice of a Mr. Rogers or librarian you feel you need to use in this situation, and strangle the child with those vocal chords.  This “dialogue” should last about an hour. 

You can throw in a lovely dinner that you've spent a few hours preparing, but make sure half of your children grumble at the sight of it and one in particular bursts into tears.

Finally, after your toddler (or any aged child, really) throws green beans at a larger sibling then runs away with a handful of red jello, know you are almost in crazy land.  You just need to be sure you drop a few choice curse words, because without those, your eye twitch wont be noticeable to your children because they wont really look at you until they hear a naughty word come from you.  You know that, right?   Therefore, they will not become frightened of you and run away crying.  As they run, they must trip over each other, and cry even more.  There will be a twinge of guilt that you are freaking out, and need to stay in control because hey, you are the only adult here, but don’t dwell on that, it will prevent the cross over into crazy land.  Once you are there, your children will realize the error of their ways and eventually apologize and want to hug you over and over, but you have to hit crazy land first. 

My perfect combination is the yelling ridiculous threats, an eye twitch, some very choice swear words and chasing them towards the bedrooms—gets it done every time.  But if you choose not to add swearing to your journey to crazy land, let me give you some visual suggestions that you could repeat.  They will work, I promise.  Don’t descend into the gutter with me—it only makes the clean up harder.

Allow your child who is tempted to play with his food, to linger at the table alone, very near a dish of jello.  Become distracted with other children and realize that the child at the table is having far too much fun with the jello to hear your threats or feel any blows to the back of his head you may give him.  It basically only encourages him.

Even after you help the jello-covered child clean up, and threaten to text these pictures to his Dad, who will surely “kill the child” when he gets home, as Bill Cosby used to put it, make sure this child also gets to linger near the pan of mashed potatoes.  Be sure this is the same child who has impulse control issues, or this wont work.

You really need a small child to play with dangerous kitchen utensils.   The pizza cutter is especially great because the child can damage property more readily than himself, which will bother you for months to come until you finally get whatever he has destroyed fixed.  Also, you'll want to have another child continuing the homework tantrum while all this is going on.  Basically the idea is to keep your head spinning in so many directions that you can’t walk, talk or think straight.  That’s crucial!

Don't’ forget to banish a child to time out.  You’ll want to check on that child and be sure he/she does NOT obey you and actually go to time out.  They must hide and giggle while you look for them.  Be sure and have them cling to you and scream bloody murder while you put them in your choice of time out location.  I would choose a bedroom, because then they can slam the door over, and over, and over, and over until your eyes begin to bleed. 
 
I’m kind of lonely out here in crazy land.  People look at me funny.  I need some friends.  If you don’t have any kids, just come over to my house around 4:00 tomorrow, and ride the crazy land express with me.
I promise, it will be a ride you wont ever forget.