It is my belief that most of us head into making major life decisions without a clue of the hazards that lie ahead. This accounts for why we still have things like home renovations and dating.

I thought of this yesterday as I lunched with my friend, Katherine, who is expecting her first child. Katherine is an intelligent, reasonable woman who has nevertheless been known to say things like, “Any child will eat vegetables if they’re cooked properly.” Our conversation went like this.

Katherine: I’m so glad I waited until I was over 30 to have children. Now I really know what I’m getting into.

Me: Uh… hmmm…

Katherine: I’m not having drugs at the birth. You can just breathe through the pain.

Me: (unattractive noise as I pass salad through my nose)

It occurred to me that I have something to offer my friend, to help her with the challenges of parenting I know lie ahead. So here’s my list of Things I Wish I’d Known Sooner, But I Still Would Have Had Kids… I’m Almost Sure.

• Children learn and grow according to a very strict schedule. Their own.

• Any parenting lesson you learn with your first child will be entirely inapplicable to your second child, who will be a completely different person.

• The key to successful parenting is a ton of love, support and encouragement. Make sure you’re getting enough.

• With care and hard work, there will come a point when you’ll know exactly how to handle the stage your child is at. This will usually occur exactly 15 seconds before they enter the next one.

• When you find yourself at Kinderswim at 8 am on a Saturday morning, shivering in your community pool and trying to coax a screaming toddler off the deck and into the water, what you need to remember is this: No nominee for a Nobel Prize or candidate for prime minister ever lost or won the race based on whether or not they were prepared to put their face in the water.

• There is one foolproof way to keep your kid from whining in the grocery store checkout line. Leave them at home.

• Children are not as smart as those parenting books make them out to be. They’re way, way smarter.

• There is only one thing that has ever kept me from being a perfectly organized, perfectly patient, perfectly wise parent. Being human.