A friend once asked me, ‘How do you get your kids to understand “do as I say, not as I do”?’ The answer is very simple. It can’t be done. Kids are programmed to learn by example, and there’s no way round it.

What it boils down to is this: if you expect your kids to do it, why on earth are you not doing it yourself? Whether it’s being tidy, saying please, eating vegetables, putting phones away at mealtimes⁶, being ill without moaning constantly, putting the front door key down where you can find it again … if you can’t do it, what makes you think a child will be able to? Either set the example you want them to follow, or live with them behaving like you.

Of course it’s irritating when the kids leave toast crumbs in the butter on the one day you managed not to, but there are worse behaviours they can copy. Having teenagers at the moment (indeed, I can’t really remember a time when I didn’t …) I have lots of friends with teenagers. And it’s very striking that those who complain their kids shout at them are – no prizes here – the ones who shout at their kids.

God knows it can be tempting to shout at them. And over the years it becomes a habit. They’ll shout back, obviously, and by the time they become teenagers they’ll be better at it than we are. They just have more energy. But by then it’s far too late for you to turn into a not-shouty person. It’s tough, it really is, especially if you were raised by shouty parents. But the only way to stop passing it down the generations is for you to learn to stop.

There are other examples too, mind you. Plenty of them. Parents who have always driven too fast while texting/after drinking, who discover their kids think it’s normal and acceptable, and do it too. Parents who are openly picky about food, but who moan that their kids are fussy eaters. Or parents who bang on for years about their weight and which diet they’re going on next, who find their teenage kids developing worrying eating habits.

Look, none of us is perfect. I get this wrong too, even after decades of practice. How could I have been so stupid as to think my kids wouldn’t copy my habit of talking over other people? No, actually, I can answer that. I didn’t think it. I didn’t think anything about it at all. Had I actually thought, I would have realised how stupid it was. Maybe I’d even have stopped doing it.

And there’s the biggest challenge. You have to recognise your shortcomings, and be able to control them. Otherwise you’re wasting your breath telling the kids to stop.