This caused my dad much nervous counting of the toothbrush bristles. It probably saved him from swallowing the odd hair, but I'm sure most modern parents would agree that the such scaremongering was excessive.

I remember my grandmother as a warm and kindly woman, and can only put the hair-swallowing thing down to that tendency among previous generations to think children were better off for a bit of suffering.

Once upon a time, adults thought it did children good to think they couldn't pick their noses without their eyes falling out, or fiddle with their belly buttons without their skin falling off.

I've always been impatient with the view that childhood is a time of blissful ignorance in which the world is bathed in a soft-glow light of magical innocence.

To be a child is to be full of fear.

Children's fears look ridiculous to us sometimes, but they're real enough to them. And that, I'm sure, is what the modern psychologists, who advocate 'child-centred' parenting, would say mattered.

Ever since she first saw and heard it in action, Zoe has been terrified of our vacuum cleaner.

Try to vacuum with her in the room and she trembles, fists clenched, emitting a bubbling cry of panic. (This is actually a very cute look, which makes me think some parents frighten their kids just to get an extra cute-fix out of them.)

I gave it a few months and tried again. (To be clear: this doesn't mean I've had a dirty carpet for months. It's vacuumed regularly when Zoe's in bed or out. It's not that I'd mind if you thought we lived in squalor. But I'd be in trouble if my wife thought I'd allowed you to think we did. It was bad enough when, a couple of weeks back, I made a passing reference to 'margarine', as opposed to 'butter', in our fridge.)

Anyway, the second attempt at vacuuming in front of Zoe had the same result.

"It's just a noise!" I explained, in one of those futile attempts at explanation common to inexperienced parents. "It can't hurt you. It's just noise."

Now Zoe is scared of even the sight of the vacuum cleaner, which she calls 'Nosing'. The thing only has to be standing inert in the hallway and she'll point at it and say in a dark, tremulous voice, 'Nosing ...!'

At first I assumed that 'noing' was her version of 'noise'.

But my wife thinks 'noing' has a more sinister provenance - a Teletubbies Christmas special DVD. This features a machine called The Noo Noo which is a bit like a vacuum cleaner.

The Noo Noo is harmless enough. But I can see it would be a freaky if you thought it had escaped from the Teletubbies DVD and somehow appeared in your house.

To empathise, if I suddenly noticed that Tinky Winky, Laa-laa and Po were standing in the hallway, no doubt it would give me the sweats.
awolstenholme@ywng.co.uk