My children are amazing.

They’re the most amazing children that have ever been born, or ever will be born. I know that seems improbable. I’m including a lot of children in that statement. I’m also aware that many other parents think exactly the same thing about their children. The problem with them thinking they’re children are the most amazing children in the world is that it’s ridiculous and bonkers. Because mine are.

My daughter’s vocabulary, for instance, is amazing. At 22 months my son was still mostly pointing and grunting. To be fair, he points and grunts now, but that’s more to do with vulgarity than lack of words. My daughter seems to adopt a new word every day. Amazing.

In fact, it’s a little bit over-amazing. If I’m being objective, most of her new words sound made up. She has started to wonder around babbling her new words incoherently. I can make out the odd word, but much of is indecipherable, like another language. Could she be independently learning a second language? Maybe. She is amazing after all.

Then she starts roaming the house wailing like a lunatic in her made up language, then moaning like a ghost, then speaking in tongues as though she’s having some sort of vision. Could my daughter be the world’s youngest tribal shaman? That would be very advanced. But she is, after all, amazing.

Then it starts getting a bit, well, scary. “Hello! hello!” she shouts, then embarks on a terrifying stream of gibberish, her voice pitching from strangulated growl to dolphin whistle to demonic chant. I wonder whether I should phone the doctor, or maybe a priest. By the sound she’s producing, I wouldn’t be surprised if she started levitating. A possessed daughter would be pretty amazing, I suppose. And she is amazing.

Then her favourite TV programme comes on. Mr. Tumble starts waving and singing his song, and she starts chanting and squeaking again. And then I realise what she’s doing, and relief and joy overwhelm me. My daughter’s not insane, or possessed. She’s singing!

My daughter can sing! She is so amazing.

I could have been a scientist. If I had been more focused, harder working, better at maths, a lot cleverer, better looking and had better hair, I could have been Professor Brian Cox.

If nothing else, I’ve got the enthusiasm. I read the articles, watch the documentaries, pretend to understand what Einstein was banging on about, go “wow” when I grasp something for a second then immediately forget it again.

What I really need, to full-fill my fantasy of being a scientist, is someone who doesn’t know what an idiot I am. Some one who actually believes that I know everything. Someone relying on me to explain the wonders and mysteries of life to them. That would be amazing. What an opportunity for a pretend scientist! And, frankly, what a responsibility.

Good job I practice. When I’m driving alone I imagine my kids asking me why the sky is blue, how an engine works, what electricity is. I explain to the steering wheel, gesticulating and extemporising. Some things I’m not entirely sure about, but who’s gonna know? My kids can fill in the details when they do their PhDs. I’m about the big picture.

“Daddy?” My son asks, gazing at his beaker.

“Yes son?”

“Where does water come from?”

I get chills. This is it. My time has come. Unleash the wonder. Right. Hang on. Where does water come from? It comes from comets, doesn’t it? Before that? Something to do with the big bang? H2O. What’s that again? One hydrogen to two Oxygen. What does that actually mean? Calm down. Focus. Keep it simple. Water on Earth. The water cycle. Right, here goes.

“Son… water is everywhere.” I pause dramatically. I am Professor Brian Cox. I’m standing on a cliff top gazing meaningfully out over a dramatic ocean. “And water is… amazing.” My perfect hair is tousled dramatically by the wind. “The water cycle is driven by the power of our Sun.” I say, “The sun evaporates water from the surface of the oceans creating clouds. The sun drives the winds, pushing the clouds over land, where they condense and release their vast cargo of rain. The rain gathers and becomes streams and rivers and finally flows back to the ocean. We take some of that rain water and clean it, and pump it to our houses, where we can drink it.”

My son is looking at me wide eyed, his mouth hanging open.

“Daddy?”

“Yes son?” I say excitedly. I am so ready for a follow up question.

“I’m hungry.”

I love my wife. She’s wonderful. If, by way of genetic chance, my daughter were to turn out exactly like my wife, it would be wonderful. Indeed, I’ve already noticed that my daughter is displaying some of her mother’s traits. It’s… lovely.

My wife is funny, clever, gorgeous, generous. She is basically out of my league. I am a lucky, lucky, lucky man. On top of all that, she’s extremely effective at getting things done. This is also great for me. I am one of the worlds great procrastinators. Lord only knows what would become of me if I didn’t have her to regularly kick my bottom.

Although my wife is practically perfect in every way, particularly for me, she does have certain personality traits that may, to some, and I want to use exactly the right words here, seem very very slightly… challenging. She can be a tiny, tiny, tiny bit… impatient. When she has a job to do, she can be a tiny, tiny, tiny bit… forceful. And when someone is doing a job badly, she can be a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny weeny bit… blunt.

