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Shakespeare on Parenting

 We have to study Shakespeare to graduate from high school, yet we don’t have to study anything to become a parent.

What if Shakespeare could instruct us on the demands of childrearing? Or easier yet–what if we could twist the titles of his plays and apply them to parenting?

Here are 10 titles of Shakespeare’s plays…shaken, stirred, and twisted for parents.

  1. Twelfth Night: The first time you start wishing there was a return policy on your newborn.
  2. Loves Labour’s Lost: How you feel the two weeks after “natural” childbirth, when you can’t even sit on a chair.
  3. The Tempest: What brews between the hours of 5 and 7 p.m. when your baby is crying, the telephone is ringing, and the microwave is on fire.
  4. The Winter’s Tale: Snowpants on, snowpants off, pee, repeat.
  5. The Taming of the Shrew: The new discipline strategy you attempt to enforce on your toddler who’s taken to biting dogs and humans.
  6. Measure for Measure: The tedious pace of making your child practice piano that drives you to drink.
  7. Much Ado About Nothing: The reality every time your child insists she needs a band-aid.
  8. As You Like It: What you tell your son who asks for ketchup to go on his waffles.
  9. A Midsummer Night’s Dream: The kids are at a sleepover at their grandparent’s condo. You’re at home with your husband who brings you a margarita and starts massaging your feet. Slowly. You lick the salted rim…and fall into a deep sleep.
  10. Comedy of Errors: Your life.

 Now it’s your turn:

What book titles (classic or modern) can be applied to parenting? Twist away…

Filed Under: Top 5 Fridays (or Wednesdays) Tagged With: books, funny, humor, Leanne Shirtliffe, mom, parenting, Shakespeare, shakespeare on parenting

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. journeytoepiphany says

    September 19, 2011 at 5:40 am

    Cents and Sensibility – Due to the rising inflation, and extreme exhaustion, this is what you find yourself losing more everyday as a parent.

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:23 pm

      Austen-tacious!

      Reply
  2. Meet the Buttrams says

    September 19, 2011 at 6:44 am

    All’s Well That Ends Well: When they finally move out of the house.

    You’re brilliant, lady.

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:23 pm

      Do you think that’ll happen? (Actually, you can apply this question to both parts of your comment…)

      Reply
  3. Bill says

    September 19, 2011 at 6:46 am

    Henry VIII – What you end up singing after a particularly bad parenting day (“I’m Henry the Eighth I am, I’m Henry the Eighth, I am I am”)

    A Yorkshire Tragedy – My first attempt at making a pudding.

    A Lover’s Complaint – well, I AM 69 years old after all.

    The Merchant of Venice – Trying to get your kid to make you a quick loan of a buck for a tip at lunch.

    Hamlet – NO! I will NOT buy you a pig for a pet.

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:24 pm

      Love these!

      Reply
  4. Lori Dyan says

    September 19, 2011 at 6:58 am

    Taming of the Shrew – trying to get my four-year-old in her bed before 9pm
    😀

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:24 pm

      Indeed.

      Reply
  5. Ricky Anderson says

    September 19, 2011 at 7:36 am

    Hamlet – “To sleep, perchance to dream – ay, there’s the butt paste.”

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:24 pm

      I love your variation-on-a-line!

      Reply
  6. Mark Kaplowitz says

    September 19, 2011 at 9:06 am

    War and Peace – Kind of speaks for itself. But the best line I’ve ever read on parenting, from Shakespeare’s King Lear, doesn’t need any twisting at all: “How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!”

    Very witty!

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:25 pm

      Good point. That’s a great line. I recite a single line from Hamlet each night to my kids at bedtime. I think I should switch to this one…

      Reply
  7. Chase McFadden says

    September 19, 2011 at 9:23 am

    The Winter’s Tale is my favorite.

    Slim had ketchup on his salad last night but would not eat the tomatoes. There’s your irony, Mom.

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:26 pm

      I do love irony and that is a classic one.

      Reply
  8. mistyslaws says

    September 19, 2011 at 9:49 am

    Persuasion – what I have to do every night to try to get the kids to finish their dinners

    Through the Looking Glass – where you feel like you have ended up after 6 months of getting up 3 times a night to feed baby and having approximately 2.5 hours of sleep every night . . . and having to go back to your full time job.

    Great Expectations – what you have right before you give birth . . .

    Bleak House – . . . what you have when you bring the baby home and realize you have to figure out how to take care of this tiny helpless thing that WON’T STOP CRYING.

    The Scarlett Letter – what you have to scrub off the walls as your child decided to practice his alphabet with markers.

    The Turn of the Screw – what your son’s words feel like in your heart when he says he only wants DADDY to put him to bed because he reads stories better, and then cries if you try to take him upstairs.

    Around the World in 80 Days – where you want to go when you are at your end and just want to run away from all the madness for a bit.

