Our children aren’t short of famous people. They’re short of people worth copying.

A handwritten thank-you note after every birthday, elbows off the table on repeat, and no phones at dinner.

Grey trays, forgettable food, and twenty minutes I looked forward to every day. My own children never had that. Why every box now comes home empty, what France and Japan get right, and why a packed lunch shouldn't be necessary at all.

I followed Gina Ford, the English childcare author whose strict feeding-and-sleep schedules became something of a cult method for a generation of new mothers, to the letter.

There is a school of thought, much repeated in the parenting circles I occasionally find myself adjacent to, that says we should never really tell a child no.