Then there’s her singing. She can sing. Boy can she sing. At the karaoke, after she’s had a cocktail or three, she is… loud. If raw vocal power were the primary measure of great singing, then she would be up there with Maria Callas. She has pinned people to the back wall of the pub with her rendition of “Hey Big Spender”. Yes, my wife’s singing is something you are unlikely to forget.

“Mummy!” our daughter says, slightly panicked, as mummy joins in with the bedtime rendition of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.’ Mummy continues to sing. “Mummy, no! Stop mummy!” She pleads. “Mummy! Stop mummy! Nooooo!”

I cannot for the life of me explain this, but there is something about my wife’s singing that my daughter finds simply unacceptable. “Noooooooooo Mummy! Stoooooop!” She begs, pained. Night after night she demands that her mother stops. Just, stops. I don’t know what her objection is, exactly. But the brutal bluntness with which she communicates it, I have a suspicion about where that comes from.

Oh, the irony.

Small children are truly disgusting. And scary.

You don’t see a monkey plastering its face with its own food. Even a pig, the traditional benchmark of grossness, rarely gets its dinner on its own forehead. My daughter, the ginger whirlwind, the bulldozer, the nearly two year old pretender to the thrown of brutal over lord of the household, is far, far worse at meal times than a pig. I regularly have to scrape baked beans from behind her ears. Comb her eyebrows for breadcrumbs. Work clots of humus out of her shining, coppery locks, her face still glowing with an orange self-tan of ketchup residue. Mess never bothers her. Quite the opposite. She revels in it. And wants to share it with you. Especially if you’re wearing a suit. The wedding-cupcake-crotch incident is still seared into my memory.

It was a pleasant surprise, then, that she started to show an interest as we tried to train our son to wash his grubby hands.

“Washie hands?” She asks sweetly. “How nice” you think. You help her wash her hands, then dry them. A playfull desire to copy her brother’s hand washing could never become, I don’t know, scary at all.

“Washie hands.” She tells us the next time, less a question, more an expectation.

“Washie hands!” She demands the next, getting a bit shouty.

From there on, it’s out of control. “Washie hands!” She demands, moments after she has just washed her hands.

“Washie hands!!” She bellows, barging in on me while I’m on the toilet.

“Wash-ie-haaaaaaaaands!” She roars as she roams the house looking for a tap like a tiny, pudgy Lady Macbeth. I want to hide.

At the end of an ice-cream/ sandpit afternoon, her hands look like she’s wearing a pair of sand paper gloves.

“Washie hands?” I suggest.

She glowers at me, incensed that I would try to sully her favourite pastime by using it to remove dirt. “No.” she says, rubbing her hands on my leg. Removing dirt’s what my trousers are for.

“That.” My three year old son grunts, pointing without looking away from the TV. He’s slouched in his chair, one leg over the arm. He’s pointing at his drink which is inches out of his grasp. I assume he’s addressing me. I’m the only one here.

My wife and I used to have all sorts of high minded ideas about parenting. We would teach our children to be confident, emotionally secure, energetic, thoughtful, hard working, etc, etc. As time has gone on, and the magnitude of these tasks has become clearer, we’ve gradually lowered our sights. Now the only thing we’re fairly confident about achieving is making our kids polite. They are going to learn “please” and “thank you” if it kills us.

“That.” He repeats, this time jabbing his finger back and forth. He thinks the reason why I haven’t fulfilled his demand yet is lack of pointing. He points more.

“Excuse me?” I say, trying to pack as much parental disapproval into my voice as possible. He looks at me innocently, blinking.

So asking nicely for something wasn’t his first impulse. That’s not great, but now the TV trance is broken he’ll remember his training. And his training has been rigorous. For nearly his entire life we have been drilling “please” and “thank you” into him, and here’s where it pays off. Moments like this. Come on son, you can do it. Give me something to hold on to. Ask nicely.

He blinks again and raises his finger, (ok, not keen on the pointing either, but I’ll let that slide for now). He jabs his finger towards his drink even more violently and starts making a sort of chimp screeching sound. Not only has he not asked nicely, he can’t even be bothered to use actual human words.

“Son!”

“What?” He asks, genuinely surprised that I haven’t leapt up to get his drink for him.

I give him the glaring of his life. He’s not cowed, just slightly confused, then the realisation dawns on him and he grins. “Can-I-have-my-drink-please-dad-dy?” he chants like a sarcastic robot.

“No.” I say. “You can reach it yourself.”

He resumes finger jabbing and screeching like a chimp.

