You’d think by now I’d have figured out that the moments you think it’s safe to sit back and say, “well we’ve done that well” about raising kids, are just before the times you realise you don’t know the first thing.

Know what I’m talking about? I honestly thought that after seven years of parenting I was doing a good job. My kids said please and thank you. They mostly did what they were told.

They. Didn’t. Throw. Tantrums.

Nobody, however, ever explained that to my two-year-old.

One afternoon he came into the kitchen with a box of ice-cream cones in his hand. I knelt down next to him and asked for it back. “Sorry Zac. Not now. It’s nearly dinner!”

That was all it took. Within a minute he was naked and purple and lying flailing on the floor like a newborn in a sea of clothes.

“Just ignore him,” my mother said the first time it happened. “He’ll get the idea that it doesn’t work.” Two hours later that day it still hadn’t worked, and he was still screaming. We ignored him the next time too, and the next, and the time after that. I learned how to carry him fireman-style. I even tried strapping him into his stroller and walking him around the block, but that only made things worse. I learned to act very calm and hide the fact that my sanity was feeling more than a little frayed. This time, though, I’d had enough.

“WANT ICE-CREAM!” His little fists pounded the floor; his mouth open in a cavernous yell.  In the silence of his in-breath I sat down next to him on the floor. I was exhausted, and I’d run out of ideas. Something needed to change, and quick. He wouldn’t listen to me, so I let out my frustrations by copying his words.

“WANT ICE-CREAM!”

“Yep. You want a ice-cream.” That much is true.

“WANT IIIIICE-CREEEEAM!”

“I know. You want an ice-cream.” Like I’m really going to give you one!

“WANT ICE…”

“You want an ice-cream. I know.”

And then the miracle happened. He stopped screaming and looked at me, still quivering, but calmer. “Want ice-cream?”

And there it was; my revelation. He just wanted to be heard. Who knew? Our dreams are important to us. Don’t we all get upset when we can’t be heard, or make ourselves understood?

“Yes Zac. Mummy knows you want an ice-cream. Have you finished screaming now?”

He looked up at me, and we both smiled a little. “Yeah.” He sat on my knee quietly while I put his clothes back on him. Nearly crying from gratitude I thought to myself, let’s never, ever, do that again.

Megan Sayer lives in Moonah and is a mother of three. When she can find her computer under the assortment of odd socks, papers and toys she likes to write.