The Mumsnet guide on how NOT to raise your children.....

[Honeydragon]

I'll start

Never let a toddler drink out a shoe

Never leave face paints unsupervised on a inadequately high surface

If breastfeeding, always return you boob to it's rightful place before answering the door

Do not relent when people say your child will like Knex, it is Satans plaything.

Never let your teen read child rearing books on raising teens, they will use them against you for purposes of evil.

When both children are covered in what you think is infected eczema, ensure you take them to the doctor to check it is. Otherwise said doctor will look at you like you're scum of the earth when you eventually take them in a week later and inform you that in fact, it is impetigo.

Do not bribe your children with lolly pops to get them to co-operate with the dentist otherwise they will ask you on the way out ... in front of the receptionist if they can have their lolly pops now.

Never leave tampons lying around.

Just because your son is seemingly in bed asleep, do not get complacent. Check to make sure that he is still sleeping and not picking all the paint and the lining paper off his bedroom wall.

Watch your mouth. Otherwise your 2 year old daughter will mutter "fucksake" under her breath when she realises she has left her coat in the flat.

Do not let your children play with paint or play dough on your table. Ever. The table now has marks in it from implements and the carpet is stained slightly blue.

Your 7 year old child cannot even be trusted with scissors at school without giving herself a DIY fringe cut the day before school pictures.

Children can break anything, even rip skirting boards off the wall.

Eye liner does not come out the carpet.

And then today, courtesy of my 8 year old .... always check their bedroom bins and don't just assume they put unwanted junk mail and broken bits of plastic in there. When emptying the bin out I nearly puked at this horrendous smell coming from the bottom. It was stained slightly brown. I stormed up the stairs to demand why the hell she felt it necessary to poo in her bin. 8 year old looked at me in disgust ..."It isn't poo. I had a sick burp and a little bit came out." I don't want to think about how long it has been in there.

Here are a couple for the hands on fathers, from my DH's experience:

Half a dead mouse is not an ideal multi-sensory teether. Even if you are fairly sure that the cat ate the other half, not the baby.

A dirty potty may be the ideal size and shape for cooling hot baby bottles, but your wife may hit the roof.

If you hear your pre-bath, naked 18mo say 'uh-oh' from the other room, it can be guaranteed that there will be a huge turd on the floor.

It will be a 5 kitchen roll sheet job. You may even get to break out the Cilit Bang.

Never leave your 3 year old preschooler alone with their sleeping new born sibling while you duck into the next room to check MN get a drink, or you will get the fright of your life when a minute later said preschooler pops his head around the door to laughingly tell you that 'Baby is hiding!'. You will find baby covered in cushions and promptly start yelling at said 3yr old while trying to force you heart back down out of your throat.

Never chase your giggling 2 year old son down the hall way of your In-Laws house, because as you run out of the hall into the living room, DS will fall over and crack his head on the corner of the stone fireplace hearth, in front of your In-Laws.

Giggles turn to screams/tears, blood everywhere and IL's see first hand what a bad mother you are.

DO NOT, I repeat DO NOT, leave baby DS unattended whilst you nip to the loo thinking all is well as 2 year old DD is happily eating breakfast.
You WILL hear choking sounds and run from the loo mid-flow to rescue your 3 month old who has just been force fed a piece of toast by his big sister.

I don't think I'll ever get over that, have been shaky all day (and come to think of it, never did finish that pee-too scared)

Do not put your six month old baby on the sofa whilst you look at the damp patch in the corner after the removal men have moved a bookcase. She can and will roll over and end up landing flat on her back on the floor. You will then travel to your beautiful new home in tears whilst trying to assess whether she is concussed or has a broken back. The entire day (which by the way is stressful enough) will be made worse by the fact that you have to find the nearest A&E and then after a four hour wait to be told she's probably fine, go to your new house and start to unpack. It was not a good day. In future, just hold onto baby and look with your eyes, it's easier.

pissedrightoff Oh sweetheart, just think of it as one of those helpful learning curves. And accept that your kidneys will suffer for the next five years

Never leave a way too eloquent & clever for her age 16 month old to wander around without a Nappy -

she will not only crap in the middle of the floor, but follow it up by blaming the visiting Vicar popping in to update on her Christening arrangement, by pointing, wagging her finger, scowling & shouting LOUDLY, when asked "OhOh who poohed on the floor" - THAT LADY THERE SHE DID IT

Oh goodness! I'm laughing so hard!

As happened to my DM when I was 3, don't rush toddler to A&E convinced she's dying because she's been peeing blood, when really she's just greedy and has a thing for beetroot. Also don't let your DD play with plastic fake scissors in the trolley whilst walking round Co-op, she will lop off half her ringlets.

Ime don't let DS1 play in his bedroom at 2.5 shortly after buying DP some Christmas treats and stashing them in your bedroom, you will find him smothered in Toblerone.

