I will tell you our babies’ favourite first birthday present so far – a brightly coloured xylophone, and more precisely the wooden stick with a pretty red ball on top for hitting it. I have watched the children play with it and fight over it these last two weeks and so will try to explain the reasons for their love through baby eyes.

The obvious, of course, is the delightful noise the stick makes when whacked against the xylophone notes and all sorts of other things lying about. The less expected and more common reason, however, is the fun it seems to be to put it into your mouth like a big red lolly pop. I would never have suggested to the children that they do this with the xylophone stick. Indeed, when they are gadding about on all fours, stick in mouth, there are times it looks to me a little dangerous and I would really rather they didn’t. But our safety measures are not the point here.

Rather, to what extent should we adults prescribe how babies play with objects (that is assuming they can do no real harm to themselves or others)? I tend to be rather laissez faire, watching and waiting to see how the play unfolds. To the point, I admit, that I feel a bit prickly when other adults carefully (and always lovingly) show our children exactly what to do with an object, taking it out of their hands and turning it around, or pressing their open, uninterested little hand around it. Something in me thinks, ‘if they choose not to, they should not really have to play with it, should they?’

Call me an overly indulgent mother, but the striking part is that babies left alone almost always work out the very best use for something, at least as good as, but often better than, I could have ever suggested. Watching these scenes of splendid creativity, I realised accepting (or rejecting) the intervention of other adults in how our children do things is likely to be a dilemma I will face over and over again for years to come. Optimistically, I suppose there are lots of teachers and other parents out there who can appreciate how exciting it must be to crawl around with a xylophone stick in your mouth. And for all those more prescriptive types, well, they can make me eat my words the day our children become world famous percussionists.