MAKING THE FIRST DAY EASIER

• Remind your child that he/she is not the only student who is a bit uneasy about the first day of school. It is often helpful to tell them to “stop being such a pussy,” unless they are girls or obvious sissy bois, in which case it is okay to encourage overly dramatic responses. Some teachers know that students are anxious and will make an extra effort to make sure everyone feels as comfortable as possible… there are professionals who may even invite your youngster to lay down with them in a dark, quiet area (or offer to give them a full body massage which is a great stress reliever!). It’s okay to let this happen as long as your principal, gym teacher, English teacher, or guidance councilor are present and taking pictures for documentation purposes only.
• Point out the positive aspects of starting school: It will be fun, as long as you take these pills. Or suggest that they take the time to learn to manipulate the system to their advantage “before a series of asshole bosses has you under his/her thumbs for the rest of your life.” Learning the loopholes in school policy and human behaviour can be fun and profitable. The sooner your youngster learns this, the better- these “work place” lessons will be remembered in the exciting years ahead.
• You may be tempted to wax long winded about your school years: like the time when you returned home after the first day, high as a kite on Tai stick, your homework assignments blowing loose leaf down the street behind you. If you take this approach, it may be helpful to suggest that “times are different now” and that your youngster needs to DO AS YOU SAY NOT AS YOU’VE DONE. If all else fails, just drop the old adage life’s a bitch and then you die on them and watch their eyes grow dull with a look of wonderment and childlike awe.
• Find the biggest, nastiest, hairiest child in the neighborhood with whom your youngster can walk to school or ride with on the bus.
• In some very special cases, it may be appropriate to drive your child (or walk with them) to school and pick him/her up until they are well into their twenties or not at all. It is important to evaluate your child’s specific place on the food chain and BE REALISTIC!

BACK PACK SAFETY

• Choose a backpack with wide, studded shoulder straps, a padded back with concealment panel, and an easy access nunchaku or “tear gas pocket”
• Pack lighters or matches for emergencies. Also: a month’s supply of MREs, double edged skinner/hunting knife, BCB wire saw, can opener, magnesium fire starter, throwers, slingshot, compass, sewing kit, fishing kit, bandages, tweezers, a packet of iodine tablets, a flashlight, a length of rope and a signaling mirror are also key to your youngster’s preparedness for the modern American educational experience.
• You will need to organize the backpack to use all of its compartments. There will be no room to spare for frivolous items, e.g., outmoded history and science text books. Occasionally, items such as a car battery or bag of fertilizer may be necessary to add to this standard back pack check list. The emergency need for these items must be carefully calculated and considered. These heavier items will need to be packed closest to the center of the back. All firearms should have safeties firmly in place with ammunition placed safely in the chamber (because seconds count when your child needs to be his/her own best advocate). The back pack should never weigh any less than 70 percent of your child’s body weight… unless they’re pussies. And you wouldn’t want your kid to be a pussy now would you? WOULD YOU? Always remember the food chain.
• Always use both shoulder straps. Slinging a back pack over one shoulder can hinder you if you should need to stomp the shit out of some tweeker jock or some prying cops.
• Never consider a rolling back pack. This type of back pack may be a good choice for weaklings who must tote a heavy load or who want to be singled out as a walking target for the cool kids to stomp the shit out of. Remember that rolling back packs still must be carried up stairs, may be difficult to roll in snow, and look gay as fuck.

TRAVELLING TO AND FROM SCHOOL (Review the basic rules with your youngster by handing a traffic law guidebook to him/her and quickly leaving the room).

• If your child’s school bus has lap/shoulder seatbelts, make sure your child uses one at all times when in the bus. Or… have your child sit sandwiched between two really fat kids. Fat kids make great buffers (in so many ways). As a last resort, if your child’s school bus does not have lap/shoulder belts, write the school an inflammatory letter demanding that they buy or lease buses with lap/shoulder belts; make sure the language of the letter is sufficiently threatening to the school board members whom you intend a little something something if your demands aren’t met. Brush up on the latest car bomb designs and gas lighting techniques.
• Wait for the bus to stop before approaching it from the curb: never throw rocks at a stopped bus.
• Do not move around on the bus unless you are moving into a sitting, kneeling, or a laying down position.
• Check to see that no other traffic is coming before crossing in front of a bus- if they are… they shouldn’t be… so go ahead and chuck a rock at them. It serves them right for passing a stopped school bus.
• Make sure to always remain in clear view of the bus driver, except when you need some privacy and are in a kneeling or laying down position.
• Children should be seen (briefly) and not heard (AT ALL).
• If your youngster must smoke, make sure they do it at the bus stop or between the bus and the school entrance. Smoking is not permitted on the bus or inside the school. However, smoking in the school lavatories & locker rooms is a rite of passage, so your child should act like s/he is pooping and keep this activity limited to a private stall. It’s always a good idea for him/her to carry some OZIUM ® brand sanitizing spray and a can of SABRE ® brand pepper spray in case someone wants to intrude and get uppity about your youngster’s god given right to be cool.

