How to De-Feralize Your Children for Back-to-School

1. Find them. Where are they? Nobody knows for sure. Seems like one might have been enrolled in a facility of some kind and another was left with a family member in a part of the country with reportedly different values. Was there a third one? There definitely was a tiny one somewhere. Jayden. Or Kayden. One of those. Drive by the playground while yelling “Aiden” out the window and see what turns up.

2. Get them medical treatment. Set broken bones, dress wounds, and provide antibiotics for new strains of disease they are sure to be carrying. After living in the wild for three months, they are likely harboring various strains of bacteria and pathogens that should not be reintroduced into the general population.

3. Remove any creatures that have come to know them as a host. Using bolt cutters, remove all small mammals currently using their hair as a habitat. This includes, but is not limited to, bats, badgers, opossum, chinchillas, ferrets, lemmings, and meerkats. Any creatures misappropriated from local zoos should be returned once liberated from your child’s pelt. Reptiles should be turned loose into wetlands and bird’s nests should be carefully placed high in the branches of native trees.

4. Bathe them. This is best done in an open area out-of-doors where you won’t be clogging your septic system with their waste. A firing line with a spray hose works very well, being sure to focus extra attention to ears, armpits, and nether regions, all while avoiding direct contact, preventing further infection. After the preliminary rinse, a Borax scrub will remove lingering soils, followed by a final pressurized rinse.

5. Minimize rough edges. Clip talons, exfoliate callouses, and ebb budding horns with a microplaning tool. A simple haircut can be persuasive in the illusion of their not having spent most days of the summer at least partially naked urinating on trees while acquiring disturbingly large mosquito bites that you had to look up on WebMD. Lingering animal musks can be temporarily obscured with baby oil and a dab of vanilla extract behind the ears.

6. Transition them from their steady diet of acorns and bugs back to table food. Expect some resistance here, but be persistent. It’s important that they be able to eat people food once they begin school so they’re not walking around all day snacking on handfuls of gravel from their pockets. If you continue to find them nibbling on dead leaves and mulch well into autumn, don’t lose hope. By the end of the year, all of their natural food sources will be snow-covered, forcing them to revert to the traditional macaroni and cheese cuisine until the ground thaws. An occasional small pinecone can be provided as a treat.

7. Replace footwear. Whatever they’ve been shod with all summer (if anything) must now be destroyed. Shake out shoes to release hidden pockets of sand and tiny animal bones, as well as lost valuables, like your wedding band and original brain cell count. Usher the shoes from the earth permanently in an elaborate ceremony of incineration. Spread the ashes over multiple locations of varying distances to be sure the remains won’t re-congeal into a radioactive pair of zombie footwear that will find its way back into your home each night without you knowing and track mud into every room.

8. Confiscate all tribal effects and weaponry acquired during ascendence to power in local child horde. This includes, but is not limited to, crowns, conch shells, chain-link armor, back tattoos, shields, spears, kilts, and tooth necklaces. Turn these in to your local police department, and replace with the (slightly) more socially acceptable rope bracelet from the boardwalk gift shop.

9. Get them some notebooks with cats on them or something.