Calling on the boys in blue when all else fails

The force has released a poster telling parents to teach their children not to be scared of police officers: “Please don’t tell your children that we will take them off to jail if they are bad. We want them to run to us if they are scared – NOT be scared of us’.

And I get it, I really do. But, I confess, I am one of those parents who, helpless in the face of a recalcitrant, disobedient toddler, when all other attempts at reason, pleading, bargaining, shouting, bribery and escalating threats of punishment have failed, have invoked the spectre of the boys in blue.

I only ever did it as a last resort. But, since I’m coming clean, I must admit there have been many last resorts. So you may as well put me down as a serial offender.

Looking back now, I agree, it all looks a bit pathetic. When it came to instilling discipline, I failed to administer all my parental duties in the correct and proper manner. But there were mitigating circumstances.

For when it was just me up against a gang of five boys, often prone to misbehave, I just did whatever it took to get them to fall into line.

And it wasn’t just the boys in blue I called on for help. Any authority figure would do. I was forever pretending to phone my boys’ favourite reception teacher, Mrs Collins, when behaviour threatened to get out of control.

Because, for some reason, the very idea that the lovely, gentle and kind Mrs Collins might find out they had been naughty used to terrify them into submission in a way I, on my own, never could

I also went through a phase of calling the doctor ‘for advice’ at tea times, when one of the boys went through a faddy eating phase which involved refusing to eat anything healthy. The doctor, he was told, wasn’t very pleased. It seemed to do the trick.

And if we were out in public, in a park, museum, café or leisure centre, there was always the ‘man’. The ‘man’ was just a vague reference to someone official who, all-seeing and all-knowing, would be on his way the moment anyone misbehaved.

“The man’s coming, the man’s coming” or “Watch in case the man sees you,” were common refrains on family outings. “Who is this man anyway?” asked one of the younger boys once. “How come he goes everywhere we go?”

The police were first called into action when our youngest was two and, having worked out how to unfasten a buckle, refused to keep his seat belt on in the car. At first he thought it was a game, laughing when I stopped the car to refasten it, unfastening it again the moment I drove off.

Then, when I pulled over, screeching to a sudden halt so that I could climb in the back and to put his belt back on, the tantrums would start. He became more and more defiant.  It became a battle of wills. All that stopping and starting, remonstrating and screaming (both his and mine) made us a danger on the roads.

So I told him that if he didn’t keep his belt on I would be in trouble with the police, which was true.

I never resorted to the last-ditch tactics of a friend with the same problem, who drove her three-year-old un-belted daughter to a police station and asked the desk sergeant to have a stern word, which he did.

But if I saw a police car while driving, I would warn my toddler of the consequences should officers see him without a belt. And once, when police were stopping cars, I even told him they were checking to see children had their seat belts on properly.

Yes, I’m guilty, as charged. But in my defence all I can say, officer, is: “It worked.”

LAST time 19-year-old Patrick came home from university, he asked if I would make him some of his favourite sausage meat pie to take back, so I made a huge one, divided into ten portions for freezing. When he was home again, I asked if he’d eaten them all. “Nearly, just got two bits left,” he said. “What have you eaten them with?” I asked. “Brown sauce,” he replied. I thought he might have had them with potato, peas or beans, I suggested.  He looked at me blankly: “Who do you think I am? Ainsley Harriott?”