Is this the naughtiest little boy in Britain Kathryn Taylor's son has no fear of yelling or smacking No amount of naughty-stepping seemed to work for her Mrs Taylor, 46, was left feeling 'a total failure as a mother' By Jill Foster Wild child: Alexander, five, with mother Kathryn, from Wandsworth, south London When Kathryn Taylor enrolled her son Alexander at primary school last autumn, the teachers handed out forms to the parents, asking them to list any concerns. Nut allergies, not fitting in or just being a bit tearful on their first day at Big School featured on most of the lists. But not Kathryn's. 'I told them that he might escape, he might climb the fence, he might urinate in the playground and that he's a bit wild,' she says. 'The teachers didn't believe me.' Lo and behold, at pick-up time Kathyrn was beckoned over by Alexander's teacher who was upset that he had indeed escaped from his classroom three times. Not only that, but he'd worked out how to open the fire door and had let himself out into the playground. Not for the first time, Kathryn despaired of her son. My husband Anthony and I had tried all the usual forms of discipline, but Alexander has absolutely no fear of yelling, smacking or taking things away from him. He was like a runaway train speeding down the tracks. They say kids don't come with an instruction manual but we really needed one.' Many parents will recognise that feeling of utter powerlessness when confronted with a wilful young child. After all, it's the reason why Supernanny Jo Frost and child-rearing guru Gina Ford are now worth millions. But no amount of naughty-stepping seemed to work for Kathryn, 46, a vet who worked full-time, and Anthony, 48, a financier. Indeed, their son seemed to be competing for the title of naughtiest child in Britain. 'I felt a total failure as a mother and guilty that we were doing something wrong,' Kathryn confesses. 'My solution has always been to shout louder or use threats but that wasn't working.' So the couple, who have been married for three years but have known each other since university, decided to take a rather unconventional route. They employed expensive experts to learn how to become a better mother and father. As I arrive at the family's four-bedroom house in affluent Wandsworth, South West London, I can't help but wonder: what kind of parent needs a £400-a-go class to learn how to bring up their child? Lining the street are houses worth several million pounds - celebrities such as Gordon Ramsay and Piers Morgan have homes here. Certainly the parents of inmates at nearby Wandsworth jail might have benefited from a few lessons, but an educated, affluent couple? Surely a good dose of common sense and parental instinct would have sufficed? I meet Kathryn as she pulls up outside her three-storey house after the school run. As she opens the back door of the car, Alexander falls headfirst like a rag doll onto the pavement. Unhurt and unfazed, he picks himself up and charges towards the front door. Once inside, Alexander races towards the wide-screen TV before Kathryn yells: 'No screen time!'. Four-year-old Harriet, who Kathryn says has always been better behaved than her brother, is excitable, too. It's a boisterous scene but, according to Kathryn, Alexander's behaviour has been far worse. 'Alexander laughs and yells louder than most boys and pushes the boundaries as far as he can,' she says. 'If I'm talking to a bunch of parents and hear raucous laughter behind me, I guess it's Alexander. He'll be taking his clothes off, urinating, turning on a tap and wetting everyone, licking something or hurting himself doing a stupid stunt. Even at an early age he would throw himself out of his cot and crawl down the stairs headfirst. We had so many safety gates that our house was more steel than brick. No amount of naughty-stepping seemed to work for Kathryn, 46, as their son seemed to be competing for the title of naughtiest child in Britain He was always falling over and we seemed to spend a lot of time in hospital waiting rooms. At one stage, I took him to the doctors and asked if he was normal, as he seemed to feel no pain, but the GP just laughed when, actually, I would have liked a serious answer. He may only be five, but Alexander's litany of bad behaviour would make Dennis the Menace proud. 'He's obsessed with electricity and robotics,' she says. When he was very little, we were living in Chelsea. Alexander would fiddle with the controls on the gardeners' hoses in parks so they would set off water in a different place, sometimes where a family might be having a picnic. Going to a restaurant could be traumatic. Restaurants with lamps and decorations are the worst as he loves unplugging things and knocking things over. Twice he's pulled the entire tablecloth off - glasses, plates and all. Once was at Pizza Express and the other time was at one of the most romantic restaurants in the world in Positano, Italy. We stopped going out as a family. 'Going to the doctor is a nightmare because it's like arriving with a team of chimpanzees. He's pulled apart her stethoscope, blood pressure machine and set of scales before she even gets to say hello. He calls everyone Mr Poo Poo Head, including nice old ladies minding their own business. This unruly behaviour continues on holiday, too. 'Once when we were on a flight to Greece, he yelled; 'Fire!' at the top of his voice just as we were about to take off. On another long-haul flight, I lost him for over an hour while we were in the air. I was frantic - but eventually found him at the back of the plane with a drunken Kiwi surfer playing computer games. When we ask him why he behaves like he does he says: "Naughty fun is better fun." 'As a vet I'm used to dealing with animals and on more than one occasion I've had to kneel down to Alexander, hold his head in my hands and make sure he's listening to me, just like I would with a dog.' Kathryn Taylor Kathryn and Anthony started their family late, and she now wonders if that was part of the problem. 'I was 40 when we decided to start trying for a baby and luckily I got pregnant in the first month I came off the pill,' she says. 'But I don't think we'd done much thinking about the "bringing up" part of being a parent. 'I don't really remember being parented by my parents at all. My siblings often had chats with me about my behaviour because I was a bit wild, too, but I can't remember Mum and Dad disciplining me. 