If you're like me, you know that mundane methods just don't cut it in parenting. Why be forced to teach your kid to move on when you can pop in with pets after death? Why use a pacifier when you can chuck a kid in a pocket dimension? Never fear parents (or poly-dimensional equivalent), here are five parenting tips with a little help from some beginner's thaumaturgy!
1. Retrocausally Erase Bruises
Uh oh! Looks like your little adventurer's gotten pretty banged up! Now, your first thought might be to invoke some light healing magic, but unless you have strong Sarkic heritage, don't bother. The risk of self-amalgamation or mutilation is just too great. Instead, I recommend a more niche piece of magic: Chronomancy! Now, I know you've probably heard the stories of novice chronomancers erasing themselves from their family trees, being forced to co-exist with their alternate timeline counterparts, aging themselves forwards hundreds of years, and much worse, but quell your fears. Just follow these step-by-step instructions exactly, and it'll be like their scratches were never there! Literally!
For this ritual, all you'll need is an object from the incident that caused the bruise, your kid, and a clear mind. Lay down on the floor with your child. Face each other and close your eyes. Hold the object between you. Think of the incident, then immediately clear your mind. Rinse and repeat until your child's wounds cease to exist. Keep this tab open because - if you complete this ritual successfully - you'll have forgotten why you're there.
2. Summon the Spirits of Deceased Pets
Now I know what you're thinking: "The only way to talk to the dead is séance dust. Do you really think I'm going to break into a Foundation Site so my kid can talk to their dead dead hamster?" but thanks to our friends over at NecroLabs, we finally have a quick and easy alternative! Simply place the remains of your pet in the Calling CoffinTM and wait for an apparition to appear on the casket!1
3. Remove Dirty Thoughts
Did your little mischief maker overhear some touchy topics? Walk in on your special Saturday night? It happens to the best of us, but the bestest of us use antimemes! If you want to order yourself a fresh batch, sit down in meditation, clear your mind, and mutter my consciousness link address - 7M73TTA9. You'll feel a sort of twanging sensation in your head, that's normal! Describe your child's undesirable thought and whether you'd prefer a visual, auditory, gustatory, tactile or olfactory antimeme whipped up in no time!2
4. Pocket Dimensions
If your species' offspring develop vocal chords at an early age, you know that the screaming can be the worst part of parenting, and seemingly unavoidable! Seemingly. Whilst mundane parents are forced to resort to pacifiers and rockers, we know better. Whilst the prospect of leaving your child in a pocket dimension unsupervised may seem unsafe, a well built one can hold just about anything! Now, the first thing you'll want to do is find a place that *doesn't feel real*. A place that just feels impossibly beautiful. The nerds over at the Foundation call this a "Low Hume Field". If you *really* focus on this and stick your arms out, you'll start to feel some… invisible handle, sort of like holding two magnets of the same charge together. Once they become tangible enough, clasp down. This part is a bit painful3, but you'll need to start pulling. Keep pulling until you're happy with the size.4 Congratulations! You've just built yourself your very own pocket dimension. You can put whatever you want in here, including the ankle-biters when they get too much for you!
5. Geases for Babysitters
Picture this: It's a Friday night, and you've been planning to go to the theatre5 with the husband for a couple weeks. You go out, you have one of the best nights in years, and you return to find your pimply faced, arrogant babysitter asleep on the couch whilst your child is upstairs coated in thaumaturgical backlash having discovered Mum's ritual supplies. Now, my legal team tells me I can't teach you how to turn them into a red triangle slug6, but I can teach you to put them under a geas. But what is a geas? A geas is a sort of contract that you literally cannot break. The signatory puts down their signature, receives a cognitohazard and it sort of… rewires their brain to become physically incapable of breaking the terms. All you have to do is type up the contract7 laying out your terms. Send it off to an anartist doing memetic commissions8 and ask them for a "visual geas print". Paste that on the back of the geas. Get the babysitter to sign, and only turn it over once they've done so.