I’m definitely going to achieve something as a parent. I really am. I believe that. It’s just, at this point, I’m not entirely sure what.

Before I had children I imagined I’d occasionally have to be the peacemaker.

When they would be, I dunno, arguing about who’s turn it was to recite poetry or list the elements of the periodic table, I would explain mutual respect and tolerance to them and they would nod and smile and apologise to each other, then hug and skip outside to gather flowers and plait each others hair.

For some reason it never for one moment occurred to me, perhaps partly because I was hoping that my wife would give birth to human children and not, I dunno, honey badgers or a litter of dingos, that I would have to try and stop my children biting each other.

And it’s not my son, even though he is more than capable of behaving like some sort of feral woodland creature. It’s my tiny, sweet, cute as a button, still less than two years old daughter. And her lunging at her brother like a tiny, ginger, hair-clipped Dracula, isn’t even the most shocking thing about it. It’s how much my son enjoys it. Not the biting. The repercussions.

He’s not blameless. His cackling as he pesters her nearer and nearer to biting point is chilling. Finally she reaches breaking point and goes in, fangs bared.

“She bit me!” my son wails. I have to wade in, but I have no idea what to do.

“That’s very naughty.” I say. She glares back at me, defiant as a psychotic prison inmate. “You should never bite. Very naughty.”

“She should say sorry.” My son points happily.

“Say sorry to your brother.” I tell her.

“No.” She says. She lowers her eyes menacingly.

“Do the counting!” My son instructs me gleefully. I start counting. “Say sorry to your brother. One. Two. Three.”

“Put her on the naughty bag!” He demands.

“She’s too small for the naughty bag.” I say, feeling powerless. “I, er, I’m sure she’s sorry.”

She doesn’t look the slightest bit sorry.

I go to check his wound. He pulls up his top to show me. I can’t see anything.

“I thought she bit your hand?” I ask.

“Errr…” My son’s eyes dart shiftily. “There too.”

“You don’t always have to win.” I tell my son. “We can all win, sometimes.”

I’m not one of life’s natural winners. My little brother beat me at everything. Running. Tree climbing. Moaning. Badminton. Our epic back garden matches outdid Wimbledon in sheer drama. I should have dominated. I was taller, calmer, more skilled, slightly less ginger, but he always somehow snatched victory from the jaws of defeat using only his total determination to humiliate me.

Unlike me, my son has a powerful drive to win.

“I’m going to win the stairs!” He shouts as we climb the stairs. “I’m going to win at hugging!” He informs me as we go in for a hug.

“How?” I ask.

“I win!” He replies. “I’m going to win at singing this song.” He tells me as we prepare for yet another rendition of “Twinkle Twinkle Little Star.”

Like all winners, he not only has total commitment to winning, he makes up his own victory criteria. “How did you win at Twinkle Twinkle Little Star?” I ask.

“I finished it before you” he explains, or “I finished it after you.” depending on the prevailing facts. “So I win!”

It’s good to be a winner in life, I suppose. My slight worry, though, is that always having to win might, in the long run, make you a bit of a git to be around. Maybe I’m jealous because I’ve done a lot of losing, but something makes me want my son to lose a little bit and learn how to deal with it.

“I’m going to win this time.” I say. My son disagrees. We start the stair climb and I make sure I win. Not only that, I make sure his little sister beats him up the stairs too. Some cheating is involved.

At the top of the stairs, I wait for my son to learn the valuable lessen of not always winning. He glares at his sister, incensed. Then glares at me, doubly incensed. “Daddy won.” I say. “But it doesn’t matter.”

“Daddy didn’t win.” My son shakes his head darkly. Then his face changes. He smiles. “We all won!”

“What’s this, Daddy?” My son rushes in excitedly from outside. I’m not a scientist, but the small, wriggling, slimy thing on his fingertip looks like a baby worm to me. He names it “Mr. Tiny-Worm”. Parents are supposed to be able to teach their children about stuff. About animals and nature. Even about hard stuff like friendship and loss. If we don’t know how to teach these things, we have to learn.

“Lets… er, put him on the table and have a look at him.” I say, worried about Mr. Tiny-Worm’s safety on my Son’s finger. “I’ll just clean the table first. It’s a bit sticky.”

We admire Mr. Tiny-Worm together and speak about the wonder of nature.

“Mr. Tiny-Worm is my friend.” My son says. I fill up with parent emotion, my face goes all squashed up and I can’t speak for a moment.

“Shall we see if we can find any more little friends?” I suggest as we go back outside. My son giggles excitedly. I’m a great parent.

“Daddy?” My son asks later.

“Yes son?”

“Where’s Mr. Tiny-Worm?”

