Small people

Recently I have been spending quite a bit of time with small children. It's quite bizarre how many differences there can be between they way people choose to handle their kids but there seems to be one common rule: Bottle of warm milk = snoozy time. Last night I was babysitting with a friend for her friend's 2 year old child who was not happy at all with mum leaving the house. Our tactic was to let her run around being hysterical at everything for 10 minutes until she got sick of that, after which she said "NO!" to everything we said to her, refused to be read a book and it wasn't looking promising for an easy bed time. But in comes Bottle of Warm Milk to save the evening, 10 minutes later she is lying quietly and what appears to be sleepily across me with a belly full of milk. We throw her in her cot, back out the door and that was it. It's like magic! I so wish warm milk had that effect on me too. I'm beginning to think that just looking after other people's kids is the way to go really. I mean you come in, play with them for a few hours, they love you for it, and when the nappy's full or they start cracking the shits, you leave! I can see how it might tempt people to have their OWN kids, sometimes it seems like it's really not that hard, but they aren't taking into account the Novelty Factor. Sure it's fun to spend one evening a year running around entertaining a 2 year old, but every evening? No thanks.