My dirty little parenting secret

London - Yesterday, I found a brilliant competition for moms and dads on the internet.

As it didn’t involve Kim Kardashian’s bottom, an avocado or Justin Bieber having a tantrum (like everything else seems to on the web), I was drawn to it.

An American newspaper had run a contest to find “the best parenting advice in six words”. All sorts of humorous entries were sent in, from “We do not negotiate with terrorists” to “Because I’m your mother, that’s why” and ‘Buttered toast is better than nothing”, to name but a few.

The winning six words were genius and really can be applied to every stage of bringing up a family: “You’re gonna need a bigger wipe.”

I wish I had known in advance about the contest because I could have added my own six-word tip which, I feel, could make an appearance in all advice books.

It’s controversial and I doubt anyone else will admit to saying it out loud, though.

It is: “I will give you one pound.” I’ve used it twice today already.

This once came in very handy at a parents’ evening for my second child, Gracie, who’s 11.

I am not making excuses here, but when you have four children at school and you’re catching up on a decade of sleepless nights you tend to forget a lot of things: your keys, PIN number and the reason you’ve walked into a particular room.

So don’t judge me when I tell you I totally forgot the name of Gracie’s form teacher.

I could neither recall her name nor her face. I was only 60 percent sure I was looking for a woman when I wandered into the school hall packed with earnest parents queueing up.

I called my husband. He had no idea. So I decided to call my oldest daughter, who’s 13 going on 27, attends the same school and, despite her volatile relationship with her sister, seems to have an unhealthy knowledge of her activities or “monitoring”, as she calls it.

The conversation went like this:

Me: “Quick, Sky, you have to tell me Gracie’s teacher’s name now.”

Sky: “No.”

Me: “What? Come on, what’s her name? I am running out of time.”

Sky: “This really is the sort of thing you should know, Mom.”

Me: “I will give you one pound.”

Sky: “Miss Knowles.”

These six words are incredibly effective and extremely useful, especially for those aged between three and 13.

Before the age of three you have to say “chocolate” and after the age of 13 you have to say “five pounds”.

It is, of course, a last-resort tactic and I didn’t imagine I would ever have to bribe my children with cold, hard cash when I first had them - but desperate times warrant desperate measures.

Parenting is an adventure that’s packed with daily surprises and unpredictable situations which stretch the boundaries of your once optimistic and upbeat hopes. Nothing turns out the way you expected it, and you end up doing all sorts of things you would not put on the entry form if you were up for Mom Of The Year. You can’t always get it right.

So keep this dodgy mom tip in your back pocket for when the clock is ticking and you’ve tried everything else.

It’s proved especially handy in the morning chaos of getting four children ready to go to school and out the door before the sun sets.

But beware, you can’t use it regularly. That would be silly and also diminishes its power.

But, dammit, if you’ve been up since 5am on a school day, you’ve watched Ben & Holly’s Little Kingdom on a loop for hours, the hot water has failed, the dog has done something unmentionable by the back door, the bread has gone off, you still can’t locate anyone’s homework and it looks as if today is the day that your ancient hamster will finally be “going to live on a farm in the country”, then give yourself permission to fork out the cash to speed things up and get out of the door on time.

No one needs to know, and to use another one of my favourite six-word tips: “Remember tomorrow is a newday.”

* Lorraine Candy is editor-in-chief of Elle magazine.

Daily Mail

* Email your magic parenting six-word phrase to [email protected].