I try to remember.

I don’t know whether it was the cleaning products or the proximity to the radiator. Like I said, I’m not a scientist. But when we find Mr. Tiny-Worm on the corner of the dining table, he’s very, very still. And a bit dry looking.

“Is Mr. Tiny-Worm sleeping?” My son asks anxiously.

“Er… yes. I think he is.” I say. I pick up Mr. Tiny-Worm, hoping to place him back in the garden to carry on “sleeping”. Half of him stays stuck to the table.

My son’s reaction is heart breaking.

After hugs and tears I talk about finding another Mr. Worm. “But what if that one breaks too?” He asks tremulously.

“Well…” I start. I have no idea what to say next. After a long, excruciating, stammering pause, I finally tell him about the importance of taking good care of animals, and letting them go safely back into the wild. Not putting them on the table near the radiator and forgetting about them. “Yes Daddy.” He says tearfully. “You have to be more careful.”

“Yes.” I nod.

I’m learning.

I need to do an excitement wee, but I’m driving. My son has a change of clothes in his school bag, but not me. I suppose if I wee myself I could take my trousers off and wear my coat around my middle like a kilt, but that would be an odd way for a parent to arrive with his child at pre-school for the first time.

And I’m thinking, ‘What if my son hates pre-school? Who’s going to cuddle him when he’s upset? What if he needs me and I’m not there, what’ll he do? He’ll be scared. It’s PE today! On his first day! My son can’t change into his PE kit on his own. He’s never done it before. It would be like him suddenly starting to fly, or, I dunno, eating a carrot. As in, completely impossible. He needs me. Nobody knows him like me. Maybe I should turn the car around and just drive home.’

I know this all sounds bonkers, but here’s the thing. Kids destroy your life, smash it to bits irrevocably. This sounds like a bad thing. Well it is, but in return you get the astonishing privilege of raising an actual person. You don’t know what the hell you’re doing, so not surprisingly this task becomes your life. Everything else pales in comparison. Then at some point you have a revelation. Not a particularly nice one. You realise that the whole point of being a parent is to slowly let your children go. It’s not fair. It’s definitely too soon. I really should just turn around and go home.

These are the kinds of ridiculously over emotional thoughts I’m having as I drive my son to his first day at pre-school, both of us trying not to do an excitement wee.

He hugs my legs then is led off into the throng before I can bend down to kiss him. I loose sight of him. He’s gone.

“He had a lovely first day.” The nursery teacher tells me when I come to pick him up a few hours later. I’m an emotional wreck. “He changed into his PE kit all on his own. Wouldn’t let me help him.” She says.

My mouth hangs open. Inconceivable. He can’t do anything without me.

“Didn’t want his pasta, but he liked his snack.” She says.

“What was your snack, son?” I ask him.

“A Carrot.” He grins. “Yummy.”

OK. Where have you got my son?

I’ve had enough. I’ve given in over and over again. Telly. Vegetables. Chocolate biscuits. I have been trounced on every field of battle. But no more. I am the parent. My three year old son is not the boss of me, and it’s time that I Dadded-up and took charge of this household. I’m ready for the fight. Come on. Test me. Bring it on.

The doctor looks into my son’s ear with one of those ear-light thingies. (I really want one of those. Not sure why. Do I really want to know what the inside of my son’s ear looks like?). He diagnoses an ear infection and prescribes some ‘banana flavoured’ antibiotics. Banana flavoured if bananas where made of plastic and tasted like washing up liquid. Unlike when I was a child, medicine is usually quite nice nowadays, so his disgust and horror when he tastes the banana medicine is a bit of a shock. He goes berserk. Medicine is supposed to taste of strawberries. Not plastic bananas and washing up liquid. He disgorges it onto the floor, and runs away.

Problem is, he has to take his medicine. I can’t go back to the Doctor and say “I’m sorry, I couldn’t get my son to take this horrible ‘banana flavour’ medicine. Can I have the strawberry flavour version please.”. Can I? Does the NHS cover that? I’d be drummed out of the parenting union. Wouldn’t I? He has to take it. Doesn’t he? Yes. He does. Doesn’t he? Yes.

Force feeding him the medicine seems both wrong, and more importantly, completely impossible. I try negotiating. “Will you be a big brave boy for Daddy and take the medicine the nice Doctor gave us to make your ear better?”

“No.” He says, running away.

“You’ll get a special present.” I call after him, out of ideas.

He stops running. He comes back. He gazes at me, eye’s narrowed. “Chocolate Biscuit?”

I go to the shops. It’s three doses of plastic banana medicine, three times a day for a week. This is going to take a lot of chocolate biscuits.