Yep…got bed-time totally under control.

The 8 o’clock fairies are my friends. I call on them at bedtime when my kids run rings around me with nappies on their heads (kid you not – see photographic evidence to right) and I’m gasping at the thought of a glass of wine.

You see, the 8 o’clock fairies live in the willow tree at our local park. At 8 o’clock every night they peak out from the hollows then fly around with clipboards and pens, checking that all the boys and girls in our neighbourhood are asleep in bed.

If you’re not, the fairies place a cross next to your name (with their glitter pens of course) and the list goes to Santa to help him decide just how many presents you deserve at the end of the year.

Desperate? Yes.

A bit scary for the little people? Potentially.

Effective? Definitely (please feel free to try).

I’ve sometimes worried if my use of the 8 o’clock fairies might be a little on the extreme side. That was until a good friend recently confessed her own imaginative parenting technique when shopping with her children: ‘Santa Cam’.

Yep, that’s right. Big brother, or Santa in this case, is watching your kiddies’ every move from his control room in the North Pole. Just one tantrum captured on the nearest security camera could end Christmas dreams of Dora dolls and Dinosaur Trains. Inspirational! (Can’t believe I haven’t thought of that one before.)

While parenting purists – usually old people who have forgotten what it’s like – would deem these techniques ‘dubious and best avoided’, we are only human and occasionally desperate times call for desperate measures. 

So, just to make me feel a bit better about myself, what elaborate techniques do you terrorize, I mean, entertain your children with?