Help Me Devise Mothering Test

In My Humble Opinion
1

Not to start a board war or anything, but on the mothering fora there’s so much criticism and judgement of the way women mother babies and toddlers. The preachy ones who think they can do it all “right” really irk me - I suspect they don’t yet actually have any kids.

There has to be a legitimate way to evaluate this. Everybody’s busy comparing and keeping score anyway, let’s put some numbers to it:

  1. Two points (one for each boob) for each month spent exclusively breastfeeding. One point if you supplemented. Half a point if you used formula but fed on demand.

  2. One point for each week you used cloth diapers. Minus a half point if your kid has chronic diaper rash.

  3. Two points for each month you and your SO let the kid co-sleep. Three points if your SO rode the couch. Minus half a point if you fought about it.

  4. One point for every Melissa and Doug toy.

  5. One point for every hour your currently spend playing w/your kid each day. Double that if you actually enjoy it.

  6. Minus a point for every hour the kid spends watching educational TV. Double that for regular TV.

  7. One point for every week you spent making organic meals from scratch. Subtract half if nobody eats them.

  8. One point for every reading of every book on a daily basis (estimate).

  9. One point for every hug or kiss you give your kid on a daily basis (estimate).

Multiply it by each kid’s age in months, and add the total for your “raw mothering score”.

Bonus round (or not):

Plus 100 points if your kid seems generally happy and is hitting most milestones on time.

Add 50 points if your kid isn’t particularly well-adjusted, but you’re doing something about it.

Add 25 points if he’s just like his father & nothing can be done.

Subtract 25 points for each 911 call. Subtract 50 if the baby’s the one doing the calling.

If you and your SO have gotten divorced (or close to it), subtract 25 points.

If your SO is nowhere to be found, minus 100 points, unless you’re better off without him, in which case add 100.

Minus 5 points for every spanking episode.

Minus 25 points for every time you let your kid CIO (whether intentional or not). Minus 50 if you really didn’t care; add back 10 if you cried, too.

Add 50 points for every time they threw a full-body temper tantrum and you managed to get them out of the store and into the car w/out smacking them or accidentally stealing merchandise.

What else?
Is this funny, or awful? I can’t decide.

2

Hee hee! I think it’s funny. But I’m not posting my score on the grounds that it may incriminate me and get me thrown off those mothering boards. Which I don’t go to, on account of too much yelling and idiocy (how do you stand it?). The homeschooling boards are quite emotionally laden enough for me. :slight_smile:

Hey, where have you been? I was just wondering where you’d gotten to. How are the babies?

What about threats of spanking? How many points off are those?

3

That’s worth the price of admission right there! HA!

I’d add:

One point for each teething-related item in your possession. Minus half if you use cold foods. Minus 2 points if you have used a frozen waffle.

4

Wow, I’d missed that whole frozen waffle brouhaha. That’s really something! I remember the first time mine got their hands on something they weren’t supposed to touch (plastic bag) - and they didn’t immediately die! Somehow I’d thought the jig would be up.

Hey Dangermom! How’s about you and yours? The twins have gotten sooooo cute lately, I just watch them all the livelong day, they’re 20 months now. My daughter’s favorite shows are “Elmo!” and “Jepa-depa-depa-deeeee” (they both clap for the daily doubles). My son’s preparing for an eventual career in housekeeping, he vacuums compulsively. While wearing his sister’s headband.

5

:wink: Too funny…so did I miss the end scoring? I get high marks based only upon the number of kisses given in a day. I try to give 100/kid a day! :cool: It’s easy when you’re blowing raspberries on baby’s tum.

Thanks for the giggle!

6

Is it considered bad form to teach your child sports and news cliches?

If so, I’m at -1000.

That’s the way it is.

7

Funny stuff.

I say subtract 10 points for every vaccine you don’t give because you heard from your uncle’s cousin’s third wife’s fifth best friend that a child they know wound up with a hangnail six weeks after getting the vax. :wink:

8

:slight_smile:

Is it a good or bad thing if a child scolds mommy when she swears?

Is it a good or bad thing if a child says “I’m not a gaming nerd!” (with the extremely clear subtext “unlike mom and dad”)?

Is it a good or bad thing to give the children sharp whittling knives at the age of five?

