MUM About Town dished out some discipline this week. Truth is she didn’t really know what she was doing and in all honesty was making it up as she went along. The thing I was sure of, though, is that it needed to be done. For a long time I have been “umming” and “ahhing” over whether my toddler actually understood when he was in trouble and wasn’t just scared by my booming voice.

He was very much in “one of those moods” from the minute he got up on this particular day.

He was not in the business of doing what was required of him without a very substantial song and strictly come dancing of a dance. Things came to a head with his truck of building bricks.

Instead of building with them, as the name would suggest, he thought throwing them at the TV was the right way to go. So I, very reasonably, asked him to go and pick them up and fight the natural urge to lob anything that came into his hot little hand.

This request was met with a stony stare and no action, despite the threat of “going upstairs”. After repeating this a number of times with pretty much the same response, I eventually got him to walk over and pick up the offending block, only to then see him throw it over the other side of the room. I realised I had to follow through on my threat.

This was well into the realms of uncharted territory for me. But, true to my word, I hot footed it upstairs, placed him in his cot, closed the door and walked away.

The wailing then began. As I stomped downstairs and sat on the sofa, I began to ponder what the heck I was going to do from here. Do I wait until he stops crying? Do I demand an apology? Would he spend the rest of his life looking through the bars of his cot all because of a lego brick?

After what felt like a long time the crying did reduce to a whimper, so I seized my opportunity to go in for peace talks.

I put my “I’m disappointed in you” face on and asked if he was sorry. I was willing him to say yes, but he did one better and actually blubbed out “Rorry”, which I grabbed with both hands.

I took him downstairs to where the offending brick still lay and asked him, for the last time, to pick it up. He looked at me. I said a silent prayer for him to comply or the next four hours until bedtime would be the hardest stint he had ever done in my company. But he duly went over to the brick and placed it back into his truck.

I showered him with kisses, more in relief than anything, and we went on with our day.

Lesson learned (I hope).