You’re either going to think I’m an absolute genius after reading this or you’re going to think I’m the worst parent ever. 😉
Last week there was a child having a tantrum in Tesco when I was doing my weekly shopping.
That doesn’t bother me at all as I’ve been there myself so I just gave the poor frazzled looking Mum a sympathetic smile, stepped around the child in the middle of the freezer aisle and walked on. As I did, I heard the Mum say to the child that if he didn’t get up them a man from the shop would come and take him away and he wouldn’t get any Christmas presents.
I must admit that at that point I did comment (quietly) to Mr Frugal that I hated when people threatened their children like that. He just looked at me and smirked at that and reminded me of something I used to do when our two were little and I realised that I’d totally done the same thing myself.
I know that this is all kinds of wrong and that any parenting experts would tell me that what we did is a huge parenting no-no but when we lived in our old house, we had an alarm system which had a couple of sensor units fitted on the ceiling in the living room and the kitchen.
These little sensors used to flash red when they detected movement and I used to tell the kids that the light meant that Santa or one of his elves was checking in to see how they were behaving!
It get’s worse! When they were playing up, I would deliberately go stand in the area that I knew would trigger a light so I could tell them that the elves could see the way they were behaving!
Oh dear!
I’m going to hold my hands up and say that I knew it wasn’t great parenting but it was that effective throughout December that no matter how many times I said to myself that I wouldn’t do it again, I always did.
We’ve lived in our current house for about 7 years now so this will have been at least that long ago and I’m a much better parent now. Honest!
Please tell me I’m not the only parent who’s done something similar….
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I used to do that too. It was the only way I could get them to behave sometimes. I don't think it was a bad parenting thing, just a clever parent thing.
When I was little I was a terror when it came to going to bed on time. In the run up to Christmas my mother told me Santa came every Wednesday to collect some money towards my presents and to get a report on my behaviour, and if he found me up and about that would be the end of Christmas for me. We lived up a gravel drive so on Wednesday evening my father would sneak out, climb over the neighbour’s fence and exit via their drive, then come crunching up ours. When I heard those footsteps I was out of my clothes and under the covers, desperately pretending to be asleep, in about 30 seconds! It may be bad parenting but at least it meant my parents had one quiet evening week.
People sell and buy ‘Santa Cam’s’ specifically for this purpose so you are not alone in that at all, and hey sometimes if it works that’s all that a parent needs for sanity!
hahaha! I have done the same.
When we first got the old smart meter installed for the gas & electric it would always go onto red when I was in the kitchen cooking tea which was when the kids would always be naughty. I said when the meter was on red it would be reported to Santa….hahaha They believed me for a good while. Oops. x
Absolute genius!
I tell my nephew that the robins are santas helpers they check to see if little boys and girls should be on naughty or nice list and report back.