MY son appears to have chosen his future career. Escapology. It has actually been a while now since we first realised that we had a mini Houdini on our hands.

Fairly early on I put him down in his cot and turned my back only to hear a dull thud and to discover him lying at my feet on the floor.

To this day I don’t know how he managed it. I can only assume he launched himself head first over the top.

He was completely unharmed but much hysteria ensued – him and me – which resulted in my husband being dispatched upstairs to adjust the cot.

Just one of those things?

Perhaps but then he got a bit bigger and he realised he could do much more exciting things. Such as reach the door handles.

Still in denial, we tried to be relaxed about this and blamed it on the universal child ‘exploring’ gene.

But we added in a daily round of checks to make sure all external doors were locked just so we didn’t find him wandering around the street.

Then he got bigger still. And more ingenious.

So if he wanted to get hold of items that were out of reach he would just find a stool or chair and stand on it.

And obviously the items that were out of reach tended to be the same items that were strictly prohibited. Like a plug... attached to the toaster. Or the bolt at the top of the back gate.

We considered removing all the chairs in the house but decided that was probably unsustainable in the long term.

So instead we just had to wise up ourselves – and improve security again.

We finally accepted that Houdini was here to stay last week when another child ran up to me to tell me that my son was “standing on the wall, trying to open the window”.

As we don’t have a wall in our lounge I knew this meant trouble.

Or more accurately (my) waist high windowsill.

The question we are now asking ourselves is why does he want to escape so much?

Is he fed up with us? Is it just for the challenge? Does he secretly want to be David Blaine when he grows up?

In truth there is only one answer.

It’s just to see if he can.