It’s hard saying goodbye to your kids. Sometimes they get a bit emotional.

More difficult is when when they don’t notice you going at all. Usually when they are hooked up to the automatic TV parent which is piping gibberish directly in through their eye holes. They are too intoxicated to turn their heads. “Bye!” I wave. If I’m lucky I might get a grunt.

If it's meant for kids, my kids will watch it, no matter how awful it is. They have no standards at all. My son wants to watch dinosaur robots with American accents. My daughter wants to watch a magic fairy mermaid with pink hair becoming a princess.

Turns out social conditioning is, not surprisingly, far stronger than I am.

My rule is this. If I can’t bear to watch it, then nor can they. That means no Paw Patrol (dog slavery health and safety nightmare). No Thomas the Tank engine (like watching the “paint drying” exhibit in the museum of nostalgia). There’s some stuff I like though. Pretty much anything with Mr. Tumble in it I find oddly comforting. And God, I’m really going to miss Duggee.

Everything's not quite so amazing now

For my one-year-old son, there was Teletubbies (alien babies trapped in an experimental Stalinist/fascist dystopia), or In The Night Garden (Just… terrifying).

Luckily, something new has arrived. It’s called Moon and ME, and it’s absolutely lovely. My one year old and I watch it together, rapt.

“Say bye-bye to Peppy Nanna,” I say at the end. “Bye Bye, Peppy Nanna.”

My one-year-old son looks at me, then waves at the TV, then begins to cry, then collapses in a heap on the floor, wailing “Bye-bye, Peppy Nanna!”

Deep down I know that I will never get a reaction like that.