Lesson five: It’s more interrogation than parenting

There’s a show on Channel 4 called SAS Who Dares Wins. It’s a group of civilian males getting yelled at a lot by ex Special Forces servicemen. If you’re in the market for some new insults, watch it with a pen and notepad.

The show starts with these blokes getting the spanking of their lives while the instructors, completing the same task, are barely breaking a sweat. It’s a very similar scene when I go for a short jog with my husband, but with less spanking. He’s there trying to have a casual conversation while I’m dragging my flab up the road wondering if my pelvic floor is up to this. My husband loves this part of the show. It makes him reminisce about military days. It mainly makes me stress eat ice cream and feel inferior.

The second part is all about mental tests. I dare say actual SAS selection would be a tad harder than the TV version but based on the show, this part would be my time to shine. After being pushed to their physical limits the participants are subjected to sleep deprivation, repetitive noises, stress positions and interrogation. Move aside people, I’ve got this.

Pushed to my physical limit? A combined 60 hours of childbirth. It’s like being hit by a bus in the vagina, or a bus driving out of your vagina at speed, or out of your stomach at speed… I forget where I’m going with this analogy. The point is it fucking hurts then you’re expected to be the primary care giver for that bus for the next 18 years. But damn I love those buses (when they’re asleep, not so much during the awake hours).

Sleep deprivation? Pahahahahaha *draws breath* hahaha hahaha *has a little cry* hahahaha. I’ve been sleep free since 2016.

Repetitive noises? My sister gave me ear plugs as part of my new baby hamper which at the time I thought was a joke.

Stress positions? Unfortunately the world around you doesn’t stop when you have kids. So chuck any task at me I can do it while walking the dogs, nursing the baby, singing a nursery rhyme, toilet training the MD, stopping a dog from removing that weeks stitches, carrying a weeks supply of snacks/nappies/spare clothes and that really important stone my child can’t be without but also can’t just fucking carry themselves and holding a conversation with British Gas about their shitty direct debit. You learn to rest anywhere, in any position, with a baby hanging off a nipple and usually the tv remote just out of reach. I feel a strong connection to the fed up looking sows at the farms we visit.

Interrogation? Toddlers. They ask everything and remember all. Again, and again.

So I’m just throwing it out there, if the producers registered themselves with Ofsted they could make some money by running the second half of the show as a childcare setting. I’d send mine. And run away laughing.