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Catholic Mom - Just For Fun! ONLINE QUIZ DETERMINES IF YOU'RE THE PARENT OF YOUNG CHILDREN  Humorist and parenting expert, Tim Bete, has launched a self-evaluating
Web quiz that determines if adults have young children. Bete, who is the
former editor of Early Childhood News magazine, estimates 98 percent of
parents forget they have children at one time or another. The quiz can be
taken at www.TimBete.com.
“Just look at the kids raiding the candy bin at the local grocery store checkout and the adults pretending those children are someone else’s progeny,” says Bete. “My quiz will help jog your memory.” The quiz uses known risk factors identified by adults who have been scientifically proven to have children. In addition to Bete’s Web site, the quiz can also be found in his award-winning book, In The Beginning...There Were No Diapers: Laughing and Learning In The First Years Of Fatherhood (Sorin Books). Unlike the online quiz, readers of the book have to calculate their own scores. “I created the Web version of the quiz to remove the burden of adding small numbers,” says Bete, who has four children between the ages of one month and nine years. “When you’re sleep deprived and being nagged for cookies, it’s difficult to concentrate on math.” Bete admits that no matter how hard they may try to forget, most parents sense they have youngsters. “Many moms and dads were present at the birth of their children,” says Bete. “I have a faint recollection of sitting next to a hospital bed in which my wife had complete authority over the television remote control for 18 straight hours and I was forced to beg her to turn back to Little House on the Prairie so I could see if Michael Landon saved the neighbor girl who had fallen into a well. I even have a videotape of the experience…the episode of Little House, not the birth.” Bete is well-known for his parenting humor column, which has been featured in the Christian Science Monitor and more than a dozen parenting magazines. He is also director of the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop at the University of Dayton. In addition to the parent quiz, Bete’s Web site contains the cult-favorite Baby Pirate (complete with theme song and dancing infant buccaneer) and the "Who looks more like John Malkovich -- Tim Bete or John Malkovich?" survey. At last count, Bete was leading with 31 percent of the votes. Malkovich had 19 percent and 50 percent of respondents said, "I can't tell them apart." “I recommend all adults between the ages of 20 and 40 take my ‘Are you a parent?’ quiz,” says Bete. “Don't panic if you have a high score. It could explain why the three-year-old raiding the candy bin looks exactly like you.” Take the quiz at www.TimBete.com. For more information about In The Beginning...There Were No Diapers: Laughing and Learning In The First Years Of Fatherhood visit www.timbete.com/Book.html For additional information, contact Tim Bete at Tim@TimBete.com. |
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