Everything I Know About Parenting I Learned From Opera

1) Kids love to hide in crazy places – Do not violently kill anyone in a sack down by the river without first checking to see if your child may have hidden in the sack.

2) Children need to be protected from the harsh realities of life – If you are going to kill yourself, make sure your kids are blindfolded first.

3) You can’t choose your children’s friends – Simply showing up with a dagger and demanding that they kill their new friend doesn’t work, and even worse, sometimes the friend you picked out for them winds up thinking you are evil and siding with your kids against you.

4) Kids need constant supervision – If you do not keep track of them, there is a chance that they may get stolen from you and then you will later try to marry them without realizing who they are.

5) They have to live with the consequences of their actions –  If your kid wants to make people answer three riddles as a pre-dating ritual, and then behead them if they get the wrong answers, you have to make sure that if someone does get the right answers, that your kid sticks to their promise.  No take-backs.

6) You must provide for your children however you can – If you are poor, but your child is dating a rich person, it is fine to trick the rich person’s family into giving your family their house, mule, sawmills, etc.  Those rich jerks didn’t deserve it anyway.

7) Your children have things to teach you too – Perhaps you were wrong about that nice young prostitute with the consumption.  Maybe, just maybe, you shouldn’t have married your son’s girlfriend, even to bring peace to Spain and France.

8) You cannot protect your children from everything – Things you cannot protect your children from include cursed rings, fate, ghosts, and themselves.

9) Families come in every shape and size – Sometimes parents are a mother and a father, sometimes they are an aunt or uncle, and sometimes they are large group of French soldiers.

10) There is nothing that you won’t do for your kids – You will fight to the death to protect them, and even after death you will return as a statue and drag their enemies to Hell.