In another room a clock ticks noisily; an abject reminder of the time I have been waiting here for these fidgety children to fall asleep. I feel that certain stiffness of impatience creeping through my limbs. Each minute is another stolen from those precious moments both children sleep simultaneously in the day. But for all of this, I still look upon the almost edible cream clad calf protruding vertically from bed – a determined indicator that its owner has no immediate plans for colluding – with utter adoration.

I have read many times, in this book and that book and then another, that the process of falling asleep must be markedly different from the excited revels of playtime – if you ever want your child to learn the miraculous gift of falling asleep effortlessly day and night, that is. Successful parents, these pages tell me, remain sternly straight-faced, ignore any impish sideways glance and refrain even from flinching at the little fingers poking up their nostrils. My fountain of knowledge may as well run dry: I can never resist a sneaky glance back or a gentle return tap on the nose. It’s true, I am a terribly soft touch.

Once upon a time, in a previous life, I managed a team. For the first months, I acted out hard the role of a stony disciplinarian, frowning when someone dashed in late balancing a desperate, pick-me-up, take-away croissant and coffee, or raising an eyebrow – a look borrowed from my most feared teacher – when the least urgent of work remained inexplicably incomplete. On my way home at the end of each day, I would feel my cheeks relax and a weight lift from my forehead; perhaps my frozen face’s way of telling me that I would rather be smiling. Worn out from this performance, I inevitably lightened up. And to my surprise, more work got done, and we were all happier for it.

I had fallen into that common managerial trap of thinking I could be commanding by behaving like someone completely different. What foolishness. I already knew that I had never responded well to strict, dictatorial orders, the sort of thing that can only lead to mediocrity. No one ever produces anything in exactly the shape you envisioned it, so why try to be so controlling. You see, managing is not about commanding but a complex process of suggesting, listening, coaxing and inspiring. And I could never be inspiring when frowning.

Now, advice books aside, it is my hypothesis, and you are at liberty to disagree, that it is this same approach we must apply in parenthood. This is not to say that children can do what they like, when they like, but that they are more likely to respond positively in the long term to gentle persuasion and a few slightly unfortunate direct experiences of limited failure (such as spilling a cup of cold water all over themselves when repeatedly playing with it at lunchtime), than to a rapid fire of short sharp commands.

So to return to bedtime: as my theory would have it, this period of gentle, sleepy playtime is what happens to be essential in helping our children eventually fall asleep without too much boo hoo hoo. To sternly face the other way, when they are at their most charming, would only disconcert and worry them with thoughts of where their greatest admirer had gone. Perhaps it works for steelier sorts, but that is just not me. Squaring up to consistency in my case is to smooth out those flickers of impatience and to see these moments of little fingers tickling my chin as far more precious than any email I will ever write. Let the clock tick merrily on.