Please somebody save me - I think the toddler Little Miss has got me sussed out (worked out for us older generation) and it can’t be long before she passes on these vital insights to the baby.

My authority has spent most of the weekend being undermined by everyone around me.

I was expecting it to happen at some stage and I knew with my luck and obvious flaws it would be sooner rather than later, but I figured that they would still be impressed by me until at least school age. By then I knew it would be perfectly reasonable for them to start to see through me and start to dismiss me as the man I am.

But it began this weekend when I was generally ignored and my requests for good behaviour were met with a wave of the hand or a dismissive sideways glance - if I was lucky!

In reality they were more often than not met with not only a dismissive glance but also with me being called invariably a ‘dill’, ‘duffer’, ’silly’ and ‘naughty’ by the toddler while Usurper the baby just sat there and laughed every time I was insulted. I would like to think that at least she was laughing at the entertaining show being put on and not directly at me as an individual.

Oh well, I shouldn’t complain, I had a bit over 3 years of respect from the eldest (I count the first year and a half even though everything that could move or talk she held in awe and I was nothing special), but it was inevitable that they would work out that Daddy is ‘made of fail’ - as the kids say.