How to be best - Behaviour

Regulating my own behaviour is an exhausting chore but the idea of having to regulate the behaviour of others brings me out in hives which is why I regard even the friendliest and most professional police officers with a degree of circumspection. I just don't see the attraction. Obviously I am hugely grateful that they exist because the maxim 'live and let live' is not one of universal interpretation or subscription but it's not for me.

Which is why I'm such a massive cop out as a parent (sorry, I know). I realise that an unlimited diet of ice lollies for my child is something I will end up paying more for than he will, most likely in dentist's bills, but shutting down that wheedling with a reasoned explanation of why he would be much better off with his kale and quinoa wrap is just far beyond me. Just say yes is my motto.

This makes me no sort of an ally to my German wife, Frau Nein, as I don't call her. She lays down the law like a road crew on the August Bank Holiday. We have the full range of sanctions from 1-2-3 to sit on the step to go to your room with a sideline of withdrawn screen time and what are fancifully called treats, fancifully because they constitute about 75% of his diet. And what kind of masochist threatens to take away their child's screen during a lockdown, the biggest self own since the Duke of York remembered taking the family out to Pizza Express.

I believe that, according to conventional gender dynamics, fathers are supposed to be in charge of discipline which is a laughable suggestion in my case, quite literally because I am usually reduced to hysterics by my child's naughtiness. My main problem is consistency of tone. My wife is capable of sounding really quite fierce when things are getting out of hand whereas I just plaintively ask 100 times for my son to get into bed with no result.

On one occasion I decided to take a leaf out of her book and shouted at the top of my voice. Instant hysterics and I had to write a letter of apology. I'm not even aiming for a good cop bad cop dynamic just totally average recruit who is going to scrape his way through Hendon. I know however that I need to shape up because, leave to one side the love/fear spectrum, I haven't yet moved beyond receiving my son's scornful defiance.