I HAVE bred a little monkey. I fear that Ben is two going on twelve. Not only does he grunt when asked a question, he has now also started to question his mother’s orders.

Is this usual for one so young? I was fully expecting him to be arguing the toss over a range of house rules when he hit adolescence but I was shocked to discover that his infant vocabulary already contained the word, “why?”

After he had asked this question about five times in response to my plea to simply “come here”, I caught myself doing something I swore I would never do.

I actually sounded like my mother, not that she is an inappropriate role model – she is in fact a top class mum. But even so I never thought I would actually start sounding like her.

This did indeed come to pass when I uttered the classic line “Because I said so!”

In my youth this was always a sure sign that I had exhausted my mum’s patience and she had simply given up trying to come up with a reasonable argument.

It has now happened to me and Ben isn’t even out of nappies. I tried to convince myself that he simply caught me unawares and I didn’t have time to put a well structured debate together over why exactly she should capitulate and move the six steps in my direction so I could put his jumper on.

Either way it wasn’t the most successful line I have ever delivered as he continued to stand there staring at me with a ‘what you going to do if I don’t’ look on his face.

In the end it took the threat of no going to the park (as if that would ever happen!) to convince him doing as he was told was the best course of action.

It seems that most things these days are only done under threat of being deprived of something, which I can’t help feeling is a sign that my authoritative approach just isn’t working. I am told this is just the terrible twos, I fear however it is simply setting the tone for the rest of his life.