    Sorry, that was lengthy. And I feel you on the Much Ado . . . that’s where we are with my 3 year old right now. Damn you Band-Aids and your cute little designs that look like stickers!

    Reply
    • Renée A. Schuls-Jacobson says

      September 19, 2011 at 7:36 pm

      Ooooh, those are goooood! 😉

      Reply
      • Leanne Shirtliffe says

        September 20, 2011 at 9:27 pm

        Aren’t they. How fab are these.

        And I hear you on The Scarlett Letter. While playing a game of Twister with William, I grabbed a Sharpie and wrote L and R on each of his feet. You know, it sped up the process…in which I practically pulled a hamstring.

        Reply
  9. Gene Lempp says

    September 19, 2011 at 10:29 am

    20,000 Leagues under the Sea: The first experiment in bathing alone.

    One Flew Over the Cookoo’s Nest: Followed by another and another, like counting sheep only different.

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:28 pm

      Clever! I forgot that first bath time experience (I sponge bathed my twins for the first two weeks because I was scared. Likely with good reason).

      Reply
  10. Diana says

    September 19, 2011 at 10:48 am

    A Tale of Two Cities – what you have to do when you have four kids, three different schools, two Back to School Nights at the same time, in two different cities.

    A Comedy of Errors – my attempt at my child’s 8th grade math homework.

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:29 pm

      Great ones. That sounds like a lot of driving…

      Reply
  11. K.B. Owen says

    September 19, 2011 at 10:55 am

    Milton’s Paradise Lost – the honeymoon’s REALLY over after the first child is born.

    And why stay with adult books?…
    A Wrinkle in Time – only ONE??!! That’s optimistic.

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:29 pm

      ROFL at A Wrinkle in Time. 🙂

      Reply
  12. Marianne Hansen Rencher says

    September 19, 2011 at 6:46 pm

    Pride and Prejudice – feelings induced when you get those ‘my kid figured out cold fusion during summer vacation’ christmas cards and your kid has a bucket on his head.

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:29 pm

      Too funny. Of course, for whatever reason, I’m now thinking of the Bollywood version of Pride and Prejudice.

      Reply
      • JM Randolph says

        September 21, 2011 at 7:32 am

        Also Pride & Prejudice & Zombies.

        Reply
  13. Renée A. Schuls-Jacobson says

    September 19, 2011 at 7:35 pm

    The Catcher in the Rye: When your husband tosses the bag of bread to your son at the grocery store. And your son misses. And the bag rips open and the seeds go flying. Everywhere.

    Yeah, that was me. Yesterday. 😉 Fo’real.

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:30 pm

      Seriously? Did you swear like Holden?

      Reply
  14. Larry Hehn says

    September 19, 2011 at 9:34 pm

    The Merry Wives of Windsor – those helpful friends of yours who don’t have children of their own yet, but are more than willing to share their personal insights about how you should be parenting your kids.

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:31 pm

      Yes. Can we make that a tragedy and kill them all off?

      Reply
  15. educlaytion says

    September 19, 2011 at 9:37 pm

    Dracula. Something about sucking the life out of ya.

    Reply
    • Tor Constantino, MBA says

      September 20, 2011 at 3:24 pm

      Genius!

      Reply
      • Leanne Shirtliffe says

        September 20, 2011 at 9:31 pm

        Indeed…

        Reply
  16. Teresa Lepore says

    September 19, 2011 at 11:37 pm

    “Lord of the Flies.” Self explanatory. 🙂

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:32 pm

      Yes, a bunch of Jacks and Rogers.

      Reply
  17. Elena Aitken says

    September 19, 2011 at 11:55 pm

    You guys are way too creative. Love it!

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:32 pm

      I know. The comments are fab!

      Reply
  18. julie gardner says

    September 20, 2011 at 10:19 am

    War and Peace.

    Because come ON! It never ends….

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:33 pm

      Yup. And sometimes we want to skip over all the war parts.

      Reply
  19. Mihael Herrera says

    September 20, 2011 at 1:36 pm

    Medea: I wish!

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:34 pm

      Certainly not the faithless husband part? 😉

      Reply
  20. Tor Constantino, MBA says

    September 20, 2011 at 3:32 pm

    +The Sound and the Fury – this one is pretty self explanatory…
    +The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest – …and the dog, and my shin, and
    a lamp accidentally…..

    Thanks for the laughs!

    Reply
    • Leanne Shirtliffe says

      September 20, 2011 at 9:35 pm

      I love The Girl Who Kicked…Hilarious!

      Reply
    • Debi says

      September 26, 2011 at 8:21 pm

      LOL!

      Reply
  21. The Hook says

    September 22, 2011 at 1:33 pm

    Interesting topic, Leanne! Nicely handled.

    Reply
  22. Redneckprincess says

    September 25, 2011 at 9:00 am

    It’s early, I have not finished my first coffee…I wanna be as witty as all of you, but I am not 🙂 nice to find you aka The Accidental Stepmom!! I will be back when I feel funnier…

    Reply

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