The Shock of Finding Out That Your Teens Aren’t Quite as Terrible as You Were

‘It’ll happen to you too now,’ my Mom once told me, dandling my firstborn son on her knee and cooing down at him. ‘One day he’s all cute and snuggly and the next minute, you open a cupboard door to hang up some pants and bam… you get hit by a tsunami of badly hidden empty beer cans.’