Monday 13 April 2009

Exercise in parenthood

If you have no children and wonder whether parenthood is something you would be good at, do this little exercise. You will get quite a clear idea.

For this exercise you will need:
Kids: 10 boys and girls age 6 to 12 (I used Adem, Ardan, David, Aişenor’s cousin, Aişenor, Aişe, little Mubera, big Mubera, Damla, Gizem + three-years-old Miraç who joined later)

Place: a piece of land with some grass and other plants (I used my front yard, approximately 2x5m)

Tools and materials: some plants in pots + gardening tools (I used 3 little shovels, a pitchfork, a small pitchfork, a rake, secateurs, a watering pot, a broom and a pair of gardening gloves)

Time to complete: 2 hours

Aim: Get some of the old plants out, plant the new ones and clean the place. It is important that children do not injure or kill each other using the tools, nobody is supposed to cry, there should not be any serious fights and everyone should be able to complete several different tasks of their interest.
If you have a cold and feel too weak to have this exercise – too bad! Children are waiting at your door at least one hour prior to the agreed time, deal with it. If you don’t like spiders, worms, caterpillars, centipedes, snails and beetles – your own problem. They will all be brought to you for close examination.

If you think you will actually do something in the garden – you are wrong. You will have to manage: “What shall I do now?”, “Shall I dig a hole here?”, “May I water the plants?”, “Shall I kill this worm?”, “Where do I put this snail? It’s still alive!”, etc. Make sure they don’t dig the good plants out and put the new ones where you want them to be.

You will have to deal with questions, lots of questions: “How does this weed come here?”, “Why is this worm so fat?”, “Did you see the new garden of your neighbours?”, “When did you get married?”, “What about that man yesterday?”, “And the man with the red car?”, “May I have some soil and seeds in a pot?”

You will receive tons of information: “We had an Easter breakfast on Friday”, “We have so many relatives – I don’t even know half of them!”, “My sister has twins in her belly”, “My sister has married a guy she’d never met before”, “My mother has breast cancer, but the doctor says she is getting better”

My front yard looks good and I am really tired (blame it all on the cold!), but I think I would make a good mother :).

Trivia: I have no brothers or sisters.

2 comments:

  1. It really looks like projectmanagement! Being a mother will be the ultimate choice to become a fulltime projectmanager :)!

    ReplyDelete
  2. ....and the back yard? Next week?
    And how do your front yard looks now? How many footprints:) ?

    ReplyDelete

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