parenting

After many a silly yet somehow profound conversations with my wife, I’ve decided it’s time to turn our D&D references to parenting into a post for your reading pleasure. Granted some of this may all seem silly at first but I have hidden some true wisdom within these lines. I’ll be doing a 3 part series of posts each one focusing on one of the parenting “Tiers”. So let’s get this thing started, enjoy.

UPDATE:This got published at Kobold Quarterly as a Friday Funny. Woot!

Heroic (Ages 0-6): This tier of parenting is simple yet dirty business and somebody has to do it! It’s not glorious when you first start out, though after all it is unavoidably the foundation you’ll build the rest of your adventuring career on. You start out battling one dirty diaper at a time and your party has no real sense of cohesion or tactics just yet. It’s all fly by the seat of your pants no matter how well you think you’ve prepared, that cleansing ritual will not keep the diapers of eternal stench at bay no matter how many times or how loudly you repeat it’s canticle. Sleep deprivation is going to sap away most of your healing surges, what’s left may be consumed by that soured milk breath weapon, hope you’ve got a high fortitude defense. Oh and all those torches you packed… they aren’t going to help your reflexes any against toys you trip over when waking up in the middle of the night due to nightmares or having to prepare an alchemical concoction for the little one.

By your “party” I do mean your child(ren), yourself  and your significant other of course, if you’re lucky enough to have one that is. Some adventurers aren’t so blessed and must quest alone. So keep in mind If you’re a single parent the encounters don’t scale down and doing even the most mundane tasks can seem trying at times. You have even less time for short rests but the rewards are fantastic – bragging rights, double XP and hoarding all the loot for yourself! After a while you obtain a rhythm and things seem to get easier, challenges you face are easily overcome with at-will’s and encounter powers. You’ll have to break out the dailies when certain situations arise, such as questions like what happens when you lose all your HP, or what that funny dance is that they saw you doing in bed with mommy/daddy the other night. Not all situations are so trying however, which in this case feel free to use minor actions to make some shit up and those curiosities drop like minions.