The problem is that my parenting skills tend to be very child specific. I know how to get my eldest son to put on his clothes. I make it a challenge. I know how to get my daughter to brush her teeth. I distract her with incompetent beatboxing.

Unfortunately, I have a third child. He is a new strain, one which has evolved immunity to my strange toolkit of DIY parenting skills.

He does not want to go on the potty, now matter how energetically I beat-box. He does not want to put his clothes on no matter how exciting a challenge I make it. I am back at the start. Again. Again.

As I, not for the first time, fantasise happily about being calmly and securely wheeled away for a month or two, he is tearing around, barenaked, smashing the place up. He disappears for a few minutes, then returns and throws a small water balloon at me, cackling.

READ MORE: Sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin

Something snaps inside me. “No more telly until your little brother puts his clothes on.” His two older siblings glance at each other. Then, miraculously, they jump into action. One puts their little brother’s favourite programme on the tablet and holds it for him, the other pretends to eat the most delicious biscuit imaginable and tells him there are more in Daddy’s back pocket.

Fascinated and bemused, he lets me put his clothes on while my eldest slips a biscuit into my back pocket. When I’m finished, I turn round and my youngest fishes it out, delighted. My eldest two return to their TV programme, as if nothing has happened.

I don’t know what’s just happened. But I think it might mean that I’m a genius. Also, that I probably don’t have to parent anymore.