If Parents of Toddlers Ran the World...

Lately I've been doing some thinking about the struggles that parents of young children face. These cute-as-a-button-bundles-of-joy are like Jekyll and Hyde. One minute they can be sweet, adorable, wildly intelligent love bugs, and as soon as we let our guard down they are pitching a fit, making a mess, or destroying the house. While we often commiserate together to relieve our stress, it's not something we really enjoy doing. In fact, if we were the decision-makers in this world, we'd just change some things all together and eliminate many of the problems before they begin. 

For example:

1. Ban public toilets that flush automatically. In order to get my terrified child into the public stall so they won't have an gross accident in their underwear, I am required to stand at the back of the commode and cover the sensor with my hand, so it doesn't go off while they reaching over to get toilet paper, pulling up their britches, or even in the stall at all. Yes, this grosses me out more than you can imagine.

2. Chicken nuggets would be a healthy meal option. In fact, they might even be their own food group. It would be acceptable to eat them every day. Mommy-guilt for feeding them to your children would be eliminated. (This would also apply to french fries and pudding cups.)

3. Eliminate Daylight Savings Time. A sleeping schedule is a delicate thing for many toddlers. When you screw with it, everyone is miserable. Adults get grumpy enough adjusting to the time change. For a 3-year old, you just might see a sonic meltdown.

4. Never have afternoon church. The church I attend likes to keep congregations to no more than a few hundred people. In order to accomplish this, we are assigned to a congregation based on where we live, and several groups will share the same building but have different meeting times. Each calendar year we rotate times. This year, our slot for the main service and Sunday school classes is from 1:00-4:00 p.m.  Incidentally, that coincides almost exactly with Maddox's nap time. Yea for us.

5. Stop making pants that fasten with buttons and zippers. No. Just... no. These kids are learning to dress themselves. I know teenagers that need to be reminded  regularly to "close the barn door", and they have already mastered fine motor skills! Besides, the inability of a small child to get pants on and off without help can easily result in... well, use your imagination. I've talked more than enough about "potty problems" in this post already and I'm not going there again.

6. Get rid of shoes with laces. I have no clue why they even sell shoes that have laces in toddler sizes. Have the manufacturers ever tried to tie a shoe of a kid that normally moves at 60 mph and has a hard time sitting still? Or even one that doesn't really want to get dressed in the first place? Or perhaps keeping that shoe tied when the kid is riding in the car for more than 20 minutes at a time and is looking for something to play with?

7. Invent a cleaner that can remove Sharpie from the walls without taking off the paint. Or better yet, let Sharpie-decorated walls, furniture, and clothing be the new hot fashion rage.

8. Dumb television shows wouldn't exist. This includes anything that has adults in cheesy costumes, mixes cartoons and live people, or has words that are repeated over and over and over and over and over again. No matter how much I try to regulate TV, it seems like these things sneak into the Netflix queue while I'm sleeping. And for some strange reason, they are like crack for kids. They just want more and more and more...

9. Playgrounds would be completely enclosed by railings. No more of this "hovering around the edges to make sure the 2-year old doesn't fall off" bit. Give them one way in, one way out, and a cage to climb in. 

10. Sharing would be socially unacceptable. It would be totally okay for kids to have the attitude of "what's mine is mine, what's yours is...mine?"  Wait. We might need to rethink this one.

I say it's time for us to take over the world and right these wrongs. Parents Of Toddlers (POTs) unite!!