'I wasn't a mummy kind of person. I finished work three weeks before my C-section, which was done in a private hospital, and only had a six-month maternity leave, before going back to work and leaving Alexander in the hands of childminders and nannies. It felt like the moment Alexander came out, he was alert and into everything. As soon as he could get hold of something, he'd grab it and try to pull it apart. But as he was our first child, we didn't know any different.' It begs the question, what have she and Anthony really done to discipline him? 'When we were out, we always relied on iPads and mobile phones to distract him and entertain him at the table, and to keep him quiet, but I know that in the long run that's not doing him any favours,' she admits. 'It's probably made things worse.' But she also insists they have tried all the usual 'rod of iron' methods - yelling, threatening, even smacking - and they don't work either. Tellingly, though, even her own family say she's too soft. 'Their advice is mostly "wallop him harder," "just tell him with authority" or even "you need to get that kid in line, he's a nightmare,"' she says. 'They've even asked us not to stay at their houses. Little terror: Kathy Taylor's son Alexander at 22 months and daughter Harriet at five months 'But I've tried yelling. When he's misbehaving we don't sit idly by and let him get away with it. But he doesn't listen and chooses to be louder and sillier.' It's the kind of errant behaviour that would make some mothers turn to Sauvignon Blanc therapy at the end of the day. Kathryn says it hasn't broken her or Anthony - but it's come close. 'I don't think I've ever cried because of it, but I've wanted to strangle my son one or two times and have had to leave the house and walk up the street,' she says. 'I remember once when I was on maternity leave with Harriet and I was horribly sleep-deprived, I thought, "I'm going to have to leave the room because I want to hurt him," but I think every mother has brief moments like that. I remember getting up calmly and leaving the room. I can't even remember what he'd done to annoy me, but that feeling of "No, I can't cope with this" was overwhelming. 'We did think about getting him assessed (for Attention Deficit Disorder), but he's not old enough yet and besides, I really don't believe he has any of those problems. His teachers don't either. They say he's normal, just a bit wild.' Alexander's behaviour, she believes, may be partly genetic. He comes from a long line of wild boys where if there was something to shoot or cut down, they were first on the scene. His cousin has just been in Afghanistan as a soldier and loved it. When I spoke to my mother-in-law, she said that my husband once tried to burn the house down as a child and tried to shoot rockets out of the garden. So I'm not surprised Alex always wants to climb fences and run about waving sticks.' The crunch came last September when he was about to start school. As Kathryn explains: 'We knew we really needed to tackle this head on, because it was going to be a real problem. I'd read so many books, but I felt they were never about my son, they were always about some well-behaved kid. I remember one that said: "Don't put all your fragile items away. Show them to your child, let them touch it, and tell them not to touch it. There is no way Alexander would pay attention to that. After that terrible start to his school career, Kathryn and Anthony enrolled on a ten-week course with The Parent Practice, which has been running workshops and courses since 2004 in the London and Surrey area. Run by parenting experts, it covers topics such as developing a child's motivation, encouraging an emotional bond and how to respond to negative behaviour. And what did these experts see as the key to 'curing' Alexander? Simply, he needed to spend more time with his mother. Blindingly obvious, you might say, but Kathryn, it seems, was amazed. 'I walked out of the first class thinking: "I need to slow down with working because I need to reclaim some of my mummy time,"' she says. And so she cut back her working schedule to one day a week - thankfully, she says, they were able to afford it - with astonishing results. Just having a chat with Alexander on the way to and from school provided me with moments of pure parenting gold. We used to send a childminder to fetch him every day, or borrow other people's nannies, which used to be quite stressful. When I think now of what we did wrong in the past, it was probably hiring the wrong kinds of nannies who used to sit him in front of the television all day. I can't help but feel sorry for poor Alexander. Kathryn, too, seems to see how insufficient her parenting had been. 'I've realised that Alexander is a little boy who needs his mummy. I've done my job for over 20 years and I love it, but if I don't put time into my children now, it's lost. I'll never get that back.' Kathryn and Anthony now limit screen time, watch Alexander's sugar intake and have even tried a star chart - although that didn't work because their son kept putting stars on for himself. Indeed, there's still some way to go. Throughout our interview in the upstairs study, Alexander has been peeping around the door to blow the odd raspberry, throwing himself down the stairs or shouting 'Poo!' at the top of his voice. Kathryn rolls her eyes. 'As a vet I'm used to dealing with animals and on more than one occasion I've had to kneel down to Alexander, hold his head in my hands and make sure he's listening to me, just like I would with a dog. But I'm going to ignore what he's doing now and we'll have a talk with him about how he's behaved today when you have gone.' It seems rather sad that Kathryn, who is so capable and in control in all other aspects of her life, had to resort to a course to build her confidence as a mother. Indeed, some might say that paying a fortune to an expert so that they can tell you to spend more time with your children is a sign of someone with rather more money than sense. But Kathryn is evangelical about the effect the course has had on her family life, and tells me that as Alexander and Harriet grow up, she and Anthony are thinking about signing up to classes every year to keep up with every stage of the children's development. 'Alexander is a good kid at heart,' she says. 'He'd never hurt anyone and is kind and thoughtful so I really don't think he's going to be a bad teenager. Apparently it's always the girls you have to watch out for in adolescence anyway. Maybe Harriet will be a nightmare...