I sit here, late on Tuseday, with racing pulse and staring eyes. Felix arrived at footie practice and promptly burst into tears because he had forgotten his goalie gloves. There was nothing for it but to race all the way back home and fetch them. The traffic was trying and I am a gibbering wreck.

So here’s a repost from those early days.

Bringing up children is not simple. It is the most complicated thing, by far, that I have ever done. Some elements of child rearing, so far, I’ve managed with a measure of success: there are some of which I’ve made a great big messy hash.

Lets take one from each category, shall we? I shall start with the good news, and progress to the deplorable stuff presently.

From the moment Maddie was born, I started to read child development writers, in a bid to turn her into a latter-day Marie Curie, or possibly Dorothy Parker. I was undecided which: but the role models were immaterial because Maddie couldn’t even focus properly yet, let alone talk.

Ruthlessly, I began a programme of less television and background, more talk. I learnt how to link words to concepts and talked incessantly to Maddie about everything that interested her.

Her first word was ‘stick’ because that’s the kind of utilitarian gals she and I are. No ‘Mama’ ; not a hint of ‘Daddy’; she was looking at a stick on the ground in the forest, and she named that stick.

And her fastidiously A-type mother inwardly cheered, and mentally ticked a box in her favourite child language development book.

As the years wore on, my beady eyes were always trained towards children’s bookstores. I combed the country for the greatest literature possible to enrich my child’s vocabulary well beyond ‘stick’.

The Narnian Chronicles; Sally Gardner’s I Coriander; The Railway Children: so many beautiful stories formed the end of each day. To this day we love to curl up just as the day is coming to a close, and read out loud to each other. To us, it’s the audible element of our reading that is utterly captivating.

And because stunning language formed a part of each day, her own expression blossomed. And just occasionally, her use of vocabulary takes my breath away. One word can reveal an ocean of perception.

And now to the less desirable end of town. Vegetables.

Well actually, food in general.

I applied the same principles of research to eating as I had language development. Rigorously, I pureed cod and orange, made baby spag bog to die for, concocted cheesy broccoli to charm the infant palette.

But when that girl got hold of a spoon, it was as if she were a teen in charge of a driving wheel. This was where her emotional muscle really showed. She was in charge, baby, yeah.

And she ate what she liked, and nothing else. What she liked started out being very narrow indeed: spaghetti bolognese. It progressed to chips. Then her stormtrooper of an appetite decided she didn’t like chips at all, no, indeed she didn’t like potatoes, could she have pasta please?

This went on. It was purgatory for me: I love my food and I love firm boundaries for children. Mealtimes were no longer a time when we could enjoy the former, and the latter seemed to excuse themselves just before we sat down to eat, and arrive the minute I said Maddie could get down from the table.

Time has passed and her tastes have broadened. But mealtimes, ten years on, are often one long bartering session.

You know:”Yes, there is a yorkshire pudding sitting there with your name on it, but your cabbage has not disappeared yet, and I can see the peas hiding behind the last piece of steak. Make those disappear, and then we’ll talk”.

And then today, at lunchtime, these two disparate strands of my child’s development converged. What is it they say in Ghostbusters? Never cross the beams?

So: we’re sitting round my mother’s table eating a fabulous steak and kidney casserole with roast potatoes, cabbage, peas and of course, yorkshires.

And Felix has just finished everything except for the green stuff and asks for a yorkshire pudding.

Felix, I say, make the green stuff go away (and not inside the dog) and the yorkshire is yours.

Felix vamousses the peas and cabbage and verily, the yorkshire appears on his plate.

Attention turns to Maddie, who has seen the second-to-last yorkshire pudding disappear and is visibly anxious the final one should not go the same way.

I scan Maddie’s plate ruthlessly. Hmm. Two small pieces of steak left, but she had a lot to begin with; a couple of ribbons of cabbage; a lot of gravy. We’re at Grandmas, we’re not going to make a scene over the epilogue of what was a great meal.

So I ask:”Maddie, would you like the final yorkshire?”

Her answer doesn’t get to anyone else around the table in quite the same way it reaches me. The beams cross.

“Is there a snare?” she inquires tentatively.

Meaning, can I have the yorkshire without eating the rest of what’s on my plate.

Oh, lawks-a-mercy, if ever a middle class member of the intelligentsia was hoisted by their own petard, I have been today.

Her perfect, incisive choice of vocabulary shows me everything there is to see about her perception of mealtimes. Not “Is there a catch?”, reminiscent of witty, humorous mums who keep their little ones lightly on their toes.

No, my daughter enquires if this is a snare. Lets examine shades of meaning here: a snare is defined as: “ A trapping device used for capturing birds and small mammals. ” and most tellingly: “Something that serves to entangle the unwary.”

Mummy, the huntress, setting ever more complex challenges. No pudding without a catch. Oh, my. Humbling, this parent business.

I suspect today’s eye-opener is only the beginning.