We help lead in a class at our church fill of engaged and newly married couples. The last week of the class, participants get to ask whatever questions they want to a panel of four couples who have kids and have been married a while.
The most common question? Some variation of “how do you know when you are ready to have kids?”
The answer is that God will give you kids when He wants you to have them. But, the answer everyone wants is, “you will now you are ready when you have completed _______” but they want you to fill in the blank.
So, here are 10 tests you should pass so that you know you are ready to have kids…and you will see why “you will now you are ready when you have completed ____________” is not a good answer to be searching for.
First, here is a fitting picture of Shilah after she got the powdered sugar out of the cabinet, opened it, and dumped it on the floor/ate it.
10 Tests to Pass Before You Have Kids
1. Time and Money Test:
- Pick up the newspaper.
- Read it for the last time.
- Go to the grocery store.
- Arrange to have your salary paid directly to their head office.
- Go home.
2. Discipline Test:
Before you finally go ahead and have children, find a couple who already are parents and berate them about their…
- Methods of discipline.
- Lack of patience.
- Appallingly low tolerance levels.
- Allowing their children to run wild.
Suggest ways in which they might improve their child’s breast feeding, sleep habits, toilet training, table manners, and overall behavior. Enjoy it because it will be the last time in your life you will have all the answers.
3. Nighttime Test:
- Get home from work and immediately begin walking around the living room from 5PM to 10PM carrying a wet bag weighing approximately 8-12 pounds, with a radio turned to static (or some other obnoxious sound) playing loudly. (Eat cold food with one hand for dinner)
- At 10PM, put the bag gently down, set the alarm for midnight, and go to sleep.
- Get up at 12 and walk around the living room again, with the bag, until 1AM.
- Set the alarm for 3AM.
- As you can’t get back to sleep, get up at 2AM and make a drink and watch an infomercial.
- Go to bed at 2:45AM.
- Get up at 3AM when the alarm goes off.
- Sing songs quietly in the dark until 4AM.
- Get up. Make breakfast. Get ready for the day (start your day and be productive)
- Repeat steps 1-9 each night. Keep this up for 3-5 years. Look cheerful and together.
4. Mess Test:
- Smear peanut butter onto the sofa and jam onto the curtains.
- Hide a piece of raw chicken behind the stereo and leave it there all summer.
- Stick your fingers in the flower bed.
- Then rub them on the clean walls.
- Take your favourite book, photo album, etc. Wreck it.
- Spill milk on your new pillows. Cover the stains with crayons. How does that look?
5. Dress Test:
- Buy an octopus and a small bag made out of loose mesh.
- Attempt to put the octopus into the bag so that none of the arms hang out. Time allowed for this – all morning.
6. Vehicle Test:
- Forget the BMW and buy a mini-van. And don’t think that you can leave it out in the driveway spotless and shining. Family cars don’t look like that.
- Buy a chocolate ice cream cone and put it in the glove compartment. Leave it there.
- Get a dime. Stick it in the CD player.
- Take a family size package of chocolate cookies. Mash them into the back seat. Sprinkle cheerios all over the floor, then smash them with your foot.
- Run a garden rake along both sides of the car.
7. Shopping Test:
- Go to the local grocery store.
- Take with you the closest thing you can find to a pre-school child. (A full-grown goat is an excellent choice).
- If you intend to have more than one child, then definitely take more than one goat.
- Buy your week’s groceries without letting the goats out of your sight. Pay for everything the goat eats or destroys.
8. Feeding Test:
- Hollow out a melon.
- Make a small hole in the side.
- Suspend it from the ceiling and swing it from side to side.
- Now get a bowl of soggy Cheerios and attempt to spoon them into the swaying melon by pretending to be an airplane.
- Continue until half the Cheerios are gone.
- Tip half of what is left into your lap. The other half, just throw up in the air.
- You are now ready to feed a nine-month-old baby.
9. Entertainment Test:
- Learn the names of every character from Sesame Street , Barney, Disney, the Teletubbies, and Pokemon.
- Watch nothing else on TV but PBS, the Disney channel or Noggin for at least five years. (I know, you’re thinking What’s ‘Noggin’?) Exactly the point.
10. Social Life Test
- Make a recording of Fran Drescher saying ‘mommy’ repeatedly. (Important: no more than a four second delay between each ‘mommy’; occasional crescendo to the level of a supersonic jet is required).
- Play this tape while talking to an adult of your choice.
- Have someone else continually tug on your skirt hem, shirt- sleeve, or elbow.
- You are now ready to have a conversation with an adult while there is a child in the room.
This is taken from some stuff on the interwebs…can’t find an original source 
