“I can see spiders in the back of your mouth”

A FRIEND approaches me outside the bank. When I ask after his little daughter, he says that she’s been refusing to brush her teeth.

“She won’t let me go anywhere near her with a toothbrush,” he says.

Having worried, encouraged, cajoled, guided, laughed, shouted, cried, forced, bribed, pleaded, delighted, feared, reasoned, hoped and prayed in the service of parenting for the past 25 years I now find myself in the odd position of having to dispense advice on it.