Car

• All passengers should wear a seatbelt and/or an age and size appropriate car safety seat, booster seat, or restraining jacket (duct tape and bungee cords will suffice in a pinch).
• The overly active child should ride in the trunk of your car with ropes fastened securely and tied off around the neck and appendages. Make sure he or she is properly medicated before applying the tethers. WARNING: improper handling of either of these steps could lead to serious injury or maximum jail time. Your child is ready for a booster seat when s/he is bigger than a grapefruit.
• Your child should ride in a belt-positioning booster seat until the vehicle’s seatbelt fits properly (usually when the child reaches about 4’9” in height and is between 8 and 18 years of age). This means that the child is tall enough to sit against the vehicle seat back with her legs up in the air and feet by her ears. The shoulder belt lies across the back of the legs and the lap belt is conveniently used to secure the arms in this fashion.
• All children under 13 years of age and all children with head injuries should ride in the trunk, no exceptions. If you must drive more children than can fit in the trunk (when carpooling, for example), leave early and pretend that you forgot it was your day.
• Remember that many crashers occur while dumb-shit teen drivers are going to and from school (supposedly). No amount of lecturing, harassment, beating, or coddling will work to get this point through your teen’s Text Message-Facebook-Wii-Xbox hardened skull. At times like this, the best chicken soup for the tired parents’ sold-out soul comes from the pharmacy. Please save yourself some aggravation: parent-teen driver agreements are a waste of time and your valuable energy (and not worth the paper you write on unless its CVS ® brand single ply bathroom tissue).

Bike or Walk

• Always wear a bicycle helmet.* Your youngster can personalize these to fit his/her unique so-called personality. For example, vintage WWII Luftwaffe helmets look sporty and make a bold statement (accent with arm bands and spit shined boots to complete the ensemble).
• Ride on the sidewalk because motorists are fuckers. Hint: a well placed rock goes a long way to underscore your rights as a cyclist. Keep a pocket full of them as there is no better form of sensitivity training that can be bought.
• Use appropriate hand signals: no matter how tired your middle finger gets, you must stay vigilant!
• Ignore traffic lights and stop signs. They are for motorists only. Remember, as a cyclist you are a free agent and everyone else can kiss your ass.
• Wear dark color clothing to blend into your surroundings. Or…
• Dress your child like a clown to make him/her more visible to drivers. This may even increase the poor child-who-has-to-walk’s chances of getting picked up by “a really nice man” who can give them a ride when you weren’t able to because you are too busy and impo®tant.
• Know the rules of the road. As the saying goes, you must know them to break them.
• Walk in a straight line. It’s harder to shoot at, believe it or not.
• See above back pack recommendations.
• If your child is young or walking to a new school (particularly in the suburbs or city), get down on your knees, give them a big hug and pray with them before you send them off into the void. Nothing is worse than knowing that when your child comes up missing you didn’t at least make a perfunctory plea for his/her soul.
• In neighborhoods with higher levels of traffic, denser populations, and strip malls consider moving to the middle of the woods. Even with the coyotes, it’s safer there. At least coyotes have a strict code of conduct.

EATING DURING THE SCHOOL DAY

• Most schools regularly send schedules of cafeteria menus home. With this advance information, you can see just how nutritionally bereft these offerings are. You may want to pack your own nutritionally lacking lunch… and tell yourself that you’re doing the right thing- your child will probably just trade it for a couple of Adderall or a joint anyway.
• Try to get your child’s school to stock healthy choices such as fresh organic fuit, low-fat free range dairy products, purified ICE MOUNTAIN ® water, and 100% organic tempeh cutlets with wheat grass foie gras. After all, these things are way too expensive for you to have to buy and keep around. You might want to consider adding these demands to the School Bus Letter recommended above.
• Each 12 oz. soft drink contains approximately 10 teaspoons of sugar and 150 calories. Drinking just one can of soda a day increases your child’s risk of obesity by 60%. If s/he drinks at least four to five of these per day until graduation, s/he will have a head start on being “preferred stock” for Govern-Mental work or any number of office environs.

BULLYING

Bullying occurs when one child picks on another child repeatedly because they are weak and/or physically unattractive. Bullying can be physical, verbal, psychic or social. It can happen at school, on the playground, on the school bus, in the neighborhood, over the internet, or at the dinner table.

