MM Comment
Supernanny and me
MM’s Editor reveals how there’s often a big leap from the written page to the naughty step by Debbie Orme
I laughed this week when a friend mentioned that her toddler was beginning to misbehave. ‘But it’s OK,’ she assured me, ‘I’ve bought Supernanny’s book.....’ Hmmm...I wondered if I should tell her.... When my daughter was very young,
Supernanny was all the rage. Up and down the land, kids were sitting on ‘naughty steps’ and kitchen walls were festooned with reward charts. So, as my daughter began to challenge boundaries and misbehave, I didn’t panic. I simply bought the book, watched the TV programmes and sat back, ready to reap the rewards.....
The naughty step
You know how it works, right? A child misbehaves, is put on the naughty step for one minute for every year of its life and then gazes solemnly at mummy with an apologetic ‘I’m sorry mummy’. Mum and child then embrace. Well that’s how it’s supposed to work... For a start, I didn’t have an appropriate
step. My stairs were open plan into the living
room...and to send my daughter to her room was like sending her to Hamleys as a punishment. So, eventually I decided on the dining room. No entertainment in there. No toys. Perfect. The next time she misbehaved, I swung
into action. ‘I asked you not to do that. You’ve done it anyway and so you’ll sit on the naughty spot for five minutes.' Cue ‘escorting to naughty spot’. Now, I’m not one of life’s taller people – the early realisation that I was never going
80 Modernmum
to be a Harlem Globetrotter was one of my lesser crises – so there then ensued what – to the outsider – was probably comical to watch. Mummy Pixie tries to manoeuvre lithe
and solid five year old to naughty spot. Said five year old, who knows how this is going to pan out, does her ‘dead weight’ act and drops to the floor. Mummy Pixie tries to get five year old off floor. Five year old laughs – ‘you can’t lift me’. Mummy Pixie thinks she is taking heart attack and gives up, storms out of room to get breath back. The following day we had ‘Mummy Pixie
and five year old: The Remake’ except that, this time, Daddy Pixie was home and five year old was no match for fifteen-stone Daddy Pixie, so she made it onto the naughty spot. Once the five minutes were up, I
eagerly awaited The Apology and The Hug. ‘You can come off the step now, but
what have you to say to mummy?’ ‘Nothing.’ ‘No, you are to say that you are sorry
and then you can come off the spot.’ ‘Well, I’ll come off the spot, but I’m
not sorry.’ ‘Well then, you’ll have to sit there for
another five minutes.’ Half an hour and five returns to her later,
she was still looking at her nails and refusing to apologise. I got out my Supernanny book but couldn’t find a ‘what to do if a particular tactic doesn’t work’
section, so, as we had to leave the house ten minutes later, we ended up leaving apology-less. Feeling like an abject failure, I decided
next day to implement the ‘doll away in a bin bag’ routine. I explained to my daughter how it was going to work and she seemed to accept this explanation. ‘Let me get this right,’ she said. ‘If I’m
naughty you’ll take a doll.’ ‘Yes.’ Half an hour later she was indeed
naughty and I told her to bring me a doll for the bag. As she handed it to me, I vaguely remember thinking that I hadn’t seen this doll before.... Two days and fourteen unrecognisable dolls later, I realised what she’d done. She’d pulled a pile of dolls she didn’t play with anymore back into commission and was using these as the ‘punishment dolls’. I got the bin bag, emptied them out and said, ‘right young lady, it’s the real dolls now'. Not long after the ‘fake doll’ episode I
actually applied for the Supernanny TV show, so determined was I to show Supernanny that her tactics didn’t always work. Thankfully I wasn’t successful... the embarrassment would have been too much to bear. Hopefully my friend will have more
luck with her Supernanny book than me. And if she doesn’t...well, this time – as the outsider - I’ll be able to have a bit of a laugh!
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