Taking Steps

"Right, okay, if you're not going to put your toys away, you can sit on this chair until you decide to behave." I think I probably threw a "young lady" in there somewhere for good measure, just in case I wasn't sounding enough like a huffy teacher.

F is generally pretty biddable, but had decided the collection of toy ketchup bottles she'd brought to the loo this morning was going to stay there unless I wanted to move them. When I disagreed, we had a battle of wills for the next hour. Fifteen minutes of screaming reduced me to trying the only parenting trick I know, which of course I learned from obnoxious junk TV.

Supernanny was actually on TLC earlier, bullying some grotesque American family for your entertainment. Look, the program (all programs ever on TLC, in fact) seems to say - your family isn't this insanely screwed up. So you must be good people and should feel good about yourselves. Stay tuned, Burkina Faso's Celebrity Next Top Wig Maker coming up next!

Seeing the show at least reminded me that I was doing the Naughty Step thing right, anyway. I wasn't convinced. Not least because we live in a flat and don't have any steps, the corner chair in Mummy and Daddy's room had to suffice. It was the most boring place I could find, although I did have to remove three Scandinavian-knit jumpers, a replica viking sword and a giant yoga ball from it first. What an interesting house we have.

F went through every classic manipulation she could find: -

• Telling Daddy to go and clear the toys away for her
• Turning entirely boneless with rage and sliding off the Chair like a paralyzed eel
• Stopping crying and until I came to look at her again, then picking up where she'd left off
• Getting off the Naughty Chair to play chess* when I wasn't looking
• Claiming she actually quite liked the Naughty Chair and was going to stay there indefinitely
• Playing with a nearby clock until it was removed (I didn't think of it as interesting enough to remove it in advance)

I left her to it for the most part. Which is hard. Basically, I don't really care about the toys. It's the principles at stake! I told you to do this one tiny thing, little daughter, and now I shall put us both through emotional hell until you concede I was right! It's for your own good! It certainly wasn't for mine, I'll tell you that. If F could see how much guilty remorse I was having to mask by hiding in the next room, anxiously Googling the authentic method of the Naughty Step, she'd have cracked me in minutes.

I went back in to try and start a reasonable conversation in the occasional lulls. Which would go fine until I reintroduced the whole sorry 'pick up your toys' thing, and then we'd be back to square one and redoubled weeping. But after a mere hour of fairly continuous wailing, she suddenly tried a new tack. Earnest smiles through the grubby tears:

"Feya be happy now, cuddle daddy."

"Oh good!" I said, and then suspiciously added "so will you pick up the toys?" because I wasn't born yesterday.

"Yes. Cuddle cuddle."

Maybe the day before yesterday. She'll have worked out how to beat this new parental ploy in a week or two, doubtless. But I'm chalking this round up to me.

*Her opening moves consist of throwing everything she can't get to work or doesn't like the look of off the board and then holding up the King and chanting his name proudly, which I believe is called George Osbourne's Gambit.