When your child is bullied, help your child learn how to respond by teaching your child how to:
• Be an expert marksman
• Stand tall and stay calm as you cut the offender into small, easily disposed of pieces. Discuss the effects of lime on the human body.
• Dig a 9’ deep x 2’ square hole.
Teach your child how to say in a firm voice:
• “Oh yeah?”
• “As Satan guides me, I shall eat your heart before nightfall/dawn (whichever applies).”
• “Take me, I’m yours.”
Teach your child:
• When and how to punish through voodoo.

1. Encourage your child to stay away from other children and establish a skill set of martial arts moves.
2. Support activities that create extreme tension and paranoia in your child at just the right times.
3. Alert school officials to the problems with their policies and work to make them fear you.
4. Abduct the bully yourself and make the rest up as you go along. Remember to have fun with it!

When your child is the bully:
• Be sure your child knows that bullying is really an extension of Survival of the Fittest.
• Channel your child’s aggressive behaviour against law enforcement and Govern-Mental Officials.
• Forget role models, they are crutches for weak kneed, pathetic followers.
• Never use ineffective, non-physical discipline, such as loss of privileges. This makes you appear as pusillanimous as you really are.
• Develop practical strategies to keep school principal, teachers, counselors, and parents of the children your child has bullied off your back and out of your face. Use psychic smoke screens and deflection as much as possible.

When your child is the bystander:
• Tell your child to cheer and sell snacks (entrepreneurship is lesson #2)
• Encourage your child to never trust an adult, especially when it comes to ideas of personal freedom.
• Help your child to support misfits, non joiners, outcasts and losers of all description as, by comparison, this will strengthen his/her self esteem.
• Encourage your child to join with bullies for his/her own support and protection.

BEFORE AND AFTER SCHOOL CARE

• During middle childhood, youngsters need a heavy, metallic claw-arm to smash them into submission. Responsible adults are too afraid to punish to the full extent of god’s law. Remember, a responsible adult on the outside is a simpering bootlick on the inside. So, you have my permission to go forth and whup ass with infectious insanity. Or don’t… and suffer a lifetime of disrespect and heartache.
• Children approaching adolescence (11-12 year olds) should come home to either an empty house, left to guard the abode with their own very life OR to a highly adventurous babysitter whose thrill seeking behaviour is only second to an inappropriately overdeveloped libido. That’s when your child’s real education begins.
• If alternate adult supervision is not available, parents should make special efforts to supervise their children using pinhole cameras and microphones. The cost of these items is falling all the time. Heck, they might even teach you a thing or two by watching them in action when there aren’t all those goddamned self important adults around. In the long run, it’s way cheaper and more fun (for you) than a babysitter.
• If you are dumb enough to choose a commercial after school program, inquire about the psychiatric background of each of the staff. Get to know their rap sheets intimately. Question these people mercilessly, as if for once, you gave a shit about something other than your own tedious and threadbare goals. There should be an electric fence about the perimeter and children should be made to sit quietly and watch soap operas- this simple, sedentary exercise will help the youngster understand what s/he will have to look forward to as a “responsible adult,” if they even make it that far.

DEVELOPING GOOD HOMEWORK AND STUDY HABITS

• Create an environment that is conducive to procrastination… a skill that takes mental agility and nerves of organic steel.
• Set aside no more than five minutes for homework, after all they’ve already spent five hours at school. As adults, we often learn too late that a good work ethic is a sorry defense for a life half lived. Get them on the right track early with the Minimum Output = Maximum Yield career trajectory outlined in the next chapter.
• Establish a household rule that the TV set stays on with volume all the way up during homework, housework times. Create as much noise and havoc as you can muster for the 10 minutes your child will spend on His/Her Drudgery. This will either increase his/her levels of concentration to a frightening degree or create a fractured and neurotic personality that will be a true detriment to society. Either way, it’s a win win situation.
• Let them be free to be on the internet- just make them buy their own computer. Introduce them to economics in the process; it’s easy enough for them to get extra money selling weed or their own ADD meds to their peers (entrepreneurship is lesson #2).
• Never answer questions or offer assistance. This only enables them to keep sucking on your teat and you’re tired enough!
• Take steps to help alleviate eye fatigue, neck fatigue, and brain fatigue while studying. Limit study time to 3 fifty second intervals. It may be helpful to close the books for an hour or two, stretch and smoke a joint (or two). If that’s not your bag, then have a cocktail. Entreat your children that if they must drink they should do it at home.
• If your child is struggling with a particular subject a tutor can be a good solution. See babysitter above.
• Assess your child’s mental faculties first: if s/he is a moron, or a hyperactive little shit, a helmet will only delay what nature really intends… so go have a drink with the money you’d squander on such an endeavor and start planning how you’ll spend that college fund.

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