How to Train Your Toddler So That You Actually Want to Live With Him

How to Sleep Train Your Kid:

Step one: Throw away all of the books that talk about how to sleep train YOUR kid. Step two: Politely refuse to listen to anyone else’s advice on how they sleep-trained THEIR kid. Step three: When it’s bedtime, help your child put on their pajamas and put them in their bed. Step four: Say goodnight, I love you, sweet dreams, or whatever else you want and turn the lights out. Step five: Help them get out of their bed in the morning. Step six: During the day, when they begin to turn into a tiny little monster, put them in their bed for a nap. Could be once a day, could be four or five times. Whatever. Monster = nap. Step seven: Repeat.

How to Train Your Kids to Pick Up Their Toys:

Step one: Ask your child, “Will you please pick up your toys now?” Step two: When your child ignores you, quietly get out a garbage bag. Step three: Because of their previous experience with you and the aforementioned garbage bag, the child goes into panic mode and cleans up their toys in record time.

How to Train Your Toddler to not have Temper Tantrums:

Step one: Child is spastic on ground because you have poured milk on their cheerios after they had specifically asked you to….pour milk on their cheerios. Step two: Stand over them and say to them “Go bigger, you can be wilder than that, C’mon you’re losing your touch! Yell louder! Flail More! Let’s go! Get that crazy out of you!” Step three: If step two doesn’t work, get down on the floor and flail with them. Really go for it. Step four: Assist your toddler, who should now be laughing hysterically at their lunatic mom, back up to their chair to eat their cheerios.

How to Train Your Kid to Be Polite:

Step one: Be polite to them. Step two: Refuse to do anything for them (i.e. get them a glass of water, help them tie their shoes, buy them stuff, feed them) unless they are polite to you. Step three: Repeat steps one and two 9,657,987 times.

How to Train Your Kid to Eat The Same Dinner as You:

Step one: Make something that you feel like having for dinner. Step two: Put a smaller portion of this type of food on your child’s plate. Step three: Eat. Step four: Clean up their plate when dinner is over. You will know when dinner is over when you either see an empty plate or, if your child has the willpower of a Tibetan Monk, they will be fast asleep with their head on the table. They will most likely get hungry enough to eat what you eat someday. I wouldn’t know, I usually only give my kids mac ‘n cheese because I have a physiological disorder that requires me to see them put food into their mouths.

How To Potty Train Your Kid:

Step one: Stop using diapers. Step two: Show them where to go to the bathroom. Step three: Invest in a mop.

How To Teach Your Kid to Be a Nice Person:

Step one: Be nice to them. The End.

Disclaimer; Written from the confines of my home, where my toddler is yelling obscenities at me from her time-out chair, probably won’t be potty-trained until she is 12, and is generally acting like a little asshole, and where my six-year-old lacks the willpower to keep himself from slide tackling his sister every 5 seconds and can’t even sit at the dinner table, let alone eat any food. But a girl can dream.