Miscellaneous

Five Things You Really Didn’t Want to Know: How to raise your kids the old-fashioned way

Note: This article is hosted here for archival purposes only. It does not necessarily represent the values of the Iron Warrior or Waterloo Engineering Society in the present day.

You have finally met the person of your dreams, and you want to start a family! As a first-time parent, you are anxious to get everything right. How do you know what to do? It’s easy! People have been raising children for all of history, and with a little study you can find out exactly what you need.

Childbirth: Ant’s egg powder, and a butter bath

To give your child the best start in life, when you are pregnant, you should take good care of yourself and your baby. Avoid eating meat, because it will make your child a hunchback. If you feel nauseous, try eating rocks from a bird’s stomach. Don’t look at dogs, because if they jump it will cause the child to be deformed. Also, don’t look at hares, or they’ll have a split lip. Definitely don’t look at the moon, because that causes insanity. I am not sure what you are allowed to look at.

Of course, you want your child to be healthy from the moment of birth. How can you take care of a newborn? First of all, as your due date approaches, you should follow the advice of Tudor midwives, and rub your belly with powdered ant’s eggs. Acceptable alternatives are powdered eel liver and virgin’s hair. You should also avoid looking at the sun (it will damage your eyes) and avoid looking at violent pictures (it will make your child cowardly). When the baby is born, the worst thing that can happen is air entering the pores of their skin. To avoid this, the baby should be immediately washed in wine, and then smeared with butter. After that, you should wrap them tightly in wrappings. How often should you change them? Not often.

Then, change the shape of the baby’s head

Of course, you want everybody to respect your offspring when they are grown up. The best time to start is now!

Who could ever respect a person without a long, thin head? While the head is still soft, tie it up tightly with cloth and straps to make it grow outwards toward the back. That way, you can show everyone how high-class you are. The ancient Peruvians did it so well that they could get heads that looked like this!

Of course, that isn’t your only option for head shape. You can also go for forehead flattening, like the Maya. If the flatness seems boring, then you can imitate some of the Salish peoples from North America, who would modify their heads to look rounder. Although it seems that there aren’t that many things rounder than a head.

If that’s a bit drastic for you, why not file the kid’s teeth to sharp points? Not only is this historic, but some Indonesian tribes do this today. You must admit, it looks badass.

Periods are sinful, and hell is a pool of blood

When your daughter reaches puberty, you will have to inform her that she is condemned after her death to wading in a pool of blood, which she will have to drink or else be beaten with iron rods. The medieval Chinese/Japanese work Ketsubon Kyo, or the “Menstruation Sutra,” teaches that periods are deeply sinful, because they pollute the earth. The main problem is that the blood enters the water cycle, and eventually will end up in tea that is served to holy men.  As a result, women are condemned to the Bloodpool Hell as described above. Reports of a Cootie Hell are still unsubstantiated.

There does seem to be a slight flaw in the logic presented, as everybody poops and pees, and that is generally considered to be more gross than blood. I can only assume that medieval holy men liked to drink poop tea.

You should force-feed your daughter her own vomit

In Mauritania, there exists the relatively unusual belief that obesity is a sign of attractiveness. Of course, people being what they are, this gets extreme fast. While it is officially discouraged and is dying out, young girls still undergo the tradition of Leblouh. This is a sort of camp, where the girls are made to eat up to 16,000 calories of milk, grain, and butter. If they don’t, they can be beaten or have their toes squeezed between sticks.

What if the kid isn’t able to hold down all that food? Well, you can’t let it go to waste! Make her drink the vomit. That will teach her not to do it again!

If the fatty food doesn’t do the trick, you can always use hormones used for fattening animals. If the girl doesn’t get fat, how will she ever find a husband?

Of course, it’s not like the boys have it easy either…

Paralyze your son’s arms with bullet ant venom

How do you know your boy has become a man? Obviously, it’s when he doesn’t cry. Logically, the only way to ensure that he won’t cry is to paralyze his arms with hundreds of bullet ant stings. If that won’t make him cry, then nothing will.

Bullet ants live in the Amazon rainforest, and their name comes from the saying that their sting hurts as much as a bullet. They are considered the most painful insects in the world, and are an inch long.

The Satere-Mawe people in Brazil use these in a boy’s coming-of-age ceremonies. First, they drug the ants. Then they weave the ants into large gloves. After the drug wears off, the boys have to wear the gloves for ten full minutes. Not only is this painful, but his hands will be swollen and paralyzed for days from the venom.

Notice that I said “ceremonieS” earlier? Yup. Your kid should do this up to twenty times – until he can do it without crying. How else do you ensure that he will be manly enough?

Honestly, they’re doing it wrong. If they turned the ants so the stingers faced outwards, your son would win every boxing match he entered.

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