Negative or positive points if a mom who will not spank, and needs a threat that can be executed right now if neccessary threatens to sit down in the snow and wail if the child doesn’t cooperate? (It worked!)

How many negative points for each time a child falls into the water, and how many positive points if the child was wearing a life vest and in sight of grown ups at the time?
Negative or positive points if a toddler spends the rest of the summer after a falling-into-the-ocean-episode dropping dolls into a bucket of water and keeping up a monologue of “I’m falling!” interspersed with happy chuckles?
The most difficult part of being a parent is the eternal balancing act on the hairthin edge between an approving “How brave you are!” and a panicked “Don’t do that, it’s dangerous!”

9

Add 100 points if you are a SAHM. Add another 50 if you are a SAHM who gave up a promising high profile career because “staying at home is the most important thing I can do.”

Add 20 if you didn’t have drugs during labor. Add 30 if you didn’t have drugs until 48 hours into labor when they dragged you in for an emergency c-section and you still feel guilty because you wanted natural childbirth.

Add 1 point for each hour you have spent at ECFE (Early Childhood Family Education), Gymboree, or any classes for any child under the age of three.

Add ten points for each museum membership you have for each child under the age of three.

Add 10 points if you child has never had a paid babysitter or been left alone. Add twenty if they’ve never been left with relatives. Subtract 100,000 if either of these is true and your child is older than eighteen.

Add ten points if your son (older than six) has never been in a men’s room alone. Subtract 20 if he has never been in a men’s room alone and he is older than fifteen.

10

Oh I forgot, you don’t get points for being a SAHM if you take any sort of public assistance.

11

2 points for making placenta brownies, 10 points for making a whole meal out of it.

(I lurk at MDC sometimes, what can I say?)

E.

12

:smiley:

The Mothering website is simultanously hilarious and utter depressing at the same time. You wind up hoping half the posters there are thirty-nine year old men without children competing to see who can come up with the silliest idea.

13

Minus 200 if you had your son circumcized. Minus 20,000 if you had your daughter circumcized.

14

Subtract 100 points if you’re WOH who wanted to stay home but couldn’t swing the finances, then later realized that if you’d become a SAHM you’d have long since either had a nervous breakdown, or shipped baby to Outer Mongolia via Parcel Post in a package that may or may not have had airholes.

Add 50 points if you had drugs during delivery - and they didn’t work. Add another 100 if the delivery was via c-section.

15

Ha! That sounds great. Um, DangerGirl’s doing K and we’re having fun. The baby is now 2.5 and stubborn as all get-out, but a very funny kid. She’s in love with ‘Gromace,’ which is the Wallace & Gromit DVD we just got. We seem to be awfully busy. :smiley:

16

Would this include handme down and free-be trikes?

17

I don’t agree with the public assistance swipe.
but I find the rest of this hilarious!

Dia knows what my score would be–my kids are older.

How about for middle school kids/older elementary and HS?
Subtract 5 points for every time you say, “do as I say, not as I do”.

Lose 10 points for telling your sophomore to lie to her coach about a dentist appt so that the two of you can do downtown and buy makeup. (this is strictly theorectial, you understand…).

5 points for every homemade lunch. Subtract 4 if kid trades it at school for a lunch of Doritos, Twinkies and pop.
Lose a point for every time you say to your teen:“when I was in high school…”

Add 3 points for participating in every school fund drive. Lose 3 points if you give the crap you bought away to Salvation Army the day it comes in.

Lose a point for every permission slip lost or turned in not signed.

Add a point for every note to school–this is good, you are communicating with your child’s educator.

Lose that point if note is in crayon and on an old envelope.
Whee! this is fun…

18

I don’t agree with any of it, but when I did hang on parenting boards, SAHMs were the best, worked very hard, it was just as challenging - more so! than a paying job - well, unless you were on public assistance, then you were lazy and needed to get a job and just had babies so that the taxpayer would support you.

Not my opinion, btw, I think SAHPs must work their back ends off. WOHPs do too. In fact, parenting is just a crapload of work no matter how you do it.

19

Oh- I get it now.
Sorry!

and I stared at WOHP for the longest time…

I’m a WOHPTM. Which I cannot pronounce!