Mumsnet needs your best parenting tips!

[Justine (mumsnet)]

As part of the publicity for our forthcoming TV extravaganza - Mums the Word on Discovery Health (due on Nov 8th) - we are putting together a piece for the Guardian on mums' the top tips/ advice/ mantras from the parenting front line. It's supposed to be fairly light-hearted and witty - which is where you come in - and can be anything from something you wish you'd known much earlier to a really practical solution to an everyday parenting problem that you never would have dreamed would have worked before you'd tried it. The idea is to be a bit more colourful/ amusing than our usual daily tip on the home page so feel free to embellish a bit and use anecdotes. Many thanks in advance - can't wait to see them.

You must have a sense of hunour and lose all thoughts of family privacy when they can talk.

Bum wipes clean everything! No need for a variety of products anymore.

1. Vaseline makes a superb alternative to wet-look hair gel.

2. It takes roughly 3 hairwashes and a buzz-cut with a pair of clippers to completely remove Vaseline from a 5 year old?s hair. Nothing short of a steam stripper and a coat of paint will shift it from wallpaper.

When you?ve moved everything out of their reach, your child will learn to get a chair to make themselves taller.

Leanr to say, 'It's just a phase' whilst breathing slowly and remaining calm (especially useful when faced with other mum s talking of their sleeping/walking/talking cherubs).

Do not use a (brand new!!) travel potty as a crown, turn round, leave 2 year old to make it into a 'necklace'. You may have to waste valuable olive oil greasing said child to remove the potty.

Children don't actually die if they eat catfood (but it would help if they didn't look quite so like cheerios). And dd does now have shiny hair and strong teeth. (And if it was your first child you would have taken it to the doctor)

Just dont take yoursefl too seriously!

johnsons baby wipes get rid of about 95% of stains on your clothes and sofas

oh yes I agree

no matter how squeemish you are, you will, at some point, cup your hands to catch their sick.

You will never again be able to hold a 10 minute conversation with someone without being interrupted/have to act as referee/save your dc from certain harm - whilst they are in the vacinity

all your principles about kids you had before you had them will join the pigs flying past the window.

you willl never wattch the news inthe same way again.

you will become a kinder teacher. ( i did)

If they are quiet, they are up to something (naughty!).

Whatever you think having a child will be like is not what having a child is like.

oh misty so true
and let sleeping babies lie

If there's a hole, something WILL be posted into it.

You will prod your sleeping baby just to check they're still alive.

yes and be toos cared t go int ot heir room if they sleep in in case they are dead. ( me)

you wil know all t he thomas engines names and numbers.

Get all your advice on how to raise children out of the way before you have your first ... cos afterwards you'll be surprised at how much you've forgotten

Never try to get your child to repeat the remarkable accomplishment to anyone else .. they invariably will do something different

If your child is sitting quietly in the garden with his back to you, he's probably eating either a snail or a worm

never wake a sleeping baby

Babies are just as happy with the box something came in as they would be with any toy you could buy them. And so the second child owns mostly boxes that boring things came in.

www lol