With 3 boys under 6, Buggy Blogger mum to J (5), B (3) and S (1) certainly has her hands full. This week our blogger feels like a Mother Grimm.

We all know the fairy-tales. There’s a beautiful mistreated heroine, a warty gruesome beast of some sort and a black-hearted baddie. Ah the sweet stuff of soothing bedtime stories…

And the mother, if not superseded by a hideously spiteful step-mother, is consistently benevolent and kind. But that’s where those Grimm brothers got it all wrong. Because step-mums aren’t unilaterally vile. And even the best of the rest of us can’t smell of roses to our kids all the time. Can we?

Well I for one confess to … surprising this … failing to be unremittingly nice, at least in the eyes of my offspring. Just sometimes they might be forgiven for thinking I’ve switched scripts with one of the baddies.

Now before you decide to boycott the blog or shop me to the NSPCC, allow me to clarify. I’m not saying I cast evil spells, make them count lentils or refuse to let them go to the ball. Neither am I unmitigatingly cruel. However, from time to time I do morph from nice mummy into villainess.

Forget the ad-perfect mummy whose dish-doing hands are as soft as her face, sometimes I scrub up as an altogether brisker kind of mum. Like when I perform forceful ear-cleaning offensives, nail trimming blitzes and short-back-and-sides onslaughts on the squealingly reluctant. Then there are those rubbing-in-suncream episodes … the injustice of it … at the start of a blistering day. Or my heartless refusal of chocolate before breakfast, a 2nd ice-cream from the Greensleeves van or a later-than-normal-bedtime on a school night. Torturer huh?

And then this week I did the dirty on B by taking him in for his dreaded pre-school booster. With a measles surge in the press I knew I couldn’t ignore the reminder letter any longer so reluctantly made him an appointment with the nurse. And that’s how I found myself standing outside the surgery with a damp forehead, a dry throat and slightly wobbly legs. (Actually I have slightly wobbly legs a lot of the time and it’s nothing to do with nerves but that’s by the by.)

And once through the doors, that’s it, I can feel myself Jeckyl and Hyding into a baddie. First off, I’m economical with the truth about exactly why we’re there. Then, as the realisation dawns, I pinion down my kicking, shouting offspring whilst forcibly rolling up his stubborn sleeves. And then … traitress … I restrain him as the nurse rams in her dirty great needle. Twice! How could I?

Dunno, I felt utterly dreadful about it. But surely it was a case of being cruel to be kind. Though it’s fair to say on this occasion B wasn’t soaking in the kind vibes. Well, not until I pulled out the peace-offering chocolate Buttons afterwards at least. Feeling like a cad? Reach for the Cadbury’s every time I say!

And after the event, how was I? As tremblingly shell-shocked as B in fact and definitely not the bad guy around here. After all it was that nasty nurse who wielded the syringe. She was the wolf in sheep’s clothing. And we … united … were the ones sheepishly wolfing down the chocolate.

Ah, a lesson in consolation by chocolate then. Now that’s where I’m certain not to teeter off script. Maybe that’s why I’ll never be a Mother Trimm?

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