When you are having a baby, you think about all the lovely things you will do in those first few vital years to nurture and develop the beautiful bond you share.

Then they arrive and you don't have time to brush your teeth, never mind nurture and share.

But that's okay because brushing your teeth is not in the new top ten list of things to do before your child reaches five, compiled by The Children's Mutual, which is apparently the leading children's savings specialist. Although, in my experience, children are much more adept at spending than saving, so why they need a specialist at all is beyond me.

Top of this "fun and stimulating" list is owning a pet. Number two should of course be burying the aforementioned pet in a shoebox, but the list actually continues as follows: teach your baby to swim; hold a memory forever (which is something to do with having a professional photograph taken of your gurning child); look after all your relationships (that means having a fumble with your fella for our earthier readers); start a children's savings plan; explore baby food cookery courses (have they never heard of Cow & Gate?); make a friend from another country (mine's a lovely chap called Jack Daniels); teach your child manners; encourage their imagination and senses; and place a bet on them winning Wimbledon (apparently William Hill will give you odds of 5000-17).

These are all very worthy and undoubtedly fine ideals to try and achieve, but they are also just a tiny bit dull, apart from the last one which is pleasingly strange and worth a pound of anyone's money.

So, while you fumble about in your bag looking for your purse, here is my top ten things that parents really want to do before their kid is five. They are of course scrupulously researched and collated using the latest scientific methodology.

1. Have a bath without a small person barging in and prodding your wobbly bits while singing "jelly on a plate".

2. Talk to a friend on the phone without having to break off half way through a sentence to allow your kid to hold the phone to their ear and nod silently for five minutes before dropping it with an ear-splitting clatter into a box of Lego.

3. Swear loudly. And we are not just talking about gosh and blimey here. If you're going to do it, do it in style with a whole flippin' feck load of bad words.

4. Get riotously drunk, put The Undertones' Teenage Kicks on the CD player (or gramophone if you are as hip as me), turn the volume up to an excessively loud level and pogo around the living room while singing tunelessly but with gusto.

5. Sleep until lunchtime (usually after completing number four). Or at least until 9am, which feels like lunchtime if your kids are usually up with the sparrows demanding Frosted Shreddies and Bear in the Big Blue House.

6. Eat dinner at the table without having to constantly get up to retrieve lost cutlery or scattered peas; remove food smears from hands, faces and soft furnishings; and scuttle off into the kitchen to satiate demands for more water, bread or biscuits (the latter of which is always accompanied by a nauseating "pleeeease" that doesn't stop until something sweet is wedged into the offending orifice).

7. Relax in the garden without having to play hide and seek, football or "find the worm and throw it at grandma". Actually, forget that last one, it's one of my favourites.

8. Have an adult conversation without having to use code, spellings or eyebrow semaphore.

9. Enjoy a day out without having to take the entire contents of the house with you.

10. Read a whole newspaper, including the international pages, which are generally about people you have never heard of in countries you couldn't find on a map.

Looking at the pictures in Heat magazine and sniggering at the captions doesn't count.

Updated: 10:48 Monday, May 10, 2004