Also don't start saying bugger in an effort to not swear around the children, it will still sound like fucker coming out of DS2's 4yr old mouth.

Dont use the word dickhead around your kids. They will, one day, answer ''Yes mum?'' to this....

Do not buy the foil vitamins. No matter how well you hide them DD will find them and not only will the call to the poisons unit make them late for school, you will be forced to wait outside for the laxative effect to take place and the call to come and collect them.......

Do not throw that talking/musical toy that decides to magically go off on it own accord at 3am out of the window. You will break something, wake the neighbors and you will all be forced to listen to the bloody PinkyPonk continue to go off for the rest of the night in the knowledge that the neighbors now hate you..

thingamajig - thank your DH for that - I nearly cried laughing over the half dead mouse thing!

One from my childhood - do not "help" your 3yo DD bounce on the bed by holding her hands and taking her higher than she can manage - she will end up with a sprained neck, trip to A&E and a collar that is way too big for her. If you are lucky, the team who cut the collar down to size will also be able to fashion a teeny tiny one for your DD's panda bear (no mean feat!) to placate her. This will not, however, mean that she gets any sleep overnight for the next few nights. (And she will end up with a lasting neck injury, like a whiplash, that is untreated for many years because "children are rubber and bounce" )

Thumb, are we talking about you here? :(

The neck injury, JM? Yes, that was me. the start of the many insults my spine received throughout my childhood, none of which were "allowable" because "you are a child and children don't get bad backs". When I told my mum I was seeing an osteopath for a bad back (in my 30s) she looked at me all and said "but you're too short to have a bad back" .
you gotta laugh or you'd cry!

Always remember that ironing boards are almost as dangerous as irons and don't let your children play under them.

I say this with someone who has a scar in the middle of her forehead after pressing the pretty red button on the underside of my Mum's board when I was a toddler and collapsing the bloody thing down onto my head!

Do not leave tampons in reach of children, they will steal them paint on them put them in their bag and take them to nursery to show all the othervchildren and their parents the pretty mice

Do not change tampon infront of toddlers, ( even though they refuse to let you go to the loo on your own) next time they go to the loo they will be trying to put them up their bum ( different child to the one who made mice)

Do not think that because you have hidden door keys in the bread bin that 2 year old doesn't know they are there

They will sneak downstairs at 5 am dressed as spiderman, climb on side retreive keys

You will wake up to the front door shutting and dc will be outside dressed as spiderman in the snow with your bank card looking for a taxi to take him to daddy's work

ensure child hands are fully inside van before slamming van door shut

Or in my Mums case, ensure your heavily pregnant daughters hands are fully in the car door before slamming it shut.

Or you will be hunched over the steering wheel sobbing that you "broke your daughter", whilst said heavily pregnant daughter pats you ineffectually on shoulder with none swollen hand.

Said daughter will also then go into labour that afternoon, apparently a fright or physical trauma can do that, you know.

NEVER listen to the Dr when they suggest using white spirit on your 9yo DD's angula-stomas. Said Dr may have been decorating and actually meant surgical spirit.

And the metal scars may be worse than the physical ones 20 + years later.

Thanks Mum.

BTW this >>>>> looks like my mouth did.

Do investigate when you hear your 2-year-old saying 'I can't get it open' from the small front bedroom. You will find him up on the side, trying to push open the old-fashioned casement window, that he has managed to unlatch. It is only the fact that the window is elderly, and has stuck quite firmly that has stopped said toddler from plunging out of the window.

And when you investigate why he was trying to climb out of an upstairs window, you will find out that his older brother has told him to do so, whilst he is trying to break out of the front door. The aim of this double escape attempt? To retrieve from the bin bags awaiting the bin lorry, the tatty railway magazines that you and No1 son agreed were too tatty to keep any more and binned the previous day.

Dh works for the railway, and it is his passion as well as his job, so he often buys 'Rail' and 'Modern Railway' magazines (fascinating publications - I bet you are all jealous), and as a little boy, ds1 adored everything to do with trains, and used to spend hours looking at these magazines, until they literally fell apart. The ones we had thrown out (in consultation with ds1) were the rattiest, tattiest assemblages of paper you have ever seen - beyond even my skill at resurrecting train magazines with the help of sellotape!

Youarekidding - that reminds me of one from my DM. If your teenage daughter is being driven mad by thrush, do not suggest she applies a cream that will burn like fire (can't remember the name, but remember the sensation VERY clearly). It was like applying Deep Heat there!

Have to say the poor Dr was mortified - kept apologising about the mistake - I still wonde rto this day if she ever dared decorate again.

youarekidding, I'm quite surprised she meant to suggest surgical spirit as well! I remember having that applied to open wounds on my knees and the pain was knicker-wetting! On your mouth, I'm sure it would have been just as bad. But possibly not as bad as white spirit. Who knows.